Sleeping Player (Project Chrysalis Book 3) by John Gold (novel24 TXT) 📕

“You!” It hurts so bad, my heart hurts, mama, it hurts. “You!” Father, sister, blood. “You shouldn’t have awoken me!” Memories flowed in a river of pain and suffering. Everyone he cared about was dead, and the good part of his soul had gone with them.

LJ the cat melted into his consciousness. In his place, Sagie returned to the world.

***

Kilaya was watching the battle from the special section of the stands set apart for the Coliseum’s technical staff. People were only allowed there by invitation from the city magistrate.

The cat and his opponent Tullius stepped out into the ring. It was rakish clothing and two black daggers against bare hands. Kilaya could sense the cat’s emotions—he recognized his foe. Either that, or he took him for someone he knew, though there was a strange feeling, as if the cat was trying to remember… The cat’s identity was shattering. For the girl, it felt like anxiety, alarm, and a foreboding that something terrible and irreparable was about to occur.

She burst into tears again, seeming to fall into a pool of pain and suffering. There was almost nothing left of the cat’s identity, and the girl could barely keep the rage and pain she was feeling from bubbling over.

The cat turned black in a fraction of a second. His fluffy tail collapsed to the ground. In the meantime, the thief teleported over and sank one of his black daggers into his opponent’s shoulder. The cat, in turn, jumped to his right to avoid the critical hit, grabbed the thief by the arm, and fired an enormous fire ball at him at point-blank range. The explosion threw the thief backward ten meters, leaving the sand to melt where he’d been hit. The echo of the explosions resounded through even the most distant stands. Tullius, however, picked himself up calmly, turned, and laughed, a vile smile on his face. His clothing was in one piece; he hadn’t taken the faintest sliver of damage. It was hard not to be impressed by his resistance to physical and fire damage. The thief slipped his daggers into his inventory and bathed in the ovations pouring over him—everyone loved his invulnerability. Everything about him screamed that there was nothing anybody could do to him.

The cat crumpled to the ground and cried. Kilaya could sense his tears and helplessness—he was barely holding out against the onrushing hysterics. All the cat wanted to do was leave, the battle of no interest to him. There was some other reason for the pain and suffering he was experiencing.

He stood up, waited for Tullius to turn his back, and knocked him down, face-first. Twisting the thief’s arm behind his back, he pressed his head into the sand. Dragon breath flashed from him. Apparently, Tullius wasn’t the only one with incredible resistance—the cat couldn’t care less about the melting sand. Kilaya could see the two sinking slowly into the pool that was forming. Minutes went by, and Tullius started to jerk, attempting to get his assailant off him. Nobody thought the cat could continue using dragon breath for six minutes. They didn’t even think that was an attack he could use in the arena in the first place.

Tullius’ health bar started to drop. While the previous two battles the pair had fought had been considered overly cruel, with the thief torturing his victim, and the cat daring to kill his enemy by plunging his own sword in his crotch, Tullius was drowning in a pool of glass. Bubbles started to come to the surface as the thief’s lungs emptied. The stands were silent… The cat was drowning his opponent in liquid glass, and there was nothing Tullius’ resistance could do to save him.

Kilaya’s friend pulled her away from the spectacle.

“Hey, Kila, why are you crying again?”

“Anderson,” she burst out, wiping away tears, “he’s been crying the whole battle. He didn’t want to fight anyone, and there isn’t anything left of the cat. What was saving him from the pain is gone. Now, he’s just a bundle of bare nerves, so sensitive and so vulnerable. He just wanted to leave, but Tullius started making fun of him.”

The girl buried her face in Anderson’s chest and bawled. It was cases like those that kept shamans from using contact empathy.

A couple of minutes later, Tullius’ name disappeared from the tournament standings, and LJ’s did the same a little while after that.

***

My head is buzzing, my hands are shaking, I’m crying, and why is it so loud? It’s muddy and wobbly. I need to get out of here—they could find me.

I remember how to move in stealth mode, so I quietly leave the gladiator room. Really, I want to get as far away as possible. There are too many people, there are too many gods, and it’s too noisy.

It’s winter outside. Snow’s falling, but it quickly melts into puddles. The people walking by work it into mud, and the locals are all over the place selling cheap goods and good food. I look for a quiet alley, somewhere nobody’s making any noise. Having found one, I head for the hatch leading to the city sewers. Telekinesis, and I’m down inside, walking along the water. So much time running across the ocean. I never thought I’d use my ability to walk through sewers. There’s all kind of nastiness floating in the water, and rats run by slugs and gigantic worms along the paths on either side of the water. Moss, vines, and other creeping flora grow by the hatch. It’s warm down here.

My head is splitting, my consciousness like an amoeba—my thoughts whirl around, and my body doesn’t feel like it belongs to me. There’s an emptiness in my heart.

Everything is too loud here. My heightened perception enables me to hear all the voices from the street, and I’m right under the market or a lively