The Relentless Slaughter [Round 3: Tormentorland]

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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It was a lot to take in at once. Whenever anyone was taken to be part of a Grand Battle there was inevitably a period of shock as they attempted to process this information and accept their new situation. However for most the nature of the competition was presented to them in a manner that was clear and unequivocal. The sudden interruption of their lives and the subsequent interaction with a semi-omniscient being who clearly and calmly explained what was going on and what you were expected to do with the seven strangers who were paralysed alongside you; it was pretty difficult to dispute the reality of that. To be informed of the same information through another method; say through the slightly dodgy sign language of a half demon half crab, it seemed far less grounded in reality. The nature of his predicament delivered thusly seemed ridiculous, but then again the situation he found himself in seemed pretty ridiculous no matter which way he tried to explain it.

From his vantage in the ruin of an old building he had a good view of a rocky slope leading down to the ruins of a street; it was along this street the ghastly procession of threatening fish people had marched out. The street, like everything in this ruined city, was shattered and through the cracks grew a multitude of plants, most of which Martin could not put a name to. For a moment he watched as Samael picked his way down the slope. Martin decided as he watched the crabman making tentative progress down a potentially treacherous terrain that there had to be something to what he had said; he had after all known who he was and of his malfunction. It was a large leap of faith to take based on the word of someone he had just met, but he didn’t see that he had a lot of choice. Pushing aside any lingering doubts Martin swam after him.

“Assuming that this battle to the death stuff if something I’m willing to buy, what are we doing?” Martin asked. “Are we actively participating? I mean are we at this moment heading off to find the other… ummm… contestants… and kill them before they can do the same to us? I mean that makes sense, why would you even want to enter a battle to the death if you wanted to do otherwise? But if so why not just kill me while you had the opportunity, why clue me in on what is going on here?” Martin hung back as Samael scuttled onto the overgrown street. From here it was obvious where the fish people had come from; down the street there was a sudden outcrop of rock, and at its base the jagged mouth of a cave. It was perhaps the only true shelter Martin had seen so far in this wreck of a town, though it looked a little too dark and a little too ominous to really be appealing as such.

Nobody is here by choice.

“Oh.” Martin said. Samael used his claws to push the foliage, what Martin had decided to think of as overgrown seaweed, out of his path, as he began to make his way down the street, towards the foreboding cave. Martin swam lazily after him, easily keeping up with the demon. Martin was thoughtfully silent for a while and when he did speak again he did so with resolve in his voice. “At the first opportunity we all team up and take down this Tormentor character.” He said. “We force him to reupload us to our original bodies and then turn him in to the authorities.”

Samael stopped for a second and stared at the well-intentioned shark man who didn’t quite get the mess that he was in. Though he could probably stand here and attempt to clumsily articulate just how dangerous the Tormentor was, and just how thoroughly screwed they all were, he could not see what would be gained. Instead he signed ‘Good plan Martin’ and scuttled onwards. Martin was more or less silent until they reached the ominous cave mouth.

“Are you one hundred percent certain we want to go in there?” Martin asked nervously. “I’m not particularly sure that any place in this entire sunken city could really be called safe, but this is perhaps the one place it is possible to absolutely certain that something nasty is waiting in there.” Samael evidently had already made his mind up. He scuttled onwards into the darkness, and Martin reluctantly followed him. Martin followed the clacking of Samael’s spindly legs and the feel of the wall through the darkness. The passage was just wide enough to admit the pair, and it seemed to twist this way and that, but always sloping downwards. “I really don’t like this.” Martin muttered to himself. Samael clicked and clacked and it took Martin a minute to realise that this was not just the sound of his movement, but a message.

‘shush’

He couldn’t argue with that, at least not without fear of waking up whatever horrible monster lurked at the bottom of this passageway, and Martin was pretty sure that there was one. Slowly his eyes began to adjust to the darkness and he could make out the winding passage that was leading them down, down, constantly down. Carved into the stone walls he could make out jagged symbols which for some reason he couldn’t articulate made him feel uneasy; as though someone was tying knots in the pit of his stomach.

“I’m getting out of here.” Martin whispered. “And I suggest that you do too Amsamael.”

‘wait’

Martin turned and swam back the way they had came, intent upon fleeing what whatever abomination lurked at the depths of this claustrophobic passage. However, upon rounding the last bend in the twisting corridor, he found himself face to scaly face with a group of the same dour faced fish people that he and Samael had watched before. Before Martin knew what was going on he had been grabbed by a person who was half octopus and was being restrained. The leader of the group; an unpleasant cross between a human and an eel regarded him critically, smiling with a mouth full of jaggedy teeth.

“If I am not mistaken, I would say that we have caught one of Carcharodon’s Brotherhood of the Burning Fin.” The eel person paused, as if wanting to see Martin’s reaction to this. His expression was one of confusion, he’d never heard of the brotherhood, but that did not necessarily mean that, at some point in this wretched battle to the death, he had not thrown his lot in with them. “We shall see what the Great Mother says about this.” The eel seemed to derive a great deal of satisfaction from this idea. Without another word they resumed their journey down the twisting passage.