Utter Carnage (HuSanNiang)
By HuSanNiang
I.
Girl was bored, which was always a bad sign. The muses were still annoyed with her over the incident with Castaspella's moon gown and the green squirrel. None of them would speak to her and Kiyone had locked away all the cheese. She wondered how to make it up to them and decided she would make them some extra special soup. It had been in the back of her mind ever since she had that chat with HuSanNiang, when Hu had been talking about her alchemy studies. She had told Girl about a healing potion she was making, and it seemed to Girl that if she tried adding the same ingredients to a soup then it must produce the most wonderfully healthy result.
Girl rifled through her pockets for the note she had scribbled on the back of an envelope at the time. There was an old moose head gathering dust in the back of the costume store that would provide the antlers, and she was sure she could find something alcoholic to substitute for root liquor in Kiyone's secret stash (the one she thought Girl did not know about), but where was she going to find rat meat at this time of night?
After a good look through the cellar, Girl decided that there was only one thing for it; she would have to sneak out of the circle and hope she could find a couple of juicy rodents before anyone noticed she was missing.
Gabrial was in the arena hall, patiently waiting for the doors to open to the Ancients Carnage. As usual, the waiting crowd was a little boistrous in anticipation of the coming competition, and the noise only made worse the headache brought on by the numerous dye requestsshe had received that day. She was going to have to think of a new quest: too many people lately seemed to be surviving the old one.
She scanned the assembled group to see if anyone she knew was attending tonight, and her attention was drawn to a cloaked and hooded figure that somehow seemed familiar. She caught snatches of conversation as the figure moved from one person to another. At first it seemed to be something about wanting directions to one of the low level caves, but the hooded person seemed to get side-tracked by the carnage discussion, and Gabrial could make out a sinewy rogue excitedly explaining the general idea of the carnage competition. Gabrial was almost sure she could place the voice when she heard the hooded one say something like "... and it's perfectly alright to kill anyone in this game?" But then a cheerful roar rang out from the crowd as the doors were opened and the multitude surged forward, and Gabrial forgot the whole thing until some time later.
II.
"What an entertaining idea," mused Girl, gazing around the pen as people quietly clustered at the arena door. She saw warriors cleaning weapons, lithe rogues limbering up like dancers in preparation for the acrobatic fighting style they favored, and mages muttering incantations and practicing complex hand gestures in preparation for the coming battle. She carefully avoided looking to see what poets might be up to - the last thing she needed was to catch the eye of a muse and get dragged back to the circle when she had found such a fun thing to do.
A warrior swaggered past Girl, waving a sword that glowed with an eerie blue light. "Where's your weapon, newbie?" he sneered, deliberatly knocking her aside as he brushed past. Girl's eyes flared red with rage, but she just managed to restrain herself from disemboweling the oaf with her hatpin with the thought of the fun to come. "Maybe I'll take yours from your dead body," she muttered under her breath, giving a tight little smile at the thought of his mutilated corpse.
***
It was an unusual Carnage, and one that few would forget. Reports differed: some said a chaos storm had broken out in the arena, or that an immortal had gone berserk. Several people blamed Kismet or the Carny hosts, but that was largely out of habit, rather than from any evidence. Asrial, the only remaining host left alive, who had survived by hiding in the mop closet until Girl had lost interest and wandered off, having remembered that she was supposed to be looking for some rats for her special soup, surveyed what was left of the arena. "It's a good thing we have a few other arenas now," she said to herself, "this one's going to take a lot of cleaning."
It was several days later, when most of the muses had recovered from food poisoning, that Kiyone received a letter on offical Carnage headed notepaper. She only felt a little queasy, having known Girl long enough to build up considerable immunity to a wide variety of toxins.
Kiyone read the letter through a second time in astonishment to check that she had understood it correctly the first time. It seemed that a special Carnage was planned, by popular demand, and the Muse elder was requested to allow Girl to attend (with the slightly testy proviso that Kiyone get it into Girl's head that Carny hosts were not, repeat NOT fair game). It was to be a three team event; blues on one side, reds on the other, and Girl in the middle.