“Yes, this will do,” the Planner decided.
Christine wanted to tell her to go eff herself. She still couldn’t believe her evil self enjoyed watching half naked women degrading themselves. It was the total opposite of everything she’d stood for.
Maybe that’s what the Outsider Taint does. Reverses your moral polarity, so to speak. Or maybe it just turns you evil, whether you’d been good or evil or Chaotic Neutral before the stuff got into your soul.
And maybe none of that matters and you should concentrate on staying alive.
Sure.
She’d been taken back to the sporting arena where the ill-fated Q-game had been held, a place that could easily hold some tens of thousands of people. Christine didn’t know if the structure had been there before the Goddess had taken over, or something purpose-built by her evil twin. Either way, the place was huge and fairly empty when she got there, but towards the end of her forced dress rehearsal, she started hearing the distant cheering of a good-sized crowd. It looked as if the show was already underway.
“That’s just the opening act,” the Party Planner explained, noticing the way Christine reacted to the noise. “One of our scavenging parties found a mountain lion somewhere and brought it back. Now it’s snacking on a few heretics.”
Christine had been afraid of something like that. They’d turned the coliseum into an old-fashioned arena. As in Roman games old-fashioned. The Goddess hadn’t been kidding when she said it was American Gladiators time. The chainmail bikini felt even more inadequate.
“Oh, almost forgot!” the Planner said. She rushed to one of the many armoires that lined the walls of the changing room, and came back with a helmet, a shiny silver metal cap with huge wings on the sides. It didn’t look like it would do much to protect her from a mace to the face or an axe to the skull, or even pennies from heaven, and the wings would only make her a bigger target. But it matched the chainmail bikini.
Awesome. I’ll be nicely color-coordinated when I die.
It probably wouldn’t even come to someone getting medieval on her. She figured that as soon as Dark Christine got a look at her aura, it’d be Game Over time. Each person’s tele-empathic signature was as distinctive as DNA or fingerprints. She’d be identified immediately.
Maybe. Maybe she doesn’t bother scanning people anymore. Maybe all the psychic noise from the crowd will dull her senses. Maybe, baby.
Which, if that was the case, still left the aforesaid getting medieval bit. Christine had already found out the hard way that playing with edged weapons was no fun. Something that she, a long-time gamer, should have known by heart.
“Time to get ready for your appearance, my dear,” the Party Planner said, gently steering Christine towards the door. Two big guys nearby were ready to move her rather less gently, so Christine let herself be guided towards her doom.
There was a patina of unreality around everything, a feeling none of this could possibly be happening. After all the things she’d survived, she couldn’t believe this was it.
Well, nobody said you have to roll over and die, you know. They want you to be a gladiator? Be a gladiator. Katniss the crap out of them.
Thanks, brain. I’ll just pit my mid-level Kung Fu skills against people who know how to use pointy sharp thingies. It’s not like I’m Snipe or someone who knows how to fight like that.
Well, you’ve been Snipe before.
Oh.
While she inner-dialoged as she was wont to do, she walked on autopilot for a bit. By the time she had the beginning of a possible epiphany, Christine found herself in a chamber with a metal-grate door that led out into the arena. She could see the ground had been covered with dirt; guys in janitor uniforms were using rakes to move said dirt around to cover some unseemly-looking pools of blood. Neat.
“You might want to shake your booty when you go out there,” the Planner told her. “If you look cute and sexy enough, the crowd may vote for mercy and we’ll fix you up for another show. If your performance isn’t good, you’ll earn a very bad end. Trust me, you don’t want the crowd to turn on you.”
“It’d be nice to know what the rules are,” Christine said.
“Simple: you and two other girls will be facing one of the current champions. If you’re still breathing when he wins, the crowd gets to vote: the choices are Life, Death and To the Pain. To the Pain means…”
“Got it, thanks.” Thanks for ruining The Princess Bride for me, ‘Goddess.’
“That’s it. There are no other rules. You can grab any weapons from the racks lined against the walls. You can do anything you want. You can even fall on your knees and beg for mercy. That works sometimes, just not very often.”
