by Azalea Ellis
But fear of death is a powerful motivator, and I refused to fall. I killed them until finally one let out a sharp “Tik!” and they all backed up a few steps and repeated the sound.
I made a feinting lunge toward them as if to attack, screaming with all the intimidation I could muster. My dry throat cracked, and my voice broke under the pressure, turning my scream into a growling shriek of bloodlust.
They jumped in surprise, and dashed away almost quicker than I would have thought possible, going “Tik! Tik!” in alarm.
After that, I took a long minute to just lean against the wall and rest. I knew I needed to keep moving. I knew that. But at the moment, I couldn’t. That scream had been a desperate attempt to scare them. And luckily it had worked, because no matter how much I wanted it to, my body couldn’t keep going without a break.
As I sat among the small carcasses, I felt elation roll over me. I’d won, with my own strength. I’d fought and won.
* * *
I sat near the entrance barrier and looked around the room. I’d been too busy with the more immediate danger to examine it before.
It was a section of the top of the building, cut somewhat like a piece of Bundt cake, the center being the heat-room I’d come from, and the other slices undoubtedly being filled with other types of monsters. There were three doorways in the far wall, each leading into darkness. But the small crisscrossing grooves lining the walls and the holes in the ceiling that let in beams of sunlight were of more interest to me.
I looked to the three doors, and then to the skylights, and then to the grooved walls. “Damn. I wish I’d exercised more.” With one last deep breath, I swallowed to moisten my still-dry throat, crawled to my feet, and hobbled toward the doors.
When I reached the outward facing wall I carefully avoided the doorways and the danger I knew would lurk somewhere on the other side. Instead, I wedged my fingers and toes into the slanted grooves in the wall, and started to shuffle diagonally upward. When I’d gone to the far wall, I carefully moved to a higher set of grooves and started in the other direction, inching my way toward the ceiling.
As I neared one of the glass-less windows, I realized it was eerily silent outside, and the faint smell of something else mixed with the light perfume of the air. When I’d entered the building, already there had been horrible screams, but they were absent now. When I reached the window and hauled my upper body through the opening, I discovered why.
“Oh. God,” I murmured.
It was a scene of carnage. Countless bodies were strewn across the ground in every direction, lying on the stone paths and amongst the trampled grass of the fields. Many of them were monsters, but I saw a human head with brown hair lying below my vantage point, face down.
It was just the head, the body nowhere to be seen.
I reared back from the opening, gasping for air as my stomach heaved. But even so, the taste of the air, filled with the scent of blood and feces and the meaty, food-smell of raw meat and internal organs…the smell filled my mouth, and I could taste it on my tongue and the back of my throat.
My stomach convulsed, and I spewed down onto the floor below. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and looked out again.
Under a nearby tree, whose trunk had broken like a snapped toothpick, a pack of the tik-tiks piled on top of something on the ground, ripping and biting. A small arm flailed out, helpless, and I gasped. It was the boy, the small boy from earlier. They were killing him.
I shouted and waved my hands, but none of the monsters so much as twitched. I crawled out of the opening, angled my feet down, and pushed off down the outside of the curved building. I slid quickly, and then shot off the side almost straight down.
I hit hard, and despite crumpling to the ground and rolling, sharp pain shot up through my un-numbed ankle, my knees, and my hips. The scaly vest I wore absorbed some of the impact, and protected my spine. I groaned and stumbled to my feet, then hobbled to the pack, shouting in rage.
They saw me coming, and lifted red-stained muzzles, teeth bared in warning.
When I reached them, I snapped one’s neck with my two hands while I cracked the spine and brittle legs of another under my foot, screaming all the while. That took care of that. They ran off, chattering at me resentfully.
I knelt in front of the small Player. It looked like maybe he had been hiding in the branches of the tree, which had been knocked over by some huge force. The boy that I’d thought earlier looked too young to be here lay bleeding—way, way too much blood.
