Monan smiled as the boy, Nrv, watched the pit with a giddy excitement. He was almost salivating through his robotic mask. The crowd around the pit reformed, but with half the energy as before. The arrival of their new master clearly made them anxious, but they still watched on with a morbid curiosity.

  The seething in T’balt’s body had slowed to the rhythm of steady breaths. The black smoke surrounded him, holding back the spark of flame.

  Chosa peeked up at Monan, who nodded in approval. Suddenly, something grew from her neck like a black, snaky fungus. As it grew, it wrapped around her torso like a shirt. The head of the thing popped out near her shoulder, eyeing T’balt with a single yellow eye.

  “You like it, Tibby? It's living armor… I call him Romeo,” she said.

  T’balt didn’t care to analyze it. He was done being taunted.

  He charged at her full speed. She pushed the wind at him, forcing him back. Then she swung the scythe chain in large circles to cut off his movement. T’balt blocked the incoming metal blade with his gauntlets and dove in for a hard punch, no longer holding back.

  But that living armor, it grew an extra limb, grabbing his attack even though Chosa clearly didn’t react to it in time. The creature stared at him, its pupil shaking violently. Chosa retracted the scythe, and its trajectory nearly took him at the neck. He ducked and retreated, tearing the limb from the living armor. As soon as he did, it turned to black slime and plopped to the floor.

  Chosa petted the creature as it pulsated across her body like it was moving its organs around inside of itself. It was alive. Another demon, making the woman he loved look like a grotesque monster herself. The thing was protecting her, worse than actual armor, because it operated independently of her, which meant it would protect all her blind spots.It was going to be a problem.

  She pushed herself forward with the wind, causing the scythe to spin violently around her. Her whole body became a shuriken. He tried to move away, but the wind tunnel pulled him in. He blocked the blade only to be kicked hard in the jaw in the next moment.

  He stumbled and ran to get some distance. His speed loot allowed him to circle her in seconds, but when he tried to attack from behind, the living armor caught him once again. This time, the back of it became a disgusting drooling mouth, using its tongue to pull T’balt in. It was trying to swallow his hand, gauntlet and all.

  T’balt punched at it with his free hand, forcing its slimy tongue off him. The impact propelled Chosa back but didn’t seem to do any actual damage to her.

  If things dragged out for much longer, this wasn’t going to end well. His overload wasn’t getting better. In fact, he could feel the skin in his hands cracking, almost like it was disintegrating.

  He heard Monan clapping. “Attaboy, T. Show her whose boss. I think we could use some snacks up here, don’t you think, Nrv.”

  “Depends on what kind,” Nrv said.

  “You wanna take a guess at what kind I’m into?”

  “I don’t know…Pretzels?”

  “Really? I fucking hate pretzels.”

  The fight spilled outside the pit as a wind plume chucked T’balt into the air. Another forced him into the ceiling of the basement.

  Chosa launched herself at him with a vicious thrust kick that ended up sending him up a floor and into the lobby, where the other Nrv members waited for the situation downstairs to end—Only to be nearly trampled by the fight anyway.

  Chosa sent the scythe around with reckless abandon, not caring who got in the way of the swing. The end destination was always T’balt. He pushed his way around the lobby, using the building’s columns as cover. But with the wind to her advantage, she was able to swerve the scythe mid-trajectory.

  He had to punch it away and speed off to give himself a moment to breathe. He ran through the arcade as Chosa exploded in behind him. He used the lanes of the games to cover his attack on her legs, where the armor wasn’t, but even then, it created a limb that tried to swallow him again. He pushed off the ground to change his direction.

  He was fleeing, on the defensive, trying to think of how to fight her. Machines were broken by her cutting wind, coins and prizes flying. He ducked into a stairwell where a spiraling staircase led up 40 floors.

  Chosa slid in with the scythe, leading her. The blade cracked the wall next to him. With nowhere else to go, T’balt ran up the stairs, zipping around in circles at blinding speed, but he found himself being chased by the deadly edge of the scythe.

  Chosa had created a vacuum up in the middle of the circulating staircase, which carried her up the middle, spinning her and the chain through each level. T’balt was forced to pick up his speed to max level to keep it from catching his back.

  10 flights, 20, 30, 40 flights of stairs, he ran in about a minute. But still, the loot didn’t make him immune to exhaustion. When he got to the top, he dove onto the floor level to escape Chosa’s wrath.

  He never expected her to be this capable a fighter. But maybe it was that specific loot combination. Wind, scythe, and living armor. It was almost perfectly made to deal with T’balt’s current setup.

  Chosa was pursuing him down the long corridors of the hotel. It was a tighter space than before. So that meant her only option was a frontal attack.

  He braced himself as the scythe shot at him like an arrow. He used his gauntlets to catch it and yank her towards him. He was taking this one from Cannon.

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  “Cannon buster!” As Chosa flew towards him against her will, he reared for a stiff forearm that sent her careening through the hotel wall and crashing into the bedroom.

  She landed flat on the bed, accompanied by exploded drywall. When T’balt jumped at her, she pushed wind, blowing herself out of the way… And directly out of the window.

  Confused, thinking she had just accidentally sent herself to the grave, T’balt leapt to look out the window. But she had nailed the scythe into the wall of the hotel and was using the chain to swing around the entire building like it was a merry-go-round.

  She crashed through a window on the other end of the hall, rolling to a stop. When T’balt attempted to meet her there, she funneled all of her wind through the corridor, forcing him to stand his ground or be blown over.

  It was then that he realized that with his speed, he could fight through the wind. Be faster than the wind, overpower it. And so he charged his way slowly through the wind tunnel.

  Chosa realized the wind was ineffective. But the moment she let up, T’balt was able to use his full speed. He was directly on top of her then, but instead of grabbing her, he grabbed at the eyeball of the living armor, trying to tear it from her body. It fought him, sticking to Chosa like it had been glued to her.

