Chapter 16


    Nobody stopped him to ask or plead again as he made his way to the perimeter of the popted area. Most of them kept their distance, though others still looked longingly his way in hopes that he’d see them and would make an offer himself. A lot of them were scared, and rightfully so, in his opinion. He had a maniac spider with him, after all.


    The countdown timer continued to tick down. Eleven minutes remained.


    He let out a slow breath of contentment and stretched his arms while he sat. The sun’s rays felt rather nice, and the grass of the field between his fingers was soft. He leaned back to watch the chaotic scene unfold, letting in scents of the grasnd fill each intake and dwelling on why he hadn’t been a more outdoorsy person over the course of his life. Meanwhile, he was calming Ath by giving her pets…which she epted grudgingly while muttering about cutting people and keeping her two red eyes in the direction of the two men who’d threatened Riven.


    He still couldn’t decide whether or not to thank the demon or to scold her…so he just said nothing and continued to sit. He’d also left the scythe behind in the madness and had only managed to pick up the staff. He didn’t see himself using the scythe again any time soon after his telling battle with the other caster, though, deciding mana regeneration was worth far more than the silly de at the end of a stick. So he didn’t bother going to get it. No doubt other people would have use for the scythe over him. Setting the staff down beside his right thigh and pulling his backpack around, he rummaged through it to pull out the vase.


    The painted ck flowers along the porcin refused to reflect any light whatsoever, and he turned the sealed object around in his hands. With a humph and inspecting the lid, he tried to twist it off along the sealed corkscrew top—but was again met with resistance even when bracing the item against the ground. It would turn just slightly if he put enough effort into it but would jam every time he got to a certain point. Curiously, he turned it back and forth—trying to get it open, and finally he even considered breaking it to see what was inside.


    </a>The vase was far too heavy to be empty, and when he shook it, he could hear something muffled hit the sides of the object with every movement. Riven guessed that there was padding or packaging of some sort, or perhaps even dirt, and it was infuriating that he wasn’t able to find out. The one thing that stopped him from smashing it open right then and there was the idea that maybe it was the vase itself that was valuable and not the object within it…if the vase had any value at all. He assumed it did, though, due to finding it in an event where, out of over fourteen hundred people, only fifty survived. He’d also found it in a goddamn treasure chest, of all things!


    There was no way it was just trash.


    His attention was diverted when another bunch of people in front of him began to throw punches and tackle one another amid shouts, quickly evolving into a full-scale brawl between two groups of at least a dozen different members each. With a huff of irritation at the tantly irrational behavior between the men and women in front of him, he stored his vase and got back up to his feet to move somewhere else with his pet spider in his arms.


    And that was when he saw them.


    It was a family of three a little ways off. They all had red hair with pale-white skin and freckles, obviously of Irish descent. There was a mother, a son, and a daughter, with the daughter being about Riven’s age and the son being in his early teenage years. The teenage son was on the floor. He was the skinny young man Riven had seen get knocked out cold with a fist that’d clipped him along the forehead right when Riven swiveled their way. Their mother was likely in her forties or fifties, with slight wrinkles on her face that suggested she smiled a lot, though she wore a terror-stricken scowl on her face as she screamed for help right now.


    Yet nobody moved to help her and her children. Not a single soul.


    She was desperately trying to shove off another group of four dark-haired white men who’d taken it upon themselves to begin dragging the two screaming and crying women off into another group of theirrades that waited eagerly nearby. Many of the men were obviously…excited, yelling andughing about how they needed to “protect” the girls in the uing trial.


    “Come on,dies! You’ll be sure to <span ss="italic">love thepany!” one of the men crowed while heughed and tugged at the roots of the daughter’s hair.


    Oh, how this <span ss="italic">Lord of the Flies scenario was already starting to y out. Riven could only see this going one direction with the way the men groped the young woman andughed while another of them took it upon himself to start beating the struggling mother savagely with his fists before he straddled her.


    The son remained passed out cold, having stood no chance against the older, fully grown adults who’d seen fit to take his mom and sister away.


    Riven had watched end-of-the-world or postapocalyptic movies in the past, and he couldn’t say that he was surprised at this kind of behavior. Humans were </a>usually dog-shit creatures, and that’s why he’d been a loner most of his life, even aside from having to drop out of high school to take care of his sickly mother before she disappeared like his dad had done. People who got a little taste of power always tried to take it a mile, and without strict punishments for their behaviors, there was little holding back much of society from straight anarchy. He’d seen it many years ago on the news as well, when New Orleans had a hurricane pass through and looters ravaged the city in awless state during the aftermath. He remembered a news report about how some of those people had even shot at a police helicopter trying to help the survivors, and this in many ways was not very different.


    But those thoughts only stayed mere moments before Riven’s heart began to speed up with adrenaline. It also very much reminded him of something more personal that’d happened to Allie years ago. Post-traumatic stress disorder was not always something that made people violent—in fact, it didn’t affect most people that way. However, in Riven’s case…he was prone toshing out.


