I snorted. In any other tournament it would be seen as unfair to throw a wrench into the works while battling your opponents, but here it was not only allowed, it was one of the rules.
“The warriors will face each other with courage, intelligence, and strength. They must overcome their fear, use their cunning to survive, be swift to escape dangers, strong to defeat the others. They must endure hostile environments while their senses are put to the test. They must know how to turn off their emotions. They must prove they are worthy. Only the most valiant will win the crown, bringing honor to his queen and thus saving his own life. Each of them has received intensive training at the hands of the Sisterhood, who long for victory as much as their Champions. The Witch who wins the crown will have a thousand years of glory over her Sisters. To us this is worth more than a thousand lives. Competition is everything. May the Dark Tournament begin! Gahl sum keht. Forge your glory.”
The Empress blew on the crown in her hands and it disintegrated like ash in the wind. Her message was clear: the crown would exist only for the new queen.
I clenched my fists and turned toward the Arena, as did my adversaries. I hated that Witch for everything she had stolen from me. I hated that kingdom. I hated all of them. There was only one way out: to fight.
20
Character Building
The ground trembled as the horn announced the beginning of the Games. I watched the landscape around me transform. The central hologram had disappeared the second the Empress destroyed the crown. The Witches’ thrones rose up, each of them high on a platform that extended over the Arena. Metal spokes stretched out from Sophìa’s central throne and connected to each of the others. From where I was standing below them, it looked like a wheel on a macabre funeral cart.
As though wanting to follow the Witches, thick walls emerged from the ground, making the stands and everything else in the Arena shudder. They rose up all around the battlefield, sealing us inside a cylindrical area. Confused, I frowned and tried to figure out what Sophìa, the Stage Director, had in mind.
The tall walls hid us from the Damned. Wasn’t it supposed to be a show put on for them? I saw my image filling an entire wall and finally understood: they weren’t walls, but rather, screens on which the Games would be projected for the crowds. The scenario the Stage Director planned to create was probably so lethal she couldn’t let them take part, not even as spectators.
I turned toward Stella and our eyes met one last time before a tall wall rose up between us, separating us, possibly forever. I felt a pang in my chest and longed to run to her, but it was too late. I was trapped with eight other Champions, all ready to destroy each other.
The Empress appeared on all the screens, followed one by one by each of the Champions alongside his Amìsha. In the background, the drums continued their dark melody. Charts projected on the screens showed the viewers our names, our skills, and who we were fighting for.
I had no idea what had driven the other Champions to this point. Each of them must have trained with their Witch in preparation for the Games. Some had been in Hell for centuries and might have already taken part in a previous Dark Tournament. Maybe some were so devoted that they were fighting just to bring glory to their queen. Others were probably fighting for their lives or their freedom. I was fighting for love, the only love I’d ever known. A love that had followed me even after death, never fading, even though I’d been sure I’d lost her. My eyes stung and I squeezed them shut. Stella had been torn away from me too soon and I wasn’t willing to give up now that I had found her again. It was time for me to get her back.
Outside the walls, the crowd whistled as pictures of our training were projected on the screen. This was followed by images of us, one by one, in the Arena, muscles taut and prepared to face any challenge the Witches had in store for us. Was Stella watching me? I didn’t want her to see me die.
The shouts became deafening when our faces disappeared and were replaced by another image. Something dazzling. It looked like a laboratory and it came closer and closer, as if the walls were moving in our direction to crush us. We backed up until our shoulders were pressed against the wall, but the light continued to advance, blinding us. Was this how they wanted to kill us off? By crushing us between the Arena walls? It was too late for an answer. I braced for impact . . . but the wall passed right through me.
Looking around, confused, I squinted my eyes against the glaring light. The Arena had disappeared. The cries from the crowd had stopped the second the scenario had sucked us in, and now I found myself in a laboratory, surrounded by decomposing corpses. It was like being in a different world, but I knew where I was: it was an interactive illusion, a manipulation of reality, a virtual game the Witches had created just for us, and we were the avatars.
