Fell Champions

“What are you doing?” Otter hissed as Sami stood up.

“I thought it was obvious. I volunteered before you had the chance to do it yourself.”

Otter caught her arm. She had a panicked look in her eyes. “Please don’t do this. I can’t afford to lose you again.”

“We don’t even know if it’s dangerous. And if it is, it’s my responsibility to bear the danger. Sua’noa, and all that.”

“Let her go,” Rua said.

“But–”

Rua didn’t say anything further, but Otter wilted, and released Sami’s arm. 

“I’ll be fine,” Sami said. “Besides, I’ve been meaning to practice my Pact abilities in an actual combat setting. And I doubt Holt will throw anything too dangerous at me.”

“Right,” Otter said, her voice shaky. “Because Holt is known as a merciful and sensible human being.”

Sami placed a quick kiss on Otter’s forehead, and turned to Rua. “Keep her from doing anything stupid.”

Rua looked a bit dubious about that proposition, but nodded. Sami wanted to say something else, some reassurance she’d be fine, but reality itself lurched, and then she was standing on the sandy ground of the arena. 

Holt’s little platform and throne were within maybe fifteen feet of her. Her fingers tingled with the desire to just draw her sword and see if she could do enough burst damage to him before he could react, see if she could kill him then and there and free them all from this.

She steadied herself, willing away the desire. Fighting Holt would result in nothing positive. At worst, she’d get herself killed. At best, she’d get Mayumi – Otter – killed. 

Even so, she longed to sink a sword into that man’s smiling face. 

“Well?” she said, arching an eyebrow.

“Always so cool and calm,” he said. “Don’t you ever get bored of the facade?”

“What facade?”

He ignored her remark, and stood up, stretching out his arms to the audience as if he were a showman. “Everyone, pay attention. I’m not going to repeat this.”

He flicked a hand, and suddenly there was a stack of papers in his grip. He pulled them closer to his face and began to read aloud.

“Once upon a time, there was a great empire. It spanned the stars, and represented the great race of man. They were strong and resolute, and put their every faith in their God King. 

“But this empire was under siege by many enemies, entities that would see them all dead. Among them were the brutal pigmen, green in colour, tusks from the lower jaw, with muscle thicker than any man could ever hope to achieve. They were a passionate race, these pigmen, devoting themselves to the one thing they loved: violence. Everything was a battle to them, and…”

Sami stopped listening, closed her eyes and readied herself. So, she was to fight a Mythwalker. And from the sound of it, an orc, some kind of Sci Fi variant of one. She centered herself, focusing her mind and peeling away what emotion she could. 

First was fear. Fear for herself, her body, her life. An exercise she’d done a thousand thousand times before. It fell away like a discarded garment. The next was her anger. Anger at being trapped, at being forced to fight, at Holt. This one was a little more difficult, but she’d long since learned how to divorce herself from the emotion when necessary.

Last was her shame. It clung to her like oil, slimy and thick, clinging to her in ways that made her feel filthy. She had to scrub it away, scour herself with words and affirmations, a mantra that what happened to Mayumi could not have been foreseen. Could not have been planned for. That it was not her fault.

It never would’ve happened if not for her. Mayumi never would’ve used that infernal device if not for her. She’d still be healthy, if not for her.

No. It was Johnny Fives’ fault. He was the one who’d sold her a lie, a machine that had hurt the one she loved. The one who’d likely recklessly bypassed any moral standards, any best practices to make sure his equipment was safe to use.

It wasn’t her fault.

But even so, she would still take responsibility.

Sami opened her eyes, set herself into stance, and slowly drew her two swords. 

Holt had put his little sheaf of papers away, and was looking very pleased with himself. His creation, the Mythwalker, was coalescing from thin air, constructing itself from a black mist that was rising from the ground. It solidified rapidly, taking on a sense of weight and heft, of realness made from nothing. 

The orc wasn’t a variant she was familiar with, but she wasn’t a big of the whole Fantasy-but-in-Space subgenre. He was big, bald, and wearing some kind of power armor. He towered over her, her head maybe coming up to his pectorals, and he was wielding some kind of combination of a sword and a chainsaw that he was busy trying to rev up.

He had a madness in his eyes, and froth at the edges of his mouth, and Sami decided it would be entirely foolish to wait for him to be ready.

