Page 155 of Light Leech

CarNin: twenty-one.

“This is a load of zegging guk!” she shouted as her platform illuminated. She gave her new cards no attention as she continued to shout out into the ether for the announcer’s attention. “You said there are no teams, yet these two continue to bombard me in an unofficial alliance! I want fair play!”

“It’s your fault for not building alliances earlier,” Ralia said. “Scholars never let the rules of the world hold them back, right?” She looked up for clarification. The announcer responded. “Even the greatest minds are bound to certain laws. You are not exempt.”

“And?” CarNin asked after a pause.

Two options floated in front of her on blue holographic panels. Though they were translucent, the text was only on the front side. It was backwards from my perspective and too fine of print for me to read.

What does that say?

“She has two options for leveling the field,” Zhu said. “Destroy an enemy on each opponent’s side and deal them five damage each.”

Or?

“Double your might and finish the match as your Light Leech.”

What is that supposed to mean?

She selected the second.

“A higher chance that she will succeed.”

Her health doubled to forty-one. A card from the middle of her deck flew out, revealed itself, then landed on her platform.

What looked like a starved, dead, then resurrected greyhound the size of a house landed on the field. The remnants of a torn suit covered certain portions of its body as if CarNin herself had transformed into the creature.

She was nowhere to be seen.

Its cloudy eyes almost popped out of its sockets as it glared at me. Its jaw hung open, exposing two rows of razorlike teeth, covered in a glowing green drool. Each pant made the beast look like it was fighting for breath but seeing that it looked already dead and beyond that, I took it to be more of a billowing fury.

It–rather she–stepped forward, but a veil of blue light stopped her.

I turned to Ralia, seeing a card pulled from her deck and placed into the field as well. She disappeared into a pillar of light that fed into the card as it summoned a new legend.

Before I could see her transformation, my world went silent.

Everything became a twist of lights and muffled sound. I felt like my senses had been stretched like a spring that hurt even more when whatever was pulling me let go.

I stood on my side of the field. Swine’s Servant and Justified Swordsman were there for a moment until they disintegrated into a cloud of pixels that covered me like mist. Everything had overwhelmed me, but I could still see the scoreboard with our life totals. My legends had joined me, increasing my life by a few points. The same had happened to Ralia, who was now the giant ogre sha, covered in royal garb and armor to make him Heaven’s General Sha of the Journeymen.

I snorted a laugh, though humor was not a feeling I was in the mood to entertain. I held my staff with a rake’s head at the ready, crouched and prepared for an attack. None of this was of my own accord.

“How does it feel to be on the other side of our partnership for once?”

I didn’t know what to say to Zhu. I could move with some autonomy, but it did not ease the existential dread that I felt. Not only was I outside of my body in a simulated test, I was now outside of my cognitive body and inside the being that was inside of me. At least I had grown close to Zhu. I couldn’t imagine how Ralia felt inside the creature I too was growing to fear.

“Set your feelings aside. All shall resolve itself after this battle.”

How do you know?

Zhu could not answer me. I felt his thoughts. I could only hear his voice in our prior symbiotic form, now it was a new level of oddity. He might have understood me, but besides the basest of his feelings, I could not comprehend a single thing inside of him. Glimpses of a long passed history full of wars and death flashed in our joint memories, but I could not put any sense to them.

CarNin rammed her head on the veil of light and let out a screaming bark.

A video cube appeared in the middle of the field.

Heaven’s General Sha of the Journeymen: Thirty-one.