Octius spent a good portion of his time showing scenes of my limp body. Not a nice sight, that’s for sure! Especially when the camera zoomed in to show my slack jaw, dripping drool… I wanted to hide my face.
The gamesmaster feigned grief as he described the debuff I was hit with. Then he delighted in my rise to the 50th floor, and made sure to praise the Companions, giving the game designers their due. The Companions, goat-faced creations of the Inferno with gleaming grinning maws, looked as sinister as ever.
“I assure you, the mages Karlesh, Mario, Shade, Ducknose and Pilgrim couldn’t have imagined such a death in their most terrible nightmares! I’m sure they were expecting anything but that when they logged on this morning!
Scenes of the Pitfall swapped to the defeated faces of the mages in their interviews after their final death. It was obvious that they’d just climbed out of their capsules and gone into the corridor, where the journalists were lying in wait for them. Unlike the Readers, the mages took the loss gracefully. They were from different factions and clans, but now a shared defeat united them.
“The worst thing we expected,” Shade murmured, sighing heavily, “was losing progress from maybe dying at Scyth’s hands. We didn’t know what his debuff was, but we hoped it was something bad. Once we saw him under attack from the bosses, we thought we had him…”
“I saw the debuff icon first and read out the description,” Ducknose butted in. “Paralysis! There was no way we were going to fail to knock Scyth out!”
“Right,” Cardinal nodded. “Heh… When his health dropped below 3%, I thought that was it, he was a goner! And then disaster!”
“Something strange happened,” Pilgrim remembered. “My ball lightning almost reached Scyth. He was done for, barely alive! It was a guaranteed one-shot! But the Threat somehow blinked away and the charge missed him. What was that ability? We went through all Scyth’s skills and there was nothing like that!”
Mario and Karlesh declined to comment. The interview cut off and now the mages were shown sitting in the hall. They were seated at a table near Octius and looked gloomier than the clouds over Terrastera.
“Let’s take a closer look and figure it out together!” Octius said sympathetically. “Let’s see! We will now show you what may have been the most dangerous moment for Scyth!”
The holocube lit up, instantly zooming in on my Trixie expression, the bubbles forming at the corners of my mouth and my dumb stare like a drunken ogre, then the camera retreated. It all slowed right down. My character was frozen, his arms hanging loosely, three taut chains of energy glowing behind his back, the ball of lightning suspended three feet from him and about to explode, emitting a crackling electrical discharge only a couple of inches from Scyth. The playback paused.
“Now let’s look very carefully!” Octius shouted.
The tongue of lightning stretched out another half inch and I, still the same shapeless doll with my tongue lolling out, suddenly shot around twenty feet off to one side.
“No, this was no mage’s Blink! This was something else, but what?” Octius smiled coyly and headed towards me. “We have the unique opportunity to put this question to Scyth himself!”
The master of ceremonies moved through the hall on a disc that couldn’t be anti-gravitational — science hadn’t yet reached such heights, — but outwardly it looked close enough; no propellers or jets, just a flat silver disc around three feet across, hovering just above the floor. Another new invention from Snowstorm that hadn’t yet reached the market.
The music faded, the voices and whispers of the contestants quietened. They were all waiting for my explanation. Octius flew closer, gave me a high-five, quietly congratulated me on my clever play and then turned back to the hall:
“My dear friends, I am pleased to present to you a sensation of the Demonic Games! Herald Scyth, also known as Alex Sheppard! A man twice chosen by the audience as the worst player of the day! By now, anyone else would have been ejected from the Games as if catapulted, but not Scyth! Instead, not only has he sent home ten of his fellow contestants, he did it paralyzed! This boy has really stirred the pot today! Whatever you say about him, you can’t deny he has spirit! You have the floor, Alex! Will you share what you’ve done with your competitors and the audience? Can you stop time? Bend space? What powers do you wield?”
“You know the answer, Mr. Octius,” I smiled. I liked the master of the Games, who was the same every year and only got more popular for it.
“Oh sure, I know it!” he said, smiling back at the cameras. “But I don’t have the right to reveal your secret. That’s up to you!”
“Then I prefer to leave my competitors in the dark. But… Mr. Octius! I want to say something else!”
Guy Barron, already turning around to return to the stage, stopped.
“Yes, Alex?”
“Mom, dad!” I blurted out quickly. “I love you lots! I’m doing fine, don’t worry!”
“Anything else?”
“Ed, Hung, say hi to everyone from me. And especially to Ir…” I closed my mouth quickly, stopping short of naming Irita. “To you know who. Tell her I miss her.”
“Aww…” Octius said, touched. “How adorable!”
The gamesmaster leaned down and ruffled my hair, then headed back to the stage, but stopped en route:
“Wait! ‘Ir’? I remind our viewers that in this hall sits Alex’s ex-girlfriend, Melissa Schafer.” Octius looked her way and spoke to her. “Any comment, Tissa?”
A close-up of her face appeared on the holocube. Tissa nodded, smiling.