My hands shook as they hovered above him, trying to figure out the best spot to apply pressure. “Oh, god. Please. Are you okay?” I knew the answer. There were too many wounds, he was too small, and he’d already bled so much. It was everywhere, the blood.
He gasped up at me, chest heaving for breath, eyes wide and terrified.
I smiled at him, hoping it looked honest. “You’re going to be fine, okay? They’re gone, and I’m here now. I’ll keep you safe, and as soon as this is over we’re going to get you out of here, to a hospital, so don’t you worry.” I looked around for someplace to hide. “Everything’s okay,” I chattered, not sure if I was trying to soothe the boy or myself with my words.
The sleeve I’d wound around my face earlier had fallen down around my neck. I took it off, tore it down the middle, and used it to tie off both of the boy’s arms as close to his body as possible. Then I tore off my other sleeve and did the same to his upper thighs. “Need to keep the blood near your core,” I explained.
His torso was still leaking blood everywhere, but I didn’t have anything to bind it with.
I heard a shriek, and a huge shadow passed overhead, blocking out the heat and glaring harshness of the sun for a fraction of a second. I looked up at the tail end of a huge flying bird creature. “Crap. We need to move.”
I looked around for somewhere small, somewhere defensible. Definitely not another mysterious, surprise-it’s-a-trap! building. Somewhere I could keep the boy safe. A crow sat in a nearby tree, watching us with its beady little eyes. I ignored it and looked past to a bullet-shaped glass container, big enough to fit a couple humans inside. It lay overturned nearby, on one of the grooved stone paths.
I slid my arms under the boy’s light body and lifted him, trying not to jostle him despite my limpy leg, and carried him to the human-sized bullet. It had metal tracks on one side, and as I stared at the aerodynamic shape, I suddenly understood. “It’s a pod! A transport pod.”
I set the boy down on the ground and wedged my shoulder against the side of the pod, giving it a hard shove. It lifted slightly, but settled back down again. I shoved harder, and kept shoving, and it lifted, then rolled over and settled with its tracks along the grooves in the stone path. I pulled at the handle I’d uncovered and opened the glass door, then lifted the boy and slid him inside.
He groaned and tossed his head back and forth, pale with pain and blood-loss.
I went behind the pod and tried to push it along the tracks, but it ground against the stone roughly and I ran out of energy in less than a minute. I had to stop. I peeked my head inside the door to check on the boy, but instead noticed a cartridge in the front of the pod, attached to the end of the metal tracks. On the floor of the pod lay another, covered in rust.
I picked it up and buffed it thoughtfully against my pants, blew hard into its end, and took the other cartridge out of the slot. They were the same. I slipped the old one into my waistband, and then put the one from the floor into the slot. It took a good hard shove to push it into place, but when I finally got it, the pod hummed to life.
After only a few seconds, the glass tinted over to protect the interior from the sun. I laughed aloud. “Hell yeah!”
The boy giggled, despite his injuries. “This is awesome.”
“How do you drive this thing?” I said, before noticing movement on the other side of the pod.
I stilled in fear as a large creature stalked around the corner of a nearby building, s
traight toward us. It looked like a humongous wildcat, except for the third eye in its head. I had half a moment to hope that it had already eaten someone or something else and wasn’t hungry any more. Then its nose twitched, and it shot forward, slamming into the side of the pod and almost rocking it off the path again, clawing at the glass as if trying to get inside.
The boy screamed shrilly.
The three-eyed wildcat growled and scored lines into the tinted glass with its claws.
I took an involuntary step back, and it pushed away from the pod, padding purposefully around to my side. I stepped backward, and then remembered something I’d heard once about dealing with wildcats. I spread my arms and legs wide to try and look large, and resisted the urge to turn my back and run.
It merely threw me a warning snarl and turned to the boy, exposed by the open door of the pod.
“Damn it,” I groaned. I lunged forward and slammed the pod door closed, leaving the boy protected inside.