  Chosa yanked on the chain of her scythe, and it pierced him in the back, barely missing his spine. But T’balt’s overload had almost numbed the pain. He felt it, but it wasn’t the blood-curdling agony it should’ve been. Either that or he had sunk into a feral beast, unable to be put down.

  “What are you..” She struggled with him, but he focused on the armor. He bit down, smoke exhaling from his lungs, and he choked its eye with both his hands, the flame loot almost unconsciously activating in his hands. The body of the creature quickly sparked into a fire. Chosa screamed.

  The fire weakened the living armor. Just enough that he could rip it off of her, leaving her defenseless.

  The thing started squirming around in his hands like the vermin it was. He pushed more flames to his hands, and it lit like a bonfire. To him, that was nothing more than what the demon deserved in his mind. After a moment, Romeo turned to ashes in his hand.

  He was possessed, his mind blank, and his mind nearly whited out. He was focused only on ending things. When Chosa saw the look in his eye, she saw death, and it made her cower.

  That stopped him. For a moment, he saw Chosa again. Not the evil, wicked one he’d come to know, but his Chosa. They had had the same face, and he discovered he still didn’t have the heart to hurt her.

  But the thing with wicked people is that if you show them a moment of weakness, they will pounce like a hungry dog. She kicked him hard in the chest, and T’balt flew back through the bedroom wall, landing flat on a once-clean white hotel bed.

  He coughed up bile, trying to catch himself from passing out from the blow. She then hammered down the scythe on his leg, piercing fully through it. “Ahh!” he shrieked.

  She yanked it out and mounted him, ready to drive a fatal blow with her own war scream. On instinct, he punched the scythe out of her hand. They scrambled, beating the living shit out of each other, soaking the bed in red from both of their faces.

  But then Chosa was able to grab her scythe and drive the blade deep through T’balt’s hand, trapping it in the springs of the bed.

  “Aghh!!”

  “Ahhhhh!” She wrapped the chain around his neck and squeezed with everything she had. T’balt’s face was flushing with blood as he felt his windpipe begin to pop. He was fading, looking into darkness—Into Chosa’s eyes, locked in the throes of a brutal lover’s quarrel.

  There were no rules in the apocalypse. One could lie, cheat, steal, kill, and society did not exist to stop them. Everyone would sin their way to victory, justifying it as survival. The human mind eventually left, completely taken over by the animals hidden inside them. The animal only knew three words: eat, survive, kill….

  With the last of his strength, T’balt widened his mouth, letting the flames escape them in a final act of desperation. And all the heat latched onto Chosa’s head, catching her on fire nearly instantaneously.

  She screamed. And those screams continued for what felt like an eternity. She squirmed all over the floor, as T’balt coughed and choked, trying to breathe again. Then, he realized what he had done.

  He had burned her alive, and he would hear her struggling, her bones popping, her skin sizzling, and turning to black crisps. He reached for her in some desperate realization that he needed to save her still. But the scythe was driven into his hand, and he was stuck to the bed.

  It would’ve been too late anyway. She had stopped moving, and the only sound left was that of the flames flickering over her corpse. She was dead. In the most brutal way, he could’ve done it. The pain. The fear in her eyes, he could see it all. It was no different than the day Monan had let her die. But this time it was T’balt that did it…

  After she faded, the scythe disappeared from his hand, setting him free of the bed.

  He looked upon the dilapidated body as the smoke detectors went off in the building. His mind was blank. “What was all this for?... Right... Yeah.”

  He left her body there. His legs and arms barely worked, but he still dragged himself to the elevator, barely breathing.

  He rode it back to the basement, falling to his knees. His body had given up. The effects of a four-stack of loot had taken most of the control away from him. His body felt like it was fading away. But he had to get his reward.

  He wasn’t going to die until he fought him. That’s what he told himself. So he forced himself to keep breathing until he got what he came here for.

  The elevator door opened, and there he saw Monan standing next to Nrv in the middle of a dozen other graffiti-painted thugs.

  “Whoa, man… You look like hell,” Monan said.

  T’balt was only using one eye, the other too covered in blood to see. His chest was hot and heavy, only one of his lungs working for him. “She’s… de… She’s dead…. You… y.. pro..mised.”

  “Wow. You really did it,” Monan said, crouching in front of him. “That’s cruel, man.” He laughed. “So how did it feel? You’ve got your revenge now. Showed her what for. And you don’t even have to feel bad about it. Cuz by the looks of you, she’ll be alive again in a few minutes.”

  “Fight… Fight me,” T’balt stuttered.

  “Right… That promise was for this life, and I’d feel bad taking on someone so defenseless. But look, as a consolation prize, I’ll give you something better… You wanna know who Nrv is?”

  “Fight me…”

  “Come here, bud.” He beckoned towards the kid.

  T’balt could hardly see him approaching, but he opened his eye as wide as he could while he could. He could see him taking off his mask, revealing a head of short blonde hair. Then Acelin stared at him as he was commanded to by Monan.

  “Right,” Monan said. “You understand now?” He knelt, whispering in T’balt’s ear. “People here. They’re just props. They’re one thing here. Another thing there. If you’re smart enough, you can use them and play with them however you like. Redeemers are the only ones who remember.”

  T’balt then fell to all fours, trying to keep the strength to hold himself up but failing.

  “Alright, you can finish him off, kid.”

  “Sure, Monan. Then can we play that thing you talked about?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Okay.” And Acelin approached T’balt, hands sparking with controlled lightning, ready to end the pitiful sight before him.

  “Please… don’t. We’re… friends… Ace..”

  “Friends? I don’t even know who you are.” Then the boy ended things with one blow.