There was a still, confused silence in the cell. Both Vincent and Fang looked at each other with several emotions coursing through their bodies. Eliot, after asking his question, just remained silent.

The first to speak up was Vincent. “Him?” he asked. “The hell are you talking’ about? Eliot ain’t a fighter.”

The guard remained emotionless and just stared at Eliot, intently. They then gestured their arms and said, “Come on, it’s time to go.”

Pushing the stunned Eliot partially aside, Vincent started to make his way towards the bars of the cell. While he wasn’t terribly angry, at least not yet, there was some intensity behind his steps.

“Listen—“

But before he could finish, a hand blocked his progress. It was the hand of Eliot. Vincent just stood there, looked at the hand, and then back towards the face of Eliot. There was a firm softness to it that he hadn’t seen since the family incident.

With a deep breath, Eliot looked back at Vincent and said, “It’s ok, Vince, please don’t get worked up or do something reckless.”

“But...”

“Don’t worry about me, I’m probably just gonna be smacked around a little bit and lose.” With a little bit of an awkward chuckle, he added, “I might even pass out before the fight even starts.”

Eliot then looked at the guard, sweat dripping down the back of his neck, and nodded. In response, the guard unlocked the cell and took him away. Only Vincent and Fang were left.

After a few seconds, Vincent shook himself out of the daze that he was in and rushed towards the bars. He began to hopelessly shake them while looking for Eliot. The bars didn’t break nor was Eliot anywhere in sight.

Realizing that what he was doing was probably foolish and pointless, he turned and asked Fang, “What are we supposed to do?”

“What do you mean?” Fang replied.

“‘What do you mean?’ I mean how are we supposed to help Eliot?”

“Don’t you have any powers?”

Like a lightbulb going off in his head, Vincent sprang up and exclaimed, “Oh yeah! I can make voids that push all things in the void away.”

Without an ounce of hesitation, Vincent turned back around towards the bars and started to create a void between the two bars. Before he could even make one, Fang shouted out from behind him.

“Woah, hold on Vincent!” they warned.

“What?”

“You can’t just break out of here and take Eliot back. Besides, what good will that do? You’ll just end up back here.”

“Well yeah, but I can’t have him fight anyone—he’s not the fighting type. Not at all.”

“Oh I can tell, but you still can’t do this.”

“And why not?” Vincent pleaded, a bit of anger starting to show through.

“Because he doesn’t want you to.”

With those words, Vincent calmed down a bit. His thoughts lingered on them and they rang true.

“He doesn’t want you to do something stupid and impulsive without thinking,” they continued.

Vincent just looked up to the ceiling and moaned, “Ughhhhh, then what do we do? I can’t just stay here.”

Fang’s eyes darted around the room and they scratched their head. After a few seconds, their eyes lit up and they looked back at Vincent.

“We can go watch the fight,” they proposed.

“We can? How?”

With a slight smile, Fang replied, “Same way you do anything around here.”

***

Eliot Zanes was being brought down the various hallways that led to the Collider. During the long walk, he felt familiar fear and anticipation starting to well up. Just as quickly as they appeared, he pushed them away. Although he was able to generally keep his emotions in check, there were times he had to stop and really force himself, because his throat wanted to scream out for his friends.

With each step, the sweat on his neck grew hotter and hotter. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—he was only a few dozen feet away from the Collider doors. The time he had been dreading was almost upon him.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

As he stepped up to those ominous doors, the guards that escorted him each put a hand on a door. Eliot took a few short breaths and nodded to the guards. Slowly, the doors opened and light began to pour in. And with that, he walked forward.

The first thing that struck him was not people, but rather the beauty of the area itself. From the spiraling columns to the intricate stonework, it looked just like coliseums from old Roman literature. He was so taken back by the architecture that he didn’t hear that there was an announcer that was talking. As soon as he snapped out of it, Eliot began to listen.

“Can you believe it?” the announcer exclaimed.

Believe what? Eliot thought.

“And now for the opponent!” the announcer continued. “She’s only in her fourth fight here, but she’s already left an impression on us. From surrendering to self-harm to suddenly passing out, her opponents can’t help but give her the win. Give it up for Lady Luc!”

As the crowd roared and cheered, Eliot looked over at his opponent and was a bit surprised by what he saw. She was a slender, Indian woman, probably in her 30s, wearing a ruby-red dress. Everything about her—her appearance, her demeanor, her glamor—was in stark contrast to the situation at hand.

