A Clash of Demons

by Aleks Canard

  The vampire’s claws slashed Trix’s arm, tearing her armour plates off. She pivoted. Severed the claw. Vampire feinted right. Strafed left. Trix was too drained from the hourglass to function properly. More blood loss.

  (Dripdripdripdripdrip)

  Behind her now. Teeth sunk into her neck, through her exo-armour. Trix grunted. She thrust her sword backwards. It rent the vampire’s gut. Its teeth did not relent. Trix punched its nose. Teeth loosened. She grabbed its head. Pulled. Vampire slammed onto the ground. Trix impaled its skull.

  The machina fell to the floor. Her hourglass ran like a tap before returning to its dripping state.

  ‘That the best you can do, dickhead,’ said Trix, using her sword to stand, then limp-running through the trees.

  ‘Those are poor words to say in the Riddling Arena, you silly cunt. You’re going to hurt the old girl’s feelings. And she can be a tempestuous riot at the best of times. You don’t want to see her when she’s been insulted.’

  ‘You’re a lot of talk, Gauthier. If I took away all your fucking tricks, you’d be nothing.’

  ‘And If I took away your weapons, and your machina powers… well colour me unfucking surprised. You’d be nothing too. Just a regular human. Fragile, and easily broken. See how that argument is worse than useless?’

  Trix kept going, deeper into the woods. Her neck was throbbing. She doubted whether she’d be crawling, let alone running if she hadn’t been wearing any exo-armour. She paused. Took off her scarf. Rewrapped it tight like a tourniquet. Resumed her run.

  The hourglass kept dripping.

  It echoed in her ears like footfalls in a derelict morgue.

  Or the Gravedigger’s shovel in soft dirt.

  4

  Every drop of blood made the world grow stranger.

  Trix had inadvertently slowed her pace. The cobblestone path she’d been following had ended. All paths seemed to go in circles among the trees. So far there’d been no more monsters. Though their sounds remained. Constant rustling. Ragged breathing. The scuttling of many hairy legs.

  Trix had become disorientated somewhere along the way. She was no longer sure if she was heading north. Didn’t even know why she thought north was a good idea. There was no reason the answer would be at the Riddling Arena’s terminus, and that was assuming it had one. For all she knew, Gauthier’s infernal hell went on forever. And the answer could’ve been right at the start.

  I’m lost, Trix thought as she continued moving.

  She sheathed her sword. Climbed the nearest tree. It wasn’t all that high, but it afforded her a view of the woods. Trix saw the river crossing to the south. It was a fair way gone. She’d come further than she’d thought.

  The woods stretched ever forward, appearing to grow so dense that they became a solid mass of wood. The swamp beckoned her closer to the east. The woods thinned in that direction. Trix could’ve run along the treetops if she’d been in peak condition. She was likelier to slip and impale herself on a branch in her current state. Even holding her sword was tiresome.

  Death became more favourable with every drop of blood dripping into the hourglass.

  It made wet, sticky sounds now. The hourglass. Blood slopping into more blood. Like stones being tossed into a lake. Or a maddeningly leaky tap in a clogged sink. Soon it would overflow.

  What a terrible mess it would make. All over the new tiles too.

  Trix dropped to the ground. The rush made her slip. She face-planted into the dirt.

  ‘If only I had the instant replay working. The last person to step into the Riddling Arena was such a clutz that I broke the damn button, smacking it so much. But, by the devil, I wish I could see that faceplant again. Would you be so kind as to give me another taste?’

  ‘Sure,’ Trix said, spitting dirt from her lips. She went to use her scarf to wipe her face, then remembered it was holding the torn skin on her neck together. ‘Come down here and I’ll show you in person. You can have a front row seat.’

  ‘I’d rather not. At the moment you look like you’ve been beaten with the ugly stick and used as a diseased troll’s tampon. The smell, my word. I’m surprised that it hasn’t killed everything in here yet. You reek worse than a whorehouse in a wet hot summer where all the plumbing’s clogged.’

  Gauthier’s taunting was like rusty knives being dragged along Trix’s face. She hated him. Hate wasn’t even strong enough a word. Right now, she couldn’t think of one. The world had started spinning.

