Chapter 14
Lilly and I walked up onto the arena and looked around. Our competitors, Team two, were standing cockily on the other end of the arena. “The battle ends when both of the opposing Teams shadows have been defeated! The controllers of the shadows are not allowed to interfere in the fight between the shadows, but they may fight each other if they wish. Note that if a shadow’s controller is knocked out, the shadow may either become more aggressive and dangerous, or more peaceful. It’s your risk to take! Now, let the battle begin!”
A dog ran out from behind one of the men on Team two, and a bobcat ran out from behind the other one. Swift screeched and jumped up and down on the arena, causing a small earthquake.
Bill wasted no time in starting to weave something, and the cat began loping towards me.
“Lilly! Could you get that furball off me?” I called to her.
“Are you kidding? It looks so cute! I’m not harming a hair on that beautiful little guy’s head!”
“That beast looks like they pulled it out of a dumpster! Lilly, it’s frothing at the mouth! Just tell Swift to have a morning snack!” I yelled.
She ignored me, and turned to the dog which was now circling her. She nodded to Swift, and Swift screeched. The bird flew into the air, and swooped down at the dog. It lunged out of the way, and Swift shot by harmlessly.
I turned my attention back to my own fight, and sidestepped the large cat’s lunge. Bill suddenly stood up on his two back legs, and revealed a bow. He put a little arrow in it, and pulled the drawstring back.
The controller of the cat burst into laughter. “Oh man, that’s a good one! Your shadow is the size of your palm and the best it can do is cosplay? Why did you even bother to bring it here?”
Without looking, I pulled my gun out and activated it. I pulled the trigger, and the beam blasted into his foot. He screamed in pain, and I let go of the beam.
What do you know, I was getting better at aiming! Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lilly pick up a small rock and lob it at her opponent. It nailed him in the eye, and he fell down screaming. I take back what I first said. I still suck compared to her. Maybe I could have done better if somebody gave me a paperweight.
Bill released the arrow, and it shot towards the bobcat. It burst into flames midflight, and smacked into the ground behind the cat. Bill rapidly fired the rest of his arrows before the cat could move, and each one missed. When he ran out of arrows, the cat was surrounded in flaming toothpicks. I sighed.
The crowd was now roaring with laughter, and the narrator had long since joined them. I gave them a personal demonstration of a rude gesture and turned to Bill who was drawing another arrow. He shot it, and there was a sudden screech as it hit something invisible.
Flames traveled down the invisible threads that Bill had apparently tied to the strings, surrounding the cat in a cone of flames. Bill hissed, and pulled on the bow. There was a sudden smell of charred flesh, and the cat fell to the floor cut into chunks.
I looked over to the controller, who was staring in horror. I winked at him, and did a little dance. He screamed in horror, and ran to the door of the fence. He flung it open and ran in horror. “Are my dancing skills that bad?” I called after his retreating form.
Meanwhile, Swift had managed to pick up the dog. I looked up just in time to see Swift hurl the dog into its controller, sending them both crashing through the fence.
The announcer stared at me in a mixture of horror and rage, and cleared his throat. “The winner of the first round is Team One! Please leave the arena and wait for your next round to begin in approximately three hours!”
Bill slipped back into my pocket, and my gun returned to its passive state. Lilly and I walked off the stage into a crowd staring at us in horror. “Ahem! The next fight will start momentarily, once the arena has been…cleaned up. Please feel free to wander around unless you are in Teams three through six!”
Lilly looked over at me, and I shrugged. She said something to Swift, and the huge bird took off into the skies. Then we walked out of the courtyard and back to our room. “That was way too easy. Nothing ever goes this well for me.”
Lilly raised her eyebrows. “You’re telling me this is going well? You’ve been a hairs width from assassination twice already!”
“How do you know about the first time? I could have sworn you were asleep!”
Lilly snorted. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice an amateur assassin like that one enter the room?”
“So why didn’t you help me? I could have been killed!” I cried.
“I wanted to see what you would do. Besides, you didn’t even need help. That idiotic assassin nearly fought himself for you.”
I conceded the argument, and looked out the window. We were lucky enough to have a view of the arena. A fight had just started between Teams three and four. I couldn’t tell which Team was which, but one Team only had one person on it. The controller seemed to have a large metallic claw in the place of his right hand, so I dubbed him Claw. There didn’t seem to be anything special about the other Team.
Claw reached into his shirt and put a small green ball on the ground. Maybe it was a big lizard or a coiled snake? The other Team’s shadows were a bat (I guess he got back in time) and a…dragon? The red beast was as large as two humans, and didn’t look happy. I rolled my eyes. Claw didn’t have much of a chance of winning this fight. The narrator announced the start of the fight, and then things went haywire.
