Brute Force: Chapter 5

Green light flashed over the doors in a rippling sheet of energy. I skidded to a halt, sliding over the damp stones to avoid crashing into the barrier, and dropped the girl to the ground. She stumbled and fell, but swung back to bring her fists up at me.

"Wait here!" I reared onto my hind legs and signed to her in ASL.

That, she had not expected. Her eyes widened in shock as I put my feet back down, turned, and charged into the fray.

The temple was now complete and total chaos. The stag and the sabertooth were battling each other to the death, horns and fangs locked in a raging inferno that had killed at least three of the panicking Hell Pigs, who were in turn butchering each other. Rooster was screaming at the Hyena Boys, Clive was screaming at his Pyromaw – Blaze – a few of the Reavers were screaming at me, and the rest were screaming at the 30-foot tall, four-armed zombie gorilla that had spawned into the middle of the bloodbath. Vanara the Glutton, or whatever the fuck his name was, grabbed the nearest Hell Pig and ripped him in half like a Christmas bon-bon.

I didn't go straight for the boss, because I wasn’t fucking stupid. No, I went for the sensible target. The easy target: the flaming sabertooth. It was taking damage from the stag I’d freed and was looking worse off than the fiery deer fucking him up, torn to shreds by the Runtina’s scorching antlers. I was betting that it was also not expecting me to launch myself across the room onto its back.

"BLAZE! NO! WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?!" Clive shrieked over the racket.

Blaze roared, breaking away from the stag and spinning as I landed on it and clung on with all limbs, riding it like a bronco. I snapped my jaws down around its thick throat, burying my teeth through the stinking fur and deep into its flesh. The stag spotted the opening: it bellowed, spun around, and donkey-kicked the cat right in the jaws. The blow snapped its head back and shattered one of its fangs at the base.

Blaze yowled in agony, then burst into flames. They engulfed me with searing pain: the first real pain I'd felt since arriving in this hellhole. On instinct, I arched my tentacles up and drove them into the cat's ribs from either side.

[Soul Drain activated.]

Time slowed to a crawl, and the world lost color and focus as a menu appeared in front of me.

Available Pyromaw Abilties:

Rend: Powerful claw attack that deals x2 Body damage.

Blast Shield: Wreath yourself in flames, dealing Fire damage to attackers.

Fireball: Expel a blast of fire that deals Fire damage.

After a moment of indecisive panic, I narrowed my eyes and focused. “Blast Shield.”

[You gain Blast shield. You drain 55 points of Strength. You regain 200 HP.]

[You deal 740 damage.]

As time sped up again, the Pyromaw chomped one free tentacle, its remaining saber tooth puncturing my dermal armor and piercing into flesh. I held on anyway, shoving the bladed ends of my prehensile arms deep into the creature's torso, piercing muscle, then organs. The cat stumbled to its chest, the flames guttering, muscles sagging. Clive screamed in sympathetic agony, clutching his chest.

[You have conquered your rivals: Clive Magazine and Blaze]

[You gain 273 exp. You are Level 10.]

The stag bellowed, swinging its burning crown of antlers in the direction of Vanara, who was running out of Hell Pigs to eat. I pulled my appendages out of the dead Pyromaw, and whirled around to face destiny.

Vanara beat its chest with two arms and spread the other two like a wrestler, circling us as we squared off with it. The Runtina pawed at the ground, lowering his head in challenge, while I began to pad to the right. As I focused on Vanara, an HP bar filled at the bottom of my HUD.

[HP: 46720/50000]

I glanced at my own HP. It was now just over 5000.

"Flank it!" I thought, in the desperate hope the stag could somehow understand me. Then, without waiting, I charged to the side.

Vanara swung around the room with wild haymaker blows, smashing the altar in half and flinging chunks of obsidian into the air. I skidded on pure reflex, almost running right into its fist as one slammed it down in front of me. Another fist came at me from my right. I reared up with the instincts of a human fighter, balling my front claws, and deflected the blow away before ducking in under its guard. The shock of the blow numbed my arm and shaved 500 HP off my bar, but I nailed it with all four tentacles before rolling away. Vanara was big and heavy; I was light and nimble, and I danced around it, stabbing every chance I got.

