Leo turned slowly to the side. The wolf has sizzled and turned into roast beef by two teenagers on a mountain bear. How the fuck did they get there in the first place? When the wolf had died, the two laughing teenagers turned to Leo, their laughter dying into a smile. “Are you the protector of gold?" the girl asked. Leo had never been confused in his entire life as he was right now. So many things were happening at the same time and his brain was trying to catch up with them. "What is gold? What are you talking about?” he asked them. “Maybe the wolf was the protector?” the boy said to the girl.”It’s possible, right? I’ve seen movies like that.” “This is not a movie, Ben, this is a game,” the girl rebuked. ‘Can you just focus for once so we can get this done and move on?” The boy called Ben was not having it. ‘I’m focused!” he said. “I held my temper until I got here, didn’t I? I would have killed the man and we wouldn’t have arrived here.” ‘You dare not.” “Besides, don’t yo
Leo hadn’t even gotten the chance to get answers from Draven before the boy pounced on him and pushed him away. He fell to the floor, bracing himself with his hands back on the rough ground, stunned that they had come out so fast before Draven could even let the words out. The girl, who was slower than her brother appeared with Lara, who still held two cubs to her chest. Lara was as stunned as Leo to see Draevn on the ground, writhing in pain as his body returned to normal.“What is he doing here?" How did he even get here? What’s happening to him?” she asked Leo, and then remembering that Leo is as clueless as she is, she turned to the boy called Ben.Ben, seeing that eyes were on him, had no choice but to answer. “Well, we brought this guy out here for very specific reasons and now this friend of yours wants to take the treasure for himself.” He then nodded at Leo. “Tell me friend, did
“What did you just do?” Draven asked as he stood up. “What did you just do?”Lara didn’t wait for him to repeat the words again. She rubbed her hands on her shirt, staining her shirt with blood. Her eyes filled with tears as she kept rubbing her hands on her shirt over and over again.“I just killed someone,” she cried. “I just killed someone.”“It’s not a real death,” Leo said quietly to her.Just in that moment, the two bodies swirled into black dust and vanished into the air. Lara wiped her eyes with her blood stained hands, further rubbing it off her skin too. Leo found it hard to concentrate. The nine wolf cubs gathered around Lara, having smelled the blood on her and probably thinking she'd brought them food. Draven stood fully straight now, even as a bone snapped into place.Leo walked towards him. In as much as he was glad to see his friend, he was mentally drained and confused by the events that surrounded his presence.“I should be the one asking you questions,” Leo said. “H
It took a while for the group to get used to Diane. Even at that, they were still not used to her. Lara was cuddling with the small cubs, unwilling to let them go. Leo was absolutely shaken with a lot of questions for Draven; they just have to wait for Diane to leave before they start sorting through their own problems. For what’s worth, Draven was not exactly offended at seeing Lara. What surprised him instead was that Leo had saved her. Leo, who was completely selfish for his own well being, put himself in the line and saved someone else. It surprised him more than Diane’s presence ever did.Diane on the other hand, went about gathering firewood and tiny sticks to boost the fire she was about to make. Leo was so very irritated by her presence, and was much more antsy than Draven was. He followed her about and asked her questions.“Those people I killed, why won’t they be coming back?”Diane then looked at him like she was surprised he could be asking such a thing. “They were on thei
The meat was delicious. This was what pained Lara the most; that the new girl had killed her fur babies and the meat tasted extraordinarily sweet. She also noticed the tension between Draven and Leo. Lara didn’t know what the story was—nor did she care since Draven was more preoccupied with the woman than her—but she still wanted Diane out. She was sophisticated and wildly attractive; like the kind of person who’d offend you madly and still laugh at your wounds. It sort of made her inferior.Lara ate the last part of the meat and licked her lips. It really was delicious. She wondered if the fear that Diane was talking about really was true or if it was just something she made up. After tasting the delicious meat, she was more inclined to give up the rest of the cubs so they’d eat too. As a matter of fact, Lara made a reminder at the back of her head to sleep beside the cubs and warm them up for the next kill.Leo ate without a single look at his food. He barely tasted it; watching Dia
Draven and Leo inched away from the rest of the group. It was way past midnight and the girls were in bed. The boys, now fully aware of each other, had purposefully stayed awake overnight so they could talk about the missing pieces of Diane’s story. They only had to look at one another and decide that it would be best to stay awake while the other slept.It didn’t take much for Lara to sleep. After the tremendous events of the day, she only had to eat and sleep straight into the grass, not caring about the tiny insects that bit them. Draven had rolled her into a cloth he found in her bag so she could be more comfortable, and then he had to agree to Diane words to her face and then sleep right after.No one had directly challenged her words. There was no use; she would promptly laugh and tell them to watch out. They knew her well enough to know that she would play around her words rather than giving them direct answers.Leo waited until he felt Draven moving out of bed before he follow
