Fell Champions

Otter let the words run over her, and actually checked in with her brain before she replied to Holt’s very implied and not-at-all subtle threat.

“Oh, fuck that.”

Holt had the grace to look abashed. But in a mocking fashion. She kind of wanted to punch him for that. Like, more so than she usually did.

“How rude,” he said, holding a hand to his chest. “I’m positively offended. And I was going to richly reward you for your participation.”

Otter ground her teeth a little. She wasn’t some literal loot goblin, willing to actually murder people for treasure. She just enjoyed getting treasure after killing things she was already planning to kill. She wasn’t some psychopath. 

“I’m not killing anyone.”

“Oh, please. We both know given the proper incentive, you’d do so. I mean, come on, did you see how those goblins pleaded for their lives? Hilarious. And very murderous behaviour.”

“They… they were goblins!” she protested. “If anything gets a pass for murder, it’s goblins.”

“Wow, racist.”

“They’re not a race! They’re not even people!”

“No, dig up, stupid. Haven’t seen someone cancel themselves this quickly in a while. Honestly expected this from one of the Punch streamers before you.”

“No, I mean they were walking dreams or ideas or whatever it is Mythwalkers are!”

“Not sure if that’s helping your case.” He leaned back in his chair, and took a chug of wine directly from a bottle, completely bypassing his goblet. “Besides, I said you’d be engaging in PVP, not PK.”

“Not much of a difference.”

“Lots of difference. Player Versus Player implies competition. Player Killing implies murder. Not all PVP is PKing, but all PKing is PVP. Unless you’re really good at it and they don’t see it coming, I guess, then it’s just… PM? No, that means private message. Uh… We’re getting sidetracked.”

Otter tried to suppress the sigh. She really did. But dealing with this absolute idiot who had so much power over all their lives was just so trying. It was honestly kind of insulting. 

“Okay, what are we doing?” she said.

“So glad you asked. I’m going to pick one person from the crowd – don’t worry, not one of your girlfriends – and they’re going to fight you.”

“They’re going to fight me? Not, ‘we are going to fight.’ That has an ominous grammatical implication.”

“Oooh, you caught it. So smart. Yep. They’re going to try to kill you, and you, without using your Pact or your weapons, are going to try to survive.”

Otter narrowed her eyes at Holt’s stupid, smug, smarmy, very punchable face. 

“So what am I going to use? Harsh language?”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You’re smarter than you seem, which, good thing, because wow.”

She rolled her eyes at that. How many times had she heard some kind of crappy insult directed at her intelligence? She made five remarks more clever than that about it herself before she even had breakfast.

“Can I at least talk to them before I deathmatch someone?”

“It’s not going to be a deathmatch,” Holt sputtered. “But fine, say your peace.”

She turned to look at the crowd. A lot of them looked nervous. Afraid. Either of Holt, or her. She was kind of developing a reputation. They’d all seen her kill Nightmare. They all knew she’d withheld information on how to form Pacts with the majority of the playerbase. 

Never mind that she’d done so for good reasons, not knowing how a bunch of self-absorbed streamers would react to having supernatural power in a world filled with very real people that they just viewed as NPCs. 

No, these people probably didn’t care for her, especially since she was an unknown. Not one of them, a name no one recognized. 

Well, it was time to fix that.

“This egotistical fuckward–”

“Hey.”

“--with a stupid fucking manbun and questionable ideas on how smart he is–”

“Hey.”

“--wants me to fight one of you in a PVP match. Not to the death, or so he says, but we all know how reliable he is.”

“Oh fine, keep talking about me like I’m not even right here and filled to the brim with godlike power, it’s not like I could literally end you with my ejaculate.”

Otter didn’t turn to face him, but she knew a good sulk when she heard one. He probably had his arms crossed and head turned down and everything.

“Now, I’m sure some of you want a shot at the title,” Otter continued. “I know I haven’t done a whole lot to ingratiate myself with the lot of you since this whole thing started. Most of you have no idea who I am. Well, that’s about to change. 

“In the world of Fell Champions, I am Otter Kaos. But you probably know me better as Mayumi Taufa, aka Pandemona.”

