Fell Champions

Staring at those two daggers, it began to sink in for Otter exactly what was about to happen. She’d had pre-fight PVP jitters before, but those had been easy. It’d been her reputation on the line before. Maybe a cash prize at a tournament or a convention event. 

 

She made the mistake of meeting Nightmare’s eyes. He looked afraid. They were wide, and darting, checking from the daggers, to her, to Holt, to the crowd, and back. She’d heard his name was Seth, once. She wished she didn’t know that. The more impersonal this was, the better.

 

She was really going to do this. This wasn’t Player Killing, it was player murdering. Didn’t matter if he was defending his own life, scrambling for his one and only chance in a scenario he hadn't realized he'd signed up for. She’d romanticized it at first. Volunteered to keep Rua from harm. 

 

But she hadn’t thought it through. Hadn’t thought about it at all, really. She’d put more brain power towards making a funny quip and reference than she had to one simple fact.

 

She was going to have to kill someone.

 

There was no other option. She was either going to have to walk out of this arena as a killer, or she wasn’t going to walk out at all.

 

“Sorry, ‘Mare. Nothing personal.”

 

“I…” He visibly gulped. “I was gonna say the same.”

 

Nightmare was known as a good gamer. But he wasn’t diverse, didn’t explore outside his own chosen niche of games. So, when you put him in a speedrunning situation, or a game that required good mechanical skill at a specific skillset that he’d grinded hours mastering, he was set. He knew techs, tricks, and all kinds of skips.

 

But this was a VR PVP match in a game he’d never played, in a genre he wasn’t familiar with. And while Otter was just as unfamiliar with Fell Champions, and just as bound to her particular genre of game, at least she was playing in the field she’d been in all her career.

 

Poor guy thought she was an unknown, some smalltime streamer he'd never heard of. If his version of reality had been true, he might've had a chance. 

 

“Everyone, prepare yourselves for the first match of the series,” Holt called tauntingly over his screen. 

 

A barrier flickered between both combatants and the two daggers between them. Likely, it’d always been there, to keep the fight from starting early, but now it was making itself known before violence happened.

 

“I’ll make it quick,” Nightmare said.

 

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

 

His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing else. He wasn’t much of a talker. He was one of those guys who locked in on one thing at a time. He couldn’t run his mouth and his hands at the same time.

 

He probably thought he was going to win this easily. He wasn’t a huge guy, but he was bigger than her. He probably thought it was all going to come down to physical strength and speed. Poor fucker.

 

Otter wasn’t quite sure how Thread of Sanctuary was supposed to work, but she activated it anyway. Information flooded into her brain. It was almost instinctual, just like Rua had explained. Otter just suddenly knew, and wove her hands in a pattern, envisioning what she wanted to create.

 

About a third of her blue bar of Will disappeared, and in her hands a cloak appeared. It was pure white, of a soft and light fabric. Nightmare took a startled step backwards as she whirled it about and settled it over her neck and shoulders. He gave her and then Holt an incredulous look, as if unclear if what she'd done was some kind of cheat or not.

 

“Get ready!” Holt called.

 

Otter took the hem of the cloak in one hand, and held it out like a shield in front of her. She cast her second arm backwards, ready to strike. 

 

“Set!”

 

Nightmare took on a runner’s pose. The daggers were maybe ten feet away from each of them. His strategy was simple and apparent: to make a mad dash directly for them.

 

“Fight!”

 

Holt laughed as if doing his best Joker impression, a sad and pathetic man delighting in the pain of others. He made a slashing gesture with his hand, and the shields dropped.

 

Nightmare shot forward at inhuman speed. He’d probably dumped a lot of his stats into Agility. He wasn’t a speeding bullet by any means, but he’d probably give an Olympic athlete a run for their money.

 

Otter triggered Thread of the Scourge. Just like before, the information just appeared in her brain, like it’d always been there, which honestly made her ADHD brain briefly wonder why Thread of Fate hadn’t told her jack. Why was that ability different?

 

In the moment, it didn't matter. A golden wire about four feet long flashed into being in her hand just as Nightmare reached the first of the two daggers. He ripped it from the ground and kept going, changing direction to go for the second as well. 

 

Otter held her ground. She’d never planned to contest his claim to either weapon. She wasn’t a melee fighter. She was a fucking wizard.

 

He reached out his offhand for that second dagger, probably thinking that ensured his victory then and there, and that was when Otter whipped her hand forward. 

 

Thread of the Scourge was primarily used for two things. Binding, and cutting. It was great for tying things down, and while its cutting power wasn’t as good as a bladed weapon without empowering it, it’d still draw blood.

 

She didn’t use it for either purpose. The whip didn’t land on Nightmare’s outstretched hand, but the dagger he was reaching for, wrapping around its handle and hilt, tying itself into a knot by Otter’s will. She yanked backwards, and the dagger ripped free from the dirt., so when Nightmare moved to grab it, instead of taking hold of the handle, his fingers gripped onto the blade itself.

