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Description
The Regicide

A strange creature of horror, a ball of spines with several bloodshot eyes scattered all over six dark tentacles and a pair of dark blue wing-like implements that look too small to work, jumps over the window and starts surrounding the vehicle with a cloud of increasing darkness.

The inhabitants of the Underworld have stopped amazing me at this point, though. My initial illusion at the prospect of witnessing a whole new zoology was shut down at the point where I learned that almost all of the creatures attacking us were actually shapeshifters, and I will not attain anything new by observing them while passing by. Death turned on the windscreen wiper, rapidly getting rid of the thing.

"So you are saying then," I recapitulate, "that there actually was a magic bullet involved."

"Holy," he quickly corrects me.

"Yes. Holy. But this holy bullet was at the same time not the one that wounded John Connally and neither of those two bullets were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald." I wait for him to nod and then continue. "And marginally related, the holy bullet was actually a normal bullet with fragments of the stone that, biblically, David used to kill Goliath, and it will always aim towards the head." He continues to nod. That's just the basics, but I have the feeling that I understand how the rest works.

...It is so bizarre yet it fits together so well at the same time. Like a real tight puzzle of a Dali painting. It is hard to know if Death is telling the truth or just getting a laugh out of my incredulity at this point.

"Let's say all of that is true, then. If the Russian estate wasn't the one to set up the assassination but a group of zealots and their pagan God, why would they want to..."

"We're here!" Death interrupts me as he starts to slow down the truck. I look outside of the window. Death had already told me of Nothing, his city of souls. Looking about I see what looks like fresh corpses wandering around a series of surprisingly well distributed pubs, casinos, whorehouses and probably cheap motels. A punk aesthetic, generally. Several of the corpses... Or spirits, I should call them, sport a series of chains and weights that notably hinder their movement with them.

"Ok, here I leave you." Death pointed towards a very elegant hotel, easily the finest building I had seen so far in the city. "Five stars, every accommodation you want, all for free. If anyone wants to charge you for anything, the password is 'I am Death's guest, you moron', so there you go."

"I owe you my gratitude for the courtesy, Death, but I think I would rather take a look at the city." I answer, smiling. "After all, whether I win or die, it looks like this will be my eternal home very soon, so I would do good in getting used to it."

"Whatever you want. But be sure to be back here at the entrance in an hour. You have a round scheduled early."

"No problem." I answer, closing the door since I can guess Death has nothing he wants to add to the conversation. Now that I think about it, I am not entirely sure of what time it is right now. I take out the silver pocket watch that I took with me before leaving. The clock hands show there are twenty seven minutes until two o'clock.

...Which would mean that I either spent twelve hours in Death's truck, which is unlikely, or I spent less than two minutes, which would be even stranger from a normal point of view, but logically, I guess that for the system to work correctly. Death can't take a lot of time to carry his souls to the afterlife, so a sort of distortion in the perception of time might be at work in that truck.

But enough of that, time to get to know the city.

Looking around the streets, I enter what I could call, generously, the classiest looking pub I can find. although by London standards it would be a bit dirty and quite modest, I certainly prefer that to the seizure-inducing levels of illumination and the general tackiness present in some of the other structures.

The ambience inside is, surprisingly, not a lot different from what you could find in any regular pub of the mortal world. People eat or play card games on small tables but generally seem to prefer sitting at the bar. There are a couple of loud individuals that yell to each other to surpass the volume of Mick Jagger singing Angie in the background, perhaps not noticing that they should separate themselves a bit from the speakers, and a general feeling of anguish abounds. It seems that even after death arrives, a bar is the place to go for in order to drown your sorrows.

"An I'm tellin ya that am not dead." I hear someone say quite close to me. I turn to look and I see something worth paying particular attention to. Judging by the colour of her skin, the absence of any signs of death and, perhaps most notably, what she just said, it looks like there is another mortal in the bar. A young woman probably in her late teens wearing a ridiculous large blue jacket. One of my opponents seems to have arrived before me, and she is plastered.

