Fell Champions

 

The colosseum was meant to seat maybe a hundred thousand, and only held a hundred and one. So the fact that it was quiet was nothing surprising. Still, Otter felt as if some noise were justified. People screaming at her. Condemning her. Anything but just this… calm. 

 

She took both daggers and cleaned them and her hands as best she could on Nightmare’s tunic, but the fabric was stiff and coarse, not made for the task, and only took some of the blood off before spreading the rest around in messy streaks. 

 

Gamer instinct more than anything else made her check to see if he had anything on him, any loot worth taking, but he had nothing. It was probably better that way. She’d always think of him, just looking at those daggers. She didn’t need any further reminders.

 

“We have a winner,” Holt said, giggling to himself. “Everyone, applaud!”

 

Silence met his call.

 

“Applaud!” he screamed, fury in his voice.

 

There were some scattered claps, some half-hearted cheers. No one’s heart was in it, but effort was made only due to the madman who held them all hostage.

 

“Good job,” Holt practically purred, and from the way the screen’s image stared directly at Otter, she knew exactly who he was talking to. “I’m gonna call that one a World Quest. First blood, and all that. One dead already. Woof. Well, always knew that first one would be quick. Thank goodness no one screamed ‘Leroy Jenkins’, hmm?”

 

He giggled absently to himself, and seemed preoccupied with a screen only he could see. Likely designing a reward just for Otter. One earned with the blood of Nightmare. 

 

Otter’s own menu popped open without her summoning it. 

 

First Blood earned!
Limited Prize Event
+1 to all Stats

 

She closed the screen. She didn’t know if a plus one across the board was good or not. She didn’t particularly care. It wasn’t worth the trade. It wasn’t worth the stain.

 

“Cheer up! You’ll get used to it. You think this’ll be the last kill you get? Oh, far from it. I have my eyes on you, little killer. You think you made a deal with only the Dreamer? Whatever she has planned for your Pact, it’s a picnic compared to my ambitions.”

 

Otter tried to tune out Holt’s voice. How could that man sound so fucking happy? Was power tripping this badly the only thing that gave him an erection? 

 

No. There was something else, something in his words. Holt had a plan. He wasn’t just trapping them in a video game, forcing them into a death match for entertainment. Something else was at play here, and as Otter looked up into the crowd and found Rua staring down at her, she had a good feeling what it was. 

 

This wasn’t a game at all. She didn’t know what it was. But this wasn’t some trope-ridden cliche. Holt wanted something, and doing it this way was his way of getting it.

 

That manic glee, that joyous laughter. That was just as fake as his PR smile. Maybe more authentic, but it was still forced, a mask, hiding something else.

 

“Now onto the dirty part of the business,” Holt said. “Otter, cut out poor Nightmare’s heart.”

 

She felt as if someone had just done what he proposed to her. She looked at him with what she knew was a sickened expression.

 

“You want me to do what?”

 

“I want you to cut open his chest, break his rib cage, and get wrist deep in him before pulling out his dead heart. Are you deaf? I mean, really. Get to it, chop chop.” And then he laughed, as if he’d said the most witty thing in the world.

 

Her hands tightened over the pair of knives she carried, but something in Holt’s eyes warned her. His mouth might have been laughing, but his eyes weren’t.

 

“You fucker,” she said, and stabbed one dagger into the ground, and approaching the corpse with the other.

 

While other VR games had been semi-realistic in terms of blood and viscera, there’d been limits. Certain things would never get past the censors and Parental Advisory groups. Like everything else in Fell Champions, things were a little… too real. 

 

Cutting open a dead man’s chest was one thing, even as its eyes stared up at her. She tried her best to ignore that, to push his head to the side, but she couldn’t help but feel the judgement from a man who wasn’t there anymore. She tried avoiding breaking his ribs by going under, through the belly, but just the texture and the knowledge of what she was doing had her heaving. It was the warmth of his guts that got her, more than anything else. 

