Death Cultivator

by eden Hudson

  As if he could feel it, Shrike snapped his beak in surprise, then fed more Chlorophyll Spirit into the whip. The flame was too small to hold much Spirit at a time, but compared to my reserve, Shrike had a pretty much endless supply. He could keep the whip just barely alive and wait until I ran out.

  Instead of waiting to be worn down that way, I charged in head-on. Shrike backpedaled, trying to keep me out at optimal whip distance, but I poured on the speed. The cage was round, so I couldn’t corner him, but I cut his retreat off and slammed a kick into the side of his knee and hit him with an uppercut elbow to the face. His beak tore my forearm open. I threw a hook at his head, but it scraped off his feathers as he ducked and backpedaled.

  The whip cracked across my cheek, ripping out some skin. Right away, blisters welled up around the wound, and throbbing pain spread across my face and head. That clear poison.

  I wasn’t fast enough to match him while some of my Miasma was focused on strangling the life in his thorn whip. I pulled that back and used everything I had for speed and strength.

  Shrike lashed out again. I ducked into the swing. The whip tore across my back and around my right ribs and left lines of blistering pain, but I was already within arm’s reach.

  I blasted him in the face and neck with a jab-cross-elbow combo, then chopped his shin out from under him with mine. He went down to a knee, choking and clutching his feathered throat.

  Wanting to get this over with before he could recover, I sent Miasma in to crush the green flame in the handle of his whip and smothered it. Then I traced the path the Chlorophyll Spirit had taken back into Shrike’s Spirit sea.

  There was a life point there, just like there had been in the vines. Finding it was a lot easier than I would’ve thought. Like my Death Spirit already knew the way.

  I closed the Miasma around Shrike’s life point, getting ready to strangle that, too. The owl’s eyes went wide, and he took one hand off his throat, slashing it through the air frantically. I squeezed the flame.

  The cage door slammed open.

  I let go of Shrike’s life point and spun around to meet the new threat.

  “Match!” the official hollered, grabbing my arm and shoving it into the air. “Winner by submission!”

  I stared at him, not comprehending. It felt like I’d been cut off mid-sneeze or interrupted halfway through remembering something important and now it was gone. My chest heaved as I tried to catch my breath, and my OSS tattoo burned under the bracer, working on the poisoned lash marks. I turned back to Shrike, ready to finish the fight, but the owl was leaving the cage, massaging his feathered throat and shooting scared looks over his shoulder at me.

  The noise from the crowd suddenly flooded in. They were screaming. Not really at me, but at all the fights going on at once.

  “Bow to your official,” the official said, bending at the waist to me.

  I was too confused not to follow the instructions. Sweat dripped off my face and the ends of my hair and splattered against the dirt. I was soaked.

  “Bow to the Shoguns.” He pointed to a box near the middle of the ceiling that looked like it was made out of that two-way mirror glass.

  It was a little awkward figuring out how to bow up. I ended up putting my hands together like Rali always did and bend-nodding at the box.

  “Info for your next fight will be on the updated bracket,” the official said. “Now clear out.”

  I stumbled out of the cage, feeling like I was missing something. I leaned against the cinderblock wall surrounding the arena floor and used the damp hem of my shirt to wipe my face. I couldn’t tell whether I was exhausted or ready to go another ten rounds. The fight was over, but it felt unfinished.

  Would it feel finished if I had snuffed out Shrike’s life point like I had the vines? In the moment, that had seemed like the only possible next move.

  Dead Man’s Hand. The words popped into my head from some old Western. I shivered. It was the perfect name for that lethal fist of Miasma and disturbing as heck that everything about the move seemed so natural. Like I’d just been waiting for it to come along.

  Had I really almost killed a guy? That couldn’t be right.

  Death cultivator has discovered the most powerful Mortal technique, Hungry Ghost croaked. Death cultivator had no need for Hungry Ghost’s instruction.

  The grinning skull was still clutched in my fist from the fight. I shoved it into my pocket, suddenly not wanting it to hear any more of my thoughts. Kest’s worry that an apparatus as powerful as Hungry Ghost had to come with hidden dangers swam through my head.

