You have 2 weeks to complete your battle, may the best man win!
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You have 2 weeks to complete your battle, may the best man win!
The gentle sound of water trickling was the only noise which filled the ancient and ill-regarded Naiterwally Catacombs.
The tunnels were so old as to appear mere caves. Almost perfectly round, with low ceilings and a number of tight, hairpin turns, they had only ever been partially mapped by explorers. Whoever had lived in them had left no major traces of their lifestyles; there were no fire pits or shards of pottery, and indeed no actual chambers, just regular tunnels going downward.
Obscure legend held that the tunnels were dug by evil spirits fighting their way out from the lower world. The great sages of Althanas held now that they were fashioned as a sort of shelter by the earliest inhabitants of Corone, though the nature and identity of these first people is lost to time. These sages point to the fact that the tunnels were dug low on the flood plain as indicators of their antiquity, as it is thought that in times past that region was higher above sea level. Certainly there are signs that the tunnels once extended far deeper, and that the movement of the earth must have closed off some passages.
The local people of Naiterwally Village claimed the Catacombs were intended as graves for a race of monsters which lost the very first war with mankind, the war which decided who would rule the world (the world at that time consisting, to those concerned, of their village and the surrounding six or seven miles). They said that to disturb the dead of their own race is bad enough, but to disturb the dead of an angry species that lost to their ancestors is far worse. They made signs to guard against evil emanations, and avoided the windy moor where the tunnel openings gaped to the sky like leprous wounds. The villagers encouraged people to stay away from the Catacombs, in their quiet and polite local villager way. But the organizers of the Serenti Invitational are not local people, and that is why they insisted on using the Naiterwallies to host a fight in the second round.
There was a small shantytown surrounding the holes, built and maintained by archaeologists from some university somewhere. They were not happy about the tunnels being used for combat, but had agreed that the expanse of Tunnel A-3 was of limited historical value, shallow and unbranching, ensuring that the two combatants released into it would eventually collide in spectacular combat. Surely, the archaeologists said, these tunnels had been empty for a long time. The shift in altitude had brought them low in the water table, and in the wet season they were totally flooded. For the moment, however, the tunnels were totally safe.
It's a shame that archaeologists get things wrong so often.
- - -
Relt Peltfelter, native daughter of San Francisco in the year 2025 and erstwhile Chinese food delivery girl, had not been enjoying the Serenti thus far.
She had passed into round two simply by virtue of her opponent's ability to suddenly and powerfully fail to be in the arena, and therefore having been subjected to a battle royale of flailing ungulate and screeching goblin. There were still bits of hippo stuck to her hair. Evidently the next fight would be in a big weird tunnel or whatever, which made her think first of Dig-Dug, and second of The Descent. Relt's experiences in caves up to this point had not been rosy, but fuck it, she had been punchblocked in the first round by some guy just disappearing, and she'd be damned if she didn't get to punch somebody this time.
The tournament representatives had handed her something as she entered the cave; it looked like an iron banana, but Relt was assured that it was a magical tracking device, allowing her exploits in the caves to be transmitted to the surface for the pleasure of the crowd. The girl just shrugged and jammed the thing into her bag, walking down the long-empty entry to Tunnel A-3
The tunnel wasn't actually very impressive. It looked as though someone had given Mother Earth a colonoscopy with a Roto-Rooter; just a long tunnel spiraling downward. Occasionally the wall would show a vaguely person-sized alcove, or a bas relief so water-worn as to be nearly abstract, but the only life down here seemed to be a bunch of fat, blind hopping critters and some optimistic scorpions. The ceiling was just over five feet high; Relt was able to walk upright and only occasionally viciously bang her head on a budding stalactite, but a taller person might find their progress a lot more hunched.
Relt stopped after walking downward for about twenty minutes. The tunnel was totally empty thus far, and pitch black; the organizers had given her a torch, but she preferred to use the bright digital glare of her cell phone's flashlight mode. She wondered if her opponent was lurking down here somewhere, or if he was still on the surface, being handed an iron banana and gently shoved down after her. She took a fighting stance and held out her switchblade, still coated in hippo blood, hoping that she looked cool for the spectators, who still regarded her with a sort of quiet, awed horror after the culminating events of the previous round, which are not to be mentioned under any circumstances.
- - -
Relt had missed a very important fact as she descended the tunnel. Tunnel A-3 goes down only one hundred feet. It takes only about ten minutes to reach the bottom, where a cave-in has evidently closed off further depths. Relt should not have been able to walk continuously downward for twenty minutes. She passed what had been the bottom of the tunnel halfway through her journey, at which point her magical transmitter's signal to the surface cut out.
More importantly, after passing this point, Relt failed to notice a change in the walls' texture. While they appear to have been chiseled by the same method as the higher reaches, which had been cut down from the surface, the digging of the lower tunnel was clearly done more recently. What's more, they had clearly been dug from the opposite direction; upwards, from below.
"You can shove me all you want, but I'm not going until you tell just what the hell the purpose of this thing is!" Seed spat at one of the nearby archeologists. The man only shrugged in response, and repeated the same thing that he had been saying for the past fifteen minutes.
"It is simply a transmitter to help record the battle," was all the man ever said in possibly the most monotone of voices ever; Seed just glared back.
"Oh really? Cause it looks like an iron banana to me," he muttered as flipped the object up into the air continuously. He looked towards the dank cave they meant to send him in, and then turned his attention back to the group of archeologists next to him.
"It's either that, or some type of sex toy. Awww...are you lonely?" Seed licked his lips as he scooted himself next to a fairly attractive female archeologist. "Cause I bet the real thing is waaaay better than this cold, unfeeling hunk of metal."
"Don't you have a battle or something to attend to?" the woman managed to eek out as she shied away from Seed, whose attitude and clothes (worn was being nice...very nice) bothered her greatly. He shrugged, and inched closer.
"So? Last person I fought would do something, I'd respond, and then she'd space out FOREVER! Like, I'd throw something at her, and it seriously felt like four days before she would even register what I did!" Seed chuckled, and jerked his thumb towards the cave. "If that's all this so called tournament is about, then I'd much rather play with you! So what's say we go somewhere and test this toy against the real thing? Baby."
Five seconds later, he was flying backwards from an uppercut that until recently Seed would have sworn a young woman was incapable of. He reeled backwards in the sky, his head a blaze of confusion and pain. He thought the confusion would stop soon (not the pain), but instead he found the sky zipping by him at blinding speeds, and the cave's entrance was growing larger by the second. He gripped for the earth, but found only hard steel beneath him.
"WHY WAS THERE A PIECE OF SHEET METAL BEHIND MEEEEEEE?" Seed shrieked like a little girl as he flew down into the cave, riding the sheet metal down the slope all the way. One of the archeologists frowned at the man's exit.
"Why was there a piece of sheet metal behind him?" the man asked. One of the other archeologists shrugged.
"Seemed like a good place for it at the time," was all that was said as Seed sped down the cave ever faster.
*~*~*~*~
"Ack! Scorpion!" Seed screamed as he quickly grabbed the vile thing before it could sting him, and flung it away. He was still racing down the cave atop the piece of metal; his hope that the dirt would slow his descent was rapidly diminishing. In fact, the further down he went, the faster he seemed to go; his long mess of red hair formed a rather nice red streak amidst the dark. Not that he really had the time to notice such things.
"This was not the toy I wanted to try!" he shouted to no one in particular as he fumbled for the torch one of the villagers had given him. It was dark in the damn cave, and a little bit of light would not hurt at all. Sparks were flying off the sheet metal, creating dancing lights the lasted for the shortest breath before fading into non-existence. He made to light the torch with those sparks, but he hit a bump of some sort (he wondered if it was alive, or had been until he had brutally smashed it), and the torch fell out of his grasp. He cursed, steadied himself, and made to stand up...
And a stalactite nearly took his head off as he did so. It wasn't fast reflexes that saved Seed; rather the luck of the stalactite being two inches to the left. He felt the cold rock graze his ear, and gulped as he ducked his head low while a trickle of blood ran down his skin.
You know, if I wasn't rapidly speeding up out of control, this would be kinda of fun! Seed managed to think as he ran over another object; a shrill squeak of some protest echoed through the tunnels as he sped on. Ignoring whatever crime he had just committed (smashing helpless animals was pretty serious business in certain parts of Althanas), he glanced ahead. Not only did a few murals of some sort blaze past him (he swore that if he looked at them at just the right angle, an elephant was laughing at him); a faint light glowed a bit further ahead.