...Well that does give me an excellent chance to kill one opponent unopposed, but on the other hand, chances of facing any given particular person in a thirty two men tournament is slim, and I would do better in knowing what kind of individuals Death has been recruiting.

"Look lady I don't care if you are dead, alive or a talking chair. If you drink my scotch, you pay for it," demands, angrily, the barman.

I sit next to the girl.

"I am sorry my friend, she is with me. It is truly a shame that she would cause you any trouble. I will pay for her in a minute," I say, smiling. The owner leaves, angrily.

"Sorreh do I know ya?" says the girl, very confused.

"No, you don't. But you want to avoid trouble with the barman here so you'd really rather be with me." I answer. "The name is Edward, pleased to meet you."

"Emiliana Aglionby... Emi fur friends." She answers, falling over the bar. I could tell Ms. Aglionby that we are certainly not friends, but I want to earn her trust. I take her half empty glass of scotch.

"I guess you don't mind if I take some, Emi?" If she minds, she does not express it. I take a small sip of the drink. It is extremely tasty, but it also burns like molten sulfur. Suddenly I understand why my new 'friend' is in her current state. I prefer to leave the drink be, keeping it at a considerable distance from the girl in the blue jacket.

"So has Death invited you as well?" I ask.

Between slurs Emiliana tells me absolutely everything that happened to her in the last five hours, including some things that I am sure are very confidential. Apparently Death had in fact organized a mini-competition in her area for the right to participate in the Tournament, but Emiliana claimed to actually be working on behalf of the Archangel Gabriel himself as a spy for the tournament. I don't know about the validity of that last claim, since she miserably fails her attempt to prove it to me as she tries to demand the Archangel to talk to her through a pendant she has with her. At one point I steal what looks like a pink toy gun she is carrying, but it doesn't seem to do anything. "No! Give meh Luca back! I really reelly need Lucah!" As she tells me this, it looks like she is about to cry, so I decide to give it back since I obviously can't give it a lot of use myself. A shame that she had to notice at all.

"Well are you going to pay or not?" The barman asks, eventually. Oh, right, I had forgotten about him. Without a lot of faith, I take a hundred pounds bill from my wallet.

"Do you take English currency?" I ask, smiling.

"Mortal money is useless here." He answers condescendingly, as if I just asked the most stupid question he had ever heard. "I only take keys."

Interesting. Again, I didn't really hope that my cash would be of any use to him. I just wanted to know what would.

I look at other customers. I am looking for keys. Well, logically, keys are used to open locks, and I can easily find locks worth opening all around me: The shackles and other restraints that people are wearing.

Excellent, now I have a slight idea of how economy works around here. Soon after this discovery I find another gem: a big man almost completely covered in heavy chains, slowly walking around the establishment with a keyring hanging from the link of a chain around his waist area. I walk towards him and subtly start removing the ring from the chain. All the while, as far as I can tell, the owner knows perfectly about what I'm doing, but as I suspected he doesn't really seem to mind as long as he gets paid. The ring is a bit tight and hard to open, but it does finally come out. Too bad that doing the extra effort made the man notice me.

"Hey! What the hell are you doing?" He asks, angrily. However he can barely move his arms, so stopping me is nothing but a fantasy.

"I am stealing from you, naturally." I answer, finally taking the ring off his waist. "When you have something important with you that other people may want, you shouldn't be showing it like that."

I go to the barman and hastily pay with one of the silver keys, storing the rest in one of the pockets of my jacket. I grab Emiliana by the shoulder and help her walk out with me towards the exit. All the while, the huge man with the chains is trying to kill me with his mind, but he can't do a lot else.

"Everyone!" He yells, using his best effort to point at me. "That bastard just stole seventeen keys from me. I don't care if you give them back, just end him." I stand corrected; he can also do that.

I quickly exit. Suddenly almost everyone in the bar is jumping tables to follow me. That wouldn't be so bad, since I am sure I can outrun them, but I am carrying a load with me. Emiliana can go barely over walking speed while wobbling around. I could abandon her right there, but she might hold a grudge later... If she even remembers this, of course. And I don't want that to happen if I was to fight her in the future.