 

She emptied the contents of her stomach the first time she tried. The second, her stomach convulsed and nothing but bitter, yellow liquid would come out. After that, she resigned herself to breaking her way in. 

 

The ribs were easier to crack than she expected. After a while, she just kind of became detached to the whole experience. Her brain retreated, and she just stopped paying attention to what she was doing, her hands working while her mind was blank.

 

A minute later, she had Nightmare’s dead heart in her hands. 

 

She wanted to hurl it away. She wanted to put it back and beg forgiveness, as if that’d bring the poor idiot back to life. Instead, she held it up to the screen Holt looked through, as if in offering.

 

“Good, now cut it open.”

 

She didn’t even question it at that point. She made a sloppy incision down the middle of Nightmare’s heart, and inside, there was a white crystal the size of her pinky nail. She pulled it out.

 

“Eat it,” Holt said.

 

Otter looked at the small gem in horror. She’d never been good with pills. She choked them up more than swallowed them. Hell, she even chewed mashed potatoes, her gag reflex was so strong.

 

Thank goodness she wasn’t hetero, she never would’ve been able to handle sucking dick, a distant and broken part of her mind said.

 

But even with all that, this blood-covered crystal had just come from inside a man she’d just killed. If she hadn’t already vomited up everything she had, she probably would have blown chunks at the mere suggestion. 

 

“Eat,” he said, and almost sounded fatherly as he did.

 

She was too far gone now. She wiped off the crystal as much as she could, and threw it at the back of her throat, closing her eyes and swallowing and trying desperately to not think about what she just put in her body.

 

A message flashed in front of Otter’s eyes as soon as she forced the crystal down.

 

Choose Stat to Enhance

Agility / Allure / Fortune

 

What the fresh hell was this? The crystal enhanced her stats? Was this… was this how you leveled up in Fell Champions?

 

Fucking Zeus fucking on a pogo stick. Yeah, that made sense. Just yet another piece of shit on top of the pile of shit that was this stupid fucking game. She held a hand out, palm down, and watched her fingers. They shook, but more from nerves than anything else. She flexed her hand, tried to calm herself, and focused. It stayed still. Mercifully still.

 

“This,” Holt said, “is the primary way to gain stat points in Fell Champions. When you kill any player, sentient being, or monster-type, you can gain a stat crystal. Eating this crystal will present three randomized options. When you choose one, you will inherit ten percent of the slain being’s stats, rounded down, in that particular attribute. It must be a creature you killed. If you eat a crystal from something you did not kill… well, the results will vary. But I don’t recommend it. I know a couple of you have already figured all this out. But for the rest of the playerbase, if you want to advance, if you want to survive, you have to do exactly what Otter here just did. The weak get eaten in this world. Remember that.”

 

Otter looked blearily at the screen. She wanted to curse Holt out. To puke out whatever she had left in her, even if it was just her liver pushing out bile. 

 

Instead, she pushed the button labeled ‘Agility.’ Nightmare was a speed build. He might’ve had something on Fortune, but Allure was probably going to get her dick all. Agility was the only one that wasn’t a gamble.

 

She felt weak for pushing that button. She wished she had the strength to not do it.

*-*-*

 

Sami watched the entire proceedings from her bench seat, absently drumming out a beat with the palm of her hand on the pommel stone of her sword. It was an old habit of hers, one that helped her think and kept her brain rational. It was how she processed, and compartmentalized. 

 

“What do we know about GrandTheftOtter?” she asked.

 

Sediment, in the form of that ridiculous dragonkin he’d taken, shrugged. “Not much. Talked to her for maybe two minutes. Name's an alias. She's either new and trying to cultivate an air of mystery, or someone old, and is trying to hide. Said she doesn't like drama, which I think is true. She’s got spunk.”