“Ahoy!” he shouted as the bearer of the light came into view. “Might I request some aid?”
Or that was what he meant to say. What actually came out was a garbled mess of shrieks and laughs (well, his situation was pretty funny), as well as a grab attempt that was more likely to pull the person on board the runaway piece of metal than stop it.
Relt was almost beginning to enjoy the quiet moisture of the tunnel and the gentle pitter-patter of scorpions crawling over her feet. Her claustrophobia had receded into a zen-like peace as she sat in one of the small, bench-like alcoves of the cavern. This state of personal transcendence had, as with most of Relt's calmer moods, been precipitated by a significant amount of marijuana smoke. It clung to the ceiling even now; Relt was a bit concerned that she was running low, but that would be a bridge to cross at a later date. She burped out a lopsided smoke ring, rubbed her bloodshot eyes, and decided it was probably a good idea to sober up before she engaged in thrilling mortal kombat.
As she was stuffing her slightly-chipped skull bong into her bag, a peculiar sort of grating sound became obvious from behind her. Disoriented though she was, Relt turned towards the source of it, further down the tunnel. Was her opponent already here? Did he walk past her, deeper into the bowels of the earth? The sound repeated again, like a fork being dragged across a fine china plate. Relt fiddled with her phone; didn't the camera have a night vision function? Maybe she could get an early glimpse of this guy without him seeing her and shooting magic balls at her or whatever.
The catacomb descended into pitch blackness as Relt disabled the flashlight, flipping into camera mode and peeping at the pixelated display. It did indeed have a night vision function, and Relt pointed the infrared beam down the long darkness of the distant tunnel. She thought she could see something, some suggestion of a quivering shape, but it could have been just an artifact of the camera. She stepped closer.
However, her investigation was cut short as a far more obvious grating sound appeared in the tunnel behind her. It sounded exactly like someone trying to skateboard on a sheet of aluminum siding. Relt turned around, the first mystery forgotten in a weedy haze, to see a light growing from further up the tunnel. Far too fast for her addled brain to make total sense of the shape in the middle of the sparks and torchlight, it was upon her, shouting and cackling and grabbing for her. A pair of hands, one noticeably scarred (Relt noticed with the peculiar sort of focus only incredible intoxication provides) snatched for her and closed on her duffel bag, snatching it from her shoulder and sending her tumbling to the ground as the surfer continued his inexorable skid into the bowels of the earth.
"Son of a bitch!" Relt shouted, her calm demeanor torn from her with her backpack, "Fucking idiot nearly killed me. Oh, wait. Fightsman tournament. I guess that was probably the idea," Relt sighed and tried to coax her shoulder, which had suffered a nasty collision with a chunk of fallen sculpture, to remain in its socket and not run away and find some kind of shoulder-based abuse councilor. "Least the fucker only got my bag," Relt muttered as she got her bearings, "Wait. My bag,"
"My bong! My weed! My viking helmet! Get back here, you piece of shit!" her flip-flops rang out against the cold, damp stone as she gave chase, an avenging Erinye on a Casual Friday.
- - -
"I don't understand," Rexfort Oggtemple, Fight Promoter (Rural Branch) for the second round of the Serenti Invitational, "How did we lose the signal? I was given to understand that those wretched bananas could transmit from the moon and back. Isn't that what you said?"
"Uh, yes," replied Alice McLufflin, the luckless mage who had designed the things, "I really couldn't tell you what's happened. I, I, I can't think of anything that could possibly interfere with the signal,"
"Well, we're going to have to call this off. If the drooling masses can't watch the fight, how can we get paid for it? I've sent someone down to collect them and we'll try again somewhere else. Think you could talk to the Ai'Bron?"
"Oh, the monks and I have never really...gotten on..."
"Well make it work, or you're fired. I haven't got all the time in the world." Oggtemple leaned back in his chair as the nervous McLufflin scuttled out; the chair had been the only thing he'd had shipped from his offices out to this little embarassment of a village. It was really quite a marvelous chair, all cracked red leather and mahogany turnings, and was totally out of place in the dank, dirt-floored shack which the archaeological team had been kind enough to loan him, in exchange for an exorbitant amount of money. Sages could say all they liked about the sanctity of scientific research, but they took to large amounts of gold like ducks to stale bread.
The door (which could only be called this as it nominally seperated "in" from "out", provided nobody nearby breathed out too hard) swung open, and a minor employee of the tournament stumbled in. "They're gone," he gasped, leaning against the wall. It shifted under his weight.
"What the hell do you mean?" Oggtemple roared, "Who's gone?"
"The combatants, sir. I went all the way to the bottom of that tunnel, twice, and there's no-one in there. Just a hundred feet of damp stone and an old rockslide at the bottom,"
"The hell," Rexfort stood up, rubbing his temples, "Not again. If this tournament keeps losing contestants, we'll be shut down. The Empire's been breathing down our necks as it is, now we have people just... disappearing without a trace! What the devil is going on?"
"Uh, I could check again, sir,"
"See that you do," Oggtemple grumbled, knowing full well there'd be no difference, "But first, tell the announcer to say some garbage about bad magical conditions interfering with the signal. Just a short delay, and everyone receives a free sausage in a bun to compensate,"
"The vendors won't like that, sir," the employee said.
"Son, the day I care what a bunch of hog-dick salesmen are happy with is the day you bury me in the cold, cold ground, understand? Now go...fix everything!"
- - -
Relt had no idea how deep she was now. Even the dripping sound had stopped, and the tunnel had seemed to have opened up some ways. Rolling her eyes, she lit her torch and held it up; she was in a chamber, but only just. The ceiling and walls bulged out, creating the distinct effect that you were inside a snake that had swallowed a mouse, and the distressing feeling that the mouse was you. There were no carvings or alcoves here, and the chisel marks on the surfaces were much rougher, more like gouges than chips. The floor, uniquely, was alive with cockroaches, though a streak of smooshed carapaces spoke to where, quite probably, a toboggan of sheet metal had crashed through them.
"Hey, dildo!" Relt shouted, hearing the echo of "ildo, ildo, ildo" mock her in return, "If you're down here, give me back my bag and let's, I dunno, fight I guess. I don't usually do this whole pugilism thing, I don't really know the fucking playbook,"
At no point did she think: If that guy on the improvised surfboard is my opponent, then who was that I heard at the beginning?
"Scorpion!" Seed screamed as he rolled away from the wreck of a ride that had gotten him bruised beyond belief. In the corner of wherever the hell he was (everything looked the same in a dark cave), a bent piece of sheet metal lay next to the bag he had torn away from the passerby who had refused to help him. So much for help thy fellow man, and all that nonsense.
"Round one! Fight!" Seed attacked with his sword, a worn and dented piece of work if there ever was one. He slashed repeatedly at his foe, cutting and bludgeoning the arthropod until the beast had only two legs left and half a stinger.
"Finish him!" A good stomp accompanied this statement, grinding the damn thing into a foul smelling paste of some sort (not recommended for cooking; worked well for toothaches though). "Fatality. Flawless victory."
Smiling to himself, Seed sheathed his sword, walked over to the wreck, and fished up the bag; the least he could do was return it. Unfortunately, he was a bit disoriented (not to mention totally careless), and the contents of the bag spilled out as he lifted it. Muttering a curse against god, fate, and the flying spaghetti monster, he fumbled about his tunic for a match. He found one, lit it against the rock, and went to work.
"This is nice," he muttered as he picked up some sort of object shaped in a skull. He wasn't sure what it was, but it was fairly well-cared for; only a few chips of damage were recognizable. He hoped they were there to begin with, as he turned the object about, wondering what it was. He then sniffed it; a faint, but familiar, smell was about.
"Oh ho! Ohohohohohohoho! OHOHOHOHOHO! Where is it where is it WHERE IS IT?" Seed screamed at the top of his lungs as his match was cast aside; he required two free hands for this all important search.
*~*~*~*~
Something was coming. Something from the depths, something that should have been long past gone. It was dragging its way up the cave, slowly but surely. Every second, it grew closer and closer.
What was it? How did it come to be? Was it friend or foe? Was it dangerous? All of these were important questions, and all of them were the furthest thing from Seed's mind.