Even my adversaries had disappeared. We didn’t have to face each other in a player-versus-player battle. Not yet. We had to accomplish individual missions in order to level up. Only then would we battle each other. Until that moment, each of us was fighting in his own virtual reality. Like me, the others had their own games to play.
I had been inside scenarios created by a Witch before, so I knew everything was real, not a simple optical illusion. It was black magic. It was our prison. I would have bet my balls they were still there watching us from above, perched on their diamond thrones like vultures, eager to know who would perish first. With their holograms, they would be keeping an eye on the progress of each competitor, never losing track of who was where. Even more importantly, they would be manipulating reality to put the rest of us at a disadvantage so their own Champion could level up. In this tournament, I didn’t merely need to face difficulties, like in the Opalion. I would have to overcome them faster than the others. I would have to challenge the Arena itself.
“Let’s play then,” I murmured, raising my eyes to the Witches. I was sure they were watching me.
I cautiously studied the room. Hundreds of cadavers lay on steel cots. They gave no sign of life, but I was sure they would soon wake up. There were no doors, only a big picture window offering no way out. I walked over to it and rested one hand on the glass to take a closer look. On the other side were my friends, the ones I had left on Earth.
And Assin was in the room with them.
“What the fuck?” Did they not see him? Why didn’t they attack him? “Evan!” I pounded my fists on the glass, trying to warn them, but the glass shattered into a million pieces with a deafening crash.
Then, silence. On the other side of the window, an empty room. A whisper touched my ear, filling my mind: “Arise.”
A grunt put me on alert and I slowly turned around. All the undead had gotten up and were staring at me with empty eye sockets. I shuddered. They weren’t strangers—they were all the people I had killed during my stint as a Soldier of Death. The souls I had killed without hesitation. My brothers had always criticized me because I took our mission as a joke. To me it had been a gift. To them it had always been a curse.
In the front row were my friends.
Seeing them shook me to the core. Did that mean I had killed them too? Was that what they were trying to tell me? I backed up, shocked, and fell through the window into the next room. They followed me and surrounded me, standing there motionless with their deathly expressions and empty eyes to remind me of what I had done. They had counted on me and I had allowed myself to be killed, abandoning them to their fate.
Something flickered on the ceiling. Though it was only for a second, it was enough to remind me where I was. The Witches were playing with my mind, my sense of guilt. One of my fears was seeing my friends, my family, die. I clenched my fists, trying to drive them away. Those weren’t really my friends, and I had to get out of there before all the other Champions did.
There were doors at the other end of the enormous room. All I had to do was cross through all those bodies standing between me and the exit, lined up like undead soldiers.
I got up and made my way through the corpse
s with familiar faces. Once again I had to leave them behind. I had to turn off my emotions. It wasn’t really them.
It wasn’t really them.
It wasn’t really them.
My father’s corpse blocked my way. I had left him too by going off to war as a volunteer. I tried to pass but he grabbed my arm and for a moment his eyes looked normal.
“Dad,” I murmured.
He opened his mouth and something crawled out of his throat: a swarm of black butterflies that hit me right in the face. I kicked my father away but all the bodies around me opened their mouths. Within seconds the room had transformed into a black vortex that was trying to suck me up inside it. I began to run, desperately seeking a way out, but I was trapped.
I had expected to battle the other Champions, but this was a battle against myself. The most difficult one. I struck out at the living dead, knocking some of them down, but the butterflies were impossible to stop. They swarmed through the room and wounded me, covering my entire body with cuts. I had to escape, and fast.
“No,” I whispered, stopping in my tracks. “No more running away.” For once, I had to decide to stay. No door would lead me away from my fears. I had to face them.
