With an electric sound and a small thud, I had been teleported into the arena. An arena of not just a game, but an arena of death, played in by warriors from across the universe and even beyond. Thousands have perished getting to the position I found myself in: the final battle against the champion of Tier 5.
I’ll never forget that place. The arena was not like others: it was covered in a thick, orange fog, with an air of decay about it. Seeing ten hooves’ lengths in front of me was a challenge, more than fifteen an impossibility. As I stood, awaiting my opponent, a stale wind blew through my short-cut mane, sending the slightest shiver down my spine. Fighting for my life in this place was to be no small task, especially against the pony who called this wretched place home.
All around me was thick, worn stone. No pony had even attempted to clean the blood stains from the walls; I had suspected that this was a way for the champion pony to intimidate his opponents. Only foals would be scared by such a display. I, for one, knew quite well what my blood looked like, and I would be damned if I was going to see it on these walls. I had faced too many great warrior ponies to find myself a carcass here.
It’s funny, in retrospect, how such a simple sound served to waver that cavalier attitude I had so readily adopted going into it. Echoing off of the dead walls, shattering the constant droning of the dry wind, a clop-clop-clop sound. The sound of my opponent, no doubt coming to greet me – or, if he was as deadly as ponies claimed, to see me off into the next life. This was the start of the one minute peacetime allowed by the overseers before a match officially began, so that two ponies – or all of the ponies, if the case was as such – could square off without actually being able to kill each other. Or, if this pony was anything like Anarki, chat jubilantly. Though I sincerely doubted this pony was anything like that.
Before that moment, I had no idea that the sound of a pony trotting could have any feeling to it, but if I had to describe it, this pony’s trotting sounded almost forlorn. Not tentative, or unwilling – simply routine, in a distantly sad sort of way.
Through the thick fog, his form finally started to come into view. He was a deathly orange pony, whose coat was the same color as the fog. Whether that was natural or a result from living in the fog for so long, I never worked out. His legs looked withered, as if his whole body had started to decay, but he carried himself with a certain defiant grace, giving the impression that he had struck a deal with death himself.
What was truly disturbing, however, was his head. He donned a thin, torn hood - it seemed to be made perhaps of burlap – that covered everything about his head besides his face and wrapped around his neck. What little was seen of his face was truly unnerving; to this day, I sometimes find myself seeing it staring me down in nightmares.
He looked almost like a skull. Where there should have been a snout, there was none. Where there should have been eyes, there were none. Despite having skin, he didn’t seem to have much else. He had wide, torn holes in his cheeks, revealing part of the teeth he still had. From inside his head came a bright orange, ethereal glow that shone through his eye sockets and the holes in his cheeks, giving the impression of two sets of glowing eyes. There was no soul in that stare. There was simply a malevolent presence that set me on edge in its unnerving dominance.
The pony trotted close enough that I could get a good look at him and sat down. Traditionally, warriors stood, staring each other down, but somehow, the way this pony acted made that all seem petty. He breathed steadily, looking me up and down as I did him. No emotion registered on that ghastly face of his; I doubt to this day that it had for many years.
His presence was unnerving, and his reputation was planted well in my head before the match, but still, I stood my ground. I uttered his name in a voice that I had sincerely hoped didn’t betray my nervousness.
“Uriel.”
He turned his head ever so slightly towards me, as if he hadn’t truly recognized my presence until then. To my shock, he spoke in a voice just a loud as my own.
“Garrison, I presume. You must be a warrior of the utmost skill to have made it here, no?”
His speaking was deliberate, but not slow; his voice gravelly, but not weak. He had done plenty of speaking in his time, I was sure, and he chose not to mince words now.
“Yes. If I hadn’t had the skill, I certainly wouldn’t have made it past your…” I stumbled for the right word, not wanting to insult the brave warriors whom I had slain to reach this point.
“Inferiors,” Uriel finished for me. “They had skill but no experience. Tell me, pony: are you any different?”
He was testing me. No doubt he wanted to see if his – setup – would unnerve me as well. I was no regular warrior, however. I would not let him get to me; in fact, his test only served to flare my confidence more.
“Again, Uriel, if I was no different I most certainly would not be here. You’d be better off dismissing any preconceived notions you have of me, pony. Underestimating me may turn out to be your undoing.”
The old pony sighed. “You are not the first to come to me with such strong-headedness. I would advise you heed your own warning.”
A loud beep, seemingly from nowhere, signified that there were ten seconds until we started fighting.
I shook my head pityingly. “You’re clearly quite wise, Uriel. It’s a pity you’ll have to perish today.”
He looked at me right in the eye – if that was possible – and said, “We shall see. We shall certainly see.”
The final timer beeped and with a blinding flash we were teleported to our starting positions.
I found myself in a dark corner, backed up against cold stone on either side. I immediately turned right, towards a glow that caught my eye – it was simply ammunition for our stock machingun.