[Vanara HP: 42910/50000]

The stag finally caught on: he bounded to the other side, threw his head up, and launched a barrage of flaming missiles from his antlers that burst against the ape's back. The boss's HP dropped another 700 points. Vanara roared, twisting from the waist to try and smash the deer-like Legion into the ground, but the Runtina was already out of arm's reach. I launched myself at the boss like a velociraptor, claws and teeth out. I hit him and hung on, pulling mouthfuls of rotten flesh and stinking fur from his ribs until he backhanded me and sent me flying into the nearest wall. I hit the stone with a crunch and kissed 440 HP goodbye as I bounced awkwardly to the ground.

Oh boy.

“Lord have mercy.” Clive was barely eight feet from me, his crossbow clutched in white-knuckled hands. His thin face was scarlet with rage. "The motherfucking Reaper. You were real after all."

I gaped my jaws at him in a toothy smile, and while he was distracted by the sight of my teeth, one of my punch puds darted forward and smacked the weapon from his hands. I charged at him, snapping and snarling. He stumbled away and hit the wall, throwing his hands up in front of his face. I barely nipped one of his palms, just before I launched sidewards into the air and back into the fight.

My battle-buddy was being pushed back toward the girl, who was clinging to one of the pillars, paralyzed by shock. The stag put himself between her and Vanara, panting from pain and stress. His hooves and horns were white-hot, smoking and sparking as he tapped some core of inner strength and ignited himself once more. The gorilla raised his fists, and by the way the stag wasn't running, I knew that for some reason, he was about to lay his life down for this woman.

I bounded like a greyhound and leaped onto Vanara's back, raking the flesh down his spine. He stopped trying to crush my buddy and roared, twisting unnaturally at the waist. As he reached around, I caught his arm with two tentacles. The needles at the end shot out and imbedded themselves into the monster's limb, anchoring me as the gorilla bellowed and tore me from his back. I glimpsed filthy yellow fangs, and began kicking his face with my back feet as I snapped the other pair of prehensile limbs around his forearm, torqued his wrist, and pulled down against the joint as hard as I could.

Vanara howled as his elbow snapped with a gristly wet sound, and then blew apart. His HP dropped by a full thousand points. Other hands grasped my back: I snarled, and flexed my stolen ability, Inferno Shield. Flames roared out from my body, just as they had for the sabertooth. The fire seared the stinking fur off Vanara’s arms and caused his hands to spasm with agony. The ape dropped me, and I discovered something new about my body, then: not only were my tentacles strong enough to easily hold my body-weight, they could also propel me forward. I shoved off his arm into the air, caught the side of his head with my foreclaws, and twisted his neck with all the vicious strength in my body.

[You deal a mortal blow.]

[Vanara HP: 25110/50000]

Vanara’s head snapped around, cracking with a dull, wet sound. His motions became jerky and uncoordinated, and he crashed forward onto the remains of the altar. But he wasn't dead: the motherfucker was reaching for his own head, twisting it back into position.

Before he could finish, the stag threw his antlers up and lashed out with flaming whips of raw energy. They slashed into and sliced the huge undead creature, taking its injured arm off at the shoulder and another hand at the wrist, practically decapitating it with a hiss of foul smoke and the stench of burning hair. It was apparently an extreme Mortal Blow. The boss's HP suddenly dropped to zero, and it collapsed into the puddle of blood and guts that surrounded the altar.

The stag stamped his sparking hooves viciously at Clive and the few other surviving Hell Pigs huddled against the other side of the chamber, then moaned and turned back to the trembling girl. Panting, flanks heaving, I fell back, only to stop when a flash of white caught the corner of my eye. I turned my head to see the albino girl frantically signing. Not at the Legion, who didn’t seem to understand what she was saying – she was signing at me.

"Watch out!" She stabbed two fingers toward me, eyes wide and white in her face. "Vanara! It's not finished!"

