The Great Game

by O. J. Lowe

  Scott stood up and stretched. Palawi turned his attention away from the vomit and gave him a curious look. “Don’t you dare think of licking me with that tongue,” he warned, not quite able to hide his grin as he reached out to scratch his furry head. “I know where it’s been.”

  That was when he caught something out the corner of his eye and he tensed up. Palawi’s fur rose on edge and he heard the growl rippling from deep inside the hound. The air felt just that little bit colder, the sun was still just about up but he knew it shouldn’t be this frigid. Slowly he let his muscles react, Scott glanced down to Palawi and saw the dog hadn’t relaxed. He was prowling about, sniffing the air in search of the source of the discomfort. He knew something wasn’t right here.

  “What is it, Pal?” he asked, throwing his gaze back and forth to try and search out… Something. He might have just been seeing things. After all, he had just gone through a traumatic experience, in his own words. But somehow, he doubted that he was imagining it. After all, unless Palawi was sharing in his psychosis then it was unlikely he was the victim to an overactive imagination.

  Scott exhaled, saw his breath in front of him. It must really have gotten cold. Already it was fading and he heard something behind him, just a small tic of metal on stone and he turned, the growl from Palawi sounding out again.

  Nothing. He was alone. Good. He visibly relaxed for a moment, shaking his head at the dog next to him. “That was weird, Pal.” He reached out to scratch the ears, grinning at his own skittishness. “Next time I do that, just bite me yeah? Tell me not to…”

  Palawi howled and he felt the sudden rush of something grazing the top of his skull. He’d never known he could move so quickly, hurling himself out the way with a yell of panic. Something ice cold brushed against his back and he felt the chill rush through him, all the way to his inner being and he fought the urge to shudder. His teeth wanted to chatter, he bit down and did his best to stop them. Still they fought to almost breaking point in his mouth. He looked back, saw the cause seeping down into the ground. Blue, purple, black, all the shades of smoke he saw and he kicked himself. Someone had told him there were a few native ghosts loose on the island. Looked like he’d disturbed one.

  A revelation that both surprised and delighted him. He’d been after a ghost for a while. He’d known someone once who used one, it had been powerful. Scott looked at Palawi and grinned. “Let’s go and get this thing!”

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than did something shove him forward, the same cold feeling rushing through his shoulders and he fell once again on injured hands. Palawi snarled and lunged forward at his command, electricity crackling through his teeth but they only snapped down on empty air. Scott rolled over onto his butt and swore as Palawi came down. Nothing.

  “Okay,” he said. “The minute you see it, zap its ass.”

  Palawi let out a yip of confirmation and started to sniff the air again, ears twitching as he sought out any sign of their slippery spectre. Whether he could smell it or not, Scott hoped that it’d give them a chance to find it before it attacked again. That was the thing with ghosts. They were good to have. They were an absolute bastard to get in the first place. Presumably because of shit like this.

  You could get specialised equipment for hunting them down, he’d heard that somewhere, but that felt like missing the point. Besides it was expensive to rent and to the best of his knowledge, nowhere on the island sold it. He hadn’t sought it out but it was the sort of stuff you tended to notice.

  No, if he was going to do this, he was going to do it the old-fashioned way. A spirit and an empty container crystal. He’d done it this way for all his spirits and he wasn’t about to change it now.

  He glanced back down to Palawi, hoping for some sort of clue. He didn’t want more cold shocks. This always was a risk when trying to claim spirits. Sometimes they did go for the caller rather than the other spirit. The trick would be making it go for…

  … Palawi…

  Scott saw the look in the pooch’s eyes, felt something screaming at him to move and he threw himself aside, the blast of electricity rupturing through the space where he’d been stood a moment earlier. He heard an ethereal shriek and felt mixed emotions, sudden worry and relief mixed together. Worry that he’d nearly been fried on the spot, relief he hadn’t.

  “Careful Pal,” he muttered, the thought already dying away as he saw the twitching ghost where he’d been stood, not down, not defeated but affected. “Next time try not to take me out as well.”

