The Soul Engine Ch. 2 (Original Fantasy) (Patreon)

A/N: Loved the reception on the first chapter everyone, hopefully people enjoy this one just as much~

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Things can always get worse. The thought starts out on the now-foreign side of his mind, only to move over to the native half as the guards drag him down a corridor that turns from cobbled stone to grittier and grittier sand. Until finally, he sees a source of natural light up ahead and has all of a moment to squint at its blinding ferocity before they reach a gate.

Before Mikael can react, the gate is flung open and he’s tossed right on through, thrown out into a sandy pit with nothing but a pair of pants to cover his modesty and chains to slow down his mobility. He’s still a complete mess, both physically and mentally of course. His thoughts are jumbled as all hell. His mind is at war with itself and both sides are losing.

However, at the same time… something about the arena in particular feels almost… right to him. As Mikael stares down at his shackled hands, there’s a moment of vertigo and déjà vu. A moment where it’s like he has a dozen different memories transposed over his vision where a dozen other men found themselves in this exact same situation.

Likewise, the sword that’s tossed down onto the sand next to him a moment later garners his attention instantaneously. He doesn’t even flinch away from it. Instead, acting purely on instinct that feels as unnatural as it feels right, Mikael scrambles over to the weapon and quickly picks it up. The foreign half of his mind insists that it’s a shit weapon, especially for the fight that he’s about to be in.

Even Mikael has to agree with those fake memories shoved into his head. The sword in his hands is rusty and looks ready to fall apart. Hell, he can see hairline fractures all throughout it that make it clear it’s probably only good for a few more clashes before it shatters on him. But… what fight?

Only then does Mikael’s conscious mind catch up with his subconscious as he realizes he’s been orienting himself to face his opponent without even realizing it. He’s not alone in the sandy arena pit. No, rather… there’s someone else in the pit with him.

“WE HAVE A SPECIAL ONE FOR YOU TONIGHT, FOLKS!”

Standing across the way is a woman in shining golden armor. The female armor is covered in the golden, glimmering armor from head to toe, her helmet covering everything except for her eyes, which are an icy blue.

“NOT THE CRIMINAL, MIND YOU! JUST ANOTHER BRIGAND PAYING FOR HIS CRIMES! AH, BUT HIS OPPONENT… NAY, HIS EXECUTIONER!”

Wait, what? Mikael tears his gaze away from the golden knight and looks up at his surroundings. The sun shines far too brightly overhead, making it impossible to see very much, but if he lifts both hands to try and shade his eyes, he can get a better look around himself. Ultimately… it’s not much to look at. This is an arena, sure, but that’s about all it can be described as. It’s not some glorious colosseum, not some massive stadium with stands filled to the brim.

No, the venue is quite small, and the stands, while more than half full, cannot be described as packed. That’s not stopping the announcer from shouting at the top of his lungs for all to hear, however. For a moment, Mikael wonders if the man presiding over the arena will be the same bastard who fucked with his head. But… no. It’s not the evil fucking wizard. Nor is he or his inhuman muscle anywhere to be seen.

“HAILING FROM FAR AWAY LANDS, A FOREIGN KNIGHT OF GREAT RENOWN, I GIVE YOU ALL… THE DAME!”

The crowd cheers and applauds, though there’s a note of politeness to it that Mikael can’t help but feel conveys disinterest in ‘The Dame’s’ identity. A foreign knight of great renown? Why the fuck would she be in some tiny arena pit like this, facing off against a dude wearing nothing but pants and chains? Something was seriously off here.

Across the way, those icy blue eyes seem almost pitying for a moment. But as Mikael finds himself unconsciously testing the weight and heft of his shoddy sword, the Dame’s gaze grows hardened and her resolve firms up right in front of him. Belatedly, the announcer’s previous words finally hit him. The man had called him a criminal. A brigand.

Part of him wants to protest the accusation. But the words catch on his tongue as he faces off against the female knight standing across from him. Her sword is buried point first in the ground, but as the crowd cheers and applauds, she grabs the hilt and yanks it up, hoisting her shield into the air as well.

The truth is… parts of him almost OWN the description as a criminal and vagabond. The longer he stands out here in the middle of this arena, the more Mikael realizes that plenty of his foreign memories aren’t of war… but of battle in arena pits just like this. And some… some are of criminal acts, just as he’s been accused of. Banditry. Brigandry. Worse.

He knows deep down that he’s not actually the man who did any of those things. He knows he’s not a monster like his false memories paint him as. And yet… and yet, it’s quickly becoming quite clear to him that he’s going to need those memories if he’s going to survive this fight.

“READY?! BEGIN!”

With that, any chance of protesting the announcer’s accusations and trying to clear his good name are lost. The golden knight begins to move forward, and all Mikael can do is shuffle away, putting distance between the two of them and trying desperately to get used to his current circumstances. He has the memories of a thousand battles in his head, and surprisingly that somewhat translates into muscle memory as well.

However, he has as many soldiers vying for supremacy in his mind as he does criminals and vagabonds. And most of the men whose lives are running through his mind’s eye did not learn to fight with their ankles and wrists shackled together like his are now. His range of movement is incredibly limited, and he’s forced into a sort of half-shuffle as he quickly backpedals around the arena, moving around in a wide circle to keep the golden knight both in front of him and at a good distance.

For a few moments, she even seems content to let him do that. In fact, if Mikael didn’t know any better, he’d say that she was reluctant to engage. Rather, he DID know these kinds of things now. His memories are screaming at him that she’s afraid, or nervous, or simply doesn’t want this fight. They’re telling him that he can take advantage of that. That he can win this.

The foreign half of his mind begins concocting a plan for how to defeat the woman. How to tear her armor off once she’s on the ground and end her… or worse. Mikael jerks back, horrified by the mental images running through his head. What was once his mind and his alone, what was once his sanctuary … he now shared it with dozens of monsters. Ghosts who whispered in his mind that he COULD win. He just had to fight… dirty.

Mikael didn’t have a problem with fighting dirty, especially if it was his life on the line. He’d always had a strong will to live, even before all this bullshit. But he would not engage in any of the OTHER activities that the foreign entities in his head were pushing for. He would win… he would live. But he would not become a monster. He refused.

“Get on with it already!”

“For fuck’s sake, just kill the sorry bastard!”

Mikael finds himself torn out of the careful dance that he and the Dame have started up, the voices of the onlookers carrying from the stands around them. He scowls as he throws one of them an angry look that actually seems to intimidate that bystander into shying back. But of course, he can only glare down one person at a time. The rest continue to call out jeering comments, demanding his head on a pike.

When he focuses back on the Dame, she seems to have taken their words to heart. Her reluctance fades away, replaced by determination as she finally moves forward, cutting the distance between them in half, and then half again, and then… she’s right on top of him. There’s no helping it. Circling an arena this small and trying to stay out of her reach was never going to work forever. It relied entirely on her unwillingness to engage, and that had come to an abrupt end.

Instead, he raises his sword and clashes with hers, surprised at how fluid his body moves as he blocks her blow and slips to the side, swinging his blade around to try and catch her off-guard. Of course, she in turn manages to block his swipe with her shield, easily bringing it up in time to stop his own strike in its tracks. She’s good, he finds himself thinking. Very good. But he’s better. He has to believe that.

Her next attack comes from above, an overhand strike… and Mikael lifts his arms up so that rather than splitting his head in twain, her sword lands on the chain locking his wrists together. The hope is that she’ll either shear right through his restraints, or her blade will get tangled up in the chain and he’ll be able to wrench it from her grasp.

The first option would obviously be the best, but despite looking almost as shoddy as his sword, the chains do not shatter. Instead they glow brightly and rebound her sword, even as she hastily pulls it back, causing the second option to fail as well.

Mikael has only a second to register the actual magic he just witnessed. His chains were not mundane, ordinary chains. They were enchanted, weren’t they? It really drove home what he already knew but hadn’t wanted to accept. This was not his world. This was not his home. He was in a world of magic and wonder… and so far, he was only getting to experience the worst parts of it.

But Mikael refused to let this be how it ended. He would live. He would survive. Even if he was at a disadvantage, he was sure he could find a way out of this. He could win.

The crowd in the stands are cheering now that an actual fight is happening. And the announcer is commentating at the top of his lungs like this is some sort of sports match. Then again, for all Mikael knew, this WAS what passed for sports around here.

“OOOH! WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT, FOLKS! OUR CRIMINAL HAS SOME BITE TO HIM AFTER ALL! THE DAME DOESN’T SEEM TO BE ABLE TO LAND A BLOW! SURELY THERE WON’T BE AN UPSET HERE, WILL THERE?!”

“Fucking gut the bastard!”

“Quit playing around you foreign bitch!”

Mikael wouldn’t say the crowd was turning on his opponent, but damn if they seemed to only like her marginally more than they liked him. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that they hated him marginally more than they hated her. Not that they even knew him. They just knew the picture that the announcer fucking painted of him.

But he can’t let that distract him now. Despite being chained up, despite having nothing but this shitty rusted sword, Mikael really did feel like he was running circles around his opponent. Yes, she still seemed a little uncertain. Yes, she was almost certainly holding back. But even still, he could do this. He just had to get lucky. Just one time…

Fluidly dodging her next sword thrust, one that the foreign part of his mind assures him is textbook perfect, Mikael swings his sword around, hoping to finally land a blow on the small part of her arm that isn’t armored. If he can just disable one of her limbs, he’ll have a shot. He just has to-

Unfortunately, her shield comes up again just in the nick of time. And as his sword lands upon the golden aegis, the worst possible thing happens.

C-CRRSSH!

His sword shatters, breaking into a hundred different pieces that all drop to the sandy arena pit, turning what was already rough terrain for his bared, shackled feet into something much more dangerous. Not that it really matters, in the end. Staring at his broken sword, now nothing more than a hilt with some metal attached to it at this point, Mikael is reminded of an old saying. It’s possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That’s not weakness. That’s life.

“I can make it quick, at least.”

There’s a sudden feeling of… intrusion in his chest as the Dame speaks up in a quiet tone for the first time since all of this started. Mikael chokes on what he thinks is spit as he slowly slides his gaze downwards to find the golden knight’s shiny sword buried in his heart. Not spit, he belatedly realizes as his vision begins to go blurry. Not spit at all. Blood.

He coughs up more of the red substance, feeling its coppery taste in his mouth, on his tongue, on his lips. He really had been so sure he could win. And if he could win, he would win. That was how it was supposed to go, right? That was how all the stories he’d read went, anyways. Summoned to another world? It didn’t matter the adversities you faced. It didn’t matter the trials thrown your way. You were supposed to overcome everything and win, no matter what.

“WELL NOW! SEEMS THE DAME HAS FINALLY FINISHED OFF THE CRIMINAL SCUM. CERTAINLY TOOK HER LONG ENOUGH!”

There’s a strange note of regret in the female knight’s eyes as she pulls her sword back out and blood erupts from the wound she leaves behind. Not that he gets long to look at her seeing as he almost immediately falls back into the sand, clutching at his chest.

It didn’t seem fair. Nothing about this seemed at all fair. But then… that was just how life went sometimes, wasn’t it?

His last sight is of the sun at least. And as the sunlight beats down on his face, the pain in his chest ebbs away along with all other sense of feeling, until that’s all that remains. And then… even that is gone as his eyes drift shut and everything goes black.

Mikael dies.

…

…

…

And then he wakes up.

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A/N: Initially, this chapter was supposed to end with the words 'Mikael dies.' but I received feedback on Discord that this was a little bit too much of a downer. So I added in the last line to hopefully convey the fact that this story is NOT already over and Mikael's journey doesn't end here, heh.

What do you all think?

As always, your feedback is very important to me! If you're liking the story, throw me a Like! If you have a question, comment, or concern, toss that my way as well! Super excited for what comes next~