I spun around just in time to see Vanara grasp the top of its head and rotate it back into place, gluing the severed halves of its neck with sickly green light. Then it roared: a guttural, hollow sound that probably would have made me shit myself if I'd still been human. The Runtina whirled back, eyes widening as Vanara lurched to its feet, picked up the broken altar, and threw the two halves of it: one at me, and one at the stag.

I rolled down and to the side, avoiding the ton of stone that flew past me and crumpled into the barrier sealing the door. The Runtina did not. Instead, he stayed between the path of the rock and the girl, letting out one last burst of power. The rock shattered around him, most of it slagging to magma on contact, but the force of the blow flung the Legion into the air. The girl screamed aloud as his body smashed into the temple pillar she’d used for cover. The pillar stayed up, but the Legion let out a bleating cry of pain and flopped to the ground, senseless.

“Kaya!” She ran to him.

Vanara let out another ear-splitting roar and jumped up to grasp the gap between the walls and roof: the same gap I'd used to get inside the arena. It began to swing around the upper level toward me, using two arms to monkey around, and the third functional arm to rip out and fling huge pieces of stone at me like shuriken. I let out a girly yip and sprung away, dodging and running in the hope the barrage would stop. It didn't. As long as I dodged, Vanara just kept swinging around, slowly filling the temple with rubble.

My stamina was dropping down into the orange already, thanks to all the jumping and leaping I was doing. There was nowhere to hide. I had to attack.

I gathered myself, and charged at one of the pillars, bounding forward and then up. At the apex of the climb, I jumped out, claws outstretched, and collided with the ape's chest. It only had one free arm, but it snapped around me like a vice, crushing me even as I went for the beast's throat. Immense pressure bore down on my spine, and I felt it creak. I gathered Psionic energy into a second Blast Shield, tentacles whipping around its wrist and hauling back. Burned, bleeding, and half-dead, Vanara started taking hella damage. I tore at his neck with my jaws, pulling out fur, skin, and then rotten chunks of meat. My back feet raked, claws pulling through the gorilla's belly. He stopped trying to crush me, and began trying to push me away... then dropped back to the ground, freeing up two of his arms.

The last thing I needed while fighting this thing was for it to have more arms.

"AOE! AOE!" The deaf girl finger-spelled the letters frantically, then ducked behind the pillar.

Sure enough, Vanara - clutching its head in one hand and struggling to hold its guts in with another - clawed at the air as green fire boiled up into its mouth. I bolted back up the pillar, climbing it like a bear scaling a tree, and scuttled up onto the edge of the second floor just as a burst of fetid green energy exploded out in concentric rings across the floor. There was a collective scream from the remaining Hell Pigs as the shockwave rolled through them, obliterating their ranks. The Runtina jerked and thrashed, then fell still.

Dammit.

I sprung out from the wall as the boss finished yodeling, and landed on him as he recovered. My jaws clamped around his skull; I lashed from side to side, ripping the green goo now holding onto his neck. It was stronger than it looked, pulling away like steel cables snapping under great weight. Vanara bellowed, punching my flanks, but I had three more functioning limbs than he did and turned the blows away as, slowly but surely, I ripped his head off a second time and threw it to the ground.

The boss's body spasmed, hands clawing at the air. I jumped back, and had about a split second of smugness before I was snatched out of my leap and crushed against the huge ape's chest. Trapped, I did the only thing I could think to do: I clamped my jaws together, and plunged my sharp, bullet-shaped muzzle into one of the gaping, bloodless wounds on the motherfucker's chest.

My HP began to plummet, 500 points a second. Agony – real pain – swept through my body as I forced my armored head forward toward the monster's sick, slushy heartbeat. Flesh and bone parted, and when I felt the organ tickle my snout, I levered my jaws apart and tore at it with panicked strength. The boss's body shuddered, then tottered in a slow spiral, arms loosing over my creaking spine. With the last of my stamina, I surged forward to grasp his heart in my teeth, then ripped it free in an explosion of dark green slime.

