Fell Champions

Holt looked particularly pleased with himself, his smile on full display in high definition courtesy of the windowed screen hovering above the arena. Jeers and boos erupted from those assembled, or rather, from half of them. The rest looked on in nervous silence, cowed into submission from the reality of the situation.

“A tutorial?” Otter shouted. “You pigfucker, we should’ve had that on the first day!”

That bravado was probably Otter’s most endearing quality to Sami, though she never voiced it. It was kind the kind of thing she had to rectify, going forward. She couldn’t only be critical. She had to be more supportive. Even so, Sami wished Otter would perhaps employ that bravado a little less, given the circumstances.

“Easy,” she said, putting a hand that was meant to be comforting on Otter’s thigh until she realized how high she’d placed it. She tried not to think about it.

“I’m always easy,” Otter said. “You’re the one who took all the persuading to get into the sack.”

She looked very meaningfully at that hand on her thigh. Sami arched an eyebrow, and neither moved it nor gave that thigh a squeeze, no matter how much she wanted to.

What they were now, whatever that was, was too new. Reconciled? Girlfriends? Knight and lady? They’d need to have an honest discussion, and no matter how much Mayumi – Otter – liked to talk, she also enjoyed the path of least resistance entirely too much. Right up until the path of least resistance was the smart option anyway. Then she tended to start headbutting things and screaming obscenities. 

Otter and Rua shared a look between them, and it was like a private conversation happened in that very small exchange. A pair of raised eyebrows, a small smile, and then laughter. 

Those two had not been together long enough for that kind of intimacy. Was this because of their link? What must that be like? To just… know what your partner was thinking? To not have to worry about trust, because everything was so honest? 

She found her free hand clenched in anger. Not at Otter, or Rua, or what they had.

No, the anger was, as always, brought up at the memory of betrayal. One of these days, Kwan Il-Su was going to get his, and she so desperately wanted to be there to see it.

How would things have gone back in the day if she’d had a link with him? Actually been able to know what he was thinking before he exposed all their dirty laundry to the world? Would she have been able to talk to him, fix things, maybe even get him to be honest?

A part of her always wondered what she’d done. What was wrong with her. Two relationships in a row had exploded in her face. She was the common denominator. 

She wished she could feel vindicated now that the truth was out, where Mayumi – Otter – was concerned. But no, the guilt would likely eat at her for the rest of her days. It wasn’t her fault. Not really. But Mayumi’s condition never would have happened if not for Sami’s own decisions.

Maybe there really was something wrong with her. Some character flaw that made all the people who were close to her inevitably leave. Not just her romantic partners, but family as well. 

Even in a sick bed, waiting for death to take her, Sami’s own mother had refused to see her. Her father hadn’t allowed her to the funeral.

Sami tried to shove the thoughts from her mind. Self-pity was beneath her. She didn’t need to feel sorry for herself. She had to focus on fixing things. And that meant keeping to her oaths. Better to focus on that.

The crowd finally settled down enough for Holt to begin speaking again.

“Originally, I wasn’t going to give you a tutorial at all. ‘Throw them to the wolves, let them learn the hard way,’ I said. Experience is the best teacher.”

“For once, I agree with him,” Rua muttered.

“But unfortunately, with the exception of the cutthroat pixie psychopath, the weird polycule, and that moon chick, most of you just aren’t playing my game at all. You’re just kind of… hiding on the sidelines, and hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting on figuring out how to escape Fell Champions. And before you all get indignant, yes, there is a way out of the game.”

There was a stunned silence, followed by Otter yelling, “Well, what is it, pigfucker?”

His smile actually seemed genuine this time. “Why, killing me, of course.”

“Oh, shit, why didn’t you say so sooner? I’ll come to the next one of these with, I dunno, a catapult, and we can all go home.”

“That’s right. I die… and all of you go home. All of you.”

Otter looked about ready to fight, to challenge him to a duel right then and there, but Sami dug her nails into her thigh.

“Shut up, for once in your life. Please. And listen to what he’s saying.”

Even if Otter were somehow to defeat him – and Sami was absolutely certain that wasn’t feasible – they’d all be logged out of the game. Which meant Mayumi’s death. And that was even assuming Holt was telling the truth.

Luckily Otter took the hint. Or at the very least, listened to reason. She wasn’t stupid by any means, but she was a lot more self-sacrificing than Sami had given her credit for. Something she’d have to watch out for, going forward.

Otter crossed her arms, and while she didn’t quite pout, she did have the air of a child who’d just been forced to give their favourite toy to charity. This time when Sami squeezed Otter’s thigh, it was reassuring.

“So, a few basics to start,” Holt said. “And I swear to absolute fuck, if I catch any of you napping during this, I will teleport you naked to the middle of the Salass Wastes, so listen up. We’re going over stats first. Most of them should be intuitive, but it’s become apparent that some of you – I’m specifically talking about you beauty and fashion ViewToober fucks who put everything into Allure – have no idea how any of this works.