 

He didn’t jerk his hand back, or lose any fingers like she’d expected. There was a moment of startled silence between the two of them as he realized what had happened, how he held a knife by the scary part and not the safe bit like he’d planned. 

 

He still reacted the way a sensible person would. He dropped the dagger to the ground before the steel could hurt him.

 

He reached down to try to grab it again anyway, and Otter kicked a spray of dirt at his face. It didn’t hit him, but made him flinch away. 

 

His reactions were like a regular person’s in a fight, and not like a man driven to take the win at any cost. Nightmare gave Otter a shocked look, surprised at her ferocity, her unwillingness to give him even an inch of room.

 

And then his face twisted in anger, and he grabbed the Thread of the Scourge and looped it around both his arms and hauled backwards for all he was worth. He was finally getting it, on a level he probably hadn’t before. This really wasn’t just a game. But Otter was already a step ahead.

 

She staggered forward, but she pumped another point of Will into her thread, depleting her resource to about half, and empowered it.

 

Thread of the Scourge flared brighter, glowing with a burning hot intensity, and there was a flash around Nightmare’s arms. It was as if there were a forcefield protecting him, and too late Otter realized that whatever points he’d dumped into Tenacity must be protecting him.

 

Otter fell right into Nightmare’s fist facefirst, and though she felt the impact, there was no pain. The red bar in the upper right corner of her vision went down a small smidge.

 

So, that’s how it was going to be. They were going to have to slap at each other until they’d depleted each other’s Tenacity, and then they’d finally be able to hurt one another.

 

Nightmare realized a second too late that his other hand had a blade in it, and he moved to stab her, but she was already dancing out of his reach. He gave another sharp haul on her thread, but she dismissed it, causing it to abruptly vanish. His own pull unbalanced him, sending him falling backwards, and Otter wasted no time, stomping as hard as she could down on his knee. She missed, only clipping his shin, but she was already activating a new Thread of the Scourge, whipping it down at his face. She empowered it at the last possible moment, and he flinched at the sudden brightness in his eyes.

 

Covering his face with one hand, he slashed wildly at the air in front of him, but she was already moving around him, repositioning and striking at the dagger in his hand. The thread caught the blade, but he must’ve figured out what her next move was going to be, and he threw it at her before she could take control of the blade.

 

Steel spun at her face, and her Tenacity was the only thing that saved her from losing an eye. Her health bar jumped down to dangerous levels, flashing angrily at her. But at this point, it no longer mattered.

 

The dagger was bound securely in her thread, and it was no longer in Nightmare’s hand. Her whip, flashy but not particularly damaging, was now effectively a kusarigama, or a flail.

 

Otter began to rain heavy blows down on Nightmare’s arms as he held them over his head to protect himself, a gesture that was too little, too late. There was a final flicker from his shield, and then blood began to spill in earnest, his forearms taking bloody gouges as the swinging knife took chunks out of him. 

 

He must’ve realized the position he was in, that his pitiful defense was useless. That it wasn’t a matter of losing a match, but his life. Nightmare made a grab for the dagger in mid-air, and she let him have it, dismissing her thread as soon as he caught it, the steel digging into the flesh of his palms. 

 

He moved the knife up in something resembling a fighting posture, and his teeth were clenched in pain, tears in his eyes, and sweat running down his brown. Otter would always remember that defiant stance, that final look he gave her.

 

And then the last thread she had activated just as he’d grabbed the dagger came hurtling at his neck, holding onto the earlier discarded second dagger. She’d been aiming for his jugular, but even with years of experience in these kinds of games, this was still an unfamiliar weapon for her. She missed the artery, so there was no fountain of blood. No quick death. But death still came.

 

Nightmare made a sick choking noise, staggered on his feet, taking two steps one way, and then one the other. He looked confused, and then did the worst thing he could do by grabbing the blade sunk into his throat and pulling it out. It wasn’t arterial blood that came gushing out, but it was still a fair amount. 

 

He dropped the dagger and fell face first into the ground. A small puddle of blood pooled underneath his head.

 

Otter wanted to throw up. Instead, she swallowed down bile and picked up the discarded dagger with her shaking hand. 

 

She looked up at the screen, at Holt’s smiling face. There was nothing PR about his look now. He looked positively aroused.

 

Otter knelt by Nightmare, grabbed him by the hair on the back of his head, and lifted. As she did, he twisted, and a knife came flashing at her. It caught her on the shoulder, piercing through the last of her shield, and into her cloak provided by Thread of Sanctuary. It only made it in a few bare centimetres into the cloth before scraping off in an ineffective line. 

 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Good game.”

 

And then she drew her own blade across his neck as deeply as she could, finishing the fight.