  Except it hadn’t been Hungry Ghost, had it? It’d been me. I had figured out Dead Man’s Hand on my own. I was the one who’d almost killed somebody.

  “Here I thought you’d be eliminated in the first round,” Warcry said, appearing beside me.

  It took a second for what he said to make it through the haze.

  “I thought I would, too,” I said. I sounded mostly normal, not very freaked out at all, which was lucky because Warcry was the last person I would’ve wanted to talk to about it. I pushed Dead Man’s Hand down to the back of my brain. I just wouldn’t use it again, that was all. “When’s your first match?”

  “Already over. He was nothing but a ponser. Knocked him out in the first five seconds.”

  “Congra—”

  Warcry slapped a hand over my mouth and shoved his forearm into my Adam’s apple, slamming my head back against the wall.

  “Don’t you dare,” he growled. “I don’t ever want to hear that word come out of your mouth unless you’re handing me a championship trophy. Got it?”

  “Get off me.” I shoved-kicked him away.

  He stabbed a finger in my direction. “Never.”

  “Geez.” I swallowed and rubbed the pain in my throat. “Freaking psycho.”

  “Know how many competitors won this round, grav? Half of ’em. So yeah, that cuts your enemies in half, but guess how many that leaves you with. Almost a thousand. Those Shoguns you just bowed to probably ain’t even in the kokugikon yet. These early eliminations aren’t worth their time. You want to impress them, you’d better claw your way into the low double digits.”

  I glanced up at the empty two-way mirror box, then out at the stands, looking for Kest and Rali. I wasn’t here to win some dumb trophy or a fistful of cash. The twins had put their lives on the line. They were counting on me to win, to get us some kind of protection.

  Hungry Ghost suddenly felt like it was weighing down my pocket. A sick feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.

  “I’ll get there,” I said. I had to.

  Number One Seed

  MY SECOND ROUND WAS against another human, a guy ranked somewhere near the middle. His kishotenketsu was as basic as mine, but he had a much higher Spirit reserve. His actual fighting wasn’t great. He carried a pair of knives, but he hardly used them. Every attack was centered around kicking. It was like fighting a way less talented Warcry. I got cut once, a slice across my ribs, and then every other attack I saw coming from a mile away. At the same time, though, the dude refused to give up, and his head was harder than a brick wall. Our fight was one-sided and brutal. It dragged out for almost ten minutes. I broke his arm, cut up his eyebrow with an elbow to the head so blood was pouring out, and smashed his nose before I finally KO’d him with a Warcry-style spin kick to the jaw.

  Not a pretty fight, but I got through it without using Dead Man’s Hand, which made me feel a little better.

  I wasn’t going to use it in round three, either.

  My opponent was one of those slug aliens with a thick, limbless, slimy body and telescoping eye stalks. My kicks and punches rebounded like crazy, helped along by a springy caramel-colored Spirit wall almost like my Death Metal shields. Nothing I threw at him had an effect. I was just wearing myself down.

  Then the slug sent these squiggly Spirit worms at me. They drilled down into my skin, tearing bloody holes in my muscle and going for my internal organs. I
dropped to the dirt, scratching at them, trying to dig those spinning Spirit worms out of me.

  The slug burbled a laugh.

  Gritting my teeth, I sent Dead Man’s Hand creeping into his Spirit sea.

  His eyes bugged out when he felt me clamp down on his life point.

  He threw more Spirit worms at me. They tore into my flesh like those drill catfish in the Amazon, but I kept the pressure on Dead Man’s Hand, strangling that flickering flame inside him.

  “You won’t do it!” he gurgled. “You’ll be disqualified!”

  Right then, that was the farthest thing from my brain. Something about this felt right. Death was the natural conclusion to every fight. To everything. I laughed at him thinking I would care about disqualification, but that turned into a cough. Blood sprayed through my teeth from the internal damage the Spirit worms were doing.

  Dead Man’s Hand tightened down another notch.

  The slug guy’s face rippled from anger to terror, and he let his drill-worms drop.