"Yeahhhhh," he managed to slur as he pulled out another slightly damaged cigarette from his tunic. He gutted the thing with one of his knives, dumped out the tobacco, and filled the empty paper with a bit of the wonderful green plant that had many names. He wasn't sure what it was called in this part of Althanas, but he knew it by sight, and he knew one other thing.
This shit was good.
"Sorry about your brother," Seed said to a nearby scorpion as he closed the newly enhanced cigarette, licked it shut, and pulled out another match. A haze of smoke clouded around him; he had already gone through one improved cigarette; this was his second. The scorpion clicked its pinchers about a bit, as if to say, "it's cool. He was a dick anyhow."
He had set himself up in a nice corner of the cave, and he didn't do a half bad job (if he did say so himself). He had propped the sheet metal up against the cave wall; a hard, but somewhat comfortable thing to recline on. At least it was better than the damn rock of the cave. Scattered about him were several contents of the bag. A half-eaten thing of rice (he wasn't sure what the sweetener was, but it was awesome), two objects that emitted red fires at both ends (Seed had managed to escape with only minor burn marks), and a small pouch emblazoned with some sort of name on it. Seed wondered if it was a company, and wondered how much it would cost to buy one of those pouches (and if it came with the contents).
He also had a helmet lopsidedly placed atop his mess of red hair. He adjusted it every now and then, but the damn thing just kept falling back to the side. He took another hit of the drug, coughed violently (he had never known portion control), and shook his head. Was someone yelling at him?
"Shit. Hold your horses," Seed coughed as he threw most of the contents back into the bag; including one of the fires. He quickly realized his mistake (as quick as someone in his condition could anyhow), and yanked the stick of fire back out, suffering a few more burns for his folly. He just shrugged it off; he felt too mellow to care. He stumbled towards the voice, missing most of what was screamed at him. He was pretty sure he caught the important parts.
"Borrowed some of your shit. Sorry," he offered; the helmet still on his head, and the stick of what the woman had called "weed" still hanging lazily in his mouth. "But, I'm pretty sure we can make a deal. I think I have something you want."
He fumbled about in his tunic, and pulled out that funny shaped object that the archeologists had given him. What were the odds it would come in handy? Must have been a thousand to one, or something like that.
"Heard the words 'fucking' and 'dildo.' I'm guessing you either wanted a fucking dildo, or a good dildo fucking. Either way, knock yourself out!" Seed tossed her the part transmitter, part iron banana, all cold hard pleasure. He then lit another match, and took another hit. A misty haze formed about him as his bloodshot eyes gave the girl a once over.
"Course I also heard something about a fucking playbook. If you need a fucking playbook for how to use dildo, you're on your own. But if you need a good by-the-playbook fucking, I guess I can help you out. Fair's fair, and that rice was pretty good. Besides, you look like you'd be fun in the sack. You down, Toots?"
"What the shit?" Relt growled, tossing the surplus magical transmitter aside as she examined the floor of this latest swelling of the cavern walls, "That's stoner talk. Really gross stoner talk. You oily cuntsneeze, did you smoke my weed? Oh, I am so going to kick your dick inside-out," the girl snarled as she stomped towards him, grabbing her bag and shoving her scattered belongings back into it. "Gimme that, you fuck!" Relt snatched her viking helmet from her opponent's greasy pate. "Man, the first guy just disappears before I land a punch, and the second guy is a creepy motherfucker who boosts my damn stash. This tournament sucks,"
Relt paused a moment, and sniffed. There was another odor in there, mingled with the cannabis haze; a smell of rotting cabbage and dried blood. That was...strange, but there were probably all kinds of weird planet-fart gasses pooting around in old tunnels like this. She blinked, as if emerging from reverie, and shoved her helmet into her bag. "I'm gonna have to disinfect anything your skeezy body touched, ugh. And you wasted the, like, two flares I had left. I'm just glad it was you who finally ate that fried rice; if anyone deserves Chinese intestinal hookworms, it's you,"
Hefting her bag up onto her shoulder, Relt looked around. Her torch was burning brightly enough to give a vague idea of the dimensions of the room, if one could call it that. Like the cockroach-strewn area before it, this was merely another slight broadening, a ping-pong ball bulge in the garden hose of this twisty tunnel. Oddly, though, the ceiling was bare; the first few coils of this thing were festooned with stalactites, calling cards of a thousand wet seasons insinuating themselves a splash at a time. Here, though, it looked almost fresh, and less and less like the work of any tool.
"Are we gonna do this thing or what, you two-balled bitch? Apparently everybody upstairs is watching us using fucking wizard farts or whatever, might as well give them a good fight. Or I can just stomp you with my foot. How's that grab you?" The girl stared at her reclining, inebriated opponent. Her anger at him had managed to sour most of her remaining buzz. She stepped closer to him, casually kicking off her flip-flop, and swung her leg for a nice kick to the face.
- - -
"Still nothing, huh?" Oggtemple sighed as the official tournament mages fussed over the receiver. The audience had about reached the point where free comestibles could no longer persuade them to stay; already the stands seemed a bit emptier. McLufflin, trying against all common sense to save face, stammered a reply.
"N-not yet, sir, no. Well, I say not yet, b-but we have gotten, well, flashes..."
"Flashes? So we've seen our fighters since they went down that hole, then. Excellent. They still have all their bits on?"
"Oh, no, not flashes of the fighters, sir, no," McLufflin swallowed; it felt like someone had filled her mouth in with honey, "Just...sections of cave, we think. Deeper than the tunnel is supposed to go. We may be fixed in on the wrong tunnel, even,"
"Well doesn't that just take the cake. Brilliant, we aren't even sure we're looking in the right-"
There was a sound. It was loud, loud enough to drown out even the blustering fight promoter, before he stopped trying to speak. The sound's quality was difficult to determine; there is a point where decibels seem to become a tangible thing, a pair of precisely aimed jackhammers in either ear, permitting the spongy grey human brain to register loudness alone. But to those furthest from it, who were spared the worst, it sounded like screaming from a hundred different throats; human, animal...and worse things, all scrambled together into one keening, crackling voice.
"Good lord!" Oggtemple roared as the sound died away, "Did you hit the bowels of hell with this thing?"
"I-i-i-i-i-it's not supposed to get sound, sir!" Alice McLufflin wailed.
Oggtemple ignored her; he was just staring at the massive sphere. There was a confused impression of and rapid movement, a suggestion of teeth, far more teeth than any mouth should hold, and a thin spatter of blood, and the crystal ball went dark. Too dark; the blackness it revealed seemed to grow more profound by the moment, spreading further and further outward from the glossy, dead surface of the sphere. Finally there was the sound of something popping and, starting from the sides, the huge crystal ball began to dissolve into thin, black dust. The dust settled to the ground amid the sounds of the remaining spectators vacating the venue as rapidly as a mob can.
"Stoner talk? I can say the same to you," Seed took another hit, "That's stoner talk, Babes. Angry, violent stoner talk, that I find strangely arousing for some reason. Still, this shit's suppose to calm you down. I can smell it on you; want a hit? Don't tell me you were carrying this stuff around just to look at?"
He offered her a hit, what he received back was a hit. To his face. With a foot. For the second time today, Seed found himself flying backwards due to a woman whose size belied their ass-kicking (and face bruising) abilities. Perhaps it had been something he said?
Seed coughed in pain as he rolled across the dirt and slime that covered the earth of the cave. He felt bugs crawl on him, and nestle themselves in his hair. Though he had at least one reason to be thankful; there was no conveniently placed steel sheet behind him this time.
"Heh. She talks dirty, and likes to play rough? I am so down," Seed muttered just loud enough for her to hear as he slowly picked himself up off the ground, wincing in pain as he did so. His left hand picked the bugs from his hair, his right hand dug into the dirt as he stood; roaches and worms filled the palm of his hand. Slimy, filthy creatures wiggled around as he closed his grip on them; his hand packed them into a dirt bug ball. He felt the slime and guts of the ones that could not escape into the dirt run down his hands, and drip across his fingers.
"S'all right my Sassy Sweetie, I'll play with ya. Thought for the record, I dislike that comments about my hygiene. No shit I'm filthy, you empty-headed pussy with a mouth. We're in a cave, breast-for-brains; it's crawling with bugs, and so are we. Not too bright, are ya? Still, at least you got your looks." A wild grin flashed up his face; Seed crouched low to the ground like an animal about to pounce on its prey. A roach escaped the wad of dirt in his hand, and climbed up his arm a few inches. He ignored it; roaches weren't as nearly bad as scorpions, and the medication he had taken earlier (weed) had dealt with that fear rather well.
