The Rules

Chapter SEVEN

I hear the metal-on-metal and I know I'm close. I hear the trills of the man named T, the low voices of the Sane, the coins of Zen clinking, murmurs of my arrival. A tall skinny man with dreads and no shirt drops down in front of me.

"Y'all know da Rru-als, child?" an earthy Jamaican accent leaks out from the man's mouth.

"Yeah, I know the Rules," I reply, staring him in the eye that isn't hidden in shadow.

"Hear dat? Lit-all miss G knows da Rru-als, eh!" he announces. Encouraging cries, whoops and cheers echo off of brick and metal. A smile worms its way onto my lips. The Jamaican man drapes his arm across my shoulders and starts walking. "Well-cam, child. Ya have a name?"

"Cessa."

"Are ya sure? Dis is da one chance ya have to change ya past and no-one will break ya far it."

"I'm sure."

"Alright, den. I'm T. What brings ya to da Shadows?"

"I wanna join ya, of course."

"Ehh! Ya mast know da canditions upon joinin us, den?"

"I do."

"Ya still goin tru wid it, eh?" He calls out, "We got a brave lit-all one hee-ah!" More whoops and cheers. "And how have ya cam ta know us, child?"

"My mama told me stories."

He laughs. "Nahh, we aren't sam bedtime stah-ry, ya know dat?"

"I know."

"Den I guess ya're ready, ah?" He cups his mouth with one hand and yells, "We gat a trial up, Shadows! Let's go!"

Some time later T has brought me to a tall old building with one light inside that I can see.

"Yar job is ta make it ta da roof," T instructs. "Simple as dat."

"Yeah... Simple as that," I mutter.

As I enter the derelict building I hear T, "Good luck, Cessa Sedona."

I whirl round, eyes wide, to see the surprisingly heavy door slam between me and T - someone who knew my mother. I shake it off - I have to focus. Now isn't the time. I can ask him later.

I step forward further into familiar darkness. I've always liked the dark - no-one could see me, no-one could find me, no-one could punish me. I sense two people ahead of me - one with a heater, the other with a shiv. I incapacitate both swiftly and easily. I don't sense anyone else on this floor, so I run up the stairs.

A chainsaw is ready to run my neck through at the top of the stairs, but I'm prepared. I stick the shiv I got from the other guy into the gap for the hole of the machine where the saw comes out of, jamming the engine. My attacker doesn't let this break throw them and keeps on attacking with the now still blade. I jump up high to get behind them and stab them in the arm holding the handle of the chainsaw. They cry out and fall to the floor, signifying defeat.

I move on to the next room where a woman stands in the middle of the room with a huge-ass flamethrower. A image of my mother suddenly flashes though my mind. What was that? Before I have time to dawn on the thought, she kicks it into gear and and aims for my head. I barely manage to duck under the flames and roll towards her to knock her off of her feet before she sears the air where my head had been and as she drops to the floor she sets the room alight, every inch of it catches fire. The blazing inferno is reflected in her eyes and she grins slightly manically at me before lighting up the air between us with red and orange and burning the ceiling through to the next floor. I wait for the instant she stops until I jump up and haul myself through the orifice and snatch my foot out of the way before she throws another pillar of fire out of the tiny hole. Now, that is a heater.

As I stand up a vertex of metal traces the skin over my left collarbone and once I straighten myself I am face-to-face with a masked swordsman. The mask is made out of cloth so I can still see his eyes, very light eyes filled with emptiness. One wall of the vast room is coated in weapons. The swordsman indicates for me to choose one. I walk slowly, checking out the so many different types of weapons; there are so many... In the end I decide on a hefty but flexible staff.

The instant I take the staff off the stand, the other weapons evaporate. This man must be Ghost, then. My mom told me about him; he could make anything materialize and anything disappear - something he calls ghosting, but he could only make some people ghost, himself included, my mom never told me why. I think she knew, though.

He raises his sword, I raise my staff, we bow and step back into different stances. I settle into a snake posture, but I don't recognize his movements. I strike left with my staff, he blocks it with the hilt of his sword which I swiftly return with a cut through his neck, which he ducks under, and across his knees, which he jumps to, landing with a swish of his clothing on my horizontally-leveled staff. He hardly weighs anything, which isn't surprising, considering his given - that's right, given, not taken - name, Ghost. I drop the far end of my staff and he slides down, balance in check. He kicks my staff up and I jump to catch it, land behind him and manage a strike to his right knee. Or I would have, had it not melted into thin air.

He ghosts out to the next room, baiting me to him, hot in pursuit, swinging the bronze staff through him. I pause, the both of us staring cooly into the other's eyes. If I'm going to pass Ghost, I'll have to be smarter than this. I beat the others with physical attributes alone, but for this guy I'll have to up my game.

I'd just make him chase me.

I stick the staff into the wall and charge my power with a full-body transformation of a black salamander. As a crawl around I see him hesitate in... Surprise? I don't know what, but I take full use of this distraction. I transform into a panther, leap off the wall and crash straight into solid mass. As I change to a Malayan Krait to inject venom into his blood, he ghosts and my fangs sink deep into the decaying wood. I pull them out with little difficulty and change back to my human form.

Ghost is standing the centre of the room without his sword. He gestures to the stairs at the opposite side of the room to the burning hole where I came through.

"You... You letting me through?" I ask in disbelief.

He nods, sets his sword down and bows before disappearing.

I grin in triumph and leap up the staircase. When I emerge atop the crumbling structure, T is waiting for me.

"Well done, Cessa," he congratulates.

"Thanks," I say. "So... Am I through?"

"Nearly," he says with a wink.

"T, when the door shut you said--"

"We can talk about dat latar, lit-all one," he patted my shoulder fondly. "Far now, enjay yar fame."

He leads me to the edge of the rooftop and I am rewarded with whoops, cries and cheers.

"Now jump," T whispers.

"Wha--?" I don't have time to finish my question because T has pushed me off the edge. This must also be part of the test. The Shadows are tough, but they're not murderers. That means if I don't do anything I won't die. But I will fail. So I stretch my power to grow a huge pair of wings from my shoulder blades that I hope can enable me to not crash to the ground. It's excruciatingly painful, but I manage it and pull up from the ground, resulting in a shaky loop in the air. As I land I feel a hot, thick liquid running down my back. I reach behind me to touch the base of my left wing and run my fingers over a slimy substance on sickly smooth bone - blood. I retract my wings and quickly replace the torn skin with new layers.

"Not bad." T's voice startles me. I wonder about how he got down so quickly until I remember he probably had to do what I just did and it looked like he did pretty well.

I shrug. "I really didn't want to have to do that. I love this jacket - it's my only leather."

T laugh. "We'll get ya a new one, Cessa." He cups his hand around his hand and hollers, "Ehh! Let's well-cam Cessa ta da Shadows!"

I revel in my moments of fame for as long as it lasts, but it turns out I don't get to find out how long that is, exactly. I passed out with the last thing in my memory being one of T's arms in contact with my newly healed shoulder blades.