Dragon's curse

chapter six

I don't consider Sara as my mother, only my caretaker and I didn’t think of her as part family. There is a saying in one of the books I read, the saying was you can choose the family that you want to stay with but you can't choose your birth. 

Suddenly a deep voice filled every room and said “Hello there my gladiators, you have done so well to make me money that I decided to give you this food as a gift. I am Slit, your boss now and Matt is dead. He will no longer be your boss and give you things when you want them. From now on things will be different, you are going to have to earn what you want.”

Ash shivered at the sound of Slit's voice and Electro healed her tightly as she shivered in fear. Jack scowled as he listened to what Slit was saying and felt anger rise up inside of him but he tried to keep his anger under control. 

He then said through the intercom, “I need the new girl to come up to the fifth floor. Oh and you can bring Death with you, make it quick.”

Jack looked at Electro with a concerned look on his face, fear filled Ash as she thought to herself, why does he want me to go to the fifth floor? 

Electro said in anger “Shit, not that woman.”

A voice came from the entrance of the cell doorway and asked with a smirk on her face,“What's wrong Electr, you don't like me any more?” She looked at Ash and continued, “So you are the girl that I have to escort to the fifth floor.” 

“When you say girl… you use it as a saying, you are implying that I look weak, but if you said little girl, you wouldn’t see me as a competition, Right.” Said Ash in a confident voice.

The woman said “Nice work on seeing how I tell people how I think of them. I have to say, you aren't as weak as you look with that kind of thinking but there is a certain amount of things you can do with that kind of thinking, right kid?”

Ash said with a smile, “You know it takes a mind to kill a person. You just have to think about surviving and killing when needed.”

“You are a smart kid Ash, I  like you. You can call me Death and you better think of a gladiator name for yourself because you will need it later on. Now we better get going before Slit gets mad at us.”

Ash stared at her clothes as they exited Electros cells, they walked down the narrow hallway in silence. As they walked down the hallway it felt as if they were walking down a long hospital hallway with no rooms or exit to be seen. Ash was surprised to see that Death was showing a lot of her pale white skin through her clothes. Death had a small knife tucked under a small strap that sat around her thigh. She wore red shorts like blood, they were ripped in certain places and torn up to her knees like someone scratched at her frantically. Ash looked further up and saw that she had a pink strap shirt that was also scratched up just like her shorts were but much worse. She suddenly saw that there were three scratch marks all over her back, arms and neck. There were some of the scratches that looked like they were old and there were some scratches that looked like they were fresh.

“I see you staring at the scratches, knock it off. I may respect you but I will kill you if you keep staring at me.” said Death in an annoyed voice.

Ash quickly looked down at the ground nervously and in embarrassment, she feared being killed by Death's hands. Once they reached the lunch room, a hidden door opened up by one of the walls. The door disappeared into the floor as it slowly moved down into the ground on a small track aligning the doorway. Once the door was all the way into the ground, they walked through the doorway and into another long hallway filled with small torches aligning the hallway with light. 

“Are we almost there? It feels like we have been walking down this hallway for hours.” Ash said in exhaustion. 

Death said in an annoyed voice, “We are almost there.”

Once they reached the fifth floor that led to a small room. They slowly walked into the small room and Ash couldn’t help but be amazed about how the room looked. There were what looked like expensive paintings, each one was different from the other and there were some paintings with animals in them. There was a set of furnishings in the middle of the room that surrounded a small coffee table in the center of the room. Ash looked at the walls and noticed that the walls were made of a type of stone that she did not recognise. Suddenly there was the sound of a door opening, Ash quickly looked over at where the sound was coming from and saw two women coming out of the doorway that sat by the corner of the wall across from her. The two women quickly walked over towards Ash and Death instantly as they came into the room. 

They both said in sync, “Hellow Ash, we are ready for you now.”

Ash then saw two grown men dragging a man out of the same room that the two girls came out of. They held the man by his arms and dragged him down another long hallway, there were rebars sticking out of his back and on both sides of his necks. He disappeared down the black hallways in an instant and she quickly took a step back in fear. 

“What are you going to do to me?” Asked Ash

Ash took one more step back until she bumped into someone standing behind her, she felt like summoned and grabbed her shoulder with a tight grip like she was being stopped from running away.

Slits voice echoed into her ear and shivers went down her spine instantly, he said “I got something special for you. You will have a forbidden curse on you and you are going to make me very happy.”

Fear creeped into Ash as she struggled against Slit's tight grip, he quickly dragged her into the room that the two men dragged the other man away from. The two young women followed him into the room and closed the door behind them.

Ash screamed in fear, “No! No!”

Death frantically passed back and forth next to the hallway that led to the lunch room as the hours ticked by and during that time, Ash screamed in pain. She curved her ears as tears streamed down her face as she thought to herself, it’ll be over soon. Suddenly it went silent, Ash stopped screaming in pain and for a moment Death thought that they killed Ash. She removed her shaky hands from her ears as watched while waiting for the door to open up. Death thought to herself, please… Please let her be ok. A few minutes later, the door squealed as it opened slowly in word, the two young women dragged Ash out of the room and brought her over to Death. Slit followed close behind and Death immediately noticed that there was blood all over his right hand. The two women then dropped Ash onto the ground and she saw that Ash was unconscious as she hit the ground, face first. 

Slit said as he wiped his hand with a cloth that he pulled from his back pocket, “Death darling, take Ash to her room and get her ready for her first match tomorrow. I am going to have her turn tomorrow and she will most likely kill him so I want you to let that happen. The crowd wants to see blood and death so let's give them what you want.” He smiled with a wide grin as he continued “Make sure all the windows are closed, there may be a lot of blood squirting everywhere tomorrow.”

Death said in a calm voice while clenching her fingers in anger “Yes sir.”

She then picked Ash up from the ground like she was a little baby and turned to walk away but stopped when slit started to speak. 

“Out of curiosity, what kind of curse did you use on Ash? It sounds more painful than mine.” said Death in a cureus voice.

Slit said as Death walked away into the hallway, “I will tell you this Death Reaper, I did the worst curse, none to man kind. It has been passed down from generation to generation.”

Death quickly brought Ash to her cell and sat her down against one of the walls. Jack and Electro quickly came into the cell and noticed that Ash was unconscious. Her legs were curved in blood up to her neck and there were tears all around her clothes.  

They quickly came into the cell, Jack asked in anger and in a concerned voice “ What happened to her Death? You said you would take care of her, not unconscious and… and…” but before he could  finish, Death interrupted him and said “Stop yelling at me and listen to me. We need to get her out of here Jack. That moron did the worst kind of curse there is and will turn out really bad if she tastes human blood.”

Jack and Electro said simultaneously, “Shit.”