"Emi, we need to go faster. I will carry you." I say, beginning to hold her from the back. She seems lightweight enough for me to do it, but she aggressively pulls my arm away.

"Getya hands off me ya perverr. Ah don't need ya help ta run... Ah am theh best runnar ever."

Before I can react, Emi quickly takes off a pair of sandals and starts a clumsy run. I begin to follow, but three steps after starting, she does a hard kick on the floor that leaves a footprint on the asphalt, meaning to do a high jump. It has become clear that Death doesn't just recruit just anyone to this, and some of the contestants will be of a strange nature.

Her balance, however, is not helping the impressive technique, since the jump ends up making her fall face first on the street a few meters beyond her starting point. I hastily crouch to grab her, since the mob is getting really close. Her nose is bleeding a bit.

"Ohhkay perhaps I do need the help." She manages to say before fainting. Better like that I guess, easier to carry.

Luckily I manage to reach the hotel soon enough. The spirits that tried to beat me up for the keys don't even attempt to follow me in. This is obviously a very private place. I leave the girl to a security manager, tell him her name and that she should be brought to her room. All in all, I walked away from that with sixteen keys, and as a bonus, if Emi was to be my opponent she will be too drunk to participate this round.

I dedicate myself to eating something in the buffet during the next fifteen minutes (I never got to eat the peas, after all), also wasting time until my host arrives, and then I go outside again. There I find the green Chevrolet. I get in.

"Punctual as expected." Death tells me, while adjusting the mirrors. "Thanks for helping out your fellow contestant back there."

"It also works out for me, so it is a pleasure to help." I answer. Of course, it's not like Death doesn't know about what motivates me. "So, who am I facing?"

"Well, I can't tell you many details about your opponent, but you will be happy to hear this much. Not only is it a gorgeous lady, but she is also royalty."

Interesting.

Description
The Regicide

A strange creature of horror, a ball of spines with several bloodshot eyes scattered all over six dark tentacles and a pair of dark blue wing-like implements that look too small to work, jumps over the window and starts surrounding the vehicle with a cloud of increasing darkness.

The inhabitants of the Underworld have stopped amazing me at this point, though. My initial illusion at the prospect of witnessing a whole new zoology was shut down at the point where I learned that almost all of the creatures attacking us were actually shapeshifters, and I will not attain anything new by observing them while passing by. Death turned on the windscreen wiper, rapidly getting rid of the thing.

"So you are saying then," I recapitulate, "that there actually was a magic bullet involved."

"Holy," he quickly corrects me.

"Yes. Holy. But this holy bullet was at the same time not the one that wounded John Connally and neither of those two bullets were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald." I wait for him to nod and then continue. "And marginally related, the holy bullet was actually a normal bullet with fragments of the stone that, biblically, David used to kill Goliath, and it will always aim towards the head." He continues to nod. That's just the basics, but I have the feeling that I understand how the rest works.

...It is so bizarre yet it fits together so well at the same time. Like a real tight puzzle of a Dali painting. It is hard to know if Death is telling the truth or just getting a laugh out of my incredulity at this point.

"Let's say all of that is true, then. If the Russian estate wasn't the one to set up the assassination but a group of zealots and their pagan God, why would they want to..."

"We're here!" Death interrupts me as he starts to slow down the truck. I look outside of the window. Death had already told me of Nothing, his city of souls. Looking about I see what looks like fresh corpses wandering around a series of surprisingly well distributed pubs, casinos, whorehouses and probably cheap motels. A punk aesthetic, generally. Several of the corpses... Or spirits, I should call them, sport a series of chains and weights that notably hinder their movement with them.

"Ok, here I leave you." Death pointed towards a very elegant hotel, easily the finest building I had seen so far in the city. "Five stars, every accommodation you want, all for free. If anyone wants to charge you for anything, the password is 'I am Death's guest, you moron', so there you go."