  “I yield!” he screamed. “I give up! Stop!”

  I wasn’t going to.

  “Please!” he begged.

  That snapped me out of it. I hurried up and shut off Dead Man’s Hand.

  My Spirit sea didn’t like that. It throbbed and ached and reached out for more the whole time the official was having me bow. My brain raced, thoughts flying at me from all directions, trying to make sense of what I’d just done, trying to pretend like it hadn’t happened, trying to justify it.

  Warcry was waiting for me cage-side when I came out. He didn’t say anything for once, just nodded.

  I didn’t know whether he was nodding because he knew I’d almost killed that slug guy or because I’d won round three and made it through to the afternoon bracket, so I just nodded back and pretended like I wasn’t freaked out.

  We hung around the arena floor watching the last of the morning matches. Some lady killed her round three opponent, but most of the spectators didn’t even look up from the match they were watching. I only noticed because Hungry Ghost immediately started sucking the Miasma down from all the way across the arena.

  Eventually, the officials announced the end of the morning matches and went off to decide the afternoon bracket. Warcry left to find some lunch, but I was too keyed up inside to be hungry and I didn’t want to face the twins until I figured out some way to explain away what I’d done, so I stayed on the arena floor.

  Unfortunately, that left me with a whole hour with nothing to do but think.

  Why did Dead Man’s Hand have to be so effective? Already, I’d gotten two opponents who should’ve kicked the crap out of me to submit. Part of me wasn’t even that upset about it. I had to win, right? Winning an affiliation was the only way to protect my friends, and Dead Man’s Hand was a surefire win.

  Unless I ran into somebody who wouldn’t tap out like my round two opponent. What then?

  Over on the far end of the kokugikon, there was a hallway leading to bathrooms and water fountains and a vending machine full of drinks. I needed something to distract me, so I dropped one of my last few credits on a Coffee Drank.

  That was a mistake. After I downed the can of caffeine and energy, I went from tangled up and on edge to a heart-pounding swirl of self-loathing almost as bad as the Transferogate drain. I had to start pacing, because if I stood still, I would explode.

  God, if Gramps knew what I was doing...what I could do... My dad was bad, but at least he’d never tried to kill anybody on purpose. But I couldn’t afford to lose. Not when my friends’ lives depended on it. Maybe that was how most Death cultivators ended up going crazy and killing everybody. Maybe it wasn’t because they wanted power, but because killing was the most effective way to protect the people they cared about.

  And maybe I was just trying to make myself feel better about not immediately making a covenant with my Spirit that I would never use Dead Man’s Hand again.

  My thoughts kept circling back around like that while I paced. After a while, the kokugikon began to fill up again. Fighters who’d gone off for lunch filtered back in, and the officials reappeared. I checked the tournament page. The new brackets were up, and round four was set to start in a few minutes.

  My jaw dropped. I was fighting the number one ranker, someone with Glass Spirit who’d won seven out of eight rounds last year, making it to the top ten before failing out.

  That didn’t do much to help the caffeine angst.

  I wandered over to my assigned pit. There were three fights before mine, so I had plenty of time to size up the fighters waiting cage-side and try to decide which one looked like they had almost won last year’s tournament. Pretty much any of them. They were all huge.

  Then it was time for my match.

  “Sedryk Nameless and Grady Hake,” the official called.

  I stepped forward, and so did a thin Ylef dude I’d assumed was just another low-seed fighter like me. The guy was about six inches taller than I was, but he looked like a stiff wind would snap him in half.

  When he saw I was his opponent, he wrinkled his elf nose like he could smell me—and not Recently Showered Me, but Running Around Ghost Town for a Month Stinking Like B.O. Me. I half expected him to refuse to bow when the official ran us through the pre-fight routine, but the Ylef gave a sort of leaning bob.

  I bowed, clenching Hungry Ghost in my fist and cycling Spirit to my muscles. I had to get inside his reach before he could use his long arms and legs against me. Hit hard enough to see if he snapped as easily as it looked like he would.

  He’s the number one seed. He almost won last year. He’s going to be faster and stronger than he looks. Like a lot.

