Carson fell back into the shadows, feeling the wind whip past his now long and tangles hair. His armor clinked and pinched him when he fell back but he barely noticed.
He appeared behind his opponent, blood staff in hand and slammed it down on the opposing gladiators skull, it crunched with a sickening splat. The headless body fell to the ground and Carson turned to find his next opponent. Instead all he found was a wasteland of mutilated bodies surrounding him.
His mind flashed back to the first time he had seen a picture like this, back when he saw his parents die. He sighed with disillusion, realizing that he never would be able to go back, and walked back towards the tunnel he had entered from.
"The Butcher wins! His fourteenth win in a row, and still has never suffered a loss no matter how many we throw at him!" The familiar announcer pushed his voice into the minds of all those present.
Carson had been here for almost a year now in total, though he didn't know how much time had passed on the outside, the time had a tendency to dilate inside trials. From your view you could be in there for decades, and a second may not have even passes on the outside, or it could've been decades as would be expected.
He had spent his year in the arena training, shadow and blood had become invaluable to his style. The shadows were intangible, but he could still move them around, and move through them as if he was teleporting. The young man thought that that was quite interesting, he felt that maybe one day he would be able to bring the shadows off of their own surface and make them somewhat tangible. At the moment it was quite limited though.
The blood weapons were extremely valuable however. They had the ability to shift into whatever he needed at the moment. Most of the time he just kept it as a staff, but occasionally he would switch it up in order to block an attack in a specific way, or to create an opening.
The young man opened the door to his apartment. He was allowed freedom after having fought in the arena for about 6 months, and since then he was allowed to move through the secured areas freely. He still wasn't allowed to leave, or have actual freedom, but at least now he could walk around without having constant monitoring by the guards.
He flopped on the pristine bed after taking off his armor and throwing it into his bag. Carson had thought about his mental state quite often. He didn't feel bad about having killed nearing hundreds of people at this point, and to be honest that concerned him a bit.
The young man knew that he had literally lost his humanity that day but didn't expect the affects to be this dramatic. He felt bloodlust, a desire to steal the power of everyone that even just looked at him funny.
He shook those thoughts out of his head, it wasn't something that he liked thinking of. He shoved his face in the pillow in an attempt to fall asleep. Tomorrow, he would fight the championship fight, and he needed all the advantage he could get.
He felt his mind wander as the world around him shifted to black.
Thud!
Carson startled awake the now dark room looking perfectly lit to his eyes. Ripping the veins in his wrist and hand open, he formed a staff of blood. He felt the light-headedness follow, but payed it no mind. He flowed back into the shadows, covering his body in a shroud.
He opened the door to his apartment quickly, trying to stun whoever was on the other side so he could get a jump on them.
"Ow!" A high pitched but familiar voice echoed around the dark, empty hall. Carson readied his staff, about to put it through the chest of the offender when he paused.
On the ground he saw a young woman about the same age as him, her wavy black hair blending in with the surrounding darkness, her tanned skin didn't fit too well with the more common pale that was common with the Spartans.
'What the fuck!?' Carson thought as he recognized the young woman.
Before he could say anything she grabbed his arm and tried to pull him down the hallway. "C'mon we gotta go! Now!" The young woman whisper yelled at him, but his muscular body didn't move.
"Cassie. What's going on right now. How the fuck are you here?" Carson questioned only to be violently shushed by Cassie.
"We gotta move now. Trust me, I'll explain once were safe." She said as she pulled his arm again. This time he let himself follow, she pulled him out of the hallway and into a nearby alcove in the stone wall.
He peeked back to his room that was carved into the rock. He felt the pouch that he had left behind appear at his hip, which was a nice benefit that it had which he hadn't realized. When he looked down the hall, what he saw surprised him. Dozens of gladiators filled into his room and started shouting.
Cassie pulled him again, urging him to follow her. They ran down the stairs, Carson lifted her and sunk his feet into the shadows, stopping the noise of his footsteps.