Christine nodded.
“When your time comes, they’ll raise the door for you. If you don’t go out, the guards will come in, prod you with stun batons, and drag you out. I wouldn’t recommend doing that.”
Another nod.
“Good. And I’m glad that you’re not crying. It’s undignified, and the crowd doesn’t like it. Well, I’m off to see after the other two contestants. They’ve both survived one show already, so getting them ready will be a cinch. Ta, ta!”
And she was gone, leaving Christine alone in the antechamber.
She watched the next show through the door – the portcullis, to be precise, a metal grate set on grooves that could be lowered or raised. Two men went in, dressed like characters from Final Fantasy. Their fight was brief and violent. When it was over, one managed to make it out under his own power, although he looked like he’d need a team of healers to put him back together. The other ended up in pieces, and the janitors had to work extra hard to cover up the blood. The whole thing took about five minutes, with most of the time spent on introducing the combatants and having them parade for the crowd. The event had about as much charm as a back alley murder.
You’ll be out there soon enough. Maybe you should try to figure out how you’re going to live through it.
Once upon a time, when Christine was a mere mortal living in a mere mortal world, she’d found an escape from her boring mundane life by playing a variety of games, chief among them World of Warcraft. Her main character, a daring Elven rogue by the name Snipe, had been one of the constants of her life. More recently, she’d discovered than when she was trapped in a psychic virtual reality she called Dreamland, she could become Snipe and use all of her level 90 skills and abilities. Could she do the same here, with her mind trapped inside a stranger’s body?
That’s one question. The other one is, how do I do it? In Dreamland, it just sort of happened.
Meditate, visualize, wish really hard. Eat pray love. Use the Force, Lucia.
She tried. As the janitors removed the last bits of the second-place winner from the area, she did all those things. The only thing she didn’t try was her Codex Words. She was too scared doing so would alert her darkest counterpart, which would kind of defeat the purpose and screw the pooch.
Of course, chances are she’ll spot me as soon as I walk out there.
Never mind that. Worry about not ending up as biological detritus.
Nothing had clicked yet when the portcullis started rolling up.
“AND, MAKING HER ARENA DEBUT AFTER COMMITTING MURDER MOST FOUL, PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER AND WELCOME… NELLIE GOMEZ!”
She went out.
The circle of dirt was about a hundred feet wide, big enough to make her feel like a bug on a plate, not to mention very exposed with only the effing chainmail bikini standing between her and the world. The surrounding crowd looked down on her and cheered or catcalled, depending on their mood. And, on the nice boxed seats, sitting on a by-god throne, was the Goddess her own darn self.
Dark Christine was wearing a tight-fitting black gown, clearly from the Maleficent Collection, extra-slutty edition. Two naked slaves, male and female respectively, knelt at her feet. Sitting on a lesser throne was her consort, faceless and wearing a leather gimp outfit, also black. Christine’s heart
lurched at the sight: that was Mark’s body, inhabited by Mister Night. She’d had nightmares about her brief encounter with that power couple, and now she was back in their presence. Life sucked sometimes.
They didn’t recognize her. They didn’t stand up and go all Donald Southerland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Didn’t have her arrested, or blasted her into cinders. She almost fainted with relief.
Okay. Give them a good show, the Party Planner had said. The other two contestants were walking around the edge of the circle, swaggering and shouting back at the audience. Reluctantly, Christine followed them. She didn’t have it in her to swagger or strut or do much beyond putting one foot in front of the other. Just as she’d feared, her outfit started rubbing her in all the wrong places. The humiliation at being put on display against her will was worse. So were the calls from the crowd:
“Shake your ass, baby!”
“Show us your tits!”
Whistles, howls, the whole nine yards. She guessed she should count herself lucky they weren’t throwing crap at her.
Christine kept her gaze on the two other women. The one directly ahead of her was African-American, tall and wiry, her muscular arms and legs left bare by a spiked leather suit that must chafe almost as badly as the chainmail bikini. She was being loudly defiant, cursing the spectators as she walked.