  Maybe—if I absolutely couldn’t do anything else—I could go for the Dead Man’s Hand submission hold. But it would just be a quick hold, not a lethal strike. If he didn’t give up immediately, I would drop it.

  Dad used to make excuses like that, too, to make it sound like what he was doing wasn’t that bad.

  I gritted my teeth. I wouldn’t use Dead Man’s Hand.

  “Fighting stances!” the official yelled.

  Across the cage from me, the Ylef sank into a crouch. Sparkling clear Glass Spirit trickled down his arms, and a pair of glinting hammers the size of splitting mauls crystalized in his fists. He cocked one behind his head and stuck the other out in front like he was going to use it to block whatever I threw at him first.

  He won’t be able to block Dead Man’s Hand.

  “Fight!” the official shouted.

  And that’s the last thing I remember about that match.

  Burning Hatred vs. Glass Hammers

  I WOKE UP AS ONE OF the kokugikon staff dragged me out of the cage, and I immediately threw up Coffee Drank.

  “Hungry Ghost!” I spluttered, digging into my pockets until I realized I still had the little skull white-knuckled in my left fist.

  Everything went black.

  Then I was on my back staring up at the ceiling of the little hallway that led to the bathrooms and vending machines. Hungry Ghost was still in my hand. I stuffed it into my pocket.

  Something hot dripped into my ear. Remembering the coffee-flavored puke, I wiped at the side of my face. The stickiness I’d expected to find was gone, but my hand came away wet.

  And red. And flecked with bits of glass.

  I reached back up to feel out the wound, but a hand grabbed my wrist.

  “Your script tattoo’s working on healing it, but there are still open parts,” Kest said, appearing in front of my face. “Don’t mess with it.”

  Rali leaned into my field of vision. “Can he actually hear you this time? Hake, if you can hear us, what’s your full name and affinity?”

  “Is answering questions supposed to help if you have a concussion?” I sat up, almost fell over, then braced myself on my arms. My whole body felt like it was underwater, rolling with the currents. “What happened?” Then suddenly, my insides turned to ice. I lurched forward. “Oh crap. Did I kill tha
t elf guy?”

  “You fought well,” Rali said in one of those voices that lets you know your friend is trying to make you feel better about sucking. “His kishotenketsu was a lot more advanced than yours.”

  “In other words, I didn’t even touch him.” I laid back down and shut my eyes. I hadn’t killed him. That was a relief.

  But it also meant I’d lost. Badly.

  I slapped the concrete and growled something that would’ve made Gramps threaten to wash out my mouth with soap. I hadn’t even lasted long enough in the tournament to lose in front of the Shoguns.

  “Guys, I’m sorry. I screwed up. I should’ve...” I trailed off. I couldn’t remember what I’d done, so I wasn’t sure what I should’ve done. “I should’ve been better.”

  “His finisher is called the Exploding Hammer, Hake,” Kest said. “Your tattoo is still pushing shards of glass out of your face. You should just be glad you survived.”

  I swallowed. It felt like I was going to puke again.

  “He wouldn’t have killed me,” I said. “That would’ve disqualified him.”

  “In an Ylef-human fight, things like that don’t always matter,” Kest said. “Honestly, I thought he was going for the kill shot. It would’ve gotten him disqualified from the tournament, but won major points with the Technols. They’re almost all Ylefs.”

  “You made it to the top hundred and twenty-five,” Rali said. “That’s pretty amazing for your first tournament.”

  Kest wasn’t as worried about my ego as her brother was.

  “Probably not good enough to get an offer from the Big Five, though,” she said, checking her HUD. “But that’s what backup plans are for. We can still win the riot bracket tomorrow.”

  I unclenched my fists and sat up, trying not to heave again.

  “Do we know who we’re fighting?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Some fighters are entered in both, so the officials are waiting to see who survives the individual competition before they make the bracket.”

  “Tomorrow will worry about itself,” Rali said. “Right now, Hake needs to rest. Let’s get back to the hotel and get some food I can infuse with Healing Restoration.”