I looked at the swarm of butterflies. They were the souls of the people I had killed. A dark portal I had to cross through. Slowly, I spread my arms. Seeming to understand, the swarm danced around me. In seconds they covered me and I fell to my knees.
It was the right command. The butterflies were my punishment. I had to welcome them in order to find redemption. My way out wasn’t surrender, but acceptance.
Overpowered by their poison, I collapsed to the floor. The only way for me to live was to die. I would never get out of there by pushing them away. I had done that to the people they had once been: I’d rejected them, cast them aside, ignored them, forgotten them. I had killed them.
Now it was time for them to kill me.
21
The Mission
A strange dizziness washed over me. I opened my eyes and found myself hanging by my feet. Something odd was going on, though: the rest of the world wasn’t upside-down. Beside me was a desk, a chair, cabinets. It all seemed normal apart from the fact that I was dangling toward the ceiling and not toward the ground. It was as though everything was responding to an inverted force of gravity that left only me unaffected.
I bent at the waist and tried to free myself from the chains, but couldn’t.
Then I saw it, the small key lying below my head on the ceiling.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I groaned. I reached out, but it was no use. It was too far away. There was no time for these little games. I bent double again and tried to break the chains, but they were so tight they were leaving marks.
I swung toward the desk next to me. A long nail rested on it. I picked it up. Maybe with that I could reach the key. I tried, but after a few attempts all I managed to do was push it farther away. I bent over again and tried using the nail to pry open the lock on the chains, but it was no use.
Maybe there was something hidden in the desk that would come in handy. In the Arena we didn’t have powers, but with a little luck we could create them. I rifled through the drawers until I found what I needed: a remote control. I took out the battery. Fortunately it was a high-voltage one. I reached out toward a heavy metal lamp mounted on the wall and ripped it off. Yanking out the wires, sparks hitting my face in the process, I pulled out a long copper wire. Now all I needed was some tape.
I rifled through the drawers again, but evidently it wasn’t my lucky day.
Or maybe it was.
A picture hung on the wall. The glass was broken. I checked the back of it and my spirits brightened: it was held together by a small strip of tape. The photograph was of Insane Souls staring at the lens, their faces covered with blood. A ghoulish choice, but I didn’t care.
“Let’s get moving. I’ve gotten through real-time strategy video games better than this.” At that very moment, a huge beast rammed the glass door with all its weight. “Shit, me and my big mouth.” I taped the copper wire to the nail, leaving one end free. It wasn’t easy to move upside-down with a wild beast snarling on the other side of the door, desperate to gobble me up.
Fuck! There were two of them!
I wound the wire around the nail in a spiral to preserve the electromagnetic effect. The more loops the coil had, the greater the power. The wire wasn’t long but it would have to do.
The glass cracked beneath the beasts’ blows. I had to hurry. I scraped the two ends of the wire against my armor to expose the copper, then touched them to the two poles of the battery. I held the nail out toward the key. Drawn by the magnetic field, it moved closer and clattered against the metal. I smiled and grabbed it with my mouth, dropping my makeshift magnet.
I hurried to undo the lock trapping me as one of the beasts shattered the glass. Free, I grabbed the chains and swung myself toward the beast, kicking it with both feet. It whimpered as it crumpled to the floor. It turned out there weren’t two of them after all—it was a single beast with two heads. I had knocked one of them out but the other stood its ground, its sharp fangs looking like those of a wolf that had been bitten by a vampire.
I slowly stepped back as the creature advanced. When it launched itself toward my chest I threw myself backwards, using the beast’s own impetus to fling it behind me. I crawled toward the magnetic nail, but the beast attacked me again, shoving me back onto the floor. We struggled and its fangs sank into my shoulder, tearing away a piece of flesh. The pain was blinding. Screaming, I held it away from my neck while reaching for the nail attached to the battery. A powerful electric charge surged through me, forcing me to drop it. I sensed the murmur of a spirit passing me. The Witches were toying with me. One of them had definitely increased the voltage.
