The Savage Brawl [Round 5: Battletopia]

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Ziirphael’s message was presumably met with scepticism, after all to the average listener it sounded like a preposterous hoax. Maybe one or two listeners who had noticed that something was off in their quiet town as of late might have took it seriously, but they were most definitely the exception. Ziirphael had nothing more to say and he clicked off the radio transmitter and left the studio. He was aware of the implications of his message; that he was looking for some kind of a reaction from the people of this sleepy town, whether that reaction was to try to escape and prevail, to unite against this threat to their homes, or to just riot. In truth he did not care. He had only bothered to inform the denizens of this place that their doom was at hand in case it pissed The Cultivator off; this was all the motivation he needed. He walked back to the office in which he had killed the girl; an open area with a window looking out onto the street below, a whole mess of untidy desks, a shattered mirror and a set of speakers built into the wall that were now broadcasting nothing but silence since the station had been took off air. The room was definitely empty, save for the girl’s corpse, and yet something was off. Something had changed that Ziir could not quite place his finger on, something familiar. Suddenly as if designed to break his concentration he could hear the approaching wailing of a siren. Putting aside any momentary misgivings about the room he went to work daubing himself with a series of runes, designed to give him a strong yet lightweight carapace of bone and sinew, and to alter his hands into talons sculpted of nail and bone. As his body reshaped itself, and the sirens drew closer, Ziirphael grabbed hold of the nearest wall, his hands digging into the plaster with pain. This was absurd; alterations to his physical form should not be this painful. It made sense at the beginning of the battle when he was so out of practice, but now… perhaps it was this body. He had never been in one body for so long, it would make sense that they were not built to survive the stresses of continual reconstruction. If that was true, if this body was sooner or later going to snap like a twig and be beyond repair, then he had to hold off on the alterations as much as he could before he confronted the Cultivator. Ziirphael’s mind was gone for a moment, so consumed with the pain that he felt that he did not hear the door open and a pair of paramedics come rushing into the building. When he resurfaced, the patch of wall he had been holding reduced to nothing but dust, he turned to face the paramedics who were stood in the doorway to the office, their jaws agape. They began to slowly back away, back towards the entrance when Ziirphael leapt. He barrelled towards them, casually grabbing and discarding the closest of the paramedics as though he were nothing more than a doll. The second paramedic broke into a sprint and bought himself a little time discarding a bag of medical equipment at Ziirphael’s face, and he almost made it outside before Ziirphael reached him, his sharp claws ripping bloody chunks out of the man’s back. It was almost like old times, if he hadn’t had that nagging knowledge that there was a problem that needed dealing with promptly. He left the bodies as they were and was about to see if there was a back way out of the building when something clicked.

Ziirphael had lived for a very long time. In the beginning a single murder had been enough, it was so much fun to watch the life drain from a person, watch them go empty and still as they slowly slipped away. Some of his best memories were of only a single kill. But as any addict will tell you eventually one is not enough. At some point Ziirphael realised he had to kill entire communities, sink entire ships or kill entire armies before it became fun again. And at some point even this was not enough. The dealing of death lost its appeal, and he found he was just going through the motions, without deriving any satisfaction from his actions. So he stopped. He took a new body and he endeavoured to find another source of enjoyment in the world. He got a job working in some office or other, in a way he enjoyed this for a while, the novelty of it; the idea of a god of death photocopying files and hanging out with people who were just ordinary people. His coworkers, ordinary boring humans, found their jobs dull, which is to say nothing of how enormously soul-crushingly tedious Ziirphael found it when the novelty wore off. Was this how most humans chose to waste their lives, stuck behind desks filing reports about nothing that would never be read by anyone; mindless busywork for the drones. He drifted for a while, tried some of the things humans use to make their lives bearable; drink, drugs, sex. Each one just demonstrated to him how utterly pointless existence was. He had lived for millennia and what had he achieved? Nothing except keep himself amused for a while, and worse while humans would eventually die and be removed from their misery he was stuck with it forever. If he had had a life to lose back then he would have taken it, but the option was not given to him. In a house that his body had once called home Ziirphael waited, perhaps he was waiting for something interesting to happen or perhaps he was just waiting for the heat death of the universe when he would hopefully be destroyed along with it. The house had fallen into disarray, dust covered every surface and Ziir made no effort to sustain this body. It was almost as still as the grave, until one day a tinkling of glass from the living room. Ziirphael hauled himself upright and halfheartedly went to investigate. The mirror had been broken, but there was no sign of the person who had broken it, no sign in fact that anyone had even been in the room for months, except… a note pinned to the centre of the mirror’s broken frame. Ziirphael took it, his interest piqued for the first time in a long time. The paper was a yellowing sheet of notepaper and the message upon it had been typed via an old typewriter. It read: ‘You do not know me. Consider me a benefactor. In time I can provide you what you want, whether that is a source of amusement or a cessation of your existence. If you want in just say yes.’ This note was too good to be true, the promise of either of the things he wanted the most, things which no longer existed for him. How could such an offer even be possible? Who had left it here? How had they left it here? How had they known what he wanted? This note was clearly too good to be true, but what was to be lost in accepting it? Ziirphael had nothing that he could lose. “Yes.” He said aloud to the empty room. “I want in.”

Ziirphael rushed back into the office and over to the shattered mirror. It had not been shattered before his announcement, of that he was now sure. As he approached it he noticed a yellowing piece of notepaper pinned to the frame. In the same thick typeface from the same typewriter the note read: ‘Do not attempt to kill The Cultivator. The lich’s magic will not be sufficient. You will fail and I refuse to lose another of my investments.’ Ziirphael had all but forgotten the note he had received on that dull and dreary day, it had been four years since and the promises therein had been seemingly unfulfilled. The only reasons that it was at all memorable were the mysterious nature of the note, and the spectacular sense of disappointment that followed it. Now another note shows up offering tactical advice in a battle four years hence. Was this what his ‘benefactor’ had meant? Was this battle what he had agreed to all that time ago. Was this The Cultivator playing some kind of unfathomable mind game with him? It would explain why the latest note advised against killing her. But no, this was not her; leaving cryptic notes and shattered mirrors was all a bit mysterious and standoffish, not exactly The Cultivator’s style. Ziirphael was getting angry again. He was being manipulated, he was sure of it, and if there was one thing he hated it was being manipulated. It was the sole reason he had not peacefully gone to his death now that he had the opportunity. Though he would never forgive The Cultivator, the contempt he felt for his manipulator, his benefactor, was monumental. He responded to the message in the way he knew best, by disobeying it and seeking Konka Rar.

It did not occur to him that this might have been what his benefactor wanted all along.