Normally attacking someone twice your size with twice the reach was stupid. Better to stay out of fights like that entirely and just deal with them at range. And while she now possessed range capability, she didn’t want to play her hand just yet. She needed to finish this quickly and decisively, get the fight over with before the orc knew it was even begun.

Holt looked as if he’d been about to say something, maybe announce some rules or try to give some self-aggrandizing speech to the audience. His eyes widened, but he fell backwards into his chair into a lazy sprawl.

The orc didn’t even try to defend itself from Sami’s initial lunge. The tip of her sword aimed at a gap in the joints of the orc’s ill-fitting plate, slipping past steel to find its way into the meaty flesh of his thigh, just above the knee. 

The orc paid the injury no mind, pulling on a cord to rev his chainsaw-sword-ridiculousness, which finally roared to life. He made a bellow of glee and violence, and then with two hands holding his weapon, slashed downwards at Sami. 

She sidestepped, moving further inside his reach, too close for him to properly employ that two-handed of his. Too close for her to also employ both of her swords as well, so she did the expedient thing and stabbed downward with one, right into his booted foot and into the sandy ground below, and left it sheathed there. 

Two wounds like that to the same leg would normally leave it disabled, and the rational part of Sami’s mind assumed it would be. She was already planning her next four strikes, how to move around that terrible sword, predicting where the angle of attack would come from, when the orc just ripped its foot free, taking away flesh and bone as it tore, and kicked her with the ruin that was its own limb. 

That boot slammed into her shield and sent her tumbling backwards into a roll. She landed hard on her ass some fifteen feet away, but didn’t feel it much. Even so, her Tenacy took a wallop, nearly half of it gone in one blow. 

The orc wasn’t fast, it didn’t have any Tenacity protecting it, but that one kick hit like a truck. She couldn’t afford to take another of those. She suspected it wouldn’t just take out her shield, it’d probably break bones as well. 

Sami got to her feet, and held out her sword in a classic kendo Chūdan middle-level stance, the point of her sword facing forward and towards her enemy’s face. 

No. That wouldn’t work against an opponent like this. It was a balanced stance, meant for both offense and defense. She wouldn’t win a battle of attrition here, and wouldn’t be able to properly defend against that brute’s strength. 

She briefly considered switching to a waki stance, pommel towards the opponent with the blade behind her, but obscuring her own weapon would do her little good here. The orc didn’t care what she was doing, and would tank anything she threw at it. Deception wouldn’t make any difference here. 

Or maybe it would.

She had been planning to practice with her Pact. And there was no point in dragging things out. 

She shifted to a Jōdan stance, her sword held high above her and ready to strike. The height discrepancy wasn’t ideal, but she was going for aggression, something to do a lot of damage. Something that also left her wide open and a very inviting target.

The orc lumbered towards her, one foot leaving a bloody imprint with every step. She could practically feel the vibration through the ground, and suspected if she looked hard enough, would see individual grains of sand bouncing around. 

Sami hummed a note to herself, high and pure, and felt it resonate with her blade. She didn’t know why she needed to make music of some kind in order to use her Pact ability, just that it was some kind of activation condition. 

She could feel the sound rolling out and over the field of battle. The orc’s sword. His armor. Her own sword, still piercing into the ground and covered with blood and a little bit of bone and flesh. 

The orc saw a big distracting aggressive stance in front of it, and in its own stupid head, couldn’t think outside of that. Its eyes narrowed and it bellowed out a warcry, and it charged all the harder, barely limping at all in spite of its injury.

So it had no idea to defend its rear. Or against what it held in its own hands. Or what it wore.

Sami triggered War Chime, and it was suddenly felt like every piece of metal around her was a part of her own body. 

In one thought, the sword she’d left behind ripped free from the ground and was sent flying through the air to pierce into the orc’s back. In the second, the greave protecting the orc’s wounded leg crushed like an aluminum can, mangling flesh and crushing bone. In the third, the orc’s own sword twisted in its hands, and was suddenly sawing into its own neck. 

Her Will depleted to one tenth of her total reserves. She could’ve finished this with one use of her ability instead of three. Overkill, but she’d wanted to make a point. Not just to the orc, or to Holt, but to everyone watching.

The orc stumbled at the onslaught, let out a horrified cry, and fell at her feet. Its eyes were confused, frightened, and furious, robbed of the fight it so badly wanted. It looked about to say something. Maybe a condemnation, or a plea for mercy. 

Sami didn’t particularly care. One stroke of her sword took its head clean off.

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