17

  LEVEL ONE: THE DRAGON STONES

  REMAINING CONTESTANTS: 9,201,009

  TIME UNTIL CULLING: 54 days

  NAME: JACK REN

  CURRENT RANK: 477,341

  When we wake, the storm has broken, leaving behind a clear and peaceful sky. The contrast is staggering, but I’m so grateful that I feel close to tears. I’m more emotional than I should be. Tired, I suppose, and incredibly hungry. We eat a small amount of our rations, nibbling on dried fruit, stale bread, and strips of salted meat. Somewhere in the arena, I’m sure, is actual, proper food; wherever it is, I’m determined to find it. Real, protein rich and delicious meals might actually be able to raise my morale. I’m not sure much else can.

  We return to our cave without saying anything and without incident. Elizabeth and Mary meet us out front. They report that the previous day was uneventful, that they were able to safely shelter in the cave, untouched by the storm. They’re more than a little amazed we’re still alive, and truthfully, so are we.

  We recount what we saw, including not just the massacre at the pass, but the distant sighting of David.

  As expected, everyone is disturbed.

  “He was already a very high level,” I say, voice grim. “If we’re to assume he slaughtered that whole group on his own…well. There’s no telling how advanced he might be now.” I sweep my gaze across the faces assembled before us. “If any of you see a giant in black armor, run. As far and fast as you can. Because David is death incarnate.”

  Cole glances at me. I can tell that he doesn’t like me addressing his group like this. It reeks to him too much like I’m trying to take control. I’m not. I need to remember that. I need to be careful. Conflict between the two of us might be inevitable, but I’m not ready for it yet.

  “Right,” says Cole, clearing his voice. “The point is, the pass is clear, so we’re making a move on it now. David might be incredibly dangerous, but we have what I believe is a unique advantage: we have a map to a Dragon Stone. All we need to do is get to it first. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize. We get that Stone, we’re just a hop, skip, and a jump away from getting ourselves a god damned dragon. I don’t care how powerful David is—I have a feeling that he won’t be too happy to see a dragon bearing down on him.”

  I have my doubts about that. The dragons will be powerful, of that, I’m sure, but the reality is this: we’re here to entertain. This is a game. A show. And, thinking about it logically, if I were creating a game, a battle royale, I wouldn’t make it so that the dragons are impossible to beat. Because that defeats the fun. It removes control and contestant input.

  And this, I think, might be the key to navigating my way through this whole mess.

  I have to think like them. I have to put myself in their exact position. If I take it as an absolute rule that entertainment comes before all else, perhaps I can reverse engineer aspects of the puzzle.

  In any case, shooting for the Dragon Stone is still the best plan we have, and all of us are in agreement with Cole. Without much preamble, we pack up our things and depart from the cave. We set out back across the hills and the fields that Cole and I crossed the day before, now mud slick and vividly green after the heavy rain.

  We see no one, although around midday, we hear a battle being fought to the west, the distant echoes of metal clashing against metal and voices screaming in pain and fury. None of us comment on it, nor even look in that direction. Already we’re becoming numb to such things. It’s just part of our life now.

  We move in a rough line, double file, with Cole and Mary at the front, the two of them engaged in a whispered conversation. Elizabeth and I take the rear.

  “Liz,” I whisper.

  She glares at me. “Don’t call me that.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “It’s fine. What is it?”

  “What do you think of Cole?”

  Elizabeth shrugs non committedly. “Why? What do you think?”

  “I think he’s dangerous. And I think he thinks I’m dangerous. And I think it’s only a matter of time before…” I trail off.

  Elizabeth raises her eyebrows. She’s tied her hair back today, a neat little bun. I can’t help but have the traitorous thought that she’s very pretty. The sort of woman who, when you see her, you can’t help but take another glance, and then another.

  “Before what, Jack?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  Elizabeth grunts, looks away. “Let’s focus on one thing at a time, shall we?”

  “Just…keep an eye on him.”

  “I keep an eye on everyone.”

  And that, I’m forced to assume, includes myself.

  #

  We make it to the pass an hour or two before sunset. The bodies are all still there, exactly as we’d left them, although now a murder of crows has descended from the clear sky to take what they can. They hop from body to body, agile shadows darting from one half-eaten mess to the next, tilting their heads this way and that, eyes gleaming like polished obsidian.

  The sight of them cheerfully pecking at corpses, tearing flesh apart with their sharp claws, makes me nauseous.

  We set up camp in the pass, lighting two small fires under the cover of the overhanging rocks. The night, just like the day, is uneventful, and I can’t help but feel that this is the calm before the storm. We’ve been too lucky. It’s been too quiet.

  Something is bound to go wrong soon.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  And even worse: there’s a part of me that wants something to happen.

  I miss the rage I’d felt during the battle with the vikings. I miss the sense of power that had come with it. The sheer strength, the violence of it, the sense that I am wrath given physical form.

  But I push those thoughts away, resisting them. I suspect they’ll lead me down a dark road. One that I cannot let myself walk.

  Around a fire, Cole, Elizabeth, and I study his map.

  The map gives no sense of distance, which is the greatest issue with it. There’s a place clearly marked, east of where we currently are, and called simply, The Spire. There’s a star drawn to indicate that this is where we can expect to find the Dragon Stone. But for all we know, it could take us a day to reach the spire, or an entire week. Hell, it could take us a month—we have no idea how large the arena is, nor how difficult it’s supposed to be to reach the stone. We already have evidence that there are other ways to travel faster, too—the Vikings all had horses, and we still possess a handful of them, which we’re using to carry the bulk of our belongings.

  More horses would be ideal. Cole wants to search for more as our first priority. But the problem with horses is that we can scarcely feed the ones we already have. They’re war horses, too, large stallions that need a lot of food and a lot of care. Elizabeth knows a few things about horses—she rode a lot as a teen, apparently—but the rest of us are relatively clueless.

  “If we keep going east,” Elizabeth says, “we can advance along the coastline over here,” she gestures to the jagged line of coast bordering what the map names, The Crystalline Sea. “For all we know, there might even be a boat. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s another element of the game—ships. Naval battles.” She shrugs. “Just speculating. Feels like something the bastards up above would do, though.”

  “We can’t rely on that,” Cole says skeptically. “And moving along the coast is bound to take longer. Speed is imperative.”

  Below the ridge, the crows caw and sing as they dance along the bodies.

  Someone—I think it’s Jake, a younger man who rarely speaks—yells out, “There’s something down there!”

  The three of us are immediately on our feet. In a heartbeat, Elizabeth has an arrow nocked and ready to go. Cole unsheathes his sword.

  “What did you see, Jake?” Cole calls.

  “Figures!” Jake is pointing toward the side of the pass we’d entered from. “A few of them, at least. I think they’ve seen us.”

  Coles curses under his breath, then asks, “Humans?”

  But Jake doesn’t know and just shakes his head uselessly.

  “Should we check it out?” I ask.

  “No,” says Cole. “We stay where we are. If there’s someone out there, it’s possible they want to draw us away from the ridge, where it’s harder for them to reach us. If we wander through the pass in the dark, we’re liable to step into an ambush.” He scratches his chin. “But, shit, this isn’t a great spot to get into any sort of conflict. I was hoping we’d have a quiet night.”

  “We might still have one,” Elizabeth grunts. “Might be that they backed off when they saw how many of us there are.”

  “Maybe,” Cole says, but he doesn’t seem convinced.

  We double the guard that night, but nobody reappears, and when I wake to a brilliant sunrise of blood-reds and vibrant orange smears, the sentries report that the night has been entirely uneventful.

  Even still, there’s a tension amongst the group as we set out again, leaving the pass far behind us. Just the idea that we’re never far away from enemies is enough to shatter the illusion of peace.