“I think I’ll show my answer instead of tell it, Mr. Octius…” she said, then leaned over and kissed Malik.
They’re both losing their Sleeper priest rank! I thought, grinding my teeth, but my comm interrupted my fantasies of vengeance with a message from Kerry — a thumbs-up and a text: Maybe now they’ll see you as a normal teenager, and not a freak and a monster?
Next Octius spoke about the groups that had formed and made the most progress. The raid led by titan Quetzal from Excommunicado and orc Marcus from Warsong was in the lead. Both had been gladiators, both in the final of the solo Arena. Quetzal won, but it seemed Marcus never took the defeat personally, and they joined forces for the Demonic Games. Which was perfectly understandable; both clans were in the Alliance of Preventers.
This group included my victims Yermak, Naiterio, Perant and Enigma, plus around twenty other strong contestants.
The group of the elf woman Destiny was second on the leaderboard. That surprised me. I underestimated the connections and capabilities of the woman from Children of Kratos. The silver ranger had forty people, and they were strong and experienced players. The ones I knew included the shapeshifter magician Messiah and the lopher torturer Urkish.
A joint group made up of Modus, the Travelers and the White Amazons numbered only twelve. They had been in second place at the start of the day, but dropped in levels by dying twice at the hands of fighters from Destiny and Quetzal’s groups.
Of the bosses and mobs, the ones that surprised me the most were the gwortlings, flying menaces as if woven from writhing darkness, legless, but with two pairs of arms and a horned head crowned with a single gleaming red eye. The level 19 monsters seemed weak to me at first, but later I realized why Quetzal and Marcus’s raid got stuck at that floor.
They defeated the boss easily, but the difficulty began when the raid went to clear the instance. The mobs’ aura of terror more than made up for their fragility. One gwortling scared any players nearby for a second, and was then usually killed. But the more mobs gathered together, the more powerful their aura became. They called to their kin with piercing bat-like cries, and at some point, the tide turned on the raid.
Under the overwhelming collective aura of terror, Quetzal’s people fell apart, curling up on the floor, covering their faces and screaming. And then it turned out that the gwortlings had bite as well as bark: tooth-filled maws and sharp blades as claws. And they moved
so fast they turned into a blur amid spraying fountains of blood and scraps of flesh as the players screamed. A minute and Marcus the orc was torn to shreds, only his skeleton remaining.
Quetzal lasted the longest. He recovered from the terror and tried to leave, gwortlings hanging off him. Blood flowed out of him as if from a faucet while he worked his massive arms to try and sweep away the mobs like mosquitos, but there were too many of them. He was like a bear in piranha-infested waters. Right by the exit, he fell to one knee, held himself up with a fist, then… collapsed, crushing dozens of gwortlings with a squelch. The other beasts continued their feast.
“And that’s a wipe,” Octius said in satisfaction. “You all just witnessed the death of a titan! But, as we will soon see, Quetzal and Marcus learned from this grievous error…”
The raid returned, forced out another group that had begun tentatively probing the floor — and violently at that, sending them to the graveyard, — and started clearing it more carefully. There the raid stayed until the end of the day.
“Clearly, Quetzal and Marcus decided not to risk taking their group onto floor 21 after they all lost a level! And remember, beautiful Destiny’s group occupied and conquered floor 20. Miss Windsor, any comments on your success for our viewers?”
The woman declined to comment, and Octius moved to the final part of his summary. He told us how Meister and Roman’s raid was doing, suggested we applaud the viewers’ sense of justice in giving another chance to Michelle the dryad after she died on the first day, and showed us the highlight of the day for that group: a curse that the troll Roman inflicted on me.
“Hope you die!” the troll shouted as he sent me on my three-minute fall into the abyss.
The winner of the Darant Philosophy Tournament was only too pleased to comment on his moment of triumph:
“As you know, we cursers can set whichever voice commands we like. ‘Hope you die!’ activates a curse that disables the enemy’s skills.”
“Wow!” Octius said, looking impressed. “Roman, your class is rarely encountered and not particularly popular due to its penalty against combat abilities. What you’ve just told us is sure to amuse our viewers. Want to share some other voice commands? Maybe something…” The gamesmaster twirled a finger in the air. “Catchier!”
“Of course!” Roman beamed. “I know a curser girl from the Russian district who tells her victims to eat a… um, she refers to a certain human organ.”
Octius turned around and looked at his behind, then leaned down, adjusted his trousers and asked in surprise:
“Eat a human organ..?”
“Yeah, kind of! She says, ‘go eat a’ — and then names the organ.”
“Which organ is it?”
“I can’t say,” Roman said, blushing. “There are kids watching.”
“Then tell me, which curse are these words linked to? I admit, you’ve intrigued me!”
“The curse is called Suicide. The victim starts running at full speed into the nearest wall.”
“Whatever for?” the gamesmaster asked in even greater surprise.
“So they hit the wall at full speed…”
Maybe because of this performance, Roman was named the best player of the day. After studying the results of the viewers’ vote, Octius chuckled and glanced at me. I filled with apprehension.