The headless corpse stumbled to its knees, legs twisting, and then collapsed bonelessly to the floor. I dropped to the ground in front of it, spat the heart to the floor, and was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when I was reamed by about a million system messages the HUD had been keeping out of view during combat.

[You have defeated Vanara. You earned a Vanara Award Tribute.]

[You gain 500 EXP. You are Level 14.]

[You have obtained a Mandala: HRIDAYA, The Heart of Earth. Meditate on this Mandala to gain new abilities and learn its meaning.]

[Congratulations: You have passed 1000 viewers. You been granted a Copper Arena Tribute.]

[You have 153 new subscribers. You have two new Patrons.]

[Congratulations: You have exceeded 100 Spectator subscriptions within your first 24 hours. You have been granted a Silver Fame Tribute.]

[Buh_Buh_Bacon has sent you a Bronze Subscriber Tribute.]

[There are still hostiles in the Boss Arena. You must defeat all enemies to exit.]

Tail and puds lashing over my back, I slowly turned to face Clive and the four Hell Pigs still left alive.

"W-Wait!" Clive got to his feet. "Ahh... now look here, Mister Reaper. You seem pretty dang smart, as Brutes go. Maybe we can sort something out? Y-You know? Like gentlemen."

I snorted out a wad of Vanara goo from my grille holes, then pulled my lips all the way back over my fangs with a low, rumbling snarl. All of the Pigs except Clive flinched. His henchmen scrambled for weapons, but Clive waved them back and took a step forward, flashing me a scar-twisted, gap-toothed smile.

“There’s an honest to god human mind in that head of yours, isn’t there?” he said to me. “Look, we somehow got off the wrong foot, but hear me out. We need strong fighters like you, Mister. Real men, men who take what belongs to them.”

I snorted at him, lashing my tentacles around so the points all angled at his head.

“I’m a war leader in the Hell Pigs. I got connections to Sponsoreds, guys who know what’s happening on the outside.” Clive was sweating like a whore in church, but if there was something I could give the guy credit for, he had balls. Most people – like the four guys now cringing back against the wall – would have been at the pants wetting stage already. “People who can talk to you and tell you how you got here. WHY you’re here.”

I narrowed my eyes back. But his words gave me pause.

Clive’s beady eyes took a hopeful glint. “You and me? We’re the same. We woke up here, no fucking idea what’s going on. No idea how we got here or who sent us. Well, I know, now. I got family on the outside who I know are safe thanks to my position here. And it’s not really as bad as it looks, either. No one’s really dying when we niner them. Survival of the Fittest is just a fucked-up fantasy, man. It’s the real world that counts.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of white. The albino girl had scavenged some clothes for herself and was now mostly dressed. Video games being what they were, the female Hell Pigs armor was mysteriously a lot scantier than what the men’s. She'd left the gloves and helmet off, so I could see her hands and facial expressions. Two vital components of sign language.

"You can understand me, right?" She signed, stepping up beside me.

I bought my right paw up, curled it into a fist, and made a knocking motion as I nodded. The sign for 'yes'.

"He’s lying. People who lose all their lives are wiped from the game and deleted, and the AI doesn’t let Sponsored Players tell people about their pasts. This guy is a piece of shit." The woman's hands and expressions had the fluidity and speed only a life-long signer could possess. "You killed his Brute, which means he has his Command Collar back. I don't know how, but he's got a plan to try and replace the collar you’re wearing. And if he does, he'll control you."

Clive glanced at her gestures, uncomprehending. "The hell is this?"

I looked between the pair of them, back and forth.

“I swear I’m not just trying to save my own ass,” the girl insisted. “I know this game as well as he does. He’s lying to you.”

Clive made an insultingly flippant impression of sign language, jangling his fingers together. “Makin’ fun of me, you squid fingered cooze? What are you? A fucking crip or something?”

I didn't have the right anatomy – lips - to reply with the sign for 'okay'. But there were other ways to answer in sign language.

I put my head down and ran straight at Clive before he could react.