  That was all he planned to say on the matter. At his command, Palawi hurled himself at the ghost, the same electric bite attack as he’d utilised earlier and bit down on the spectral space, Scott heard the shriek and let out a mental cheer as Palawi growled and ragged back and forth, shaking the spirit as the sparks streaked through its smoky body. He reached into his pocket, digging deep. He had a spare container crystal somewhere, they were handy to have around…

  His distraction a factor, the ghost suddenly jerked back to life, twisting wildly and he heard the yowl as Palawi was thrown free and crashed into the side of one of the oversized trashcans that lined the alley. The pooch lay there in a pool of his own blood, whimpering in pain and Scott felt a twist in his heart as he heard them. Still Palawi tried to get up, legs unsteadily supporting him. A great chunk of fur had been torn out of his back, blood everywhere. He thought he saw bone protruding out of his flesh and he tried not to look, glancing back around for a sight of the ghost.

  This was starting to become annoying.

  A thought that was exemplified as he caught another cold blow, this one about the face and he went down, half blind from the chills that rushed through him. He couldn’t feel the left side of his face, numbed by the blow and he flailed out impotently. Vision slowly crept back in, the flashing darkness replaced by a jumble of images he could just about bring into focus. Where was it?

  It rose up in front of him, large and powerful, he could see it wholly for the first time. Some ghosts did have a shape when they chose to. Others remained as clouds of smoke. This one looked like a short fat little imp with four pointed ears and a mohawk sticking all directions out of its head, what passed for skin all blues and purples and blacks. It had a mouth out of proportion to the rest of its body, large enough for him to see the void inside when it smiled, behind stubby white teeth. That tongue was huge and slimy, green and flecked with silver spittle that stank of death and decay. The three eyes it bore were yellow and malicious, the brows heavy and protruding over them giving it a judgemental look.

  It laughed, not a pleasant sound and he steadied himself for a blow that never came. He sensed the static in the air a fraction of a second before the blast hit the ghost full on and Scott saw Palawi had stood up, three legs still quivering and as he had done with Irrow, the current was still being generated. The pooch was dropping hundreds of thousands of volts into that one space. And it was working, despite its incorporeal body, he could see the ghost was feeling the effects. It was reeling.

  And knowing he might never have a better time, Scott took a deep breath and went for it, clumsily tugging the empty crystal from his pocket. He slammed it against the permeable cloud of smoke that passed for skin, felt it pass through the ghost. Immediately his arm felt like he’d dunked it in a bucket of cold water and the shivering ran up his body. Inside, he reached out with the very essence of his entire being, found the ghost’s presence and reached for it.

  If before had felt like dunking his arm in a bucket of cold water, going in for the capture felt like he’d jumped in head first. Not only did his skin shiver with clammy cold but he felt the sensation of it crawling, a hundred little pinpricks moving over him and he fought the urge to recoil as he tried to keep a grip on the slippery presence of the ghost. Here, they were evenly matched. It wasn’t seeing, not as such. It was more being everything and everywhere, just a small part of the whole and at the same time not being able to care. He’d done this many times and each
time was different, the duel between potential spirit and future owner.

  The ghost wasn’t letting go easily, it was scratching and biting him, trying to suffocate him, smoke in his mouth and nose, ears deafened and eyes blinded. All he could feel and see was the objective. The ghost he’d come this far for and he wasn’t about to let it get away. The scratching and the struggling was annoying but he knew it wouldn’t leave any permanent damage. Nobody knew quite the explanation behind this state, the best way he’d heard it described was as a higher state of being, an acknowledgement that all life is connected. As exists you, so exists the potential for a connection.

  Strangely enough, that quote hadn’t come from a scientist but rather a priest of Gilgarus. Go figure that one out. He’d tried. He’d failed.

  The fighting was a two-way street here, he brought back a metaphysical fist and smashed the ghost right between the eyes. They always fought and always it was a challenge. Claiming Palawi had been the easiest but even as he’d realised what was going on, he’d snapped and bite and howled, he’d not gone out easily. Sangare had been the hardest, the dragon of Threll had nearly engulfed him completely. Three times he’d attempted that. As the ghost went down, reeling from the blow, he made to jump on it. The sooner he got out of here, the better he’d feel. His body passed through empty space, the ghost no longer there and he rolled over into his back, a wave of panic going through him.

