Fell Champions

“He’s really going to kill the people who didn’t make it here,” Pegacorn said numbly.

“Fuck ‘em,” Slider said. “They were competition. And besides, Holt’s not killing them, his horsemen are.”

“Horsemen?” Brock asked.

“Yeah, his five Horsemen. That’s like a Bible thing, right?”

Il-Su stared after the five people who had retreated into the maze of pillars. One of them, a man in a very nice deep purple suit, with a stylized and oiled beard, lowered his sunglasses and looked right at Il-Su. And though the distance was far, he knew the man winked at him before putting his shades back and then disappearing into the maze.

“It’s four,” Il-Su said, feeling chilled. “Four Horsemen. Not five.”

“Whatever,” Slider said. “Doesn’t matter. I’m gonna call them the Horsemen.” 

“I like it. Five Horsemen. It’s only natural for me to have one more than God, or Satan, or whoever is supposed to be giving them orders.”

Il-Su’s gaze snapped over, and sure enough, Holt was standing on the field now, centered between the three teams. He’d apparently decided to do yet another costume change, wearing black slacks and a turtleneck with the sleeves rolled up. He was even sporting a pair of glasses, though he didn’t need them. 

“Ego much?” someone from one of the other two teams called. Il-Su thought it was the Legolas cosplayer. 

“Why wouldn’t I think of myself as God? I very clearly control all of you like one. I…” He trailed off, and got a confused look on his face for a moment. His form flickered, and apparently he decided the Steve Jobs look was a touch dramatic, because it changed yet again, now a simple white shirt and black pants. His expression became more serious, his stance less playful. “It’s time to get this over with.”

Pegacorn glanced at Il-Su, and he nodded his agreement. That had been kind of weird, whatever it was. 

“There are three teams,” Holt said. In the distance, someone made a panicked cry. There was an explosion, and then silence. Holt flinched at it. “You will all fight. The ‘tournament’ ends when every player has three points. Getting three points does not mark you as safe at any point. Nor does being on a team. Your own teammates are allowed to attack you, should they wish. The circles you currently occupy are safe zones. However, they are only safe so long as the circles glow gold. They will randomly turn on and off as the fight goes on. If you are inside the circle for longer than five seconds after it deactivates, you will be purged. You do not want to be purged.”

“So, no team has to win over the others? We don’t have to fight until all but one team is eliminated?” Pegacorn asked.

“No. But higher success will be found with team cohesion. And once again…” Holt stared directly at Il-Su. “If anyone kills that one, it will guarantee you survive this event. You automatically win, protected from everyone else, and guarantee you two extra respawns. Two extra lives, without having to come back here.”

The heat had returned to his eyes, a fire fuelled by actual hatred. Not irritation, not annoyance, not the kind of thing Il-Su typically saw from slop tubers talking about him. Genuine fury.

“What the hell did you do to piss him off so much?” Slider asked.

“I don’t know,” Il-Su hissed.

Apparently they weren’t as quiet as they thought, because Holt’s eyes narrowed, and if they’d been lit by anger before, they were now blazing with a frenzied rage.

“And they get a custom weapon,” Holt growled. He spun on his heel, took a step, and was gone, just like that.

“You really pissed him off somehow,” Pegacorn noted.

“I know.”

“You shit in his cereal or something?”

“I said I…” 

He trailed off as he saw that the golden circle around their group had dimmed to a dull black with no fanfare. Il-Su sucked in a startled breath and leapt out of the circle. Pegacorn was out a second after, and then the both of them pulled the more inattentive Brock and Slider out from it before the invisible timer ran out.

“Fucker,” Pegacorn swore. And then an arrow pinged off her Tenacity, the shaft shattering as it struck.

Evidently the safe zone had opened up for the second team, the one with the archer she’d nearly killed, and he was attempting revenge. Her black eyes narrowed at him, and she smiled. He drew again and loosed, but this time she got her big club up, the images of charcoal cats back on its surface, and blocked with it. 

Il-Su drew a knife, and Pegacorn barked, “No! Brock and Slider still need kills!”