"I owe you my gratitude for the courtesy, Death, but I think I would rather take a look at the city." I answer, smiling. "After all, whether I win or die, it looks like this will be my eternal home very soon, so I would do good in getting used to it."

"Whatever you want. But be sure to be back here at the entrance in an hour. You have a round scheduled early."

"No problem." I answer, closing the door since I can guess Death has nothing he wants to add to the conversation. Now that I think about it, I am not entirely sure of what time it is right now. I take out the silver pocket watch that I took with me before leaving. The clock hands show there are twenty seven minutes until two o'clock.

...Which would mean that I either spent twelve hours in Death's truck, which is unlikely, or I spent less than two minutes, which would be even stranger from a normal point of view, but logically, I guess that for the system to work correctly. Death can't take a lot of time to carry his souls to the afterlife, so a sort of distortion in the perception of time might be at work in that truck.

But enough of that, time to get to know the city.

Looking around the streets, I enter what I could call, generously, the classiest looking pub I can find. although by London standards it would be a bit dirty and quite modest, I certainly prefer that to the seizure-inducing levels of illumination and the general tackiness present in some of the other structures.

The ambience inside is, surprisingly, not a lot different from what you could find in any regular pub of the mortal world. People eat or play card games on small tables but generally seem to prefer sitting at the bar. There are a couple of loud individuals that yell to each other to surpass the volume of Mick Jagger singing Angie in the background, perhaps not noticing that they should separate themselves a bit from the speakers, and a general feeling of anguish abounds. It seems that even after death arrives, a bar is the place to go for in order to drown your sorrows.

"An I'm tellin ya that am not dead." I hear someone say quite close to me. I turn to look and I see something worth paying particular attention to. Judging by the colour of her skin, the absence of any signs of death and, perhaps most notably, what she just said, it looks like there is another mortal in the bar. A young woman probably in her late teens wearing a ridiculous large blue jacket. One of my opponents seems to have arrived before me, and she is plastered.

...Well that does give me an excellent chance to kill one opponent unopposed, but on the other hand, chances of facing any given particular person in a thirty two men tournament is slim, and I would do better in knowing what kind of individuals Death has been recruiting.

"Look lady I don't care if you are dead, alive or a talking chair. If you drink my scotch, you pay for it," demands, angrily, the barman.

I sit next to the girl.

"I am sorry my friend, she is with me. It is truly a shame that she would cause you any trouble. I will pay for her in a minute," I say, smiling. The owner leaves, angrily.

"Sorreh do I know ya?" says the girl, very confused.

"No, you don't. But you want to avoid trouble with the barman here so you'd really rather be with me." I answer. "The name is Edward, pleased to meet you."

"Emiliana Aglionby... Emi fur friends." She answers, falling over the bar. I could tell Ms. Aglionby that we are certainly not friends, but I want to earn her trust. I take her half empty glass of scotch.

"I guess you don't mind if I take some, Emi?" If she minds, she does not express it. I take a small sip of the drink. It is extremely tasty, but it also burns like molten sulfur. Suddenly I understand why my new 'friend' is in her current state. I prefer to leave the drink be, keeping it at a considerable distance from the girl in the blue jacket.

"So has Death invited you as well?" I ask.

Between slurs Emiliana tells me absolutely everything that happened to her in the last five hours, including some things that I am sure are very confidential. Apparently Death had in fact organized a mini-competition in her area for the right to participate in the Tournament, but Emiliana claimed to actually be working on behalf of the Archangel Gabriel himself as a spy for the tournament. I don't know about the validity of that last claim, since she miserably fails her attempt to prove it to me as she tries to demand the Archangel to talk to her through a pendant she has with her. At one point I steal what looks like a pink toy gun she is carrying, but it doesn't seem to do anything. "No! Give meh Luca back! I really reelly need Lucah!" As she tells me this, it looks like she is about to cry, so I decide to give it back since I obviously can't give it a lot of use myself. A shame that she had to notice at all.