"Let's get down, dirty, and all sorts of freaky," Seed spat with a wild grin as he flung the dirt ball, complete with a set of roaches, worms, and some sort of cross-breed that offended all known laws of morality at the girl's head. Not wasting any time, he drew back his right hand, dashed after the projectile, and lashed out with a punch to the stomach.
He had planned to follow up his attack with something, hopefully a witty comment of some sort. Instead, when he opened his mouth, all that echoed through the cave was a loud roar. Even if the so-called Chinese food (whatever that was) had given him intestinal hookworms, he seriously doubted ear-screeching, blood curling howls were one of the side-effects.
"Ah," Seed whispered as the roach made its way up his tunic. He picked it up, and flung it at the girl's chest while he turned to look down the tunnel. "If that's your boyfriend, tell him I wasn't serious. 'Cept about the let's have sex part. I stand by that."
Having dirt and bug guts thrown in her face was not a thing that would dissuade Relt from fighting. She was used to it. Such an assault was the playground version of assassinating Archduke Ferdinand, an action to be followed only by years of unpleasant trench warfare, or at least kicking each other in the face until a teacher sobered up enough to hear the screaming. The gut punch, however, was quite effective. Relt stumbled back. She took a moment to get her bearings, then bent at the waste and barfed a little.
Acid sizzled in her throat and nostrils, a guitar note of sickly pain in the haphazard orchestra of her mind. Spitting out the last bits of vomit, Relt was about to take advantage of the momentary pause in banter to belittle her opponents manhood, and possibly insinuate that he lost his virginity to a tranquilized mandrill, when the cavern was suddenly alive with the most god-awful sound she had ever heard from a living creature. It sounded as though someone had given Godzilla a coffee enema.
Relt scowled at her opponent as he yammered at her, flicking a tossed roach away. "Shut the fuck up," she said conversationally, "That wasn't me. It was probably a monster, I mean that's just the kind of luck I have: fighting a guy who has to go door to door whenever he moves in to a new neighborhood, and being besieged by dreadful subterranean bullfuck scream-monsters,"
"Well, fuck that," she said defiantly, turning on a dime, "I'm leaving. I don't care if that means you win, or whatever, I'm headed back topside,"
She stopped, the flop of her single shoe missing it's flip. The way back was gone; where there had been a tunnel, only gouged and scraped stone stared back at her. She tossed her torch aside and flipped her cell phone open, playing the light over it. There was no seam, no point where the wall stopped being a wall. There hadn't been a cave-in, she would have heard it, she hadn't been barfing that loudly...
To describe the expression on Relt's face as she turned back towards her opponent as stormy would be an understatement. It made Jupiter's Great Red Spot look like a light summer squall. She stalked towards him, not bothering to retrieve her still-neglected flip-flop. "Listen, shitbird," she hissed, "I dunno if you have, like, rock magic, or what, but if you closed up that tunnel then please say so. And then open it. Before I stab your ass. Because I don't want to killed by monsters,"
There was movement behind him, down in the tunnel. An indistinct white shape, possibly vaguely person-sized, and seemingly with its back towards the combatants. Relt paused, forgetting her concern of a moment ago, and stepped towards the thing. In the back of her mind all of her finely-tuned horror movie senses were screaming at her that going closer to the monster is the stupidest thing a person can do, but she ignored them, because damnit, if people didn't make stupid decisions regarding monsters, then stories just wouldn't happen.
A cockroach squished under Relt's bare foot. Never has the crackling of a ruptured carapace sounded so clearly. Relt might as well have fired a bullet. The white shape, without really shifting itself in any readily noticable way, suddenly seemed to be staring at Relt over the shoulder it may or may not have had. The screaming rang out again, a jackhammer of a million sounds, the noise that a hyena makes when it is mauling a bear and being mauled by a flock of seagulls, and the white shape leapt towards Relt, ululating terribly the whole way.
The thing collided with Relt; it was easily twice her size, though how that mass was organized was indistinct. All at once the thing was a swirling maelstrom of jointed limbs, a greasy, clinging fog, and a gelatinous sphere. It bore the girl to the ground, and she grabbed at what she hoped was its head, twisting thumbs into eyes that weren't there. The texture of the thing was like wet pasta, but cold as ice, so cold as to burn the fingers. Relt sliced at it, but she may as well have tried to eviscerate a cloud. Something that reminded her of dog skull emerged from the roiling mass, snapping at Relt's face. It howled again, and a rush of frigid breath that stank of ice and rotting meat washed over her.
Roaches and scorpions surged under the girl and the monster as it attacked her, claws emerging from its shroud to slice at her, yet her attacks leaving not so much as a dent in the thing. Relt shouted and kicked at the thing, convinced that she was probably going to die. The creature howled again, and as suddenly as it had attacked, it vanished. Only a thin mist hanging in the air bore testament to the presence of the ephemeral creature. All together it had attacked Relt for thirty-four seconds.
The tunnel was darker now, the entry of the thing having knocked Relt's phone from her hand and extinguished the torch she'd lit. She sat up, scrabbling in the dark for her phone and her knife. She was scratched all to hell, but not bleeding nearly as much as she expected. For all the thing's weight and unearthly cold, its claws had had the strength of kittens. Relt looked irritibaly toward her opponent, whose name she might want to eventually find out, and sighed.
"Correction," she murmured, "Monster ghosts,"
"Unfortunately barf-butt, I have no magical control over rocks," Seed answered as he wiped a bit of vomit off of his hand, "I do have the power to make a certain part of my body rock hard, but that's neither here or there."
Things were quickly going bad to worse in the snowball rolling down the hill style; a snowball that ran over a bunch of pissed on snow, making it one big giant yellow ball of human excrement. That was a bit of a bummer, because only a little while ago Seed had been nice and stoned. Things had certainly spiraled out of control.
"Well, you know what they say. Hate to see you go, love to watch you...FUCK!" he shouted as he leapt to the side as some sort of...creature attacked the girl. What the hell was that thing anyway? It seemed to consist mostly of cold and gelatin, making an accurate description mostly impossible. Though, if forced to give a description of the sight before him, Seed would have to go with something along the lines of a cat fight gone molestation.
"Yo. I didn't actually mean that last part," Seed muttered as he sat down to watch the fight, "but seeing as how that thing seems to have a hard on for you...if I see tentacles, I'm selling tickets."
The fight lasted for a bit more than thirty-three seconds, but somewhere less than thirty-five. During that time, Seed casually flicked away a few roaches that bothered him, and watched the girl punch, eye-gouge (or attempt to, as the thing had no eyes to gouge), and possibly fuck that the thing away from her. Just when it looked like things were hopeless, the monster just vanished; a tad bit of disappointment crossed Seed's face, but he shook it away.
"Monster ghosts? That's not good," he whispered in a somewhat playful manner, "Seems to be a good time to exit. Anyway, good luck with that creep. Use protection; Lord only knows what type of diseases creatures with a gelatinous body carry. If you make it, hit me up sometime. Chow!"
He tossed a casual wave to the girl, who's name he had not bothered to learn, and made to move. There really was only one way to go, seeing as how the way he had made it down here was completely sealed off. Still, as long as the monster creep went after the girl Seed ought to be okay. He never played the hero; living was far more important. Though he liked her style, and her wit, there was no way he was going to pal around with a woman who brought screaming ghost freaks out to play. No sir, he'd take the solid approach of fuck-you-I'm-gone.
At least, that was his plan until he made an about face. There, not two inches from his face, was that creature that lacked definition. A rotten smell washed over Seed's face, a fine mixture of something that reminded him of roach juice lit on fire, mixed with a dose of vomit. That wasn't too surprising; all those things were within a two foot radius of him (as well as on him).
"Ah...the one with the vagina's over that way," Seed motioned towards the girl. The monster let out a pants-wetting roar that stank of rotten cheese, and two day old feces. He hated that smell.
"No? Ah, fuckin' hell," was what Seed managed to eek out as the creature shoved him against the cave wall. With a cough that was racked with pain, Seed managed fumble his sword out of its sheath. He took a less-than-graceful swing; no result. Well, actually there was a bit of a result. An ice chill, colder than any of the woman he had meet so far today (but not throughout his entire life), shot through one of his hands that came too close to the monster. He instinctively pulled that hand back, dropping his sword to the dirt as he did so.