“What the fuck y’all looking at? Motherfuckers! You so brave, come to watch us die!”
Some of the people in the crowd fell silent at that, but the rest reacted to her words like sharks smelling blood in the water. The lowest level of the stands was separated from the arena by a ten foot wire fence. People flailed against it as they screamed back at her. The N-word got used a lot. The audience ratio of d-bags to regular folk was depressingly high.
The third gladiatrix was short and bronze-skinned, with a voluptuous figure and raven-black hair. Hispanic or Native-American, maybe. She was prancing like a little girl, laughing and making faces at the crowd. At one point, she opened her skimpy leather top and flashed the stands, to the delight of many.
At least her fellow fighters looked pretty tough. They’d survived this kind of thing, which meant it wasn’t a certain death sentence. Maybe the three of them would dogpile whatever d-bag they sent in after them, and live another day. Another day for Christine to get her powers back and figure out a way to escape this Kansas edition of Beyond Thunderdome.
A few moments later, she found herself walking right past her evil twin, and her thoughts were washed away by sheer terror. She hadn’t been recognized so far, but this was her closest approach to her dark half.
Avoid eye contact. Christine looked down and kept walking. If I can’t see her, she can’t see me. Childish pseudo-logic, but that was all she had left. You can’t hide from an empath. Any second now, the Goddess would have the guards seize her and bring her up to the throne. The best that she could hope for was a quick – if not painless – death.
Nothing happened. She walked past the VIP section without incident. Holy crap. And mega-phew. And weird. Had her empathy really atrophied after turning evil? Maybe it was too hard to murder and torture people if you could feel their feelings. It was bad enough when she’d had to hurt people because all other choices were worse. Maybe the evil bitch version had been forced to shut off those senses.
Analyze all you want after the show is over, her brain suggested. How about concentrating on summoning Snipe for now?
Good advice, only it still wasn’t happening. For a second, as she followed her two partners in misery towards the center of the circle, she had a brief flashback of fighting as Snipe, but it was gone an eye blink later. Meanwhile, the Goddess rose to her feet to address them and the crowd.
“Little girls!” she said, and her voice carried without the need of a microphone and sound system. “You are all guilty of something or other. Frankly, I don’t really care. The point is, you have a chance to redeem yourselves. Fight well, and live! Entertain the crowd, and maybe live! Suck ass, and die horribly and at great length! That is all.”
The crowd cheered wildly. Talk about easily amused.
Christine turned to her colleagues. “Hi, I’m…”
‘Don’t give a fuck who you are,” the black woman said. “You survive this, you get a name. Right now, you’re just some fresh meat.”
Without another word, she turned her back to Christine and headed towards the weapon racks lined up against the walls. The short woman paused only long enough to point and laugh at Christine before doing the same.
Oh, kay. A d-bag ex-boyfriend of hers had once pointed out that most casualties in a combat unit came from the new recruits, who didn’t know what they were doing and ended up stepping on a land mine or catching a bullet with their teeth. Given that, not getting attached to the newbies made sense. Still not very friendly of them.
Weapons time. Christine rushed to the nearest wooden stands, which held all kinds of nifty cutlery, from halberds to icepicks. Christine settled on a couple of long knives, or maybe short swords, straight double-edged blades a good ten or eleven inches long, which reminded her of Snipe’s favorite epic weapons. Hyena-girl was wielding a trident and a small buckler. The cusser had a two-handed sword, a Highlander special, held like a baseball bat.
Christine tried to do a swinging flourish with her daggers and almost cut herself. The short woman laughed at her again.
Yeah, this is going to be pure awesome.
Once the trio of morutori had armed themselves, they went back to the center of the circle to wait for their opponent. He showed up soon enough.
Oh, God. Her knees got a bit wobbly as soon as she saw him. What an asshole bitch!
Three on one, even one who knew what he was doing, wasn’t terrible odds – for the three. But that only worked when you were fighting normal humans.
