Page 54 of Killer of the Bells
It didn’t occur to me that the guy hadn’t used any magic on me. I was fighting for my life, okay? Fight or flight doesn’t make for a lengthy decision-making process.
The minmaxer managed to wrap my arms tight, trapping them against my sides, while holding me tightly against his chest.
“I hate you so fucking much,” the minmaxer hissed.
“Hate me?” I wheezed because he’d crushed the air out of me.
I mean, I got that we were on opposing sides and all, but hate was a bit extreme in my opinion. We were playing a game. I’d been feeling exhilarated and supercharged, and the minmaxer hadn’t been having fun at all.
Dude needed to get a better hobby.
“I’d kill you if?—”
Suddenly, the bells began to toll, and the minmaxer made a strangled gasp and fell to the floor, trapping me under him.
It was a great way to tell one from a regular human if they weren’t overtly throwing magic. The fight was epically fierce at the start of every hunt because once the bells tolled, the humans got a major advantage when the minmaxers all dropped like underwear on prom night.
Some of the minmaxers were able to struggle through whatever effect they were under, so the humans weren’t able to completely dominate the field, but for about a minute, the only people fighting to win were the humans. The minmaxers were busy fighting just to stay conscious.
Huh. I wondered how Vale dealt with the issue. He’d been totally out of it the one time I’d seen him suffer from the bells. If I was a minmaxer, I’d probably just escape town untileverything was over rather than putting up with the psycho three-ring circus of the bell hunt.
I don’t know what the humans think about said phenomenon. Except for a few professors on campus, most humans don’t notice magic and manage to rationalize some of the weirdest things into wild perversions of the truth.
One day, I watched something big and slimy try to mosey past the border between the town and the campus in broad daylight, only to fry itself on the spot. It made a huge zapping sound while sparks and the smell of fried frogs filled the air, but instead of being all likeOh my god! It’s a giant slime monster! Run for your lives!People started running away, screaming about a transformer blowing up.
The only people doing anything about it were two professors from the humanities department. They ran toward the chaos while everyone else ran away—including me. I wasn’t sticking around to find out what getting eaten by a frog monster would be like. But unlike the rest of the people running for their lives, I was actually aware of what we were running from.
I called the phenomenon Sunnydale Syndrome, like they did in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
So, there I was, trapped underneath a minmaxer while he cursed and whimpered from whatever the bells were doing to him, mere feet from my goal, and unable to do anything about it. Like what in the ever-loving fuck, universe? Why allow me to get so close only to stop me at the last second?
I fumed as I stared at my objective. It would take me ten seconds to dismantle the clapper on each bell, and there were three bells. I could have done it. If I’d known what time it was, I could have stalled the minmaxer long enough to stay free until the bells rang. I might have broken a few fingers while breaking the bells while they were ringing, but what was a bit of pain when it came to winning?
When the bells stopped ringing, the minmaxer recovered his wits, and he rolled off of me. I was expecting him to knock me out or kill me, but instead, he gazed at me warily, still keeping a tight hold on me. He looked longingly at the bells, but made no move for them.
I held up my hands in aYou got me, man. Go do the thingmotion, but he did nothing.
What the hell?
Just as I was struggling to find a few words or a phrase to echo to try and figure out what the guy was doing, another mother fucker set off another mother fucking airhorn.
Pastor Jonathan started swearing even louder and even more creatively than the night before, and I didn’t blame him.
Seriously? Was someone so petty that they had to ruin the hunt just because they were losing?
Bad form, asshole. Bad fucking form.
I was so trolling them on the forum the first chance I got.
The minmaxer sighed and released his hold on me.
I gave him a little salute before making my way down the stairs. If I could have, I would have said, “Same time tomorrow?” to be a cheeky little shit, but I thought a salute worked just as well.
As I waded through the aftermath of the fight, watching hunters limping away as quickly as they could, I collected the remains of my sprung traps. Some of them were beyond repair, but some of their parts could be put to good use.
If a trap still held a person, I left it. I wasn’t a saint. Why would I free someone who was probably going to kick the shit out of me as soon as they were loose?
No sane reason I could think of, that’s for sure.