The creature seemed to assess me anew in surprise, and bared its teeth in warning, letting out a rumbling growl, like the sound of far-away thunder rolling across the earth.
“I can’t let you. He’s just a little kid.” I said aloud, though I knew it wouldn’t make a difference to the creature.
It lunged for me, and I pushed sideways just soon enough to avoid its long claws. I fell onto my numb leg, now unfeeling all the way up to the hip, and scrambled backward. My hand landed on a rock, and I threw it at the cat, but it struck nothing more than a glancing blow.
All three of its eyes focused on me unwaveringly, a hunter’s glare.
I continued to scuttle away as it stalked forward, until I came up against the trunk of the split tree from earlier.
The cat let out a series of raspy coughs, almost as if it was laughing.
I used the trunk to haul myself to my feet and snatched one of the snapped branches, pointing the sharp end toward the cat and shouting in wordless, empty threat.
It swiped one large paw and ripped the awkward weapon from my grasp. Another step and another swipe, and it knocked me into a tumbling roll across the ground.
I crawled to my hands and knees, holding the bleeding scratch marks on my arm, and wondering if the bone might be broken. My ID link definitely was, cracked and split like the ground of a desert land.
The cat pounced on me again, batting at me like a toy and sending me flying.
I dragged my limp left leg toward the pod, and used its smooth side to haul myself to my feet. My eyes met the boy’s through the tinted glass, and I saw a fear in them that mirrored my own. I also saw the reflection of the cat behind me, and I knew that it would play with me until it killed me, and then it would eat me, and the boy would die.
There was no escape.
So I turned around, balled my hands into tight, bloodless fists, and screamed defiance at the monster. “Come!”
It smashed me against the side of the pod and pinned me with its front paws, towering over me on its hind legs.
I punched and flailed and even tried to bite at it, but it held still, looking at me with those three beautiful golden eyes. It opened its mouth to bite off my head.
I refused to close my eyes against death. But when it lowered its head, instead of teeth biting at me, a sandpaper tongue rasped against my forehead. I blinked twice as my mind stuttered in confusion. A lick?
The creature pushed back and landed on all fours, looked at my astonished face once more, and let out another coughing laugh. Then it ambled away, disappearing around a bend of the stone path between the tall grasses.
I shakily opened the door of the slim pod and sat down inside. “Are you okay?”
The boy nodded faintly. “I’m glad…you’re okay,” he whispered, taking rapid, shallow breaths.
I chuckled. “Me, too.” There was a small lever in the center of the pod. I pushed it forward, and with a rusty groan, the pod started to slide forward.
The boy started shivering, and when I placed my hand on his forehead, it was cold and clammy. I pushed the lever down harder, and the pod shuddered with the effort to add more speed.
With some difficulty and a lot of worrying, we finally made it back to the starting point and the cube, the pod dying as the clearing came into view.
I got out, lifted the boy into my arms, and hobbled toward the still black cube. I laid the boy at the edge of the clearing, went to poke and prod at the cube, but got no reaction. I smashed my palm against it in frustration and then went back to the boy. “It’ll be over soon, and then we’ll be able to go back. I’ll get you help.”
He smiled sweetly at me and whispered, “No, you won’t. But that’s okay. Take it.” He gestured to the front pocket of his jeans.
“What?”
“Take it.”
He fumbled with the stiff fabric, so I reached into the small denim pouch to help him and drew out his black token.
“No.” I shook my head, moving to put it back.
He smiled again, and blood ran out of the corner of his mouth as he whispered, “It’s okay. Thank you.” And then he was gone. I didn’t want to believe it, but there’s a horrible sense humans have for the souls of others. His was gone.
I blinked and let out a hitching, sobbing breath, though my eyes stayed dry.
Then the crow flapped down from the deep blue sky, landing atop the cube once more.
A screen flashed in front of my face.
THE TRIAL IS OVER. PLEASE RETURN TO THE STARTING POINT.