"God fuck damn cock shit!" Seed blasphemed, plus he tossed in a good number of other curses, most of which involved at least three people's mothers. With a snarl, the beast had him pinned against the cave wall, snapping at him all the while. Seed’s face and body were being raked by claws from some part of the creature (he prayed it wasn't one of the fouler areas), but they didn't hurt too badly. In fact, the girl's kick had been worse.
That didn't change the fact that nothing seemed to affect the freak of nature. Swords went through it, punches only shot chills down Seed's arm, and biting was just an all around stupid plan. Not that he didn't try it; Seed didn't think he'd be able to use the left side of his mouth for a week.
And just like that, the thing was gone. One second Seed was caught in an cold tundra of scratches, snarls and curses (the curses were supplied by him), and then he was on the floor, coughing and cold. With more roaches and scorpions on him. He angrily flicked some away, smashed a scorpion that pinched his thumb, and fumbled for his sword.
All in all, his fight had lasted just shy of thirty-two seconds.
"Bisexual ghost monsters," Seed muttered as he drew himself up, sword in hand, and shaking like a babe having withdrawal symptoms from being weaned off his mother's tit. He glanced at the girl, whose name he still did not know. Still, her last nickname for him had been "shitbird" so...
“Hey. Pissrat. Truce?” he asked as he gazed ahead into the unending darkness of the cave. “Don’t kick my dick inside out, and I promise I won’t rip out your ovaries and use ‘em as a yoyo. At least until we get out of here, and I beat the ever loving shit out of the guy who set this ass wipe of a tournament up. Deal?”
Relt had just caught her breath when a second one of the entities assaulted her nameless opponent. She stared with eyes like very wide eyes (the metaphor was nonexistant, and Relt hated it, but fear dampened her associative faculties) as the ghostly pale thing tore at the man's face with its assortment of mismatched claws. It was a little bit easier to get a read on it when it wasn't trying to kill you; the thing looked kind of like a mole cricket, a lobster, and a centipede had gotten really drunk one night and had a twisted night of dirty, dirty arthropod sex, and then the baby from that unholy tryst had, being a very confused young creature, dry-fucked a pile of cold spaghetti and a ventriloquist dummy, and then that depraved six-way baby had glued a bunch of dog skulls to the area nominally considered its head. Of course, being a ghost, it also was surrounded by a shroud of mystic fog.
After about the same interval, the creature vanished without a trace, just as the one attacking her had. Somewhere behind the glacier of terror slowly plowing its way down Relt's conscious mind, the little analytical Relt homunculus that occupied a well-appointed apartment in the back of the girl's brain made a note: only thirty-ish seconds per attack? Interesting and possibly useful. She breathed, air feeling like a knife-flavored slurpee, and got to her wobbling feet. She picked up her errant flip-flop and slotted it back onto her toes. Part of her heard the disgusting, crass, boner-shrivellingly self-absorbed man propose a temporary alliance.
She thought about it, staring vigilantly into the darkness of the tunnel. They would band together, fighting their way out of here through an army of phantasms, maybe learning a little something about each other, and judging people based on appearances. He'd turn out to have a heart of gold under all that grease, and she'd maybe soften up a little bit and find she didn't need to be so confrontational. They'd become best friends, two unusual metals alloyed together by a trying time. Maybe he'd win the tournament and move on, and she'd wish him luck. Maybe she'd win, and he'd cheer her on. In the end, it would be a happy story, of learning and friendship.
And utter fucking bullshit.
"No!" Relt shouted, echoing away down the tunnel. Her voice wasn't as terrifying as the spectral howl of long-dead monsters, but only just. "No, I will not help a slimy piece of garbage like you! ¡Mierda y basura! I'm getting out of this tunnel, I'll kick your ass, I'll kick the ass of any monster ghost that gets in my way, and I'm gonna win this whole fuck-damn tournament and then, then I'm going to invent the first cheeseburger anyone on this butt planet has seen and eat a god-damn cheeseburger!"
For good measure, she threw scorpions at his face before bolting down the tunnel.
- - -
A villager had been bustled in to the little shanty-town surrounding the Catacombs, much to the man's consternation. He was the youngest of the village's elders, at thirty-five, and therefore the least argumentative about being dragged to the Catacombs, which the people of the village never visited, and which he and his friends had spent every weekend throwing rocks and spitting into from ages six to sixteen.
"Tell us about the damned holes, sir, if you would please," Oggtemple asked; his slicked down hair was now a tangled mess, still strewn with black dust. "I've heard all the stupid legends, and whatever the bleeding archaeologists have made up, now I want you to tell me the truth, Mister..."
"Chuggy," the young elder said, "Chuggy Thumphaven," Oggtemple blinked, but decided not to comment, as a man named Rexfort Oggtemple had no room to make fun.
"Mister Thumphaven, I know that you and your townsfolk know the truth about these blasted tunnels,"
"How do you know that, exactly?" Chuggy said defiantly; the two thugs who had gently escorted him up here were standing guard at the door, with the expressions of men who are paid handsomely to stand around trying to look menacing.
"Because everyone knows that the folk of the little rural village who don't talk much to outsiders always know the truth about any local folklore or mythology or suchlike nonsense, whenever it turns out to be mostly true,"
"Fair enough," Thumphaven said, trying not to seem as flattered as he was, "I'll break the ancestral code of silence that the fine, upstanding people of my village have maintained for centuries. On one condition,"
"Name it," Oggtemple gasped, trying not to seem as relieved as he really was.
"Can I have that jacket?"
"You stupid bimbo. I didn't say you had to help me," Seed muttered as his still unnamed foe ranted and raved about numerous things, "I said we don't cause one another bodily harm. Which means no punching, kicking, eye gouging, ball smashing, tit-twisting, foot stomping, or any other sort of damaging acts. And, under no circumstances do we OH MY GOD THERE'S A FUCKING SCORPION IN MY EYE!"
Instantly he forgot what he was doing, and fell to the ground, thrashing about wildly. He caused all sorts of debris to fly into the air, from living to dead to somewhere slightly in-between, and the curses he screamed caused a person completely unrelated to this incident to fall down a flight of stairs (though to be fair, that guy was having a pretty bad day to begin with).
Though the beast put up a vicious fight, with much clawing and stabbing, in the end it was not enough. With a firm hand (that shook with fear and dread), Seed grabbed the damn thing and smashed it repeatedly into the cave wall. After the death bell knelled, all that remained of the epic battle of man versus scorpion was a slight mess on a cave wall, and several more cuts on Seed's face. He cursed, saluted his valiant enemy, and then turned his attention towards the darkness before him.
"Okay! God damn it! Tu me fait chier! Salope!" he screamed at the back of the woman. "I will find you, and stab you repeatedly in the ass...that's not a metaphor! I will stab you repeatedly in the ass with my sword...that's not a metaphor either!
At times like these, Seed always found it helpful to establish a to-do list. He was, just in general, a scatterbrained type of individual. Being such, it always helped to have a simple list to follow.
Step one: escape with life. Step two: get revenge on stupid girl who threw scorpion in face. Step three: beat shit out of man who set up this blasted tournament. Step four: avoid the ghost monster behind him. Step five: move step four up to step one, because that shit's pretty damn important.
Seed felt the wind leave his chest as he was tackled to the ground, and his lungs filled themselves with that stank air that could only come from some sort of science experiment gone horribly wrong. With a spicing of rotten tomatoes on top.
He twisted and squirmed, much like he had the first time. He even threw out a punch, like he did the first time, and cursed as he is hand suffered a sudden onset of minor frostbite. Seed then resolved that in this case, the best offence was a good defense. He covered his face, dealt with the scratches, and made several rude comments involving the ghost, its mother, and a broom handle.
Thirty some odd second later, the freak of nature (part ghost, part monster, all freaking annoying), vanished without a trace; Seed found himself knee deep in roach guts and some sort of wetness. He checked himself, nodded in pride that he had not soiled his pants, and dusted himself off as best he could. All he had to do was defend for thirty seconds each time he was attacked, such a thing couldn't be so hard.