  The blow slugged him in the chest, right in the heart and he let out a pained wheezing gasp, doubling up into a ball. He nearly blacked out, nearly lost the connection but even as some of it slipped away, he clutched down and managed to retain enough of it to keep hold. The ghost stared down at him and laughed, a malicious bellowing sound amidst the darkness and the shadow.

  And then it did something he’d never have expected, something he’d not heard of before and doubted he ever would again.

  “You keep fighting, bagmeat,” it said in an eerily high masculine voice. “What?”

  The fucking thing had spoken.

  It had fucking spoken to him. He was so shocked that the connection failed, he let go and suddenly he was back in the real world, light and life coming back to him. He blinked several times, his eyes dry from the trance and he saw the ghost fleeing, leaping up the side of the building and away over the roof, gone into the night by the time he’d had the chance to stand up.

  Scott looked at Palawi, still not quite sure what had just happened. The dog looked back, cocked his head in bemusement.

  He was good looking in a dark sort of way, Anne thought as she studied him. She could read not just his expression but his emotions and for the moment he was radiating off a sense of cold, calm curiosity. Anything but that aggressive anger that normally came from him was good.

  “Explain again,” he said. “You want to make it interesting how?”

  She shrugged. “Anyone can fight. You fight best when there’s something at stake. Like now, here in this tournament. Would you not say that you’ve done your best work because there’s a bigger prize at stake?”

  It was his turn to shrug. “I go out to win every time. It’s nothing unusual.”

  “Except it’s all in your head,” she said. “It’s the way you view things. You can’t keep going at things a hundred miles an hour and hope to overwhelm them like you’ve done so far. Sooner or later you’ll meet someone who can weather it and then you’ll be in trouble. Or you’ll burn out long before the final. That which burns twice as bright burns half as long and all that stuff. Don’t get me wrong but you haven’t fought anyone top notch here so far. How do you think you’d do against Sharon Arventino? Or…” Thinking of Wade hurt a little so she quashed that example down inside her. “Or… Nick Roper.”

  If he’d been calm before, the wave of rage that struck her at the mention of that name was like a hammer and she had to steady herself, regain her composure before speaking again. That was interesting. Something she hadn’t heard about, it would seem. Maybe she’d try and tempt that out of him at some point, see how keen he was on sharing. Now, he wasn’t going to. She could only push him towards the door so far. He still needed to walk through it himself.

  “I can take anyone on my day,” he said grimly. “Anyone.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You might be able to. But the key is to ensure that every day is your day. If you’re at your best and your opponent is at their best then the key is to ensure that if at least you don’t win, you don’t lose easily either. It’s not always about pure power sometimes. Sometimes a little guile and craft goes a long way. You miss that from your game.” She leaned over to one of the targets that his anklo had shattered with a leaf and rapped it with a knuckle. The wood was three times as thick as her hand, she noted with a grimace. That was power, she had to admit.

  “I’m going to prove this to you,” she said. “And here’s the deal. If you win, I’ll shut up about it and let you chase your own path down to victory.”

  He looked moderately interested at that comment although she didn’t detect any radical switch of emotion from him. Maybe he liked the idea… Maybe she didn’t. She didn’t know which she’d prefer there.

  “And if you win?” he asked. His voice was bored, listless. Completely out of sorts of his being. She could sense intrigue.

  “You keep a tight rein on your emotions,” she said thoughtfully. “Don’t you?” He didn’t reply and she flexed her fingers out in front of her. “Tell you what. You lose, you buy dinner. How does that sound?” Been too long since a good-looking man bought me dinner. She didn’t say that aloud. She almost wished she had, would her cheeks not have flared up like fireworks if she had.

  She felt the stab of emotion run through him, curiosity, surprise, bemusement… Got you, she smiled.