I waited numbly until others started to drag themselves back to the cube, weary and half-beaten. Then I stood up, clenching the second token in my fist. Words appeared on the cube.
YOU HAVE PROVEN YOURSELVES WORTHY.
I watched as the survivors filtered back. A man and woman came back okay, or so I thought. He dragged her, her arm thrown around his shoulder. Her eyes were wide and staring, and her throat had been slashed open, deep.
He was chanting to the dead woman mindlessly, as I had done to the boy. “It’s okay, Honey. I’m here with you, and everything’s going to be okay. It’ll all be back to normal once we get back to the real world. It’s okay, Honey…” This time, I knew for sure that the words were to comfort him, not her.
The cocky guy who’d claimed to know what was going on at the beginning of the Trial popped out of the tall grass and stumbled over the body of the boy. He grimaced in distaste, and then knelt down to pat the boy over and search his pockets.
“He doesn’t have a token,” I said without thinking.
He looked up and smiled at me. “You made it, huh? Though a bit worse for wear, I see,” he said, looking at my bleeding, bedraggled and bruised body. “How do you know he doesn’t have one?”
I stared at him emotionlessly, and his lips twisted into a knowing smile. “You took it, that’s how. Well, well. I must say I’m impressed. Going for the weaker targets doesn’t pay in strong Skills, but you decrease risk that way, too. Personally I prefer the ones with fight in them. That way you know you’ll get something good.” He nodded at me approvingly. “And you got some armor. You’ve got more guts than I thought. You might do well in this Game.”
I turned my head away without responding, and watched the others. There had been many at the start, but we were fewer now. “More than fifty percent casualty rate,” I muttered.
“How else to cull the weak from the strong?” he said.
The crow moderator opened its mouth. “Everyone has arrived. Congratulations on surviving. Now, for the special awards! Please take out your tokens.”
I slipped my finger between my strange vest and my shirt and pulled out my original token from the pocket where I’d stashed it. As the cube hummed, both mine and the boy’s token started to vibrate sympathetically, and then melted and reformed into strange shapes that reminded me vaguely of old Chinese characters, or maybe Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Words rolled out across the screen from left to right.
WISHER’S PENNY: JENNY SHEEN
>
GREEN WHISPERER: JACK URBAN
SECOND WIND: VAUGHN RIDLEY
AURA OF LIGHT: VAUGHN RIDLEY
FLICKER: VAUGHN RIDLEY
MADRIGAL’S SHELL: VAUGHN RIDLEY
NOSE_
I watched the guy next to me. As Vaughn Ridley’s name rolled out, over and over, his smile grew wider and wider. He held a handful of transformed tokens in his hand, watching the screen.
I grew cold inside, but was soon distracted as my own name rolled across the screen.
TUMBLING FEATHER: EVE REDDING
SPIRIT OF THE HUNTRESS: EVE REDDING
“Wow,” Vaughn said. “You got a spirit-type Skill? Impressive.”
I frowned at him. “What does that mean? What are ‘Skills?’ ”
He shook his head at my ignorance. “They’re just like the ‘skills’ in a video game. They let you do special things once you plant them, things you couldn’t do normally. They’re quite useful.”
I stared at the two tokens, sitting so innocently in my palm. “They’ll help me survive?” For a second, I was elated at my good fortune. I could hardly wait to plant them.
“They help you do more than survive. They allow you to become god!” He announced, looking at me with narrowed eyes. “I am the strongest Player to ever enter the Game, and I’m aiming for the ultimate power. I’m looking for allies to help me on my way. Strong people who will do whatever it takes, and don’t mind getting their hands dirty. How about it?”
It took a minute for my overwhelmed brain to understand what the braggart was asking. “You want me to join you?”
“Yes. You’re the only one here with more than one token, besides me. Even if you did only kill a little kid to get it, at least you’re ruthless. And I know you’re a bit strong, because you’ve got a spirit-type Skill. I’m going to dominate this Game and all the other useless Players, and I’ll take you with me to the top.”