Now that its fangs had had a taste of my flesh, the beast grew thirsty for my blood. It was one of those moments when a little help from Kreeshna would have come in handy. Ignoring the pain from the shocks, I grabbed the nail again and drove it between the beast’s eyes, the electric current surging through me. It was as though a lightning bolt had split its forehead in two. The beast tensed and fell, its body still buzzing with electricity. Wielding that nail had been like handling a thunderbolt. It seemed the Witch had read my mind: she’d increased my strength, otherwise I would have been zapped too. I scrambled back across the floor-ceiling and got to my feet. It was strange how everything was upside-down. The desk and chairs were above me, hanging from the ceiling.
Looking around, I saw something on the wall. A large safe. Grabbing hold of whatever I could, I climbed up the wall until I reached it. Distant growls drew closer in the hallway. More creatures were hunting me. I didn’t have time to guess the combination.
I leaned over, wrenched the remains of the metal sconce off the wall, and struck the digital display in an attempt to crack it open. The growls were closer now and the beasts’ claws rasped against the floor, eager to sink into me. If I left the room right now I might still be in time to escape them.
If the Stage Director had put a wall safe here, there must be something inside it, something important, judging from the size of the strongbox. I had to force it open somehow. I ripped the cover off the control panel and fiddled with the wires, but when I yanked one out, a metal bar slid out, sealing off the safe even more securely. A curse escaped me. I had to get out of there. It sounded like there were lots of beasts, and I couldn’t take them all on at once.
On Earth, video games had been my favorite pastime—after women, of course—and it wasn’t the first time I’d entered a virtual-reality environment. It was just that in this one I couldn’t take off my 3-D goggles. Fighting was my only way out.
On the edge of the safe I’d noticed some writing that at first I’d mistaken for the manufacturer’s details. But we were in Hell, so everything had only one manufacturer, and that was the Sisterhood. Clinging to the safe, I turned my head to read it better, ending up
upside-down. “Now I know what it must feel like to be Spider-Man,” I murmured, the blood rushing to my head. The engraving read:
At each knell, flakes of ash fall onto a carpet of red
“What the fuck does that mean?” I certainly wasn’t a poetry guy. What did flakes of ash have to do with it? Suddenly I understood. They fall. Like us. It was referring to the Champions. We were the ash; the carpet of red was the river of blood that would be shed. The knells were the levels. The line was talking about how many of us would fall during the trials. Or at least I hoped that was it.
I punched in the first number on the digital number pad: nine, the number of players. A metal bar slid back, telling me I was on the right track. What could the combination be? At each knell. How many of us would fall? I followed my instinct and pressed the number three—the number of competitors destined to lose in the first level. Another bar in the safe slid back. I continued. At that point there would be six of us left to battle it out in the second round. The third, though, was a face-off between only two players. That meant four more would be missing when the roll was called for the third and final round. I punched in the number four and the sound of another metal bar urged me on. Of the two remaining in the final level, one would fall, leaving the glory to the victor. I punched in the number one and held my breath. A click told me I’d done it.
When I swung the heavy door open, I was happy I hadn’t left. A low growl broke the silence. Another of the two-headed beasts had crept into the room and was right below me. “Hi,” I said to both its heads, then whipped out the gun I’d just found. “Bye,” I said as I fired it, wrapping up our little chat. I stared at the gun, amazed. I’d shot a hole through both its heads.
I went back to focusing on my spoils. “I knew it was a better idea to stay.” The safe was full of weapons. The other beasts were approaching, so I ransacked it, taking everything I could carry: a nail gun, a knife with a spiked handle, a compact machine gun that would definitely come in handy, and a few grenades. I examined a beautiful scythe with a skeleton carved on its handle and slung it over my shoulder. “Perfect for a Reaper Angel.”
Dark Tournament_A Romantic Fantasy Adventure_Touched Saga Spin-Off Page 14