Though the projectiles and the pain were very real, the actual ammo counts and weapons were largely virtual. We each had harnesses on our backs that produced whatever weapon we had just ‘picked up’ on our sides or over our heads, or, if we so desired, would equip our front hooves with deadly gauntlets. We started a match with only our machineguns – two rotary, magazine-fed guns that had both a low rate of fire and little stopping power – and our gauntlets. We could only have one equipped at a time. All of the ammunition was made from a completely malleable material, and fortified into useable projectiles on the fly in hefty packs that rode on either side of us, on our flanks. The harness then calculates how much ammunition we have left and limits our weapons to that amount: when the count goes to zero, it stops firing. It then automatically switches to the next ‘best’ weapon that a pony had picked up during the match. It was made almost entirely by unicorn engineers and had been in use since the games had started.
I rotated the barrels on my machineguns in anticipation. Walking along a narrow corridor on the outskirts of the considerably-sized arena, every perceived noise made me jump a little. I had no idea where my opponent was and he struck me as the type that could sneak up on a pony without being noticed.
As I was finally getting used to the fog and the atmosphere, a bullet whizzed by my mane, close enough that I could feel the impact of the displaced wind next to me. Hearing it embed into the wall on my left, I jerked my head to the right, fighting to control my adrenaline so that I might be able to catch his form floating in the shadows and fog. Unfortunately, I saw nothing; it was as though no pony was even there. I raced in the direction I anticipated he fired at me from, guns ready, on the alert. He wasn’t going to get away from me, not if I could help it. I had ended matches in minutes before and I could do it again.
He was gone. Either I had lost him or he hadn’t been there at all. Both options left a considerably bad taste in my mouth. I wanted to squeeze off a few rounds into the wall or the floor in anticipation and anxiety, but even a newbie fresh out of Crash’s tutorial knew that that would give away your position to a lurking enemy, especially in an environment like the arena I was in.
A distant sound made me stop in my tracks: the signature pick-up noise of a rocket launcher. Naturally deadly weapons, though they came equipped with only ten rockets. Unless somepony managed to land all direct hits, it could take at least that much to finish a pony off.
Still, I turned and ran in the other direction. I wasn’t running away – there was no ‘away’ in a box – but instead I was running to the area I knew would be most likely to have weapons Uriel hadn’t found yet, simply because he wasn’t there.
I ran behind a short pillar, hoping to find something of some use there. I was in luck – a beautiful blue glow splashed itself across the floor underneath the slick, silver plasma gun that lay before me.
The plasma gun was a very powerful weapon, firing multiple orbs of hot plasma in a straight line every second. A newbie would simply chew up the ammo firing at shadows; I, however, knew that the best way to harness this weapon’s power was to fire it generously, letting every orb find its target after taking time to aim at and lead a pony target. It was the weapon I used most efficiently – well, it was my second, underneath the shotgun. To my knowledge, I had not yet come across a shotgun, however.
As if to taunt this casual observation on my part, the distinct POW of a shotgun blast erupted behind me, followed by a pellet ingraining itself into my right flank. The searing agony shot through my entire back half, and it took every fiber of my being to choke down the cry of pain that had all but made its way out of my throat.
My pain quickly turned to anger as I whipped around to see Uriel rushing towards me, lining up for a kill-shot. He thought he would beat me that easily. I couldn’t help but think about how foolish that was.
Seemingly taking cues from my anger, the body of my plasma gun flared up brightly, sending three perfectly aligned orbs of plasma speeding at Uriel. My aim was true, I knew it, and while the shots certainly wouldn’t down him, it would show him a thing or two about pain, melting a good portion of the thin layer of flesh he still possessed.
Like a specter, my opponent was impossibly fast, practically gliding just out of reach of my plasma bolts. His hood was singed from the encounter, but he was otherwise unscathed.
I wasn’t planning on letting him crack off another shot. Quickly switching back to my machine guns, I positioned myself so that I was fully facing Uriel once more and squeezed out multiple rounds toward his legs. I had done this before to others in one on one matches: I was going to incapacitate him, and quickly finish him off with my gauntlets. The adrenaline of deadly combat made you do some brutal things, but I certainly didn’t earn my place here by being friendly to my opponents.
I nearly cackled in delight when I heard the telltale sound of bullets ripping flesh and muscle. Though a majority of the bullets hit the ground underneath him or the wall behind him, Uriel was a tad too slow, allowing some of them to connect, impacting him right above hoof level. He stumbled and fell almost straight into the wall next to him, before catching himself and fleeing around a nearby corner. My anger rose again as I started to gallop full-tilt after him.
Our chase didn’t last long. He was surprisingly nimble for an injured pony, and by the time I had followed him down a few corridors, I had lost him.
Realizing my prey had escaped, I slowed to a full stop. I had been running at a good clip for a few long seconds, and the burning in my lungs told me I needed to catch my breath. After the adrenaline started to wear off, I finally started feeling the pain in my flank again. It seared awfully, as if somepony had stuck a red hot poker deep into my flesh. I leaned against a wall, nursing the wound as much as I could with my right forehoof. If I had been standing a bit to the side…
Before I could allow myself to fall into hypotheticals about my own death, a loud FWOOM brought my attention to the area directly ahead of me and the large, flaming, metallic object flying directly towards me. I had to admit one thing: Uriel had impeccable timing.
