Game of Light

Chapter 2 - Image

Chapter 2

Light tossed the waiter a few gold coins as he arrived at her table, and took an alleyway to the East gate. She could have decided not to go, decided to ditch him, but her curiosity of what the List member wanted from her got the better of her. For a moment, she stood at the gate, which looked like the typical entrance of any Chinatown, until the man who had talked with her spotted her and beckoned her to follow him. They walked along a narrow path that wound its way deeper and deeper into the forest surrounding the city. When they arrived at a small clearing with a variety of toppled trees at its edges, the man turned towards her. He was of the Elven race, but even so towered over her. Once he removed his goofy sunglasses, Light saw that he had surprisingly piercing dark brown eyes. His smile was easy and his teeth were straight and white.

“Hi, my name is Image,” he told her, reaching out a hand, which she shook. She recognized the name from the List. If she remembered correctly, he was ranked 80 or so. “And yours is Light.” He said, sparing her from repeating a fact that they both already knew. “Welcome to the List.”

“Thank you,” Light replied, taking a seat on one of the thick trunks on the ground. He followed suit and once he was settled she decided that asking him a few questions wouldn’t be a bad idea. “How did you find me?”

Her question visibly surprised Image, but his face loosened as he thought it over. “I guess you haven’t heard of the List-Map,” he mused. “Here, I’ll show you.” He called up his map, which appeared as a hologram in front of him, and then reached through it and seemed to pull forward something from inside of it. When he let go, the map had small little red and blue dots covering it. “The dots represent players from the List,” Image explained and laid his finger on one of the red dots. Immediately it grew and revealed the player’s name, picture and its basic statistics. “The red dots are for male players, and the blue for female. You can also find a specific player, if you call out that player’s name.” He demonstrated calling out “Light” and her blue dot on the map started pulsing.

 “I’m surprised,” Light commented, while trying to copy exactly what he had just showed her. “Normal players don’t have this map, do they?” she asked. Because if they did, she thought angrily, then she had taken her blasted time on figuring it out.

“No,” Image said grinning. “They don’t.”

Light's attention was teared away from Image's response when a furious blond-headed moron burst through the forest into the small clearing, with a posse of followers rushing behind him. Then the moron, a.k.a. Dagger, turned toward the two peaceful looking players and demanded to know which one of them was the infamous “Light”. Light glared at her companion, who was laughing silently. I should have known that Dagger would be searching for me in a while, she thought to herself angrily, now he’ll probably want me to fight with him. Once she told him that she was the one he was searching for, her assumption was confirmed:

“I demand a one-on-one match, to prove that I’m better than you!” he sounded like a whiny child and she almost laughed at hearing him speak. But since she had no way to refuse him without throwing her newly gained reputation in the drain – a reputation that she had just started to like – she accepted.

The people he had brought with him spread out in a circle around the clearing, and Image wished her luck, before joining them. Light stood up and made her way towards the fuming, red-faced Dagger and reached behind her head for the hilt of Hook Eye.

“Are you going to let me explode again?” Hook Eye asked in a voice that any bystander would have interpreted as bored. Light, who knew better, heard the enthusiasm behind it.

“If you’d like to,” she said, mildly teasing it. It grunted in reply and she smiled slightly.

“Winner,” Dagger announced, putting venom into every spoken word. “is who kills the other first.”

Theoretically it was her jurisdiction to set the rules, but Light didn’t feel like talking with the insolent scumbag, so she left her mouth closed and nodded. They started to circle each other. Dagger occasionally spit out an insult, but she paid them no heed. He had a good stance, she thought in disbelief, one foot planted behind the other and his brightly glinting silver sword clutched in his hands. But once she saw his obvious flaw, she knew that she had him trapped. Without any apparent sign in his stance, he lunged forward. But luckily for Light, his malice-filled eyes had given him away. She dodged his thrust and he toppled over the tree trunk that in Light’s mind had fallen in the perfect place. Before he could stand up again to face her, she pulled his head up and severed it from his quivering shoulders. A fighter who’s scared of dying, she thought scornfully at the slowly dissolving corpse, is no fighter at all. He disappeared. And I thought the Gorgaron was an easy kill, she mused in a happier tone.

The crowd on the outskirts of the clearing exploded into cheers. I forgot they were here, Light thought guiltily, and then turned her guilt into contempt, as she kept on thinking: So worshipers change their gods easily, don’t they. Disgusted, she turned away from them and started jogging down the path Image had led her through before. When she heard a small creek gurgling and remembered that Hook Eye was in need of a thorough wash, she stopped. Sticky, slowly drying blood was not something easily removed and even with all the practice Light had, it still gave her trouble. Come on, she thought infuriated to the blotches of red, why can’t you just disappear for me! Though she begged and pleaded, the soiled spots on Hook Eye did not want to cooperate. Why is human blood so much harder to wipe off blades than monster blood?, she thought, frustrated. She already knew the answer. The reason that human’s blood was harder to wash off was because one of the game designers, probably one with bad experiences, had wanted to remind people that guilt for murder should be hard to lose. But that didn’t mean that it had to be idiotically hard to get anything clean after a fight!, Light grumbled to herself.

As she scrubbed off the last fleck of crimson, she heard a soft footstep behind her. She turned around and swung up Hook Eye. Image staggered backwards to avoid the wickedly sharp blade. Though he had almost just been sliced in two, he grinned widely.

“I knew you had it in you!” He exclaimed, walking over to her and clapping her on the shoulder. “You should have seen Dagger’s frightful face! Priceless, I tell you.” He started dragging a bewildered Light beside him.

I did not think he was the type of person to enjoy the suffering of others, she thought, watching her newly made friend who was humming a monotonous tune.  I guess I was wrong. She had already thought the contradiction between his stern eyes and easy going smile was strange, but his personality was also split? I guess only weird and troubled like people like me, she thought with a sigh. Well at least I have a friend, even though he’s strange.

Main’s foreboding silhouette appeared before them again and Light swore she could see the storm clouds foretelling the doom that awaited her there. She tried to edge them into a different direction, but Image walked in a straight course towards it, ignoring and even slightly smiling at her attempts. Oh no! What have I gotten myself into! Light’s thoughts whirled into pandemonium, He’s a sadist! He must be a sadist, or crazy, if he believes I’ll be able to enter Main, without someone noticing that I’m the new List member, like he did!

“Honey,” Light said in the overly sugary sweet voice that half of the population of girls used when they were talking with a member of the opposite sex, “I don’t wanna go to Main!” She put on her most convincing pout and jabbed him in the side, to make her message clear.

“But sweet pea,” he replied, obviously enjoying their little play, “You agreed that you’d meet my friends!” He gave her a loving smile and grinned evilly.

“When in all heck did I agree to that?” Light demanded, outraged.