They walked back slowly to the camp, being careful not to make any noise to alert the others. Lara was probably a deep sleeper, which was not an issue, but the other new comer could not be accounted for, especially since they have all these new suspicions about her.Draven tried to think as they walked back to the camp, but he was distracted by the events that led him right here. No matter how much he thought about it, he needed Leo. He needed Leo so very much. He won’t be able to handle Diane all on his own.Speaking of Diane; she was no longer in the camp when they got there. The blanket she slept on was still there, the roughness signifying that someone had slept on it. Where had she gone? Now on alert the both of them looked around in fear, wondering where she might be.“A number of things could have happened right now,” Draven said.“Nothing happened right here. She stood up and left,” Leo said.He then brought out his sword from his side hilt. The sound of the sword leaving the
Diane was flabbergasted. The minute Draven touched her hand and his fingers burned into her skin, she knew the danger was closer than usual. How would she explain that he had endangered their lives far more than she would have? Here they were, all afraid that she was about to cut their heads off when they were the one inviting death closer with their actions. For all she knew, she was innocent. She only acted the way any player in the game would; it wasn’t her fault that they just won’t get over it.She bored holes into Draven’s back when he turned around to sleep. She could bet with her life that he probably slept with a smile on his lips now that he knew that she only had one life left. He even had the audacity to sleep with his back faced to her; like he was challenging her to act out and kill him if she has the tenacity to.Diane ignored the mad voices in her head and went to sleep on her back. It took a while before her eyes finally closed and her breathing eased into a slow slee
Draven couldn’t believe it was over. Three months later he was still thinking if he was making the right decision. Assistant David sat in his living room with a bunch of documents in front of him. He paced up and down, not sure what he would do.“You can just sign here,” the man said for the umpteeth time. “It’s not really that hard. You sign that you’ve taken ownership of the game and you decide what you want to do with it.”“But I don’t want ownership of the game,” Draven said again. He had repeated this exact words countless times but the guy didn’t seem to be hearing him.“You should have known what you were getting yourself into when you challenged late game owner Timothy—” David paused and looked to the heavens. “May his soul not rest in peace. You should have known that killing him would automatically make you the owner of the game. Those were his rules.”Draven rolled his eyes. He was sure that Timothy had made that rule because he didn’t believe anyone would be able to defeat
Timothy laughed. His laughter was vivacious and full of life. This was what he wanted, after all. The very end of judgement day where he would punish all those who failed him; those who went against him and those who was party to his torture.Here was Draven, the strongest man to ever grace his game. Timothy knew he was going to be a lot of trouble in the future and so he had specifically looked into him. Now that Draven has waged war with his full chest over a woman, he was ecstatic. This was historic, and he was living a historic time in the present. How many men brought knives to fight for their loves, anyways?Smiling, he snapped his fingers. A single door opened and his assistant ran to him carrying a box.“You’re about to experience an historic moment with me,” He said to Draven. “Diane will be our goddess Diana, and we will be the lowly men who are fighting for her love.”Diane scoffed. “You don’t have to do it, Draven. The guy is nuts. Let’s just get out of here.”“But darling
Draven panicked for a minute. He thought for sure that the darkness and pressure meant he was losing his consciousness, but that wasn’t the case. One minutes there was stark darkness and the next minute they fell into an extremely white room with hard cardboard. They fell through the sky, hitting directly on the wood and groaning in pain. The stark white color of the room blinded them. It was brighter than a sky or white paint. It was so bright that Draven closed his eyes and tried to regain his or he r senses. He knew there was a betrayal in the group—which wasn’t surprising as their group was made of weird, diverse people, but he needed to see who exactly did it.He won’t even be surprised if to was Lara. She was the one who had led them to the cage, after all. She was the one who offered to test the waters and make sure the portal was okay. Who in their right senses tests water and portal to make a point of the portal not working? Unless he or she was working with Timothy and knew
