Am I a bad person?
I'm not sure; it never occurred to me.
I claim to want revenge on the gods that destroyed my life. Yet I ended an innocent life, and it wasn't the first.
Who am I?
You are Eve. Who else?
That name sounds so... foreign.
I'm nothing more than a flesh puppet driven by a mad obsession.
Good. That's your purpose. Everything you did and will do just brings suffering to innocents. People treat you like a monster because that's what you are. It doesn't matter if you change; you will remain the same—a plague on this earth.
Eve sighed and began to pace her room, her body visibly shaking. Her teeth almost turned to dust from all the gritting. For once, Nightfall wasn't whispering in her ear, yet she missed its whispers because her own mind was much harsher.
After the fight with Galbert, she had remained deep in thought in her cell. The sight of the clown just giving up and waiting for his death was burned into her mind.
Eve headed to the mirror and looked at her reflection.
Pitiful creature.
She readied her fist to punch the mirror, yet her hand began to tremble.
Something the matter? Can't even dare to face yourself without lashing out? I'm kidding, Eve. You are innocent. You didn't mean to cause all of this suffering; it just happened.
"Huh? You mean it?" Her voice quivered.
She almost heard it clearly; her mind started laughing at her, mocking her for being so foolish.
"SHUT UP!"
Her hand connected with the mirror, and shards fell into the murky water beneath it. Her fist remained buried in the shattered glass, and rivulets of blood fell alongside the shards into the water. She sank to her knees. The cold floor bit into her skin, and a few tears started to leave her eyes and trail down her cheeks.
"Shut up... shut up... shut up... shut... up." Every word came out quieter than the last.
Eve retrieved her hand from the broken mirror, and then she covered her face with both hands. The right side of her face was smeared with blood. Tears and blood mixed like poison.
"Get a grip... Eve," she started to laugh, yet the tears didn't stop.
You are a calamity dressed in human clothes. And here you are, crying your eyes out because of a clown. You killed innocent people, yet you didn't bat an eye at their deaths. What's wrong, dear? Feeling sorry for once?
"That was different... I only killed those people to survive."
Ah... the old saying of self-preservation. And maybe that goes for the clown's death as well, huh? You did it to survive, right? Poor you. Yet you wanted to join this tournament to grow stronger, and you became the reason for the clown's death. In this world, there are no ifs, Eve. This whole ordeal with the fool is just the same as the death of your mothe—
Her knuckles connected with her own jaw. The moment she punched herself, she lost her footing and fell flat on the floor.
"I get it."
She slowly started to get back up, yet the tears kept falling from her eyes.
"I get it now," Eve spoke in a silent sob.
Standing at her full height, her face was smeared with blood, and dark bags hung under her eyes.
"I'm a bad person." Her hand kept trembling, but after a moment, it stopped. Her blood kept on dripping onto the cold concrete floor.
After a while, one of the guards walked up to her cell.
"Rat, wake up—"
The guard thought that she was sleeping, but Eve was standing in her cell, looking at him with a cold stare.
He tried to fake a cough. "Anyway, uhm, prepare for your next fight. Your opponent is a big, dumb guy. From what I was told, he was a failed human experiment from Scholars' Keep. His name is Slackjaw, and he doesn't have any weapons—he just bites people to death with his iron teeth. So, uh, good luck, but I don't think you need it."
The guard scanned Eve before leaving. He wanted to see a reaction from her, but unsurprisingly, he didn't. Her gaze was still focused on the wall behind the bars where he had been standing.
She looks just like a statue
the man thought to himself.
After the guard left, some minutes went by, and then a group of other guards appeared in her view.
"Wrists!" one of them shouted.
Yet Eve remained rooted in place.
The man who shouted looked confused and turned to one of the other guards. The other man gestured for him to try again.
"Wrists!"
Yet nothing.
"We have to enter, dammit."
The man who shouted unlocked the door and entered her cell. "Be ready to strike if something happens—"
Before he could finish the sentence, Eve was right in front of him. He yelped in surprise, but before the other guards could draw their swords, she simply offered him her wrists.
The guard just looked at her for a bit, confused, then he decided to lock her wrists with the same handcuffs. He didn't try to antagonize her any further; he had a feeling that if he did, it would be the last thing he ever did.
They walked her out of her cell, and after a while, they reached the gate to the arena. The guards opened her shackles, then the gate slowly ascended, and Eve walked inside. The guards sighed in relief, and the gate closed behind her.
The smell remained the same: death and dreams.
She glanced over to where Galbert's corpse had been, yet he wasn't there anymore. Only bits and pieces of his scattered brain were left.
"Well, everyone, there's no need to introduce the participants this time, because all of them won their first fight," Calliopius told the crowd.
Eve bent down and picked up Nightfall, then her gaze fell over the opposite gate, where a big man with deformed limbs was on all fours. He was bald, and his teeth were far too big for his mouth; deep scars split his lips from all the biting. Thick spit fell from his mouth onto the sand.
He was hungry.
"Let's hope this time, Eve will put more effort into her fight with Slackjaw. Let the second round start!"
Nightfall trembled slightly in her hand.