In fact, things were starting to get better already. After he had returned to his base camp (where he had crashed), he found one of the fires still burning. On top of that, he found the stick of weed that had been brutally kicked out of his mouth by queen-bitch-of-the-universe. With a smile, he picked up the thing she had called a flare, took a hit of the drug, and marched onward. Ever onward, into the black unknown.
At least, that's what he hoped people would call it if they found his dead corpse. It sounded a lot cooler that way.
It was a dangerous game Relt was playing, fighting a man in the midst of an ectoplasmic assault, but the girl was as hard-headed as she was loud-mouthed. She knew nothing about her opponent other than the fact that he was utterly vile, and though it pained her, she had to assume he was at least a somewhat capable fighter. Relt was not a capable fighter. She could hold her own in a street brawl, and had once beaten a barnacle creature to death with its own cirriped, but most of her successes in life were based on good luck. Fortunately, she believed in making your own luck.
Relt had slowed her run down the tunnel gradually, hoping that the gently fading sound of her flip-flops slapping against the ground would convince him she had run further, and therefore make him think he was safe (apart from the aforementioned spectral attackers). Then she had removed them, as they really hadn't provided much protection from the scampering roaches licking at her heels anyway, and the relative silence of bare feet would give her something of an advantage.
She was finding her way using her phone's infrared camera, which worked about as well as a papier-mâché jackhammer, so as to mask her movements. It was eating up her battery, though, so it would not prevent a long-term solution. A solar powered cell phone was not going to recharge easily this far underground.
And she was only getting farther underground; the tunnel had developed a resolute stubbornness about changing direction, being rather preoccupied with "down". It was quite a suprise for Relt, then, when she came to a fork in the tunnel. Not the typical fork that one might expect in a tunnel, where it splits like a growing tree branch into two divergent passages, but more like a dinner fork: four identically sized tunnels, all pointing in roughly the same direction, and laid out alongside one another like tines.
Relt had a devious plan.
She crept down the rightmost tunnel, which after about twenty feet began corkscrewing gracefully to the left. Relt stopped just past the first complete turn, fiddling with her phone. After a moment, it began emitting loud, thrumming bass music. The tunnel shook with the noise of it, Relt was illuminated by the insistent, electric glow. She set the phone down, reluctantly, as it played its tunes and shined brightly on the opposite wall. Then, the girl felt her way through the darkness, back up to the four-way split.
Relt found a spot in the next tunnel over where she could see out, but not be easily seen by, for instance, a perverted passerby who had recently received some arachnid-based injuries to his head's ventral surface. If all went according to plan, such a person would think she was down there with her phone, and therefore she could sneak silently into the trap tunnel after him, and stab him up. Relt was glad that the dried hippo blood dulled the shine of her switchblade. She knelt in a state of badger-like readiness, badgers ranking on the readiness billboards somewhere far below cats and slightly above kakapos. There was a still a little marijuana steam burning in the riverboat of her mind, but Relt was sure she could easily subdue her opponent.
Now all she had to do was hope like fuck that she wasn't sucker-punched by a ghost.
"Dear diary, I have had a very interesting day. I signed up for a tournament to kill a bit of time, and what happened? I've been assaulted by bisexual ghosts, kicked in the face, punched in the face, gone on a toboggan ride of death, and got trapped in a cave with a girl who won't stop attacking my face. And, to top it all off, I've reached a fork in the road."
Four ways to go, all of them looked pretty much the same. No, scratch that; the rightmost path had two more scorpions and three more cobwebs than any other path. Seeing as how his luck with skittering creatures with claws was at an all-time low, that path was definitely out of the question.
"Oh, and one of the paths is simply blaring out loud noises that make me want to shake my booty in a sexual fashion. Naturally, I suppose the only possible solution to this dilemma is to charge blindly down said path, because there's NO WAY that music is a trap. Yes sir, I can only assume that the ass-shakingly good music will be beneficial to my health, and in no way will I end with another scorpion in my face. Or worse."
There was a saying that Seed recalled at moments like these Always use protection, because you never knew just what type of filthy diseases were waiting for you in the hole that you chose to plunge into. Sure, it might work out all right, but at the same time, you might earn yourself a painfully agonizing death. Hence, the best option was to look before you leap, think before you act, and use a goddamn condom.
So naturally, Seed found his feet taking him blindly down the tunnel with all the music.
As the music grew ever louder (he could have sworn the cave was shaking, but that might have just been anxiety over another scorpion being thrown at him), Seed licked his lips. How was he to go about this? Seeing as how blasting bass was anything but natural, he could only assume something would happen when he reached whatever was emitting the noise. He could charge in blindly; that was fun sometimes. There was nothing quite like just plowing into that dark hole, ignoring everything but the exhilaration of pleasure.
But the kicks, punches, scorpions, and ghosts had put a damper on that particular style. Seed cocked his head to the side; maybe another ten feet until he reached that noise? The weed he had borrowed (he had every intention of returning it...someday) was almost out, and it wasn't even doing a decent job of getting him high. He made a mental note that scorpions and pain canceled out fun, and came up with a plan.
His flare was almost out as well, but it still had a bit of fire left; enough for his purposes. He let out a bit of a sigh, spit away his weed, and focused as best a man with his scatterbrained mind possibly could.
It was always a bit difficult to control the flames, but dear god, what a feeling it was. As he traced his burned hand over the dying fire, a rush of power filled him. Those little flames, how beautiful they were! Shining brightly despite their imminent demise, lighting the way in the darkness where nothing else would, and providing him with warmth in a cold world. Yes, fire was a wonderful thing, and so too was the man who could control it.
The flame beckoned to his call; it always did. No one understood fire better than Seed. The way it burned, the way it destroyed, the way it brought life. All aspects of the flame captivated Seed, and so too could he captivate the flames.
"Let me add my own beat to the mix," he muttered softly as his damaged hand moved slightly; the flame danced brighter in response. "Here goes! Party time!"
He flung the flare forward towards the noise, and clenched his burned hand tightly. He could, at his skill level, extend a flame up to ten feet. Seed wasn't sure if it was enough, but it was better than simply charging in there blindly. Not that such an option didn't appeal to him; he had simply decided on a bit of protection this time around.
The flare, which had so recently been on death's door, hit the ground. It should have faded away, but instead it burned ever brighter. The red fire painted the cave in a crimson color; the stone walls seemed to reflect that wonderful color. With a mad grin, Seed yanked at the flame from where he was, and it responded to his call.
Red fire whipped out ten feet, swirling in every direction. Roaches, bugs, scorpions, unnamable creatures that had long been forgotten by the world of me, all fled from the fire. What was once a small fire had become a ten foot long whip of flame, scorching everything it touched.
He had no real plan, he never did. All that mattered was that that the music of the crackling flame was more beautiful to him than whatever creature created that other noise, and the fact that he was the maestro of the flame.
Moving his hand about, the fire licked against the walls. This way, that way, it didn't matter. He would simply send the fire in every direction until he lost control (it would only take a few seconds), or he heard someone scream. Either one suited him just fine.
That's right, you big dumb idiot, Relt thought as her quarry slipped into the trap she had laid, Just waltz right in 'cause that's the right-FUCK
Creeping after him in the dark, Relt was totally unprepared for the skeevy dude to start shaking around a bullwhip made of fire. These are not the sort of surprises a person should be subject to at the bottom of a ghost-filled hole. Fortunately, however, he seemed to be focusing the brunt of the pyrotechnic display forward, toward the music, and she could probably just...just sort of...
Relt stood silently behind the man, switchblade raised. Blood pounded in her ears.
- - -
"So tell me," Oggtemple, newly jacketless, groaned. He rubbed his temples in frustration, "Why have two of the contestants vanished down what was supposed to be the shallowest tunnel? Why did our very expensive stadium-sized crystal ball dissolve?"
Young Elder Thumphaven looked pensive for a moment. The sun was beginning to set outside, but the room he was in was quite brightly lit, so perhaps it would be alright. He adjusted the fit of his new jacket. "As I understand it," he said, "The tunnels were made by some kind of...creatures, that owned this land before there were men or elves or dwarves. They didn't farm or build cities or anything, they were nothing like civilized races, but they were...I don't know. It's complicated,"
"Start simple, and then build on it,"
"The legends say that they were cruel masters to the land. They attacked villages constantly, for no reason anyone could understand. There was a war, because of that, between these creatures and the people who would be my ancestors, and somehow my people won, wiping out every last one of these creatures. They tossed their bodies down the holes, and thought that was the end of it,"
"And I am to assume that it wasn't?"
