“MY FELLOW MONSTERS. WELCOME OUR BLOODY ENTERTAINMENT OF SCUM FOR THIS GLORIOUS DAY OF HARVEST” A skeleton in long black robes swings round, using his necromantic staff as a microphone, his other bony hand clenched in the air

“OAHH!!” the crowd roars in anticipation

“WE HAVE…THE CARNIVOROUS EATER” A bugbear, scarred in many locations walks out onto the blood soaked sand licking his blood soaked gauntlets.

“YAAAAHHH”

“THE SLITHERING CHOKER” A naga slithers out, its turquoise scales glinting in the torchlight, with no weapons in sight.

“OOAAAAHHHH”

“THE CRIMSON ORC” A normal green orc walks on with a standard double-edged axe

“BOOOOO” the crowd mostly boo, except for the orcs; who cheer at their brethren entering the blood soaked arena

“THE BODY SMASHER” A large troll lumbers out, eyeing his opponents with a crazed look in his eye

“OOOOHH”

“THE POISON THORN” A leaves Dryad with wicked nails and filed sharp teeth walks out with a malicious grin

“WOOOO” some avid fans wolf whistle at her

“THE SCOURGING SEDUCTRESS” A pale succubus, scantily clad in just covering leather saunters out into the field, whip dragging along behind her.

“YEAAHHHHH” Wolf whistles thunder the arena and an almost visible killing intent leaks out of the dryad, directed to the succubus

“THE IMMORTAL BITCH” A young, human looking man but with grey clammy skin walks in wearing nothing but a white shirt and brown shorts, looking quite nervous but his eyes glint with steeled determination.

“HAHHAAAAH!” The crowd roars in both confusion and anticipation at this new entertainment of a sort

“AND LAST, BUT NOT LEAST BY NO MEANS! THE COOOOORPSE FUUUCKERRRRRRRRR!” The host thrusts his hips into the air eliciting a tremendous roar from the crowd who scream in joy at a young mindflayer walking out, her tentacles wiggling around impatiently.

The host throws his hands into the air causing the arena to go quiet and let the participants peer at one another, sizing each up.

“LET THE BLOODBATH…BEGIN” He sprints out of the arena along with an ecstatic roar from the crowd as they watch the participants fly at each other with eyes crazed and clouded.

…

-Earlier that day-

Ankorr suddenly bursts out of his head jumping into the sky with glee while Windshaw observes silently from his chair.

“Oho, looks like you’ve finally sorted it out” Although no smile could be seen, the pleasure in his voice is apparent.

Ankorr smirks slightly but doesn’t feel too happy about his accomplishment; because it took up an entire month.

Though, he knows that now he can finally go to the arena.

“Windshaw, I need you to get me in to the Harvest match”

Although Ankorr had spent his month perfecting himself, he did spend some time going to the arena to watch the matches, and in a way was looking forward to do something as normal as fight.

And now that he can, he does not want to waste time in gathering levels to be paid in the harvest, since today is the day of the harvest.

And because it is the day of the harvest there is a special celebratory match reserved for the most promising of individuals of each grade.

“Already done” The shock on Ankorr’s face is not missed “I thought it would be a good debut for you” His sleeves go up and down in a shrug

Nodding his thanks, Ankorr closes his eyes and lets the bittersweet memories of Lucille wash over him.

Opening his eyes a minute later, he finds himself looking up at Windshaw once more from the tiny body of Lucille.

With an excited shiver, he grabs his weapons and heads outside.

Skipping merrily down the street in his petite body, the small spike buckler and saw-like sword jangle on his thighs.

His skipping gets a lot less merry as once again the stares of lust and desire, or just simple curiosity, from onlookers, snake their way to his flesh, crawling over the ruffles of his lengthy skirt and almost penetrating the thick woolen pullover he wears.

Though Ankorr is quite used to the looks; to the feeling of his skin crawling and thus it does not turn him into the nervous wreck as he temporarily became in this situation.

Somewhat tolerating it, he presses on leaving the stares to roll down his back like a sole finger brushing down his spine.

To keep his calm, he fingers his sword focusing on its dark, bristly leather wrapped around its hilt. That helps somewhat.

Quickly turning the street a new wave of stares replaces the old ones, causing a slight sickly feeling churn in his stomach as he walks through focusing on the blood stained cobbles in front.

He was so focused that he almost did not register a huge putrid leg of a troll swing towards him.