  Setting off at a run, feeling almost euphoric with fatigue, Trix reached the woods’ edge. There was a swathe of open land before the swamp. It didn’t last long. Soon the fog mingled with noxious gases. They turned Trix’s stomach, but she didn’t think they were lethal.

  Keeping to the perimeter as much as possible, Trix searched for anything that could be a lie. She didn’t want to guess without being certain. Trix didn’t think Gauthier would give her another chance.

  Sound from the west. Breaking tree roots. Digging. Trix peered out from the trees. She couldn’t recall a time when she’d felt so hopeless, or afraid.

  Bodies rose from the land which buffered the swamp and the woods. Ghouls. Rotting bodies reanimated by magic. They feasted on flesh whether it was alive or not. In the real world, ghouls came in many shapes and sizes. Some could even wear corpses as disguises to lure people closer. They could typically be found around battlefields. However, poorly maintained cemeteries were known to have their fair share. Pinewood was purported to keep them at bay.

  They weren’t especially tough on their own, though their long limbs meant they had a sizable reach. Ghouls typically travelled in slaughters (their collective noun) for survival.

  And Trix of Zilvia was looking at a huge one.

  Their heads twisted, re-breaking broken bones. The machina was reminded of Isha, Balthioul’s undead bride and sex slave. The image burned in her mind then disappeared.

  Festering eyes replaced the memory. They stared at Trix. Her smell didn’t perturb them. Flesh was flesh. Blood was blood. They would feast regardless.

  Trix counted over fifty. She couldn’t take them on now. She was nigh on gasping for breath as it was. Trix turned tail. Ran further into the swamp which was no doubt what Gauthier wanted.

  Ghouls followed. Hunks of flesh flapped on their moist bones, creating the sound of wings beating like birds in flight. Yellowed teeth gnashed, stirring up a vicious brown froth. Boils burst. Bugs spewed out, nibbling on their host’s flesh before fleeing elsewhere into the swampy terrain. The deeper Trix went into the swamp, the harder it was becoming to avoid the sludge which sought to entrap her.

  The whole place was like a mess of sticky baits meant to stop rats. Only these were machina sized. One ghoul leading the slaughter charged. Hit Trix square in the back. She tumbled forward. Went with the momentum. Her fractured rib gave way. Her bones didn’t normally break so easily. She supposed, in an absent-minded way, that the hourglass was sapping her machina powers, not just her life force.

  The machina rolled. Faced her attacker. Magnum Opus was in her hand. She fired a volley of bullets. The ghoul’s head rocked back and forth before exploding. Trix emptied the clip into the next set of ghouls then turned to run again.

  Standing in such a rush gave Trix intense vertigo. Something grabbed her around the ankle. It was the ghoul she’d filled with bullets. His detached arm was trying to claw Trix through her combat boots. The machina stumbled. Fell down a dirt bank, into the swampy water. She pulled herself free as the rest of the ghouls descended upon her.

  Trix activated her helmet as three ghouls grabbed her left arm. They sought to pull it from the socket. Another three tried to grab her right. She hit them with a blast of reverse gravity. They fell up the bank. Trix nearly blacked out from the effort. She could see the hourglass on the backs of her eyelids. It was below halfway now.

  (dripdripdripdrip)

  That was when she screamed. The ghouls who had her left hand bit off three fingers, and were work
ing on the last two as more skulked around her body, figuring out which part to devour next. The hourglass accelerated. Trix grunted. Used another hit of magic to send the feeding ghouls into the swamp. They took another finger as they went.

  They flailed with urgent cries when they hit the water. More ghouls came for Trix. The slaughter wasn’t over yet.

  Piercing screams filled the air. The ghouls looked up. They forgot about their meal. Scattered. Trix knew those screams. Banshees were coming.

  Very little comprehensive knowledge had been amassed about banshees, despite their prevalence in foggy marshes and low-lying woodlands. While they were wraith-like in appearance, they couldn’t become immaterial, though they were generally created for the same reasons as wraiths. Horrendous deaths coupled with unfinished business meant unnatural life after death.

  Thankfully, no complex spells or curse breaking techniques were required to finish a banshee. A little silver and conventional weapons would do just fine.

