Heaven's Empress ||COMPLETE||

|38| End Game

|First Person POV|

The screams raged in my skull, the sounds vibrating at a frequency where even slamming my head into the wall won't dull the noise. Screaming, the never ending screaming. Of pain, terror, suffering.

My screams.

A bucket of ice-cold water drenched me from head to toe and I snapped out of my nightmare. In front of me stood Mei in all her unadulterated horridness. My throat felt dry, and my eyes watered from exhaustion.

Wasn't she... dead?

I blinked, hard, trying to clear my eyes and my head.

That's right. I killed her. I sliced her into a thousand little pieces and watched as she burst into flesh and bone. A smile emerged on my face. That's it then, I had gone officially crazy.

Either that, or I was dead, but my body was in far too much pain that I knew with a cold certainty that I was still alive.

"Shut up, wake up." She commanded, her haughty and regal mannerism still the same.

I smiled at her, a wide tooth-revealing grin and realized that blood was dripping out of my mouth. She smirked, and flipped a switch.

Instantly, my body was flooded by electricity. The electrical voltage scrambling my nerves and setting every inch of my body on fire. I screamed again, not able to control my own voice.

She turned the electricity off, and laughed at me.

"I'm not that easy to kill, Empress. Now, you still remember what you promised last night, don't you?"

Last night?

My mind was hazy and felt like there was a ten-pound weight weighing it down, but I managed to trudge through my memories. Last night, after Chidoku had gone to find the person who wrote the note, members from the Company had appeared in my room.

I fought with everything I had — which wasn't actually much, considering I had the restriction of "Zel" placed upon me — but was overpowered and outnumbered in the end. They drugged me and carried me off to the holding cell used for wild beasts before they participated in the Pit.

My stomach recoiled, remembering that tiny damp space. I had been there before, when I was rebellious, when I sought freedom openly. Silva had appeared, and strapped me to the electrical torture device.

He informed me that he learned of my plans to conspire with a certain challenger, and that he was most displeased. He shocked me then, ten times in a row. Of course, he wasn't afraid of hurting me, since he knew all my skills. He knew that upon taking a percentage of damage, Ichor would activate on its own and heal me.

So he continued with his torture, always speaking in a calm and rational voice that made him so much more insane. He told me that he had opened the news publicly, that the undefeated Empress would rise to the challenges of Hisoka. He sold the tickets at a extreme price, and that I had either two options.

"Fight, and kill Hisoka, or fight, and die."

He stroked my cheeks then, chuckling.

"You were my favorite, Zel. That's why I kept you alive for so long, supplying your silly pills and all. But now... Well, all gold mines run out sooner or later, don't they?"

He had left upon my promise that I would kill Hisoka without a moment's hesitation, seeming most pleased with himself. After that... I fell into a deep sleep, and was once again entrapped by my night terrors.