"Well are you going to pay or not?" The barman asks, eventually. Oh, right, I had forgotten about him. Without a lot of faith, I take a hundred pounds bill from my wallet.

"Do you take English currency?" I ask, smiling.

"Mortal money is useless here." He answers condescendingly, as if I just asked the most stupid question he had ever heard. "I only take keys."

Interesting. Again, I didn't really hope that my cash would be of any use to him. I just wanted to know what would.

I look at other customers. I am looking for keys. Well, logically, keys are used to open locks, and I can easily find locks worth opening all around me: The shackles and other restraints that people are wearing.

Excellent, now I have a slight idea of how economy works around here. Soon after this discovery I find another gem: a big man almost completely covered in heavy chains, slowly walking around the establishment with a keyring hanging from the link of a chain around his waist area. I walk towards him and subtly start removing the ring from the chain. All the while, as far as I can tell, the owner knows perfectly about what I'm doing, but as I suspected he doesn't really seem to mind as long as he gets paid. The ring is a bit tight and hard to open, but it does finally come out. Too bad that doing the extra effort made the man notice me.

"Hey! What the hell are you doing?" He asks, angrily. However he can barely move his arms, so stopping me is nothing but a fantasy.

"I am stealing from you, naturally." I answer, finally taking the ring off his waist. "When you have something important with you that other people may want, you shouldn't be showing it like that."

I go to the barman and hastily pay with one of the silver keys, storing the rest in one of the pockets of my jacket. I grab Emiliana by the shoulder and help her walk out with me towards the exit. All the while, the huge man with the chains is trying to kill me with his mind, but he can't do a lot else.

"Everyone!" He yells, using his best effort to point at me. "That bastard just stole seventeen keys from me. I don't care if you give them back, just end him." I stand corrected; he can also do that.

I quickly exit. Suddenly almost everyone in the bar is jumping tables to follow me. That wouldn't be so bad, since I am sure I can outrun them, but I am carrying a load with me. Emiliana can go barely over walking speed while wobbling around. I could abandon her right there, but she might hold a grudge later... If she even remembers this, of course. And I don't want that to happen if I was to fight her in the future.

"Emi, we need to go faster. I will carry you." I say, beginning to hold her from the back. She seems lightweight enough for me to do it, but she aggressively pulls my arm away.

"Getya hands off me ya perverr. Ah don't need ya help ta run... Ah am theh best runnar ever."

Before I can react, Emi quickly takes off a pair of sandals and starts a clumsy run. I begin to follow, but three steps after starting, she does a hard kick on the floor that leaves a footprint on the asphalt, meaning to do a high jump. It has become clear that Death doesn't just recruit just anyone to this, and some of the contestants will be of a strange nature.

Her balance, however, is not helping the impressive technique, since the jump ends up making her fall face first on the street a few meters beyond her starting point. I hastily crouch to grab her, since the mob is getting really close. Her nose is bleeding a bit.

"Ohhkay perhaps I do need the help." She manages to say before fainting. Better like that I guess, easier to carry.

Luckily I manage to reach the hotel soon enough. The spirits that tried to beat me up for the keys don't even attempt to follow me in. This is obviously a very private place. I leave the girl to a security manager, tell him her name and that she should be brought to her room. All in all, I walked away from that with sixteen keys, and as a bonus, if Emi was to be my opponent she will be too drunk to participate this round.

I dedicate myself to eating something in the buffet during the next fifteen minutes (I never got to eat the peas, after all), also wasting time until my host arrives, and then I go outside again. There I find the green Chevrolet. I get in.

"Punctual as expected." Death tells me, while adjusting the mirrors. "Thanks for helping out your fellow contestant back there."

"It also works out for me, so it is a pleasure to help." I answer. Of course, it's not like Death doesn't know about what motivates me. "So, who am I facing?"

"Well, I can't tell you many details about your opponent, but you will be happy to hear this much. Not only is it a gorgeous lady, but she is also royalty."

Interesting.