  “Good thing I don’t intend to lose then,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

  “You can intend all you like,” she replied as the spirit emerged from the crystal locked into her summoner. “Intentions are the cheapest currency you can find unless you act on them.” Paws formed out of the energy and stretched out her lithe body with a little yawn, powerful muscles flexing as she extended her claws out of her paws. Purple and white spattered fur covered that feline body, her tail twitching lazily in the air-conditioned room. A trio of silver jewel-like protrusions emerged from her forehead, shiny in the artificial lighting of the training room. Anne had caught Paws up in the Fangs in Serran, a native snow leopard that she’d done some tweaking with. Compared to Theo’s giant anklo, she looked small and slight.

  “Is that your choice?” Theo asked, a little note of curiosity in his voice. She sensed the cocky confidence radiating from him and she fought the urge to smile. Those who underestimated their opponent had already started on the path to defeat. Maybe he would win. Maybe she underestimated his abilities. It would be interesting either way.

  “Of course,” she said. “Whenever you are ready, we will commence.”

  He attacked first. Of course, he did, she’d seen it coming a mile off and the leaves shot from the back of his anklo and swept in towards Paws. She could see them spinning viciously through the air, like mini-saws, just as she could see the light glinting off their razor-sharp edges. She smiled, a mirror reflection of the expression that passed across Paws’ face as the leaves halted mid-spin, not falling, not moving, just still.

  Even though she couldn’t see them, she knew the crystals would be glowing, unlocking the full potential of the upgrades she’d visited upon her spirit. The look on Theo’s face was something to behold, surprise etched into every pore of his skin as she smiled sweetly at him and gave Paws the silent command. Almost immediately the leaves swept back through the air towards the anklo, digging deep gouges into its face and shell. The roar of pain almost shook the room. She felt the anger emanating off Theo and fought the urge to smile. That likely wouldn’t improve his mood.

  “Getting angry doesn’t solve anything,” she said. Atlas looked just as pissed as his caller did and she mentally c
ajoled Paws to remain on her guard. If the anklo suddenly attacked, it wouldn’t be good to get caught beneath those heavy feet. Whatever Paws’ telekinetic abilities might be; she wouldn’t want to wager too much chance on her being able to stop the anklo in its tracks.

  “Who’s angry?” Theo sounded nonchalant but she didn’t buy it. Not even for a moment. She could see past his words. Not that he knew that. “I’m calm.”

  You’re not though, are you? Again, she fought the urge to smile. Paws’ forehead protrusions shone again and from their epicentre, a beam of pure white light ripped out and struck Atlas face on, Theo’s attempts for the anklo to block it just a fraction too late. This time she did feel the rage like a hammer blow and she subconsciously took a step back from the sense. She swallowed, found her composure and this time she did smile. “You’re easily distracted. And that can be…”

  Atlas roared and the uniblast tore towards Paws who didn’t miss a trick, springing lazily aside of the destructive blast and Anne commanded her to counter-fire with the same white light as she had moments earlier, the attack she’d informally christened the mind beam. It was quite a twee name as they went but it did what it suggested. It was a beam of energy and it came from the mind.

  The aim wasn’t as good this time, Paws was off-balance after all, but still the blast caught a glancing hit off one of the thick stubby legs. Several layers of scale and muscle were torn away, blood gushed out. Maybe she’d hit an artery. She didn’t know enough about anklo physiology to say whether she had or not. If she had, it’d be over very quickly. One thing she knew a lot about was where to hit to cause maximum damage.

  She fought a wry smile. Not for nothing had she been trained as a Unisco sniper. And it’d be churlish to not use that training in her battling abilities. Not to mention a waste of talent. Those that didn’t utilise all their advantages tended not to get very far in the great game.

  If the blow was fatal, then Atlas wasn’t letting it hold up. She didn’t even have to look at Theo to get a read of his emotions, she kept all her attention on the giant bleeding spirit. As she stared, she saw the glow of luminous green energy rippling through it, starting from the very centre of its being and radiating outwards like a shockwave. And before her very eyes, the torrent of blood slowed to a trickle and the skin healed up as if nothing had ever happened.