“To be honest, the results of the vote have me at a loss,” Octius said. “No, I’m not referring to Roman. That has happened several times in my memory — unable to choose between leading players, the viewers simply pick someone memorable. Clearly, by almost sending Scyth home, Roman has thus found his way into the viewers’ hearts. But, speaking of Scyth, can we really call his performance boring?” He shook his head. “I do not understand it! Yes, my dear contestants, the worst player of the day, for the third day running, is Herald Scyth!”
I expected as much, but I hoped up to the last moment that the audience vote might be legitimate, because otherwise I had no chance to win: the corporation had enough power to twist facts and hide behind their beloved excuse, ‘it’s all part of the gameplay.’
The mages and the Readers who had fallen victim to Spirit Shackles crowed the loudest, even jumping up from their chairs and telling me they hoped I died in various disgusting ways. They made enough noise to put football fans to shame. The holocube showed twisted faces and insulting gestures directed at me. The rest of the hall reacted less loudly than in the first days.
While Octius wound things up and wished everyone a nice night, I tried to figure out what was going on. Did the viewers really hate me that much? I didn’t believe that. Sure, maybe my performance wasn’t the most exciting — I hadn’t even killed a single mob so far, — but was there really nobody worse?
“At least half the people here had a far less successful day than you,” said a tremulous voice behind me.
Turning my head, I saw Joseph Rosenthal, the jeweler Meister. The old man wasn’t looking at me, but was standing nearby and was definitely talking to me. What, was he reading my thoughts? Or was it all clear enough on my face?
I answered the same way, raising my head to stare at the holocube as it showed the contestant leaderboard:
“Then why am I the worst player again?”
“Because you, my young man, made an impression. Dullness isn’t memorable. If you don’t remember someone, you don’t vote for them.”
Meister fell silent, and when I glanced over, he had already moved away to embrace a black-haired lady of around eighty, her lips painted brightly. Despite her age, she had a figure fit to compete with young models. The comm gave me a hint: Clarissa Giovanni, also known as Laurie the fairy chef. I remembered her; she’d called me a ‘brainless freeloader’ while I registered with the royal scribe Ravencrow. Now she was gushing with admiration for Meister the ‘white knight.’ Clarissa’s hat was so big that when she turned around, she blocked the jeweler’s head from view.
Rising silently, I found Kerry and went with her to the media center. There I answered my share of the journalists’ questions and took part in a couple of streams. The viewers asked my favorite color, what kind of music I listen to, whether I could lend them ‘a little gold…’
The journalists weren’t much more interesting than the viewers, asking what I ate, how I’d slept and whether I was planning to continue the aborted fight against Coover. One flashy-dressed girl even asked me whether I was having an affair with my assistant. I couldn’t resist making fun of her question; I asked her if she wanted to join in and make it a threesome. Why not? Ask dumb questions, get dumb answers. But the trouble was, she agreed and kept following us until the droids ‘neutralized’ her.
Once we were rid of the horny reporter, Kerry suggested we unwind — check out the night club, go to the spa or the gym, or even an intimate relaxation chamber.
“Or we could go socialize, make some friends,” she added, running out of suggestions.
“Are you kidding? Make friends in this viper’s nest? Two guards won’t be enough for that. I’m going to my room.”
There was a lot to think about. I had to check the net too, see what people were saying. It was already obvious that I wouldn’t get far without the viewers’ approval. The more fans I had, the less Snowstorm would be believed. Two days had passed, and I was still at level one! And any death would be my last…
Kerry walked with me to my room. We stopped outside. The security droids rolled up into orbs, took up their positions and cloaked themselves with a camouflage effect.
“Don’t worry,” my assistant said, forcing a cheerful tone. “You can do it, I believe in you!”
“Of course I can!” Even though she was just doing her job, my assistant was the only one keeping me from feeling totally alone. I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. “Good night, and may they never wake…”
I cut off abruptly, realizing what I’d said. Kerry looked at me strangely, nodded:
“Yeah, let’s hope some of the contestants oversleep the Gam
es tomorrow!”
I ignored her strange reply and went into my room.
Opening a bottle of Nuka-Cola, I fell back heavily onto the bed and started to read what people were saying about the Demonic Games online.
The internet was buzzing, with most of the action beneath Ian Mitchell’s material:
Clean up your act, Snowstorm!
How to Lose Trust the Kiran Jackson Way
Ian colorfully described my misadventures, analyzed what motivated the viewers to choose the worst players of the day in previous years of the Demonic Games, and summed it all up by pointing out that even an independent survey among Disgardium Daily viewers showed that I should have been the best player of the day, or at least far from the worst.
At the end, he addressed Kiran Jackson:
Admit it, Mr. Jackson: you messed up. You don’t want the Threat to stay in the Games. That’s obvious. I know from insider sources that Alex Sheppard was sent to the court of the gods a day before the Games started — to an Ordeal! Which, as you know, is usually a one-way ticket to character loss.
The Demonic Games (Disgardium Book #7): LitRPG Series Page 16