He glanced at Slider, the kid, and Brock, the useless beauty icon in the body of a hairy beefcake. How much easier it would be to just kill until there was no one left. Il-Su had three kills. He was in the clear for Holt’s requirement. Pegacorn had two. Slider had one. Brock had none to his name. For his whole team to make it, they’d need to kill six people, assuming none here had any kills to their name to transfer over. 

Il-Su made his choice. He threw a knife as hard as he could. And broke the Tenacity of the first frontliner who stepped up, shattering his shield, and putting the blade into the flesh just above the man’s knee. 

Slider was on him in a second, making an excited whoop and bringing down the sword he’d picked up down towards the man’s head. Even wounded, the man managed to block the blow, stumbling as he did.

Pegacorn swung her massive club around, setting up an area denial field, preventing his allies from rushing to his aid.

“Brock!” she yelled. “Get the kill!”

But Brock was looking a little green, and his hands shook on his sword. He closed his eyes, whispering something to himself.

Slider didn’t hesitate. He kept slamming his sword down, and with the knife in the man’s leg, he couldn’t hold up the guard for long. The sword rammed past his defenses and bit deeply into his shoulder. Not a killing blow, not in the immediate moment, but a disabling one.

One of his teammates, a man with red hair, got around Pegacorn’s swing and leapt to drive Slider away. And as soon as the kid retreated, the ginger bastard turned around and stabbed his own teammate in the throat, claiming the kill for himself.

“Fuck!” Pegacorn swore, swinging precisely to knock the redhead away. It crashed into him, shattering his Tenacity and sending him bowling, but it was too late.

Il-Su lined up his next throw, but an arrow pinged off his shield, and he flinched away. The other team’s safe zone had just turned from gold to black, bringing them into the fight, and suddenly Pegacorn was being swarmed.

He was a good shot, but he was low on knives, and throwing them into that mess would just be a waste of resources.

“Brock, help her!” Il-Su shouted.

“I… I can’t!” he yelled, unable to keep his sword straight.

Il-Su sighed, and then channeled his Will into his Voidblade. The black sword dropped into his hands, and he went in, backing up Pegacorn as best he could. 

Apparently someone noticed him moving into melee, because some jackass yelled, “Get him!” and suddenly a lot of the attention was taken off Pegacorn and put on him. The first sword that came at him got sheared in half by the black substance that made up his Pact blade, and he stabbed at the wielder, sinking an inch of his weapon through the offending attacker’s Tenacity and into their shoulder. 

And then suddenly a lot of weapons were coming at him. He was no slouch. He’d been trained by the best. But this wasn’t his forte, these upfront clashes, and there were a lot of weapons suddenly slashing and lunging at him from a number of directions.

He managed to slice through the blades of sword more swords and the haft of one spear, but his attackers didn’t let up, jabbing at him with the ruined remains of their weapons, and suddenly he was taking a lot of hits to his Tenacity. Il-Su staggered backwards, and then a pair of arms grabbed him from behind and pulled. He drew a dagger with his offhand and made to stab at whoever had grabbed him, but his arm froze mid-strike. 

And then he realized, he was in a safe zone, inside a golden circle that had flared to life, giving him a brief reprieve. He glanced backwards, and saw Brock, his face flushed and unable to meet Il-Su’s gaze.

“It’s… all I can do,” Brock mumbled.

“Good enough,” Il-Su grunted. If Brock couldn’t kill, even with his life on the line, it wasn’t any of Il-Su’s business. Didn’t matter if it was morality or cowardice. But at least he hadn’t completely frozen up.

A few of Il-Su’s attackers circled around the safe zone predatorily, waiting for it to come back down. In a flash, he realized they were trying to trap him and Brock inside the zone once it was rendered no longer safe, and hope Holt’s ‘purging’ would count as their kill. 

Clever. He almost admired them for it. Too bad they had turned their backs on Pegacorn when they did it.