Diving out the way, he is narrowly missed by the leg. Rolling back to his feet he turns around to glimpse his assailant storming off in a vent of fury, leaving Ankorr, anger seeping out his mouth due to being almost kicked without reason.

Suppressing a growl, he swivels round to continue his way, but soon finds another obstacle in his path; a skeleton carrying a familiar figure out of an alleyway.

Catching the gasp that escapes from his mouth, he quickly observes the pair; the skeleton he has no idea who it is but the man is the one who had come here with him, who had been split up at the portal.

He almost jumps up in glee if not for the fact that the man seems a lot flatter than before, as if every bone in his body had been crushed and the unnatural rattling sound that echoed from his body as he bounced upon the skeletons shoulder gave Ankorr nothing but worry.

The skeleton moves swiftly, almost sliding through the growing crowd unhindered and Ankorr soon realizes he’s going to lose sight of them.

Dashing towards them, he ducks through the legs of many and sidles past others, ignoring the bypassing hands that brushed ever so slightly against him, almost innocently, almost.

Soon, the duo are back in sight and he keeps his eyes glued on them, ignoring the crowds that he passes and the hungering stares that bear down upon him as he squeezes past them.

For some reason, the skeleton starts to move faster and he fears that he has been discovered or something of the sort.

Terrified, he begins fully chasing them, knocking into monsters to quickly move past them, causing more damage to himself than to them but maintaining enough speed to keep up with the duo.

He sees the skeleton slide into an alleyway and he follows, bursting out of the crowd, racing into the dark.

However when reaching there, only darkness can be found; neither the skeleton nor the man he carried upon his back is there.

Terrified by the mental images, of what could be happening to the man now that he has lost him, that bombarded his mind, he swiftly rand back to the tavern bursting into their room a short while later.

Windshaw remains hovering on his chair as usual and the hood swerves towards Ankorr as he enters.

“Help me find my friend” Ankorr hurriedly spits out the words

“Who?” Windshaw sounds confused

“My friend; the one who was supposed to be on the other side of the portal!” Ankorr loses his composure further

“Ah. Why do you need help? Did you see him here or something?” his voice remains impassive

“Yes, some skeleton was taking him away!”

“A skeleton huh…I could look into who he is if you want” Windshaw replies calmly, with a hint of elation leaking from his impassive tone. However Ankorr does not hear it as his mind is filled with nothing but worry for his friend. “But” He holds out a sleeve to silence Ankorr “I shall only tell you once you have given me parts”

Ankorr shuts his mouth as he begins to speak, his business sense finally quelling emotion. He muses, replaying the small conversation they just had in his mind.

“I want you to find out where my friend is” Ankorr grins slightly as he had noticed and avoided the trap Windshaw had lain out

“Ah damn, and I thought I could get a free part. Well nevermind, guess you’re not that stupid so as to just say yes to the terms without thinking” Windshaw sighs and nods his consent.

Relieved, Ankorr rushes out the door, his mind on the levels that he needs to make and on the possible fates of his friend.

His run to the large coliseum is quick and he arrives there feeling a yawn creep up his gullet. Pushing it back down, he dashes through the entrance and towards a snot-coloured creature with a mouth raised to the sky and a third arm on the back of its pudgy body, which stands on a crate, surrounded by monsters; their killing intent seeping out in clustered waves.

Walking up, he stops himself as he notices that everything is still too tall for him.

Swallowing a curse, he walks outside, darts into an alley and sits down after checking that he is alone.

Crossing his legs, he thinks of ‘It’. He lets the fresh, bloody memories of ‘It’ fill his mind and one particular memory stays thickly at the forefront; one where he looks into the still waters of the fountain by the Library back in the City of Darton; one where he is covered in the fresh blood of the first person he killed.

He looks into the waters, seeing the clammy grey skin of his with crimson eyes and a look of hunger spread on his mouth.

Letting the images flow away one by one, he finally opens his eyes as the last one disappears from his mind.

Standing up, he inspects his hands; seeing they are once again the wicked clammy grey claws that are ‘It’’s hands.

Hiding his sword and shield in his inventory, he steps on the bloody cobblestones, exiting the alley from a different path and makes his way towards the coliseum once more.

…..

Ankorr walks into a large cylindrical room lined with pillars and filled with monsters of all shapes and sizes.

Immediately, many eyes glance his way, but none out of desire. Each look holds a fierce intent to kill, causing an involuntary shiver down his spine as the wave of killing intent stabs him like knives.

All plans of him trying to make allies flies away as to him, everyone looks like they would rather rip him to shreds than work together.