 

Sami  nodded along. She always valued his assessments. He was usually a good judge of character, and just having him nearby was a comfort. She had yet to find Sediment in the Salass Wastes, despite multiple calls between them and trying to pick out landmarks and track the sun’s position relative to the both of them. They were probably a couple hundred miles apart, with no telling how many wandering bandits between them. Holt bringing them to the arena was something resembling a comfort, right up until his sudden heel turn into madness.

 

Sami pondered for a moment. She always had to look at problems from all the angles. She couldn’t afford to be the one to rush into situations head first. 

 

Sami watched this Otter as she gathered herself after that ordeal. She’d handled it well, all things considered. Her infighting was a little sloppy, but she was apparently playing a mage class, and she had guts, being able to actually kill a fellow player and then carve out his heart and eat a part of it. But it was the magic that had Sami’s attention.

 

“Any word from the other players on how she was able to do magic?”

 

Sediment shrugged. “She hasn’t talked to anyone other than me, from what I can gather.”

 

“That’s not true. She’s clearly acquainted with whoever this ‘Rua’ is. And someone visited the pair of them, where they were sitting.”

 

Everett spread his hands helplessly. “No one knows who Rua is. She doesn’t respond to any messages sent her way. She’s a mystery.”

 

“Not even Holt knows,” she said. That seemed odd. You’d think even a half-mad idiot would know how someone could sneak into his highly secure video game. Sami was good with patterns. She could recognize them quickly, isolate them, and predict them. But more importantly, she knew the importance of pattern breaks. “There’s more going on with this Rua than a simple logon mystery. She’s the key.”

 

Everett didn’t ask how she’d arrived to that conclusion. He’d always let her do the thinking. Well, her and Il-Su.

 

“Any response?” she asked. She didn’t need to specify. Not for him.

 

“No. He doesn’t answer. You know how he is.”

 

“We’d both still be dating him if he knew how to communicate,” she said. “And Pandemona? Has she responded at all?”

 

“No.”

 

That was odd. Another pattern break. You normally couldn’t stop Pandemona from talking. It’d been endearing, once. 

 

“Any chance she’s colluding with Il-Su?”

 

Everett gave her a look that communicated very well that she was supposed to be the smart one of the two of them.

 

“Point,” she said. “We need strong players on our side. We don’t know what Holt has in store for us. We’re going to need to clan up.”

 

“I’ve been playing with the Community settings. There’s a way, but it looks expensive. Ten soul crystals, for a level one clan. Five people.”

 

Sami drummed a rapid beat on the pommel stone of her sword. “Now that we know how to get those, it should be easy. There’s no shortage of enemies in my part of the Wastes. We need to use this time to start recruiting.”

 

“You want Otter?”

 

“And Rua. Both, or neither. I’ll leave the fifth to you. Start mingling. I don’t know how long Holt is going to let us stay here like this. But don’t push yourself. We both need to be rested before we return to the Wastes.”

 

Everett nodded, and rose from his spot. He started to stride towards the nearest shadowy figure, their identity concealed with some kind of perception filter Holt had placed. But Everett could make friends with anyone. He was a big teddy bear.

 

“And Everett? Make sure… make sure they’re able to kill.”

 

“No way to feel that out in a conversation. But… I’ll know the types to avoid.”

 

"Good."

 

"You know... there is one who fits all your criteria."

 

"No. We are not recruiting Il-Su. He can't be trusted to leave us hanging in the wind."

 

"He's good at this kind of game. Great at single-target DPS, stealth, and is nimble. Really nimble." Everett adopted a goofy look at that last comment. "He'd shore up a hole in our party, we work well with him, and we both know he'd... acclimate well here."

 

"No. Anyone but him."

 

"You still care for him."

 

"It doesn't matter how I feel about him, because I also know him. The answer's no. Find someone else."

 

Everett hung his head a little sadly, his wings flicking out in irritation. She gave him a small smile. "I know. But trust me. Anyone dealing with Il-Su will regret it. He'll always betray them, because that's who he is."