I had maybe two seconds before the rocket would hit me directly, severely injuring if not killing me. Thinking quickly, I pushed forward and jumped as hard as I could, attempting to give the rocket room to fly underneath me. In a stroke of great luck, my kicking legs hit the tail end of the rocket, diverting its flight path and sending it straight into the air. I was grateful for the fact that this particular arena had no ceiling.
Uriel let out a small grunt of frustration and turned to dash away. I had landed close enough to him so that firing off a rocket would be suicide, and I was practically already firing on him, not giving him a chance to switch to his shotgun, so he had no other choice.
Instead of pursuing him, I headed in the other direction, anticipating where he would go. I had seen the area in passing while chasing him the first time: a large box area that was wide open and lined with ammunition pickups. Anypony who had just used ammunition would want to go back there after a firefight, if they wanted to be safe in their ammo count. Besides that, there were some health kits lying around this place, and if there was one place where they might have been, it was there.
Ignoring the pain the shot through my body every step I took, I eventually made my way to one of the large archways leading into the main area. Because of the thick fog, I couldn’t see all the way to the other side; Uriel could have been anywhere. I held my breath and walked slowly into the area, aware of any noise or perceived movement around me. Even the wind seemed to stop blowing in those thick moments of anticipation, leaving nothing but a truly deathly silence to surround me.
The silence was interrupted by the sound of a rocket flying through the air. I had heard it well before it was close, but I had no idea from which direction it came; the acoustics in the area made the sound seem to come from all directions. If I ran in any of them, I risked running head-first into a rocket.
Knowing that my time to think was severely limited, I chose to run forward, towards the middle of the arena. I was almost positive that I had made the correct decision until the rocket impacted the ground impossibly close to me.
A wave of heat and sound hit me at full force, sending me on my side. I cringed as the rough texture of the hard stone ground dug into my flank, feeling it tear off a layer of my skin. The sound of the dust debris falling combined with the ringing in my ears spared me of having to hear the cry I let out from not only the physical pain, but the pain of realizing that I had been so foolish as to walk right into a rocket.
“I see you were boasting earlier,” a voice floated into my still-ringing ears. “It’s unfortunate. I was quite looking forward to a challenge.”
I looked up at his approaching form. He had the barrels of his shotgun aimed directly at my head. He could have taken the shot, ended it right there, but for just a second, he hesitated.
Uriel wasn’t like the rest, neither in the way he fought nor in the way he spoke to his opponents. He had none of the boastful confidence of Sarge; none of the playful condescension of Hunter; none of the bestial, instinctive brutality of Klesk; none of the jovial excitement of Anarki. He gave off the air of somepony who had been doing this for so long that they no longer found any thrill, any enjoyment in the affair. Part of me still thinks that, for whatever reason, he wanted to die that day, by my hooves. That that was the reason he didn’t take that shot.
Taking advantage of the momentary pause, I quickly switched to my gauntlets and pushed off of a nearby wall towards Uriel. Clearly surprised by my sudden movement – he may have thought I was rendered unconscious from the blast – he jumped back, trying to avoid the blades spinning around my hooves. He wasn’t a match for the speed with which I moved toward him, and my gauntlets connected with his front legs.
There was a sickening assortment of sounds from the gauntlets digging into his legs. His body was clearly withered, as my gauntlets easily picked through the skin and bone. Though too many warriors before me had fallen because they had assumed the fight was won before their opponent’s last breath, I allowed myself to smile at the almost assured victory before me. I would take Uriel’s life, and I would move on to take more. The thought pleased me immensely. This is what these tournaments were about.
Uriel let out a small whimper as he lay on the ground, desperately trying to re-aim his shotgun at me. I got directly behind him and stood over him so that he couldn’t physically turn his barrels to face anywhere near me, but so that he could still see me.
“You could have finished me,” I found myself saying unprompted. “You could have ended it. Right there. But you didn’t. Why?”
He let out a defeated sigh. “You may have my life, pony. You may not have my secrets. Take this victory as a blessing, and move on. Finish me now before I use my rocket launcher to finish the both of us.”
I closed my eyes, switched to my machineguns and let off multiple rounds directly into his skull. After his body stopped twitching and his tail stopped flicking, the final buzzer sounded.
Upon reflection, no victory is completely empty, if only because it allows one to take another breath and participate in another deathmatch. But defeating Uriel wasn’t like defeating the other Tier leaders’ tournaments. Did I win that day because I possessed great skill in combat, unmatched by anypony who entered the field? Or did I win because Uriel no longer had the drive to continue, and, deep down, wanted to die, and in that moment made the ultimate decision?
It seems that no pony would ever know. The only pony who ever did know was lying dead in a foggy arena, having finally become one with his environment.