Rubbing his hands nervously, he skirts around the room trying to reach an unfilled corner, but he finds no such thing.

Doing his best to ignore the few stares that remain fixed on him; trying to analyze all they can or just out of desire to target him, he goes to the sparse centre of the room.

A few other unlucky individuals; A strange lanky brown being with an almost human shape stands to his right, opening and closing the starfish-like hands with a soft suction sound at every clench. To his left is a wolf, although larger, blacker and with a hint of intelligence in its eyes.

There are others in the centre; such as an orc, multiple kobolds, some strange cockroach like creature but the size of a horse and a few other monsters that Ankorr truly has no idea what they are. However Ankorr does not pay them any mind as they do not to him.

Only these two to either side of him kept their eyes on him for longer than a glance, thus raised alarms in his mind.

Although there are close to a hundred monsters here, the room is deathly quiet with everyone sharing stares and silently picking their targets.

This silence is soon broken by a skeleton in long black robes as it walks in, banging his staff on the stone floor.

“Scum” He almost spits out the word “Warm up because your fight will be in a short while”

He leaves as quickly as he enters and the silence returns once more covering all like a blanket.

However a thought enters Ankorr’s mind.

Kill everyone here

The thought blares out in his mind as important and necessary to act upon, but the words he distinguishes not as his own thus breaking the illusionary desire.

Immediately he swerves around to see who was trying to implant such a horrible thought in his mind, but the only thing he sees is a crude axe slicing its way towards him.

Shocked, he loses precious time to back away but somehow the axe misses as he is knocked into the ground by something heavy.

Slobber plasters his face as the worg bites towards his neck, but stops midway as a scythe spurts through the back of its head, piercing just below Ankorr’s collarbone.

The wielder, a skeleton, rips the scythe away, taking the now dead worg along with a large chunk of Ankorr’s flesh.

Scrambling up, his left side is clipped by a dog like creature with its head facing the sky, maybe naturally as it whines in pain when it crashes into the far wall.

Unbalanced, he stumbles into a lizardman’s scimitar who cackles in glee before its head is smashed to a pulp by an ogre’s maul.

Retreating back a step to let the scimitar slide out, he trips over a heavily bleeding gnoll, narrowly dodging the bloody maul.

With a roar, the ogre smashes the maul downwards and Ankorr rolls to the side, albeit too slowly as he hears the crack of his right leg, accompanied by the gnoll’s entire chest being crumpled.

Panicking, Ankorr pushes on the floor with his remaining leg, sliding on the blood-slick floor and between a pair of legs, surrounded by chains.

Looking up towards a being covered in chains, he raises his arms protectively as a pair of spiked chains come crashing down.

His arms are immediately constricted. A heavy foot holds his stomach down while the chains are raised; squeezing his arms with a loud squelch as blood spurts and rains on his face.

Suddenly he gets forcefully lifted as a lance impales the chained being’s stomach; raising it from the ground, bringing Ankorr along with him.

The black blood rains down drenching him as the lance wielder, an orc sized frost coloured ant with crimson eyes wriggles his spear, sawing from stomach to groin.

It *chit*’s gleefully with its pincers for half a second, before it is engulfed in flame quickly scorching it to a burnt husk.

Feet touching the ground, he desperately tries to snake his hands out of the chains, but they’re embedded deeply in his arm. The only thing he gets from his effort is more blood seeping out of the fresh wounds.

His efforts aren’t ignored, as a bluish troll smashes his fist into Ankorr, grinning evilly as the audible crack of his victims left shoulder adds to the throes of battle in the room.

Flying away, Ankorr smacks into something a few feet away, letting out a grunt in echo of the thing he smacked into.

Crashing on the floor, his body immerses in a river of sweet tasting blood and a mass of eviscerated bodies, barely recognizable as kobolds.

Immediately rolling to the side, he sees a large purplish foot splash where his head was half a second ago.

Looking up, he sees a large humanoid figure with four arms wielding swords looking down at him with visible anger.

Four swords slash down towards Ankorr’s head but are blocked by the chains with a loud screech.

The troll charges into view and the second attack doesn’t come as expected as the four sword monster diverts three swords towards the troll and one towards him.

Blocking the sword with grunting effort, Ankorr is given a shower of turquoise blood as the troll is sliced with a flurry of blades. Fingers, toes and flesh scatter around the floor within a second but the troll continues its charge, bashing Ankorr’s side with its foot, tripping it and making it crash into the purple being as if tackling.