  There are other problems, too. We’re running low on food and drinking water. We have enough for another two, maybe three days, if we really stretch ourselves thin, but even that’s dangerous, because the more we try to stretch our rations, the weaker and more tired we all become. Already, all around me, I can hear people's stomachs grumbling. Everyone is trying hard to keep their discomfort to themselves, to complain as little as possible, but at the same time, it’s obvious that their moods are frayed.

  When I piss behind a sycamore tree, the resulting urine is a bright, neon yellow. I grimace at the sight. My body has seen and felt better days. I’m so thirsty that, if I think about it too much, I want to cry.

  We stop in a clearing of oak trees for around fifteen minutes. Cole gathers us in a circle and holds up the map so that we can all see it clearly.

  “Alright, gang,” He says. “If this thing is even half-way accurate, this place here,” he points at a small circle not far from where the mountain pass is illustrated, “is some sort of citadel. Alar’s Fort. You all see it?” Cole draws in a deep breath. “My thinking is this: we try to find the fort before the end of today. We scout it out, take a look from a distance. If it looks safe, or at least safe enough, we take a peek inside. Because the truth is, we need supplies. If it doesn’t look safe—we keep going and find something else. Thoughts?”

  Ultimately, no one has anything much to say, and we unanimously agree to check out the fort.

  We find it perhaps two hours later.

  It’s much bigger than any of us had expected, an imposing display of tall, fortified walls and high towers. The stone is smooth and dark, almost black. The citadel is built into the side of a large cliff, while all around it, in the other three directions, a stretch of mostly flat grass provides an absolute lack of cover.

  We view it from the undergrowth of a copse of trees perhaps a mile or so away. It’s impossible to get any closer to the citadel without being right out in the open. We can’t actually see anyone, at least, no one who’s still alive—outside the citadel gates, there’s a pile of distant, dark shapes that Elizabeth reckons are corpses, although none of us have the comparable eyesight to confirm.

  “I can’t see anyone up on the walls,” Cole says quietly. “Maybe it’s empty.”

  “I highly doubt that,” I say. “You think anyone’s going to let a place like this go unoccupied? At the very least, David would've surely passed by. He could be in there, for all we know.”

  “But we don’t know,” Cole snaps. “And that’s the problem.”

  I don’t like his tone when he says that. It’s silly, I know, the reaction of one alpha male to a burst of aggression from another. But I suddenly want to hit him, or beat him, or otherwise put him in his place. The anger I’d unlocked during the battle with the Vikings stirs deep inside me, asking a question—is it time? Will you embrace me? Will you let me deal with this man?

  But I won’t give in to the anger, to the alien rage that’s slowly consuming my heart. It isn’t me.

  Or at least, that’s what I tell myself.

  “We have to go in,” Cole finally says. “The place is massive. Almost a city. The things that could be in there…”

  “And what are we going to do?” I say. “Just…walk up to the gates and knock? Ask politely if we can be let in?”

  “We don’t even know that the gates are locked.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “And there’s no way to know without risking imminent death. So, I say that we move on. It isn’t worth it.”

  Cole scowls. “I’ll go alone. At night. I’ll check the gate. If it’s locked, I’ll try to climb the wall.”

  “The wall that’s almost thirty feet high?”

  “Spring Boots,” Cole says simply. “Plus, I’m a hell of a lot stronger than I was before I was put in here. I can do it.”

  I think about it for a moment. It’s a stupid plan, but I don’t like the idea of Cole going while I stay behind, because what if he finds something like his ring, another powerful artifact that just puts him further ahead of me? I can’t fall behind. I won’t let myself.

  “Then I’ll come, too,” I say. “The two of us. We both have the boots. We’ll go at night, as you say. If we can, we’ll open the gates and the others can come and join us, because I doubt they want to be left behind,” and a chorus of agreement from the rest of the group immediately backs me up. “But if we see any sign that we’re not alone, that we’re in danger—we come right back.”

  Cole yawns like he finds my caution boring. I want to punch him squarely in the nose at that moment.

  “Fine,” he says. “As long as no one has any objections.”

  Predictably, no one does.

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