  It was their screams of which you had to be wary. They could make you hallucinate more than any drug, man-made or natural. And the highs were worse than the lowest lows.

  Trix stood. Fell to her knees. Stood again. Swayed. Retracted her helmet to vomit. Swayed. She could see the sky from where she was standing. Dark’s Hide was coming closer. Why was she being shown that? What did that have to do with anything?

  One step. Then another. Trix moved herself away from the swamp. She had to escape. Ghouls were manageable. Her left hand, could it have spoken, would’ve said otherwise. Banshees weren’t. Trix was seeing things as it was. Hallucinating. She thought that she saw Kit waving her over for a drink.

  It was a curled tree branch.

  Then there was Yvach offering her a smoke.

  It was really just a burning piece of wood. Trix didn’t know how she was supposed to identify a lie when she couldn’t trust her own eyes.

  ‘Dearie me, stumbling in the dim and dreary while you careen all weak and weary, it’d be enough for me to have a teary if your persistence didn’t make me leery. Still all the pain you feel in this eerie place puts a satisfied grin on my cheery face.

  ‘Though, I have to say, honest to the devil, no fooling, you couldn’t look worse for wear if I threw you in shit then covered you in a mouldy sack. If it makes you feel any better, the Riddling Arena is having a ball with you, and she’s no kidder. She just loves that you’re no quitter! Most people, well they find this arena too much, and they die before the real fun begins.’

  ‘I’m going to enjoy killing you,’ Trix wheezed. Her broken rib made breathing difficult. She went to wipe her face when she remembered her left hand was caked in blood and ghoulish residue.

  ‘No, slut. It’s I who’s enjoying killing you. Your soul’s going to taste delicious. I’m salivating already, all over my finest clothes too. And you know the best part? While I’m eating, I can make you imagine whatever scenario I want. I think I might chain you up and whip you raw, then I’ll fuck you with toys you ain’t never seen before.’

  Trix walked back to the swathe of land separating the woods and the swamp. She couldn’t bring herself to speak. The possibility of Gauthier winning entered her mind for the first time. And it was almost enough to make her scream. To make her beg for a quick death. Already she was in so much pain. The world was fading before her eyes.

  (dripdripdripdripdripdripdrip)

  Endless dripping. And echoing splashes. Sloshing around like ship in rough seas. It never stopped. Trix walked into the fog on wobbly legs. Maybe the reason it was so thick was because it hid the answer. Wouldn’t that be nice if the riddle’s answer laid only a few steps beyond? What a present.

  Trix’s foot landed on a rock at a strange angle. It broke. She cried. Fell. Tumbled down loose scree. There hadn’t been an answer in the fog, only a forgotten canyon’s steep banks.

  Gauthier Nadim’s cacophonic laughter made all the Riddling Arena’s monsters cheer with glee.

  The hourglass had mere minutes of blood left.

  And, deep down in the canyon, there was a monster that would be happy to give Trix an early reprieve.

  Even so, Maldrodyn, a being of unspeakable origin and malice, felt human goose bumps erupt on his skin, and a chill ice his back. The machina was too close to the answer.

  But she would not reach it.

  Now she would die.

  5

  It was cold in the canyon.

  Ice clung to every surface, so cold that it burned like fire to touch. Fog covered the sky. Trix could no longer see Dark’s Hide. She was slowly aware that she couldn’t see much of anything.

  She blinked. Piercing tendrils of agony exploded into Trix’s head, making her skull ache and her brain thump like it’d been thrown into a rave.

  Rock shards had penetrated her right eyeball. Her left was fine. Though now she couldn’t see the hourglass. It didn’t relocate to her left. She groped for it in the darkness when she became vaguely aware that a gash had torn open the left side of her head. Giving up on the hourglass, she assessed the damage. Clumps of white hair came off between her fingers.

  Trix shivered violently, causing her broken rib to prod internal organs.

  She collapsed.

  ‘I’m still in this fight,’ she said. Her cheek hit a patch of ice. It should’ve been cold enough to make her recoil. Trix didn’t notice.

  ‘I’m still in this fight,’ she repeated. Her voice sounded alien. Unrecognisable. She knew that she had to tourniquet her hand, but she had no more cloth.

  My travelling cloak, she thought.