There were some confused noises from some in the crowd. Beelzebrass made a show of sleeping and snoring loudly. FcJ, that stupid Quebecois jort, started screaming incoherently in neither of his claimed languages, resulting in casual gibberish that just communicated anger. It was mostly a mixed mess, leaning towards negative.

Right up until Digimane, that little ball of culture and poise and annoying perfection, shouted, “If you’re really Pandemona, then why is there another Pandemona on the online list?”

Otter shrugged. “No idea why she did that. Probably obsessed with my ass. I mean, have you seen it?”

Digimane gave one of those small smiles of hers, the kind that really made Otter want to get into her pants before she remembered how annoyingly perfect she was. She nudged Masked Baguette, who was sitting next to her, and he leaned forward, a piercing look in his eyes.

“Why reveal yourself now?” he asked.

“Because I made up with Sami, so no point in hiding anymore. And I’m trying to ingratiate myself towards you, so whoever Holt picks to fight me doesn’t come at me with lethal force, so I don’t have to answer it in kind.”

Baguette and Digimane turned to one another in a silent conversation, but they looked convinced. That was good. They were both some of the smartest people on Spasm. Getting them to at least believe her was progress.

The problem was the stupid people, though. Worse, the stupid people who thought they were smart. 

Not everyone here would know her. The streamer world was a revolving door of talent. And some of the younger people – and looking out at the crowd, some of those faces looked too young to drink – probably wouldn’t know who she was. Knowing streamer drama and lore wasn’t a prerequisite for the job, and only the terminally online followers could keep it all straight.

But this was a good start. 

There was a shimmering to Otter’s left, and she turned to face it as a body materialized into existence beside her. It was a different teleportation effect than what normally happened. Did that mean something? Or was Holt messing with her?

The man who appeared was older, going grey, both in hair and in the shadow of a beard he was beginning to sprout. He still looked in shape, whether from the character creator, or from actually visiting the gym regularly. He gave her a wide, awkward smile. He looked familiar, but he wasn’t anyone she knew. 

“LoneRunMan,” he said, introducing himself. He held out a hand to shake. 

She knew the name, and his rep, if not the man himself. He was an oldschool speedrunner, preferring classic platformer games that were older than she was. He dipped his toes in modern games, and was supposed to be good at them, but they weren’t his bread and butter. Most famously, he tended to develop very loud and public rivalries with people she considered obnoxious, so that was a point in his favour.

“Otter, but you knew that. Forgive me if, uh…” She looked pointedly at his hand, and then at the knife strapped to his belt.

“Right, right. Makes sense. Pandemona is supposed to be good at this type of game, right?”

“I am, yeah.”

“And we’re supposed to fight?”

“Nah.”

“‘Nah?’ Didn’t he just say we had to fight?”

“Yeah, but… nah.”

“But… he’s probably going to kill us if we don’t do what he wants.”

“Probably. But nah.”

LoneRunMan sputtered a bit, and looked very unsure of what to do. Luckily, she had this one figured out. She knew exactly what Holt wanted her to do, and she’d been piecing together how to do it for days. Ever since the Dreamer did it to her.

She focused on LoneRunMan, and visualized herself activating one of her skills without actually activating one. But instead, she forced all that willpower into one word in her head.

“Stop.”

Nothing happened. LoneRunMan danced from foot to foot, looking more nervous by the second.

From somewhere in the audience, that French fuck FcJ shouted, “Stab the bitch already!”

Annoyance hit her, and she funneled that into what she was trying to do. The Dreamer had said anger was needed. So she used it. She listened for every negative jeer, every nasty remark. And then she dredged her memory, and thought of all the bullshit she’d had to deal with over the years from chat, from comments, from Reddit threads. 

If anger was fuel, then she was pumped, and she channeled it all into the single thought, imagining LoneRunMan’s muscles locked up, his motor functions disabled, and poured in her Will.

Her blue bar didn’t deplete. Instead, a chunk of it turned purple, taking up nearly ten points of Will in her estimation. LoneRunMan got a funny look in his eyes, and then suddenly fell over.

“Willcasting,” Holt announced. “Anyone can do this. So long as your target has less Will than you – and I mean, bare minimum at least twenty-five points – you can focus your thoughts and throw a command at them. The more complicated the command, the more demanding the consequence is.