No one said anything after Diane’s statement. They were so tired and hungry and unsure of what to do next. Draven’s goods felt heavy to him. His sword even felt heavier than normal. He didn’t believe he came back to this game to be ridiculed and placed in a very unstable condition because of a silly fight that was going on between two lovers. When he looked at Diane, he wondered if she was toying with them again. Was she afraid to meet Timothy or what? He knew that the portal might likely take them to Timothy as the owner can easily manipulate events, but at least he was ready for that stage. He could exactly tell what Diane was thinking when she was looking her nose down on the portal.“We cannot just stay here,” Lara said. “Do you want us to keep waiting for him to keep finding opportunities to kill us? We’re certainly going to die of hunger if we keep waiting!”“She’s right,” Draven concurred. “We can’t keep lying about in wait like lambs to a slaughter. We must make the first move
Everyone was super awkward after the kiss. Leo avoided for the rest of the morning. He didn’t want to talk about it but it was too late; Draven had seen them and announced to the whole pack in the morning that the kiss was probably the most hottest he’d seen.“Whoa,” Diane said excitedly. “You two kissed? That’s great. Are you like a couple now or something?”“It’s nothing like that, okay? It was just a kiss, and a mistake at that,” Leo piped up.Even though he didn’t want to talk about the kiss or look at Lara’s face, he was glad that Draven brought it up. At least he’d air his opioid publicly about it so he won’t have to be in an awkward space with Lara.“Ouch, Leo, you’re a player!” Diane said, laughing. “You can’t say those kind of things to someone when you’ve kissed them!”“I didn’t kiss her, okay? She’s the one who kissed me,” Leo defended hotly.“It’s still hurtful that you say it that way. Have some feelings, pal,” Diane said, her laugh increasing.It sounded mocking and cont
Leo could not sleep. Draven had been out for close to an hour, yet he wasn’t back yet. Lots of thoughts assaulted his brain, but the one that stayed the most was Diane.Diane. Diane. Diane.He bet she was here to true their life again, and that bet was true. If Leo was the one to handle this, he’d definitely not want to help her out the way Draven was. It was as if the guy didn’t want to learn any lessons about why it’s dangerous to just not help anyone for too long. Draven was lenient when it came to Diane and he didn’t like it one but.He turned his head to the side and saw her sleeping peacefully.“Yeah, like you didn’t just send someone to their death,” he murmured to himself.He wondered if Draven was still talking to the game creator or if he’s been killed. If he was truly killed, Leo won’t honestly know how to handle that. He tried not to think about it because it was depressing enough. He sat up now, still watching Diane. If she had been careful, they won’t be in this shit hol
Draven waited until everyone was comfortable with him being their security for the night before he left into the woods. Diane was surprisingly quiet and compliant. It was like she was into her head too much to care about what Draven wanted to do. Seeing that all odds were in his favor, Draven waited a bit before withdrawing to the forest. He walked deeper and deeper, wondering if he should just sit on a log and wait for Timothy to appear.“Hi Draven.”He yelped and fell to the ground, startled. His shouts of surprise startled the forest a bit, and so Draven waited it out to make sure no one was coming to check what the noise was before turning his head slowly to the side. There was Timothy, standing under the moonlight. He looked attractive and mysterious and just too handsome to be standing there. Draven sat up as he brushed away the small dirts on his body.“You scared me,” he hissed at Timothy. “You know you should learn not to sneak up on people like that.”“I didn’t sneak up on y
They camped inside a cave, just as Draven wanted. He’d taken his time and made sure they covered a 12 hour distance just so he could find the perfect place for them to camp. Finding a cave was not just the problem—and caves were pretty scarce. The problem was finding one that was deep and big enough to accommodate more than three persons. When he finally found it, it was nearing dark. The blanket of darkness that fell over them was just the right thing Draven needed to carry out his plans. He’d been thinking for hours how he would get away with talking to Timothy without anyone noticing and this was the best part.“A cave?” Lara asked in disbelief when they stood before the place. “Isn’t this kind of weird, Draven? Some crazy monsters might be in there!”Draven nodded in understanding. “Leo and I are going to check it out and see if it’s free of monsters; how about that?”“I thought you said we were getting to the end of the game,” Lara moaned.Draven gave her a confused look. “Lara,
They walked a long mile, Draven and Leo leading the way while Lara and Diane walked behind. Diane stayed at the far end so she won’t walk on the same lane with Lara. There was something suspicious about the young girl that she didn’t like. Diane wasn’t usually suspicious of people but when she does, her instinct was definitely right—just as it was right with Draven and Lara. Leo cleared his throat and glanced at Draven. “So… were you lying?”“Was I lying about what?” Draven mumbled.“You know… about what Diane said?”“Why would I be lying about that?”Leo cocked his brows at him. “Don’t forget that I know you all too well, Draven. I know when you lie out of necessity and when you lie out of leisure. I usually don’t catch the leisure one but the necessity one is very obvious.”Draven glanced at him with an amused expression. “Really?”“Yup. You get all tense and defensive and violet most times if you’re pressured about it. It’ll make you want to protect that little lie of yours quite