The green blob next to Claw suddenly began expanding rapidly. Within seconds, a huge tortoise stood next to him. It snapped its jaws together, and stepped forward. The arena seemed to shake, and a web of cracks spread out from where its foot landed. The tortoise’s head snapped forward and swallowed the bat in one bite. It turned to the dragon, which spewed a blast of fire at it. The flame bounced off the turtle’s thick shell and deflected harmlessly into the sky.
The turtle’s head shot forward again, and when it came back, the dragon was missing. My eyes widened as the two controllers ran out of the ring, leaving Claw victorious. The narrator announced Claw’s victory. The fight was over in less than a minute.
I gulped, and turned to Lilly. She grimaced. “We might have to get rid of him before we fight. I’m not sure we can beat that beast of his on our own.”
As much as I hated the thought, I found myself in agreement with her. I had long since learned that I couldn’t save everything, and sometimes a sacrifice is necessary for the greater good.
“I think you might be right. You know, I can’t believe that I’m actually agreeing with you that we should assassinate someone. We’re no better than Richard the Donkey Lord if we do this.”
Lilly smirked at me. “Welcome to the real world, Drake. There’s no such thing as peace and happiness. There is only one rule. Kill or die. It’s that simple.”
“Maybe right now there is. But I’m going to change that. I’ve never followed the rules anyways.”
Her eyes filled with an emotion that I had never seen from her before: Admiration. But just as quickly as it had appeared, it vanished and Lilly’s eyes returned to their normal icy glare. I had probably just imagined it. She snorted, and turned around.
“We should head back down, Drake. We don’t want to get disqualified for being late for our next match. Since that guy with the metal hand finished his fight so quickly, I’m sure that our fight will be a lot sooner than we expected.”
We ran back down to the ring and arrived right as the narrator was finishing some speech. “…Therefore, Teams One and Three will be progressing to the arena in the side courtyard, while Teams Five and Six will be fighting here.”
Lilly and I followed the crowd to the next arena over, where another announcer that looked practically identical to the first one stood waiting. “Teams one and seven, come up to the arena immediately!”
We entered through the gate, and the people that had to be Team Seven followed us in. Both figures were wearing dark brown cloaks that covere
d their features and trailed behind them. They were both strangely small as well.
Lilly and I took a few steps back, and our Shadows prepared to fight. The two cloaked figures raised their hands, and an unearthly roar filled the arena. The very air seemed to drop several degrees, and a shadow passed over me. Suddenly, a massive hole sprung open in the center of the arena, and a clawed hand reached out and crashed into the ground. The shockwave threw both Lilly and I against the walls.
I could only watch with growing horror as a demon from a nightmare crawled out of the ground. Upon its shoulders rested two heads. On the left, the red eyes of a raging lion glared at me, and on the right, a dark brown goat’s head sat. As if that wasn’t enough, it’s tail whipped around to face us, baring it’s fangs.
“Look close my friends, for this is a once in a lifetime opportunity! Group Seven has a real live Chimera! Why, the odds in this fight sure have been stacked! It’s time to open a betting pool! I give a thousand on Team Seven!”
The crowd all started yelling out prices, all for our opposing Team. Lilly nudged me with her elbow. “Drake, try to cut its tail off. I think that it’s poisonous.”
Sure enough, a drip of purple liquid rolled down the snake’s fangs and splattered onto the floor.
The announcer cleared his throat. “Further bets can be made during the fight…assuming that Team One can last long enough for anyone to say anything!”
The crowd chuckled, and the announcer called for the fight to begin. Bill skittered onto my shoulder and began spinning himself a weapon. Swift cawed at the Chimera, and it replied with a massive roar. Swift flapped its wings in fright and hopped backwards.
Both controllers suddenly reached up to their hoods and pulled them back…revealing two young girls! I wouldn’t have placed them above twelve. As one, they both grinned eerily. “If you surrender, I promise not to hurt you too badly.”
I chuckled and pulled my gun out. “Once upon a time, I would’ve been horrified about pulling a gun on two little kids. But now, I’ve killed Kings! You don’t scare me. Although you really shouldn’t put makeup on. That part is pretty dang scary. I mean, who wears makeup at ten years old? What’s wrong with this generation?”
“I’m eleven!” they yelled at the same time, and the Chimera lunged towards me.
I jumped to the side, and Bill leapt off of my shoulder. He aimed a miniature blunderbuss at the Chimera and fired off several shots. I didn’t think the monstrous creature even noticed Bill. It was too busy staring at me with hungry eyes, trying to figure out if I would taste better in a sausage or a hamburger.