“And there is a price to doing this. Right now, Otter will be seeing a portion of her Will bar looking a different colour right about now. That means, if she uses that part of the bar… there’s going to be consequences. And not good ones. Should wear off in a few days. I don’t recommend testing what those consequences are. You’re not going to like them.”

Well, that just figured. “Are they fatal?”

“Nope,” Holt said. “But you’ll wish they were. Trust me. Don’t do it.”

Otter was about to say something quippy, and then realized her nose was bleeding. Like, a lot. It wasn’t exactly fountaining out blood, but it was more than just a regular nose bleed. She wiped it away as best she could, but more kept coming.

“Oh, also, there’s that,” Holt said. “You might’ve damaged your brain a little. Don’t worry, it’ll fix itself in a bit. Probably.”

He clapped his hands, standing and addressing the audience. “Willcasting is very powerful, but very difficult, and has a lot of conditions. Don’t play with it if you don’t have to. But if you do… start investing in Will now. And remember, all the best change comes from righteous anger.”

Otter tried holding her nose shut, but that didn’t help much, and all of a sudden it was like her sinus cavity just smelled of pennies. She was about to show him some righteous anger, when he turned back to her.

“So. Reward?”

She sighed. “Banana chips. Like, a lifetime’s supply.”

He cocked his head at her. “Banana chips? Really?”

“Rua likes them. Can’t disappoint the girlfriend.”

“Well, I’m not giving you a lifetime’s supply. Do you have any idea how much Will that would cost to drum up? How about some banana trees, right on her property? Full-grown, in bloom, and then you can hand-feed her all the bananas you want.”

“I already hand-feed her my banana, thank you very much.”

“Going to pretend I didn’t just hear that. Fucking Silayans, horny little monkeys, the whole lot of them.”

“Yeah, I was a horny monkey way before coming into this game.”

“And I’m sure that’ll only get worse as time goes on. Which reminds me. I had a reward all lined up for you in advance, in case you showed up.”

“What?” she asked warily.

He snapped his fingers, and it was like something stabbed into her arm. Not like a knife. A short, small prick, kind of like what she expected he had under that toga of his.

“Ow,” she said, rubbing her arm. 

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“For what? Being an ass?”

“Eh, you’ll figure it out. And then you’ll be thanking me profusely. Anyway, wanna let poor LoneRunMan there go?”

She looked down at him, where he was still paralyzed on the ground in what looked like a very awkward position. “We’re not covering how to break out of Willcasting for the class?”

“What am I, a saint? I did more than enough for you kids today. They can figure it out on their own. Or you can just broadcast it yourself, make some friends. But, you know, after you go home, I’m tired and have things to do.”

“What could you possibly–”

He snapped his fingers again, and suddenly reality blurred, and she was standing in Rua’s bedroom. Rua, her clothes dishevelled and her hair all messed up, was kneeling on the bed. Her pants were around her ankles, and she looked as if she’d been in the middle of something fun. She opened her eyes, looked around, and swore about fables and tales and other weird epithets. 

“Blueboxed, huh?” Otter asked. 

“Every time with that man,” Rua muttered.

“Eh, it’s not all bad. I mean, it is. But I got you some bananas apparently. Oh, and Holt slipped up. Said something he probably shouldn’t have.”

Rua adjusted her clothes, pulling her pants back up and sat down on the edge of the bed. “What?”

“He said that conjuring stuff up costs Will. He’s not just using an admin console or anything to do his god powers. He’s actually spending a resource. He isn’t getting something for nothing.”

“And that’s good?”

Otter shrugged. “Means we can wear him down. He’s not infinite. It’s more than we knew yesterday.”

“I suppose. So where are my banana chips?”

Otter rolled her eyes. “In banana form. Holt said he made you some trees, to give you a renewable resource. But you have to learn how to make them in chip form.”

“Don’t you know how?”

“Why would I know how? I hate banana chips. I’ve never wanted to learn how to make them.”

Rua made a noise that sounded a lot like a sigh. 

“Maybe you’ll like bananas more than banana chips,” Otter ventured. “Then we won’t have to worry about learning to make them.”

“Impossible. Well, might as well go see these trees then. And find out if anything happened while we were gone.”

“We were out for like, two hours, tops. What possibly could have happened in that time?”

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