  It was still on her belt.

  (dripdripdripdrip)

  Trix pulled herself off the ice. A slab of skin stuck to the ice. Trix’s cheek had been torn off. Her bottom eyelid went with it. Muscles and tendons were revealed with harrowing clarity. She barely felt it amid all the other pain.

  Working as quickly as one hand allowed her, Trix bandaged her mutilated left hand. Stood. Trudged towards the only path there was. Red lights glinted off the ice. They were lanterns, just like all the others. Kind of like Chinese ones on Earth. There were symbols on them.

  (死　and 生活)

  Trix couldn’t make them out. She didn’t care.

  Canyon walls enveloped her. Neon signs — all red — penetrated the darkness. One promised unlimited orits. Another purported to have the best swords in all the worlds. There was even one which said that they served the elixir of life.

  You could have it neat, or on the rocks. They sold kebabs too.

  This part of the canyon looked like a back alley in a merchant district. Maybe even one of the places in Dark’s Hide’s bowels.

  Another sign. Guns with infinite ammunition. Another one. Personal teleporters.

  Trix considered that some of these shops were only illusions, and each one would contain another monster.

  ‘These shops are as real as the blood dripping all over your body, machina. They’re peddling what they’re purporting, that’s for certain. Go in and have a browse. They’re the Riddling Arena’s gift to you for showing her a good time. Devil knows the old girl hasn’t been given a ride like this… ever.’

  And at that moment, Trix completely believed Gauthier. They were real. There was no doubt that everything these shops sold could be hers if she took the time to haggle. To peruse their wares. But that was what Gauthier wanted her to do. And the only reason for that was…

  I’m close, Trix thought. Beads of ice had begun forming in her eyebrows. At least the cold was stemming her blood flow. That was something.

  Trix began running past the shops without looking at their signs. She was mostly hopping due to her broken ankle. If she was being serious, everything felt broken. She was Gauthier’s allowance and he’d spent her till there was nothing left then took out a loan and kept right on going.

  There was something up ahead. A wide-open space. The splashing of hourglass blood boomed in Trix’s ears like a pendulum in a clock tower. Everything wa
s coming to a close. She would die if she didn’t succeed now. And maybe, so would everything else.

  A boom louder than the others came right behind her. She didn’t stop to look around, though she did reload her pistol. Having to do it with one hand caused her to slow, but she got the magazine in just as she felt something warm on her neck.

  Now she turned.

  Trix saw a spider of gargantuan proportions through her one working eye. But its head wasn’t an arachnid’s. It was the charred ceirlo’s, though now it had eight spider eyes. Rapturous, darksome orbs that rested beneath towering antlers. His mouth opened in four parts, like mandibles.

  The reliquia was unsettling warm in contrast with the canyon’s icy temperature. Trix levelled her pistol. The reliquia charged.

  Bullets scraped the creature’s eyes. Some hit their mark, causing it to howl at the fog covered sky. It wasn’t slowing. Trix ran out of bullets. She holstered his pistol. Drew her sword. Held her position. Mostly because the pain in her ankle had made walking unbearable.

  ‘Well,’ Trix spat, her world bobbing up and down like waves during a storm. ‘Come on.’

  The monster kept coming. Pus surged from its eye sockets in pressurised jets. It came to Trix, rearing for the kill. Trix sliced off its two front legs. It came down. She held her sword up. Its lower jaw was torn open. Its body collapsed. Trix was caught under its girth.

  Dripping deafened her ears. She could barely think over all the noise. And now she was stuck underneath this horrible monster’s head without the strength to move it.

  ‘Yes,’ Gauthier said. ‘That’s it. Die. Let this be over now, machina. Just give up. Your time is over. And my freedom, I can taste it. I’m suckling at its very teat. Now die, you fucking whore! And let me have my freedom from this place. Toss away my chains and sever my bonds. DIE! DIE! DIE! OH, MOTHERFUCKING DIE, BY MY HAND!’

  Trix pushed with all her strength, struggling to free herself from the monster’s body. She raised its head. Inched out. The juices from inside its skull were bubbling on her armour. Causing it to broil. It was acidic. She’d be dead within seconds once it reached her skin. That was if the hourglass didn’t run out first.