    Riven’s eyes briefly shed a bright shade of crimson, unbeknownst to him, and his breathing rapidly increased while previously sheltered memories berated his mind. Even with his current abilities and his little demon…he would likely be unable to take on a group thatrge to stop them. Aside from the four men who were dragging the younger woman away or the two beating the mother’s face in, there was therge group of their friends waiting expectantly nearby. Most of these men had identifying gang tattoos that matched one another on their arms, chests, or backs. When they pulled the young woman inside the perimeter of their crowd, the screams and pleas from the girl only intensified amid theughter of her aggressors. Others nearby slunk from the situation, putting distance between themselves and what was happening so that they wouldn’t be the next targets, and still others just dumbly watched with nk expressions.


    “Ath.”


    His voice was shaky, heated, and his entire body became rigid. It did not go unnoticed by the demon, either.


    “Yes?!” Ath turned onto her back like a dog wanting a belly scratch in his arms, but instead of asking for that scratch, she lifted her two front legs and ced them on either side of Riven’s cheeks. Her tiny legs were cool to the touch, and she brought her spider face up to him to stare into his eyes and speak to him with that smooth, silky voice that sounded like a wind chime on a midsummer’s day.


    “Are you okay?”


    Power rippled the air along Riven’s skin, and despite the spider trying to pull Riven’s face toward her own, he did not let his eyes leave the sight of the two women being attacked. Emotions roiled inside him, and he shifted his posture to turn in their direction.


    Slowly, he started to walk. “We’re about to kill a lot of people.”


    </a>“OH, REALLY?! How splendid!” The spider cackled and hopped down onto the grass, excitedly tapping her feet in anticipation. “I assume you want to y hero to those fine li’ldies? Your bodynguage is easy to read. I’ll keep you safe, don’t worry! I didn’t leave theher realms just to be put down by a bunch of cocksuckers like these guys!”


    Mental anguish racked his mind, and pain very briefly etched itself into his facial expressions. He barelyputed her words, beginning to pick up pace while memories of Allie on that night all those years ago caused him to literally shudder. He’d been too weak, and they’d been too many. His sister had cried for his help. It was a mental scar he’d never get rid of. But today things were different; today he had the power to do something about it—even if the odds were not on his side due to a massive number difference. His body stilled and ceased its shaking, his blood ran hot, and his lips curled back in a sneer.


    With an ever-rising fury fueling him, he began to channel mana into his fingertips.


    Riven paused for a few moments to watch, however, when a single man of African descent barreled into the group like a truck. He was big, huge even, and looked like he worked out twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Large tribal tattoos covered his arms and legs, and he took out the first of his opponents with a roar and a single swing of his fist.


    The jaw of the first man who’d dragged the young woman over to his buddies cleanly broke under the force of the dark-skinned man’s knuckles, causing the opponent to let go of the young woman and whip around—spinning to the floor unconscious. Immediately after that, the scene was chaos.


    Four others immediately began attacking the neer, two of them tackling him while the others began to m their fists and feet into his body while he struck back out at them and tried to maintain bnce.


    “Please…” The mother begged a ways off from her daughter, spitting blood when she was pped hard across her bruised face.


    The man over her just sneered down, a poorly shaved mustache turned into a sour frown. His hands gripped the older woman’s neck and began to squeeze. “Shut up, you dumb whore! I didn’t—”


    Two discs of razor-sharp, crystallized blood cleanly ripped through the man’s neck and left a trail of ribbonlike crimson through the air as they passed. The man’s speech was sharply cut off—Riven’s magic cleanly lopping off his head, severing it from the body with a single attack. The head flipped into the air, spraying the others nearby with red fluids as it bounced along the ground to settle in front of the other would-be defiler waiting his own turn with the older woman. He looked up from his prey, bewildered, just when another razor ran itself through his right eye and partway into his skull.


    *SHUNK*


    </a>The man screamed, reeled back, and only managed to choke out a single cry for help before a booted foot mmed into the protruding piece of blood magic—lodging it deeper into his brain. He flopped backward, sprawling unceremoniously onto the grass in death, and began to twitch.


    <span ss="italic">Fatality.


    Those nearby paused or gawked at what had just happened, many of them in a state of shock or simply just in denial of what had just urred. But others were quicker to react.


    Riven held up his staff in his left hand to whirl about, using the object to point at his next victims when they rushed him. A of ck energy erupted forward, spreading out while it went and mmed into the crowded bunch of three men to catch them in sticky, burning, needlelike barbs. The magic pierced their bodies and tangled them up like glue, smoking and tearing into their skin and sending torturous thoughts of agony through their conscious minds. His targets were flung off their feet into the air before hitting the ground hard, and their bodies began to rip more and more due to their struggles while they cried, iled, and screamed.


    Riven stepped forward, animatedly crunching onto the neck of the twitching second man he’d killed. He then aggressively leaned forward with a malicious sneer, conjuring condensing pockets of blood magic in the air around him. <span ss="italic">“Kill them all.”