It – he, he was very, very male – stood close to seven feet tall and almost equally wide. His green skin, outthrust jaw, lower fangs projecting well past his lips, and grotesquely-muscled, hunched over physique showed that he might have been human once, but not anymore.
Orc. Effing orc.
At least it appeared that the chainmail bikini rules applied to both genders. The orc was only wearing a loincloth, a spiked plate over one shoulder, and a big Samurai-style metal helmet. He had an eight foot long spear with a leaf-shaped blade on one end and a blunt metal butt on the other; a long curved sword was belted at his waist. He looked at them with dark beady eyes and snorted, clearly not impressed.
“This ain’t fair, man,” the black woman muttered. “Motherfucking Green-Go.” She caught Christine looking at her. “Don’t let him take you alive, chicklet. He’ll do you either way, but dead it won’t hurt.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re fucking welcome.”
That girl and Mark should play Words with Friends sometime.
The two women started shuffling sideways, spreading out – and leaving Christine in the middle, facing the giant orc alone. No solidarity in the trenches, apparently. Their plan clearly was to wait till the orc moved in on Christine and then hit him on the sides and back while he was busy dismembering her.
Her knives suddenly seemed like a rather suboptimal choice. The orc had like five feet of reach on her, maybe more.
Okay, I can do this. You know how to do fancy footwork. Dodge around, close in, and then slash the back of his legs, hamstring him. And…
The orc charged with a deafening roar. He was thirty, forty feet away when he started, but he closed the distance before Christine fully knew what was happening. Sheer reflex got her to pivot on one foot, and the spear thrust that would have gutted her like a fish only drew a deep gash on her midsection as it not-quite missed her. She backpedaled away, barely avoiding an upswing with the butt of the spear that swished an inch past her chin, and leaped away when the orc brought down the spear’s head like an axe. The green mean machine pressed on, his head swinging side to side as he moved, as if he was shaking it in a
‘No’ motion. Not that the headshakes were slowing him down any. All Christine could do was stay a fraction of a second ahead of the spear thrusts and swings.
He was huge and he was fast and she was effed.
Desperately dodging around for dear life, Christine barely noticed the black woman coming up from behind the orc, sword held high for a chopping blow. The Horde bastard either had eyes on the back of his head or the headshakes were letting him check his six, however. As soon as the woman got close enough, the orc thrust back with the spear, catching her in the stomach with the blunt metal butt.
Blunt end or not, he drove the spear right through her.
Christine heard skin and flesh give way with a hard slapping sound, followed by a scream of primal agony. The orc thrust at Christine with the other end, forcing her to keep her distance, and swung around in one fluid motion.
The black woman was doubled over, sword on the ground, squeezing the terrible wound with her hands. She looked up just in time to see the spear point flashing towards her face.
Christine looked away as she retreated. She still saw too much.
Laughing woman had started to charge, but she’d been too far away to reach the orc in time, and as soon as she saw the black woman go down, she checked herself and kept her distance, obviously hoping the orc would pick Christine first.
Zee knives, zey do nothing! The crazy riff on The Simpsons line flitted through her mind and almost drove her into hysterical laughter. The orc turned towards her, and the incipient laughter was replaced with the urge to let her bladder run free. She almost threw the knives away and fell to her knees, begging for mercy.
He’ll do you either way, but dead it won’t hurt.
Yeah, I guess surrender’s not an option.
Another vision flashed past her eyes. Snipe, fighting those mean orcs that prowled the area just outside Lakeshire. Those had been tough encounters back when she’d been a mere Level Sixteen. If only…
The spear point darted towards her, impossibly, unavoidably fast. She leaned back, just far enough to let the leaf-shaped blade pass harmlessly over her, and reached out with the knife on her left hand, the edge connecting with a solid chunk! She somersaulted away as the orc lost his grip on his spear and looked unbelievingly at the bloody stump where his thumb used to be, before it was neatly severed between the first and second knuckles.
New Olympus Saga (Book 4): The Ragnarok Alternative Page 11