Speaking of the situation at hand, Eliot was already feeling more and more uncomfortable. He was not someone who liked attention and big crowds. Even when he was in theatre, he never acted; he always worked backstage.

While trying to collect his thoughts, he didn’t even realize that Lady Luc was already halfway across the arena. In a bit of a panic Eliot blurted out the first thought that came to mind.

“W-wait! I don’t know what to do,” he frantically said.

Luc stopped for a second and raised an eyebrow. At the same time, a dull pain started to throb at the front of Eliot’s head.

“First time?” Luc asked with a smile.

Caught a bit off guard, Eliot rubbed his head and responded, “I-um yeah I’ve never done this before.”

“I can tell,” she laughed as she approached ever closer.

As Luc moved closer, Eliot felt that pain grow stronger.

“I’ll tell you what,” Luc started to say, “I can tell you aren’t much of a fighter.” She then stuck her hand out towards Eliot. “I’m an experienced fighter, so instead of me hurting you, how about you just close your eyes and ‘faint’?”

Although there was still something in his mind that wanted him to pull back, Eliot gave into the relief that the words she spoke gave him.

“Um, yeah, I can do that,” Eliot said, reaching his hand out to shake Luc’s.

The moment their hands touched, he felt his mind instantly wracked with pain. His entire body began to seize up and twitch at every nerve. That being said, his body felt no pain, only his head.

As the pain subsided, he felt as if he had been stripped of everything and left out in a blizzard, naked. No, that’s not quite right. He didn’t feel physically exposed, but rather, he felt as if the walls around his mind and self were being cracked.

Eliot had been so concentrated on the pain that he didn’t realize that everything around him went black. He could see nothing, hear nothing, and feel nothing. He couldn’t even see himself.

Then, a familiar voice began to echo around him.

“Let’s see, which one would be the most painful?” the voice said.

Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain somewhere in his head. It felt like someone was poking their finger around his brain, looking for something.

As the pain flared up, so did the black around him. The black flared up to a bright red and then simmered down back to black with the pain.

A few seconds passed and the calm began to set in again. But before he could get too comfortable, another shot of pain coursed through him. This time it was deeper inside his head. And just like last time, the black briefly flashed red.

“Get out,” Eliot instinctually said.

But still, the poking, prodding, and pain continued. Time after time the pain would continue, and Eliot would tell whatever was poking around to get out.

“My my, what a wall,” the voice said, once again. “This is the kind of memory I was looking for.”

“No! GET OUT!” Eliot now screamed.

He didn’t know why, but he could feel that whoever it was that was looking through his head was getting closer and closer to something. And that something was something that he could not allow to be freed.

Wait, why can’t it? Eliot thought.

More pain struck, this time more intense.

“Aghhhh,” Eliot screamed out.

No one should know what lies behind that wall. No one is allowed to see it...not even himself. But something continued to try and break it, and he couldn’t allow that. In desperation, Eliot began to lose himself to his mind. He started to scream out anything and everything. With each breath, more and more steam began to pour out of his mouth.

“Get out! No more! I don’t want it! I can’t have it! I don’t want to remember!”

He didn’t know what he was saying. It was as if whatever his brain was screaming flooded out of his mouth.

And then it started to crack. Whatever it was that was buried deep inside of him, it began to break. He felt that the walls that were keeping it at bay were being broken down by an outside force. It was going to be free and that terrified him, even though he had no idea why.

Eliot began to roll around and spaz out on the ground. He could feel his brain flexing and twitching, trying to fight back against this intruder, but it was losing. There was nothing left he could do. He could only strap in and give in to the red that started to burn around him.

The moment he resigned himself to it, the black that surrounded him became completely consumed by the flames—by the red. Those flames burned redder, hotter, and quicker.

Before he knew it, the flames that consumed his vision were gone and he was standing back at the Collider. However, everything around him was shaded with a deep hue of red. Not only that, but he couldn’t hear the crowd anymore. The only thing he could hear were three words that continued to play over and over in his head: anger, fear, hatred. Those words were the only thing he could hear. They continued to loop in his head faster and faster, hotter and hotter. He felt himself becoming one with those words and with the red that filled the world around him.

Finally, it broke. What must not be remembered was freed from his mind. The walls that he desperately tried to hold together were finally destroyed. The memories of things he long-forgot and things he kept long buried in the deepest crevices in his mind were starting to flood his head.

Just as those memories began to take him over, with every fiber of his being resonating his anger, Eliot screamed out, “Berserkir!”