Guards were stationed at the end of the stairwell with torches lining the nearby walls to prevent his teleportation. 'Shit these guys really wanted me dead or something.' He looked at Cassie who was being carried like a toddler on his hip. 'I guess she really saved my ass huh.'
He spun the staff in his hand, and hit the guards hard enough to knock them out while also being just soft enough to make no noise. The bodies hit the ground without sound, Carson having extended the shadow to silence it.
He exited the stone building only to be met with dozens more guards patrolling the outside of the building.
"On your left!" Cassie whisper shouted, a guard appearing just where she had pointed. He melted into the shadow and felt her loose from his grasp. He looked up from his fourth dimensional view of the world to see her dialogue with the guards.
"What are you doing ogling me! Get back to work!" she shouted at the man who had approached
"Sorry ma'am!"
She continued walking past him and gestured for Carson to appear, The young man appeared next to her panting, and was once again pulled aground by the young woman.
She led him to a sewer opening, one that had been deactivated due to excessive wear, and hopped the guard line. Carson briskly followed finally having a moment to ask "What the fuck is happening"
"Vulgar, where'd you learn to talk like that." She shoved her finger at his face "At least be polite, i just saved your life!"
"Yeah and how would i know that when you never explained what the fuck is going on!" Carson lowered his voice to a whisper halfway through the sentence, realizing he was shouting.
The two kids crept forward slowly, the pitch black corridor only illuminated to Carson's eyes because of his Echo.
"I followed you in here after i heard what happened at the monolith, i hoped that it would send me into the same one as you, which i guess worked out for me." She sighed "So you can imagine my surprise when a prisoner of war named Carson, had been slaughtering his way through the coliseum ranks." She stared pointedly at him.
"Not my fault, fuckers tried to kill me first." He shrugged "Didn't have much choice"
She sighed once again in reply, "Fine, Whatever. Lets just get out of here first before you get your dumb self murdered."
The two creeped further into the abandoned sewer tunnel and Carson felt the world around him slowly growing darker. His shadow-bending should have given him a strong form of night vision, so when he realized this, he told Cassie to stop.
A low rumble echoed throughout the tunnel, a gruesome growl encumbered with an aching for blood. Carson felt his mind warm up, finally a decent challenge for the man who had destroyed countless people with ease.
Out from the dark emerged a four legged creature, pale clammy skin drew taught over its jagged bones. Hollow black eyes sat recessed in the eye cavities, sunken in and darkened. Drifting over its beastly pale face, hung few thin strands of greasy black hair, and on its visage it wore a wide toothy grin.
The demon before him, clouded in the darkness, arched its back like a cat and showed the pronounced ribs and vertebra. It opened its maw and let out a low rumble that made the shadows flicker.
Carson, who at that moment was trying to drop into the shadows and teleport behind the creature was kicked out of his attempt.
"Shit" He muttered, before rolling under an incoming attack. His blood staff shifted, and grew a spear head. In the confined tunnel, only about ten feet tall, he didn't have enough room to properly fight with the rod. Not to mention the giant monster in front of him that filled nearly the entire space.
After exiting his roll the young man thrust his spear forward, and under the beast's stomach. The thin skin rebounded his spear with surprising force, pushing Carson back once more.
A clawed hand threw itself into his path, talons lining its forefingers, and dried blood marring the image.
He pulled more blood out of his body to form a pair of gauntlets on his hands, repurposing the blood from his spear to help. He brought up his gauntleted hands and caught the incoming strike, growing spikes from his knuckles he stabbed into the beast's wrists.
It howled in pain, causing the shadows in the tunnel to shift once again, throwing Carson of balance.
He heard a voice from behind him speak up in the midst of this, "I don't think he liked that..."
"Yeah, no shit."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author Note: I wanted to get out at least one chapter this week. Some of my classes have finals next Monday, so i didn't have as much time to work on this as i wanted. I also got some other projects going on right now, so i might not have as much availability to work on this one. If you're reading this, its the unedited version of the chapter so if its shitty then that might be why, or i just suck Hahaha.
Apologies my non-existent readers, my bad boo, lmao.