“Each stat has its own province. However, certain combinations of highly placed attributes will create a sort of… resonance. And sometimes, you’ll find you will need certain requirements in certain adjoining stats before advancing too far with a different one. I’ll let you figure it out, but I will say this… don’t invest too much into Strength without putting something into Tenacity as well. Or else you’re going to be punching things with more force than your body can withstand. 

“As for what each individual stat does, we’ll start with Strength. It’s not just physical strength, but also endurance, vitality, etcetera. It’s how healthy your body is, and most of your physical feats. There’s a little overlap between it and the Agility and Tenacity stats, but not as much as you’d think. It’ll help you against disease, poison, boost your recovery time, and increase your overall physical fitness. 

“Agility is all about how quick you are. How fast you move, how quickly you react, and it also makes your overall equilibrium and sense of balance better.

“Next, and most importantly, pay the fuck attention, is Tenacity. Strength will help your recovery rate, but only so far as the body is capable – just at really enhanced rates. Tenacity can help it to superhuman levels. You can reattach limbs and outright regrow body parts if it’s high enough. Furthermore, it gives you a personal… I don’t want to say ‘force field,’ but it’s totally a force field. It can and will prevent all intended harm to a person from another so long as it is up. So, someone tries to stab you, an animal tries to bite you, an insect tries to lay an egg in the subdermal layer of your skin, a foreign virus or bacteria tries to make its way with you, Tenacity will prevent that. And for those of you who haven’t invested in it, well, my guys’ve been running the numbers, and we expect we’ll be seeing a few arena matches in the next couple of days. Introducing bodies with immune systems not used to a foreign environment with no protection? Bad news.”

There was an uneasy quiet, and Sami could hear Otter gulp. No one she knew hadn’t invested at least something in the stat, but given there there were a hundred players, there was about to be someone who hadn’t.

“The good thing is, as soon as you acquire even one point of soul power, you get a minimum baseline of ten points in everything. Thank the Dreamers for that, eh?” Holt smiled, and looked as if he expected people to laugh at something clever he’d just said. When no one did, he scowled. “Anyway, Allure’s next. Pretty simple. It makes people think you’re attractive, likeable, charismatic, all that. Handy in a few circumstances, but rarely good in combat. My personal recommendation, don’t put anything in that one, but you do you. I did say you could do anything in my game.”

“Yeah, except go home!” someone yelled from the crowd.

Holt ignored the jab. “Next we have Fortune, which is also better described as opportunity. It’s a dangerous stat to invest in. It gives you an increased chance to find valuable items, or meetings with important people, or just any kind of windfall in general, but as the old saying goes, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Every opportunity has a cost.

“Awareness is your general perception of the world. Sight, sound, scent, all that, but also your body’s ability to break down that information and actually use it. Even a self-involved dullard would be more perceptive to their surroundings than even the most vigilant guard with enough investment in it.

“Will allows you to use the various types of magic in Fell Champions, the most common of which is…”

His image turned to face Rua specifically, and she yelled back, “Pact magic.”

He smirked, as if he’d expected that answer, and said, “Wrong. It’s glyph and rune carving. Anyone can use those skills. Just find a piece of Adamant, carve the appropriate rune or glyph into it, and voila, magic. You’re gonna need to find a tradesman to teach you that crap, I’m not covering it, it’d take forever just to get the basics down.

“But the second most popular bit of magic in Fell Champions is Pact magic. That is where you form an agreement with the Dreamer of your starting region, and they give you abilities that you can level up and evolve. Think of it as like getting your own unique class. I will be sending everyone the relevant data to make a Pact of their own, as well as the wards needed to protect yourselves from your specific Dreamer. But just fyi, it is dangerous, and the Dreamers don’t respond to everyone.

“There are other types of magic out there. Saiku. Brinshala. Aether writing. I don’t even know them all. The World of Fell is wild, and always changing. But now we discuss the most important magic of them all. The one I am telling you not to play with, but I inevitably know some of you little idiots will, just to spite me. Well, I guess I’ll get a big old ‘I told you so’ when we see you in the arena.

“We’re going to talk about Mythwalking. There is one law in Reylorien, the World of Fell. And that is, do not tell stories. No fiction. Trumped up lies about the feats of a real person are fine. But nothing made up purely from the imagination. Do not repeat the plots of your favourite movies or video games or books. Not that I expect half of you even know how to read. The Dreamers latch onto stories, and recreate them, usually with their own spin.”

“What’re these Dreamers you keep mentioning?” a female voiced yelled. Sami was pretty sure it was Digimane.

“Think of them like… gods. Gods that I don’t have any control over, so don’t ask me to intervene with them. They’re cruel, capricious, spiteful, and so very, very bored.”

“So like you!” someone jeered.

Holt placed a hand on his chest in mock offense. “I don’t think comparing me to a god is the insult you think it is.”

Behind Sami, she could feel Rua bristling. She growled, muttering, “The Dreamers are not gods.” 

Sami shifted to look behind her. “We don’t have anything else to compare them to. We don’t have anything of that magnitude where we’re from. It’s the only word they’ll understand.”

“There are rules to Mythwalking, of course,” Holt said. “That’s what they call the telling of stories here. Well, the formal term. You see, when you tell a story here, it captures the imagination of the Dreamers. They can sense the possibility, and they quicken it. When you tell a story in this world, a thing completely untrue and entirely made up, the Dreamers may… latch onto it. And when they do, they create it, making it reality.”

“What he’s saying is,” Otter shouted, “if you tell the story of, say, Star Wars to someone, you might suddenly find yourself confronted by a half-baked version of Darth Vader.”

“Exactly so! The Dreamer dreams the dream to life. Such Mythwalkers, as they are called, are bound by the rules of their story. Some cultures in the past have attempted to use this to their advantage, but it always inevitably backfires. A story gets out of someone’s control, and next thing you know, it’s monsters in the local school eating all the little kiddies, or suddenly the Giving Tree decides it’s not gonna take it anymore and starts smashing everyone who comes to it for fruit. So, tell your stories if you want, I don’t care, but if you do, what happens next isn’t on me.”

“Can’t you just turn that off?” someone asked.

He ignored the question, not even acknowledging it. “Luckily, there are limitations to Mythwalking. If you’re not a very good storyteller, the Dreamers might not bother with you. And they hate repeats. So, since I know somebody in this crowd already told some story beats from that overblown space opera–”

There was an eruption of gasps and jeers.

“Hey, I said what I said, and I stand by it. Anyway, since GrandTheftOtter already told that story, and the resulting Mythwalker was destroyed, the Dreamers won’t bother with anything from that universe again. Which, thank goodness, because honestly there’s some terrifying stuff in the Expanded Universe canon, which yes, I have read, and I still stand by my opinion of Star Wars, I swear it’s Sci Fi for children and rednecks, I mean, come on, the three original main heroes are a pair of kissing siblings and a space trucker, the whole plot might’ve well have taken place in Appalachia.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” Otter said. 

Sami dug her nails into Otter’s thigh again, even if she agreed with her. Which Star Wars was hardly her most beloved piece of Science Fiction – her guilty pleasure would always be that she was more of a Farscape girl – she’d always appreciated George Lucas’ not-so-subtle nods to Akira Kurosawa, and its clearly defined lines of good versus evil. 

“Luckily,” Holt said, “there are advantages to Mythwalking. You see, when you create a true Mythwalker, the central figure to the story that is created by the Dreamers, you create something with a will, with sapience, directly from the Flow itself. Any resulting soul crystals harvested from a Mythwalker will be unattuned. They’re not tied to the person who killed it, but to the Flow. Anyone can use them. Or, if you’re inventive, those crystals can be used for other purposes.”

“Impossible,” Rua said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“There are many things you do not know, and that I do, Sister Rua Hyleah, Seat of House Hyleah, and Burden of Shadows.”

The comment was made with a casual air, but there was a glint in Holt’s eyes. Had Rua ever said any of that information to them before? Sami couldn’t remember it, which meant it was likely not. Holt was showing off, displaying that he’d done his homework onto who Rua was. 

“I mean, we did get those three unattuned soul crystals from Ashborne,” Otter whispered. “It kind of tracks.”

“I’ve never heard of using soul crystals for anything except consuming them.”

“Then it’s a good thing he’s giving us this information,” Sami said, leaning her head back into Rua’s thigh. “Who knows what else he might leak.”

Rua grumbled a little, but appeared somewhat mollified.  

“Some of you don’t seem convinced as to the dangers of Mythwalking,” Holt said. 

There was a muttering in the crowd, and Sami could see it herself. A lot of people talking to one another, some in hushed, excited whispers. Masked Baguette was gesturing animatedly while discussing with Digimane, probably plotting how to farm Mythwalkers for what would be ‘easy’ soul crystals. Some, like Chinchilla, sat in silent contemplating, which was such an odd look on her. Normally you couldn’t get that little goblin to sit still and be quiet. 

“I’m sure some of you think you’ll be able to handle whatever you might produce,” Holt said. “So, I think we’ll need a demonstration. I will require a volunteer. Whoever it is will be rewarded.”

Otter started to rise, and Sami’s heart skipped a beat. Her mouth moved before she could give it thought.

“Me!” she shouted. “I’ll do it.”

“Perfect. Well, why don’t you join me down here, Ms. Yamamoto?”

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