"OH YOU STINKIN’-!" Whatever he was about to say was cut off as I took him to the ground and struck him with my upper jaw. With my mouth open, teeth exposed, my jaws worked like a double-edged battleaxe. His scream of agony cut as teeth sheared through hide and flesh. While he gurgled his life onto the stones, I ran down each of the other Hell Pigs, pouncing them like the biggest of pumas. Screams pierced the air as blood sprayed and flesh flew. My new lady friend shrunk back against the remains of the altar, clutching it, but not looking away.

[You have defeated your enemies. You gain 121 EXP.]

[You are Level 15.]

[The Boss Arena will open in 60 seconds.]

Just as well we had a timer - because the Hell Pigs were howling outside the gates. The guys who'd been in here had respawned in the camp, and they were banging on the door to the temple. The grace period was probably to give you enough time to prepare for this exact PVP kill-stealing scenario.

Turning to the girl, I struggled with what to do. I could make the hand gestures for ASL, but I didn’t have a face capable of holding a proper conversation. But I was a Psionic Legion, right? Could I use telepathy?

I concentrated as hard as I could. “We have to get out of here! There’s a way through the roof!”

The girl flinched like I’d slapped her, clutching her head with one hand. She angrily and quickly signed with the other. “OW! WHAT WAS THAT?!”

“Sorry! Too loud.” I reeled back the concentration a bit. “First time communicating with a real live human-person.”

She pawed at her face, grimacing. Then I realized: I was defaulting to speech telepathy. If she’d been born deaf, like my sister, the sounds were jangling around in her head but not making sense. ASL wasn’t just English spoken with the hands. It was its own language, more closely related to French.

I couldn’t remember what I looked like as a human, so I made up a picture of Noodles the Human FBI Agent. Big. Brawny. Nice hands. I tried projecting the image to her, speaking with a ghostly expression and gesture instead of spoken words. “We have to go!”

Understanding dawned on her. Stricken, she pointed back at the body of the stag. “We can’t leave Kaya! They killed Sam… Kaya was her Legion. if they take him, they’ll collar him.”

I was about to tell her that he was already an ex-Runtina when the great creature gave a spasmodic kick of its front legs, then lifted its antlered head from the floor. When he saw the pair of us, he moaned and lurched up onto his knees.

“Hey, buddy!” I tried pacing around, honking to get his attention. The deer shook his head, eyes unfocused. They were full of grief and terror, but he didn’t respond to my mental urging. However, he knew the girl, orienting on her as she ran over and helped him to rise. With her help, he clambered unsteadily to his feet.

“I’m sorry, Kaya.” Sam voiced aloud in English. She was crying now, tears washing thin trails through the dirt and blood on her face. “They took all my heals, my weapons… everything. Sam’s dead. I could try collaring you? We can… we can try and get out of here. We have to, we… I…”

Kaya looked to the shuddering door, nostrils flaring. Then he looked to the girl with eyes dulled by pain. Then he turned to me. For several seconds, his gaze bore into me. There were no words – but I understood.

“Got it, chief.” I gave him a sharp nod, then turned my head to the girl. “Come on. We’re out of here.”

“I… but we can’t just leave him!” Sam protested. “They’ll kill him! Or collar him!”

“We don’t have a choice. He’s on his last legs, he can’t climb the walls, and there’s no way out of here for him except out those gates.” I went down to all fours and jabbed toward my back with one tentacle. Emphatically.

Moaning with frustration, the girl climbed my elbow and pulled herself onto my back. “Stay alive, Kaya. I’ll find you one day. I’ll free you. I promise.”

The stag made no sign of understanding, staring at the rocking temple gate. The girl grasped two tentacles at the base, and I curled one around her back to hold her in her seat. I sprung away, scaling the nearest pillar until we reached the opening along the roof. I vaulted through, keeping my passenger low to my back, and spared one last look at Kaya. He had his feet planted and his shoulders set, facing the door with the murderous intensity of a man with one pure, unwavering desire: to kill as many motherfucking Hell Pigs as he could before he died.

“Godspeed,” I thought, and bounded out into the night.