"No, as it happens," Thumphaven scratched the back of his head nervously, "My grandfather told me stories about what happened to people who went into the tunnels. They disappeared, sometimes, like your two fighters, like the tunnels moved around on them. The tunnels are sort of...haunted,"
"Haunted? The ghosts of these creatures, you mean?"
"Yes, sort of. These creatures weren't from our world, they don't work the way you'd expect. A human dies and, sometimes, becomes a ghost. These things...you know caterpillars?"
"I'm familiar with the concept, yes," Oggtemple said, utterly without sarcasm. He was far too concerned for snideness.
"My grandfather said the ghosts of these things are like caterpillars. They don't become ghosts after they die, they are born as ghosts and become solid later,"
- - -
As Relt was about to show this guy her stabs, particularly in the back of the neck, she was startled by a now-familiar bloodcurdling shriek as one of the ghosts tackled her from the side. It pressed her against the tunnel wall, multifarious limbs flailing and scratching weakly at her. Relt struggled to get it off, but only as a token objection; she knew now that these things could only maintain an attack for half a minute, so it was just a waiting game now.
- - -
"Why now?" Oggtemple demanded, "These holes have been there for centuries with people nearby, and those blasted archaeologists have been in and out of them for months!"
"I think it's your tournament," Thumphaven responded, "All the stories about these things say they fought like demons, goading people into attacking them. I think that they got energy from fighting, that conflict strengthens them. They fed on people fighting. My ancestors got it all backwards, I suspect; those tunnels aren't catacombs, they're a womb. Fighting inside there must be like fertilizing the eggs,"
- - -
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one... Relt counted as she tried in vain to shove the ghost off of her. She counted to fifty before realizing that the situation was different. The creature was getting heavier, and its misty-white ghostly coloration was fading into a dull rust-red. It howled at her with its hideous jaws again, growing larger as its limbs shifted from ephemeral tendrils to bulkily carapaced claws.
Relt punched at it, feeling her hit connect, but only managing to generate a sickening crunch in her knuckles. She would have preferred that the creature laugh at her weakness; you know where you stand, when a monster chuckles at you condescendingly. Instead it just howled in her face again, grabbed her in an enormous lobster pincer, and hurled her bodily towards her still-nameless opponent.
I guess I messed up. Seed though. She was behind me all this time. How sad, I thought to be the one to stab her in the ass, but it seems like she'll stab me. Well, I really can't complain. Turnabout is fair play. Heh. Kinky.
His legs buckled as his body jerked with the large amount of force that hit him. He lost control of the flame, and the flare flickered to a dim light. It would die in a few seconds; a fitting irony. He who had loved the flame so much would follow shortly after. That wasn't so bad.
"Hah, what a soft death. I thought it would hurt to die, but this is actually quiet nice," he muttered as his face plowed into the ground; there was no way to stop his rapid descent to the earth. Roaches and other creatures skittered away from him as fast as their filthy bodies could carry them; the ones who couldn't make it found themselves smashed by Seed's body. He didn't mind too much, it wasn't as if he was the poster boy for cleanliness.
This was actually kind of peaceful. Sure, would have preferred to die on a big bed, surrounded by naked women putting grapes in his mouth (while they put certain other things in their mouth), but he wasn't about to complain. Yeah. Now all that's left to do is to go to sleep. That's what it's is to die I bet; it's just a nap that you don't wake up from. No more skirt chasing, no more drinking, no more scorpions in the face. I'll rest now.
"Just kidding!" he blurted out randomly, "I guess you didn't kill me after all! Do you have a soft spot for me, my frisky foe? Because I'm pretty sure I can find a soft spot on you!"
With a wild laugh, Seed groped around as best he could, hoping he could grab at least something juicy. After all, this whole tournament had been such a screw up, but if he could walk away after getting high and copping a feel, it couldn't have been all bad. In fact, he would most likely call it a good day.
He was so absorbed with his fun that he almost didn't notice the impending death coming at him. Thankfully, the ghost monster was in fact a monster (generic story book kind, class C), and let out the standard stomach-twisting roar of I'm-going-to-kill-you-now-yum-yum-I-bet-you'll-taste-good (had it been of a higher class, it would have just ate him and been done with it, ending this story here).
"Holy fuck! Get offa me! We'll cuddle later!" Seed shouted as he shoved the girl away, and rolled to his feet. He made to question the changes that had gone over the monster (like why it was more real, and why it had giant crab pincers), but such thoughts were secondary compared to saving his skin.
"Fuck shit damn," he swore as the now very corporeal monster tackled him. He learned of the monster's non-ghost status by punching it in random desperation, and noticing that his fist managed to connect with something solid. He also noticed that that object was very much solid, to the point that his hand was throbbed with a dull pain as the creature tossed him about.
Oh, and one of those crab claws managed to take out a good chunk of his side. Just great. He complained. Now my shirt is ruined. Er, more so than it was before.
"Okay. Now I'm mad," Seed whispered weekly as he managed to rise up; his right hand cupped his side timidly. A good amount of blood ran down his leg, which probably wasn't a good thing, seeing as how he wasn't on his period. Plus he was a dude, but that was beside the point. If the damn monster was real, than he could cut it. And if he could cut it, it was slice and dicing time.
Well, it would have been if the monster hadn't snapped his sword into two with its giant claws. Seed sighed, muttered something about how that sword had cost him at least ten coins, and rolled away from the beasts relentless attack; a few of the more blood thirsty insects scuttled toward the blood that had dripped from his side, and onto the ground. He was happy to see at least something in this blasted cave couldn't die hungry.
"Ah," he whispered as he pulled out one of his knives and looked towards little Miss I Love To Throw Scorpions. "I propose a tru...wait wait WAIT!"
He instinctively covered his face from any inbound arthropods.
"On second thought, let's just...throw shit in every which direction. Bonus points if you hit the beastie though, and not me, mmm'kay?"
Out of Character:
The sound of Relt's head hitting the tunnel wall as she bounced off of a greasy pyromaniac was reminescent of a giant tortoise being struck by a bowling ball. Blood trickled into her face, making her concussed brain wish briefly for a nose-mounted windshield wiper, and she skidded to a stop next to her cell phone. She smiled faintly at this, and picked it up. The music she had started was still belting forth from the phone, lending a surreal air to the conflict. Of course, that sensation may have been due to the aforementioned concussion.
Relt stared as the monster swiped at her opponent, who she was begrudgingly beginning to regard as less of a target than the recently de-ghosted monster. The thing looked only somewhat like it had before; big sections of what had appeared to be noodles were now covered in thick crustaceous plates, and there was now a clearly defined head. It was a head that appeared to be made out of small legs surrounding a mouth, with no visible eyes, but a head nonetheless.
The girl snorted as the man recoiled in memory of an arachnid in the eye. "God fucking shit nuts," Relt muttered, "Do you never shut up? I think we've passed the point were proposing a truce is a good idea; let's just try not to get, I dunno, eaten or whatever,"
The creature roared again, and while the smell that it had possessed as a spectre seemed diminished, the sound it produced was now sufficient to peel an orange. The roar died away down the tunnel, and the gross guy rolled his eyes. "Yeah," he said, Relt still feeling a powerful urge to break his nuts, "Heard you the first time. What else you got?"
"Don't taunt the monster, shithead," Relt hissed.
Another shriek answered the first, from seemingly every direction, and suddenly the tunnel was, if the reader will pardon the oxymoron, alive with ghosts. The swarmed through the walls, howling and wriggling at the behest of their solid cohort.
- - -
The ghosts, or rather, larvae had only the vaguest of memories of the time before, when they or possibly the ancestors (though the two may have been one and the same) ruled the world above. But they knew that they were thirsty, and that it had been so very long since they had drunk any conflict. And here were two small shouting things, so very full of animosity and violence; the larvae could feel it pouring out of them like a torrent, delicious conflict invigorating and sustaining them.
The larvae watched as their First, the solid one, strode forward and pressed the two humans against the wall, reveled in the increased flow of conflict as the humans fought for their lives. Their shrieks became cackles as their ghostly forms bloated with hatred and fear and resolute refusal to give up. This would be a meal enough to permit them all solidity, and they would return to the surface and take it, and drive the world into a war that would scorch the skies and boil the seas, all so that they might taste genocide.