She called that strange word again that he couldn’t quite make out once more, and charcoal cats leapt from her club and at those surrounding Il-Su and Brock. Even as they did, the circle flashed to black once more, and Il-Su dragged Brock back outside the ring and into the melee. Brock made a few clumsy swings, his form poor but good enough for this lot, an effort to defend himself and nothing else, refusing to press the attack.

“It’s kill or be killed!” Il-Su roared. “And I am going to fucking live! Fucking live, Brock!”

He couldn’t spare anymore attention after that, being forced to defend against three opponents, while trying to dodge arrows from that Legolas fuck. 

The charcoal cats were causing absolute chaos, but with multiple opponents, their attention was divided, and Pegacorn didn’t seem to have any actual control over what they did. None of them seemed to want to attack the same opponent, and two of them wrestled each other while one played with a piece of… was that someone’s hand? Had someone lost a hand? Il-Su tried not to think about it. 

But one of the charcoal cats leapt on one of Il-Su’s opponents, and he took advantage of the confusion, immediately focusing on the other two. He chopped their weapons to pieces, hacking away at their steel until it was just a pair of nubs, and then kicked one man directly into the path of Brock’s sword. A solid yard of the blade went through the man’s chest, roughly where his heart was, and Brock made a panicked noise, dropping his weapon, but it was too late. The man was dead, and Brock had his first kill.

The other of the two looked from his dead companion to Brock, who was now unarmed, and then to Il-Su, and made his choice. Even with his sword cut to just a small hunk of steel, it sheared off edge was still sharp, and he went right for the defenseless Brock.

Il-Su reached for a throwing knife, and couldn’t find one he hadn’t already hurled. He panicked, diving at the man reflexively, but an arrow sprouted out of his opponent’s temple.

That Legolas fuck gave a mocking bow from across the way, and then very deliberately didn’t ready another arrow, instead retreating from the fight. He was probably at three kills now, and wasn’t looking to take his chances on going for Il-Su. Or maybe he was just creating distance.

The man with the charcoal cat digging into the back of his neck screamed, and his eyes locked onto Il-Su. A decision seemed to flicker in his eyes, and then settled into grim reality. He knew he was dead. And he just decided to take Il-Su with him, to try to get those extra lives.

He took two steps forward. And then a massive club crashed down on him, smashing his brains in and ragdolling his body.

Pegacorn wrenched the club free, and grunted, “And that’s three for me.”

Il-Su glanced around, and suddenly found the battlefield very empty. It was just his team, and that Legolas cosplayer left.

“Kill count?” he asked.

“Two,” Slider said, and Brock mumbled, “Just… just one. I think. Assuming what… what you did counts.”

Il-Su winced. There was no saving Brock. Nothing he could do. So, he turned and pointed at the Legolas guy, and said, “Okay, Slider, kill that guy, and–”

He stumbled. Some part of him recognized that his Tenacity was broken, and that he was suddenly very off-balance. He looked down, and saw a sword blade sticking out of his lower abdomen. 

Il-Su dropped to his knees, stunned. He turned, and saw Slider - that stupid kid, Kenny - staring contemptuously at him.

“The old Il-Su never would’ve turned his back on an unknown,” Kenny said. “The guy who used to aura farm Gallant Stand II never would’ve trusted anyone. You’re worth two extra lives, bitch. You think I wasn’t–”

Whatever he wasn’t never got answered. Brock brought his sword down full strength on Slider’s head, and apparently the kid didn’t have any Tenacity left. It went through, like cutting butter.

Brock made a startled gasp, as if what he’d done had been purely reactionary, and then began to vomit. Il-Su watched Slider topple. He knew that look, that glassed over look in the kid’s eyes. Another dead child, because of him.

Another one.

Oh god, he really had killed another kid before this, hadn’t he?

Slider had that exact same look that other child had, the one he’d accidentally killed when Kir had come for him. The same bewildered stare, as if what just happened didn’t make any sense.

But Kenny was real. Why would he make the same expression as… as an NPC?

He… this really wasn’t a game, was it?

Il-Su began to throw up, too.

78 Players Remain.

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