I stuck my tongue out at it, and fired a shot off at one of the girls. She leaned backwards, and it shot right over her head and disappeared into the sky. “Oh great. Who taught the kiddies acrobatics?” I complained.
Swift suddenly swooped overhead; claws poised to strike. His claws raked across the monster’s back, and I almost cheered in joy. Almost. There was a shower of sparks, and Swift’s claws bounced off of the monster.
I cursed, and felt my back bump into a wall. The Chimera’s lips twitched and I could’ve sworn it was smirking at me. “Lilly! Kill the controllers, it might go back to whatever hellhole it came from!”
She nodded her head slightly, and pulled her laser pistol out. She fired several shots at the twins, but they easily dodged each one. “How are you avoiding the shots so easily?” Lilly screamed in frustration.
The girls giggled, and the monster took a step closer to me. “Don’t get us wrong, you’re the best shot we’ve ever seen. However, that doesn’t help you when we know exactly what you’re thinking. For example, you’re wondering how we could know what you’re thinking about right now. The answer would be that our Chimera can read minds and speak with us telepathically. He is a very smart boy.”
Lilly growled, and fired several more shots towards them, which they easily dodged. Suddenly, her face lit up, and she grinned at the girls. They both turned slightly pale. “No, don’t! You can’t aim if you’re just…”
They were cut off by Lilly screaming like a maniac and starting to sing some song about the glory of war. She began randomly firing shots in their general direction, each one getting closer to hitting the twins than the last.
One wild shot blasted into one of the twin’s arms, and that was the end for her. She screamed in pain, and Lilly stopped singing. She took careful aim and fired, sending a beam of high powered energy straight into the girl’s heart. The air around her shimmered, and a middle aged man with a goatee toppled to the floor in her place.
The other twin screamed in rage, and turned into an identical man. “You fool! I cannot control the Chimera without my brother!”
Although I was rather occupied at the moment, I couldn’t resist asking him a question. “Do you guys have some weird dress up fetish or something?”
He glared at me just in time to receive a face full of laser from Lilly. He toppled backwards, dead. The Chimera let loose another mighty roar, this one even louder than the last.
A shimmer of darkness washed over its body, and another snake tail grew. “Oh great.”
The monster lunged towards me, and I lifted my gun to shoot it. To hell with the rules, I wasn’t going to die eaten by an oversized cat or an ugly goat. Before I could fire, it landed on my chest, its paws crushing both of my arms into the ground. I yelled in pain, and the crowd roared with approval.
The monster’s saliva dripped down from its gaping mouths, splattering the ground next to me. I grimaced in pain and looked around for a way of escape. “Hey, a little help here? I don’t want to be on the menu!”
But Bill was nowhere to be seen. The monster leaned closer to me, and its mouth opened wider to tear a chunk of me out. Suddenly, it seemed to freeze, and the crowd went utterly silent. Red liquid budded up around both of its necks, and began pouring onto me. With a grunt, I shoved the monster off of me. I stared in surprise at what I saw before me.
A beautiful woman stood before me. And when I say beautiful, that’s an understatement. She had almond shaped blue eyes and shining black hair. Her skin was just lightly dark. She bent over the monster and pulled two large knives from the monster’s throats, and flashed a grin at me. “Hi Drake.”
I rubbed my head. “Oh great, now I’m hallucinating. Am I dead yet, or is this the stage before I die?”
Her laugh was like the jingling of thousands of bells, except there were no bells. Or jingling. “You aren’t hallucinating. I recommend you stand up though. You do look a little pathetic lying there surrounded by blood and drool.”
“Not all of the drool is that Chimera’s,” I said stupidly.
She giggled, and pulled me to my feet. The crowd was staring at us with, once again, a mixture of confusion, horror, and rage. The announcer didn’t say anything until I prodded him, and he nodded hastily.
“Ah…the winners for this round are Team One! And make sure to tell your friends to come to Team One’s next battle, because it’s certainly going to be interesting!...I hope they get killed.” He added in a low voice.
Lilly gave him the finger, and Swift screeched in his ear before blasting through the roof of the fence and flying away. I looked around to find Bill, but Lilly grabbed me and started dragging me to our rooms. “Wait, I have to find Bill!” I complained.
Lilly smirked. “Bill is walking on your right.” She stressed his name.
I glanced to my right to see the beautiful woman again, and then looked back at Lilly.
“What? Did you get hit in the head or something? Because I’m about ninety percent sure that Bill was a cute and fuzzy arachnid and not a hot lady.”
The woman/Bill grinned at me. “Aw, thanks for the compliment, but I can assure you that I am not an arachnid. However, I think it would be prudent to explain more once we reach somewhere safer?
I just shook my head in confusion, and allowed Lilly to lead us back to our room.