The two crash into the floor in a bloody mess as two sword impale the trolls front and two more hack away at its disfigured face.

Roaring, the troll spread both spittle and blood on the purple being as it holds its two free arms down and it smashes its thick skull onto the purple being producing a squelch as the head becomes pulp.

In these few seconds, Ankorr had pushed himself up and as brain matter explosively splatters onto the floor, he dives onto the troll’s back, raking his chained arm along the troll’s face.

Blood and viscous eye juice spurts out and the troll wails in pain, flailing its fists towards Ankorr, who pushes off and rolls unceremoniously in the river of blood.

He stops rolling at a spearhead with a few broken inches of shattered wood on the end. Picking that up, he unsteadily stands, only to get an arrow in his eye.

Ducking the second shot, his depth perception goes haywire, causing him to ram the floor with his face, blasting the arrow through the back of his head.

Lying still, he quickly hears the sound of heels as they wade through the river of blood and as they stop, he feels another two arrows pierce the back of his head.

He lies there as his ‘killer’ runs off and he listens to the brutal fight quickly die down as the number of massacring monsters substantially decreases.

Within another minute and after a heavy foot stepped on his pelvis, cracking it, the throes of battle stop and only the dripping of fresh blood remains; intoxicating the air with an orgasmic smell.

Standing up, Ankorr is immediately noticed by the drow archer who stands, heel dug into the skull of an ogre, reveling in the sweet smell pervading the air.

Before he can steady himself, she notices and her malignant red eyes grow in shock before she licks her lips with devious pleasure

“I guess three arrows weren’t enough. How about I stick you with mmm a hundred” her silky voice is nothing but frightening for Ankorr.

Dodging clumsily to the left, her first arrow whistles past

“Now now don’t be like that” She fires off a second one, penetrating Ankorr’s lower leg with a thud.

She deftly removes her heel from the ogre’s head and begins to jog towards him firing off arrow after arrow which she collects from dead bodies along the way.

Ankorr moves back as quickly as he can, stumbling over the mass of bodies and splashing through large puddles of blood. But the drow is quicker, shortening the distance, making the next shot feel more powerful than the last.

Soon his body is covered in cuts and tears from arrows that grazed or were forcibly ripped out by the stumbling through corpses.

She seemingly aimed only towards his legs and the effect was becoming definite as Ankorr could barely shuffle now.

The storm of arrows ends with a last arrow in his thigh and the drow, almost lapping up the spurting blood with her eyes, struts towards him

“Ah, it seems I’m out of arrows. Guess I’m going to have to do it the skinning way again” She pulls out a jagged knife, pristine and shining wickedly and holds it in her free hand.

Ankorr backs off as fast as he can but he reaches a wall and she quickly reaches him.

With a swift motion, she catches his still chained hands with her bow and raises them to the ceiling.

“Mmm, how shall I play today?” She caresses his right side trailing the knife along the neck leaving a thin red line.

She grins as her knife reaches the back of his neck as her hand brushes past an arrow.

“Oh, I’d almost forgotten about these” She grips the arrow along with a chunk of hair “May I have them?” she tries to pout cutely but her face is plastered with brutal thoughts of what she was about to do.

“Sure”

Ankorr rams his head back causing the arrows to smack against the wall and pierce through him while it pulls the drow towards him due to her hand being pulled away violently by the back of his head.

“You can have your arrows back…bitch” Ankorr growls out as two arrowheads pierce her skull and a nock rams into a shocked eye.

She slowly slides off the arrows, collapsing on the floor with a face full of shock, dead.

*Clap Clap Clap*

The slow clap sounds from the other side of the room and Ankorr sees the door open, revealing the skeleton in the black robes clapping monotonously.

“Well done, Blood Drinker. I hope you’ve warmed up, because the real show is about to start soon”

The skeleton cackles and motions to follow as he walks away.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author's Corner:

HEY EVERYONE!

ITS BEEN A WHILE I KNOW, MY GOD

AND I HAVE THE NEED TO WRITE SHOUTY CAPITALS TO TRY MAKE UP FOR THE SILENCE THAT HAS BEEN MY FICTION FOR THE PAST COUPLE OF WEEKS.

NOW I DO ACTUALLY HAVE A REASON: EXAMMMMMMS!!!! THOSE DASTARDLY THINGS.

BUT THEY ARE COMPLETE NOW SO WOOO! FICTION CAN GET BACK ON TRACK!

HOPE YOU ENJOYED IT AND PLEASE COMMENT/REVIEW/SAY STUFF

-TRUE NORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRD