“Gavil, we don’t have to do this. We could both concede and walk away with our lives.” Creed’s mind was racing with possible options.
“Concede!” Gavil spat the word like it was venom on his tongue. “You want me to concede to you? Maybe I hit you one too many times in the head, boy. Why don’t you just lay down right here on the ground? I’ll make this quick for you, for old time’s sake.” He was inching toward Creed. Slipping snake-like closer to his little brother until the Young men stood an arm’s length from each other. The crowd was shrieking wildly in anticipation. “You better take my offer. It’s the only mercy you’re gonna get.”
“Gavil, don’t do this,” urged Creed. “You know what happened last time we fought. We don’t have to…”
But he didn’t have time to finish his sentence before Gavil’s hand flashed up and under Creed’s jaw, stabbing his pressure points with deliberate skill and malice. Creed’s nerves shot pain into his ears and pierced his brain. Instinctively, he slapped his brother’s hand away and leaped back, recuperating from the excruciating jolt. Gavil smirked, loving how easy it was to trick his sucker of a brother.
“Are you ready to fight now, Bleedy Creedy?” Gavil sneered, throwing out that hurtful nickname he’d given his little brother for all the injuries he caused him throughout the years.
“So be it.” Creed locked his jaw and ran full-speed not at his brother, but at the arena wall beside him. Curiosity and surprise were the only two facial expressions Gavil had time to register before he realized what Creed was doing. He ran straight up the wall, used the momentum to flip backward and caught Gavil by the neck with his legs on his way down. Creed landed on top of his brother, knee at his throat.
The audience gasped in wild admiration.
Gavil glared up at his brother, spat phlegm into his face and rolled out from under his knee. He jumped to his feet and charged, head down shoving Creed against the wall and though it looked like a kind of brotherly embrace, there was nothing tender about this. Instead, there was something sinister about the way Gavil’s hand slipped to his boot.
Still locked together in a powerful struggle, Creed began punching his brother in the stomach. Each time, Gavil was lifted off the ground with the velocity of impact.
Audience members facing his back would later swear they saw it; just glints of light reflecting off a slice of metal that Gavil had retrieved from his boot. Angered murmurs rose in surprise and disapproval. Though they had been taught to feed off the weak, they had some semblance of warped integrity.
No one ever brought weapons to a Retribution Match. It was supposed to be hand-to-hand combat, to the death. Heck, even a monkey could be taught to use a weapon. Metas were different—above, more. And though bloody and vicious, their society was built on very strict rules of conduct.
Creed’s anger was ice as he punched his brother. Not even the sound of the crowd roaring with frenzied excitement reached Creed’s ears.
Then it happened.
Gavil pushed himself away from his brother just long enough to reposition the metal in his hand, and delivered a strategic and powerful punch into his brother’s kidney, burying the shard deep into the tender skin below the ribs.
Creed wailed in shock and anguish as Gavil continued to beat that same pierced spot with blow after blow. All the years of fury and hatred for his perfect little brother, his archrival, came spilling through clenched teeth as he hammered Creed cutting him deeper and deeper.
Creed slipped to the floor and curled into fetal position. Pain traced the lines of his face just as much from the metallic shard as from his brother’s vicious and absolute betrayal.
It was in that moment that everything became crisp and clear. The crowd roaring, the scent of his own blood—sweet and coppery, grainy dirt from the arena’s floor caking to his sweat soaked skin, a deep scuff on his brother’s black boot inches away from his face—everything. And in that moment Creed discovered something about himself.
He could separate himself from his pain.
As he lay there, he no longer felt the weapon embedded in his side. He didn’t feel winded or strained at all.
He felt—nothing.
As though he found a light switch in the dark, Creed simply reached out and turned off the pain.
Gavil was more interested in the crowd’s cheers than his dying brother, so he stood with his back to Creed, arms raised in triumph. It was only the gasps of the audience that made him turn to see his opponent coolly stand, and assume the ready, fighting position.
What the hell? Gavil’s mind screamed.
His eyes shot a look at his brother’s shirt and confirmed what he already knew: He stabbed his brother and beat the weapon into his skin. Blood soaked the entire side of his fatigues and even was seeping down to the waistline of his pants.