- - -
Relt's head ached, and not merely from the significant injury dealt to it. She couldn't see a way out of this scenario that didn't involve being scissored in half. She was bloody and exhausted, and her switchblade had done nothing but ricochet off the thick plating of the lobster-like claw currently pressing her against the wall. She was also uncomfortably close to her opponent, the man who took her weed and reminded her of a guy she knew in high school who had been arrested for doing a bodily rape on an endangered species, the man who she would like nothing more than to stomp into a kind of, of gross pinkish jelly, or maybe a powder, or-
She stopped. Relt had noticed, as she thought about those (admittedly very gratifying) thoughts, the horrible ghostly things had begun to solidify a bit. The shock of this had snapped her out of it, even got her to stop fighting against the claw she was sure was doing irreparable harm to her midsection, and at this the ghosts returned to translucent, filmy things.
"Holy shitfuck, really?" she whispered, "That's just dumb. Way to go, monster ghosts, for having the stupidest 'moral of the story' weakness ever. Hey idiot!"
"Shut up, I'm busy! We'll fuck later!" the pyrotechnical pervert shouted over the sounds of him stabbing a lobster claw.
"Gross, no! Just stop fighting. I think they, I dunno, eat fighting?"
"Wait, what?"
"I mean, let's try, like, the opposite!" Relt yelled over the shrieking cacophony of swarming ghosts, "I mean, what the fuck even is your name?"
"Albert Gofuckyourself!"
Relt held her breath for a moment and tried to relax. She dug deep inside and found that peace at the center of her being, that little happy place where marijuana, video games, and old movies about guys in giant rubber monster suits trashing Japanese cities mingled to create the closest thing Relt Peltfelter ever had to inner peace. She opened her eyes, the tunnel suddenly silent.
"Nice to meet you Albert, I'm Relt," she managed, through clenched teeth.
The ghosts had gone, and the huge calcareous claw sagged from the wall. The monster actually looked smaller, and paler, as though it eaten something that didn't agree with it.
"What did you say, these things 'eat fighting'?" the newly minted Albert asked.
"Yeah, so I guess chilly politeness was like poison or some shit," Relt replied, popping her neck and trying to keep her left shoulder from dislocating.
"That's what you get for living off an abstract concept, idiot," the man said, jeering at the weakened monster.
"Settle down hoss, you'll just feed it again. Let's just get the fuck out of here, this is a bunch of shit,"
"I bet this is the start of a beautiful friends-with-benefits-ship," The man said, wrapping an arm around Relt's shoulder.
"Don't touch me,"
- - -
Paradoxically, once the pair set out for the surface, it took only ten minutes for them to get out. There was no obstruction, no closed-off tunnel, and the sun had barely set. One of the tournament organizers had been out for a smoke when he saw them emerge; he had swallowed his cigarette, and needed nearly as much medical attention as the two combatants.
Rexfort Oggtemple had been hurriedly informed, and had rushed out to congratulate the two on surviving an 'unscheduled special tournament event', thankful for the waivers the two had signed at the beginning of the Serenti Invitational. Chuggy Thumphaven had gone back to the village after Relt and Seed Vicious (having dropped the Albert alias) told him what they went through; he planned to raise money to buy a lot of black powder from Alerar and a few dozen barrels of concrete.
- - -
Relt rubbed awkwardly at the bandages on her head. Apparently even crazy bullshit fairy magic didn't fix things as well as a bandage did, as both had been applied in equal measure. She and Seed, who maintained his rank as the most sexually unappealing man Relt had ever met, were sitting in the office of Rexfort Oggtemple. His proper office, that is, back in the town of Serenti proper. It had been three days since the situation regarding their match in the Naiterwally Catacombs, and an important issue had to be settled. The man himself sat in his comfortable chair, in front of his massive desk, and smiled joylessly at the two combatants. His assistant stood, clipboard in hand, by the door.
"It's just that neither of you won," Oggtemple said, then caught himself, "I mean, of course we at the Serenti Invitational are sorry for selecting a location of occult significance and great mystical danger, we had absolutely no idea, but the fact of the matter is that at no point in the match did either of you defeat the other."
"So you'll need to fight again,"
Relt glowered at the man. She couldn't, and didn't want to, see Seed's expression, but she was sure it was similarly dour.
"Now, we've lined up an arena on an island-"
The leather of the chairs creaked as Relt Peltfelter and Seed Vicious stood up.
The issue of who won the match remained undecided for the day, but both combatants felt rather gratified to have beaten three kinds of hell out of Rexfort Oggtemple.
Relt/Soulforged
Story 7/7: Seed had the better intro, Relt had the better conclusion (as technically, Soulforged did not have one), and the middle was good on both ends. I will say that while I enjoyed Relt’s back-and-forth scene switches for her next-to-last post, it was jarring s3itching back and forth between characters, but not enough to seriously dock you for it.
Continuity 6/4: You kept up your end of the deal by mentioning your previous rounds quite well. Soulforged lost points because, while cell phones, flares, and the maryjane are all things Relt’s character would know of and refer to, Seed brought in terms that would be out of his characters continuity. Mention of a hotel (When in the particular setting Althanas is in, most ‘hotels’ would be considered ‘inns’), Seeds mention of adding his own beat to the mix (a more recent Earthy term, considering I wouldn’t think Althanas to have ‘beats’, per se), and references to booty/ass shaking all took away something from the continuity of your character. Also, the toboggan reference threw me for a loop as well.
Setting: 5/5: The cave was good, the monsters were better (More on that in Interaction), but overall I felt that there was nothing spectacular about this particular matchup. Throwing scorpions is fun and all, but it gets stale the 2nd time its even mentioned, and stop becoming funny.
Creativity 8/6: Relt had a more creative use for the cave than what he at first let on. Soulforged, you get an above average score for your impromptu sled at the start of the match, but (And please don’t take this personally) Relt outclassed you in almost every way when it came to coming up with unique stuff.
Character 4/4: I know what the two of you were trying to convey from your characters, but I never got the sense that Seed was the asshole that he was making himself out to be. Nor did I get a sense that Relt was this independent girl who just wanted to kick the chauvinist pig in the testes. Try incorporating more feeling into your posts. Make me want to root one way or the other. Relt, a great example was your last round, I was totally hoping Relt would get some good dick-punching out, though that match didn’t finish. I just didn’t see that same sense of empowerment in this thread. Soulforged, Seed talks way too much to come off as a genuine jerk. I know smack-talking is in his character, but at some point a line should be drawn.
Interaction 8/5: Seed gets the average score because he wrote his ‘interaction’ with Relt’s weed a lot better than anything else, which just seemed to be taking a page out of what Relt had already established, with the occasional flair added in. Relt says the ghost-thing stinks, Seed says the ghost-thing stinks. Relt punches ghost-thing and hurts her hand, Seed punches ghost-thing and hurts his hand. Relt, you did an excellent job creating a backstory to an environment, something I rarely see, making a unique type of crab-ghost-apillar thing.
Strategy 6/6: Tied mostly because of Relt’s use of the cell phone and Seeds use of his fire-whip thingie. There could have been more done, but this match just seemed more like a shit-talking match, with an occasional Scooby Doo moment thrown in for laughs.
Mechanics 7/4: Soulforged, I could count 2-3 errors in almost each one of your posts on average. While there were some spelling errors on Relt’s end as well (I spotted a The when you meant They off the top of my head), your mechanics almost made your posts to the point of unreadable. A good hint would be to have a buddy read over the thread for you, checking for you mechanics. I go to SirArtemis for such things, but I’m sure you can find someone who will help point out errors as well.
Clarity 5/5: Both of you were clear, though there were reaons why I had to go back and re-read a post or two from each of you (Relt I had to re-read your next to last post twice because of the scene switching. Soulforged, your errors caused me to read a couple of your posts). They weren’t horrible, but not as crystal clear as to let me move on flawlessly.
Wildcard 7/7: Relt’s creature and backstory was good, and the MK reference from Soulforged, though rather out of place, did cause a smile to cross my lips (In fact, it’s the one scene I kept thinking of whenever this thread popped into mind). I’m also impressed that the two of you kept to the deadlines so well, without trying to game the system. Good job, Old Blokes!
Final Score:
Relt – 63
Soulforged – 53
Relt gets 1050 Exp, 100 GP
Soulforged gets 300 exp, 200 GP
Relt Peltfelter Advances to Round 3!
Exp-GP added.