Chapter 176: The Vote That Gave Kelmen a Pawn
It was about who would be owned.
Arkan let that truth hang in the arid air for three more heartbeats. Then the crowd erupted. It wasn’t cheers; it was a violent, rising wave of noise, a pent-up release of tension that shook the tiered benches. The sound was a physical wall, built from thousands of individual shouts, gasps, and chants, crashing over the two dripping men on the sand.
Arkan raised one hand, a simple, slow gesture that had nothing to do with requesting quiet. He was conducting. Above the arena, the massive projection veils dissolved into two monolithic, burning names written in mercury fire: SKELLIR on the left, OTAR on the right. Beneath each name, a percentage counter flashed to life: 0%.
“The public vote begins now,” Arkan declared, his voice a steel needle threading through the fabric of the roar. “You are not voting to eliminate. You are voting to keep one contestant in the competition.”
The numbers began to move.
Skellir’s percentage jumped first, lurching to 15% in a single blur. The early sympathy vote, the appeal of the loud, struggling underdog. He stood a little straighter, his jaw tight, watching his name burn.
“See that?” he muttered, more to himself than to Otar. “People respect a fight.”
Otar’s number ticked up slower, 5%, then 8%. It was deliberate, plodding. He watched it with a kind of detached horror, his fingers curling into his wet palms.
Then the gap closed. Otar’s percentage surged to 20%, then 30%, nearly catching Skellir’s 35%. A different narrative was taking hold: the clever, surprising boy who almost outsmarted the board.
Skellir’s head snapped toward him. “What are they seeing?” he hissed, the camaraderie of shared suffering evaporating.
Otar’s eyes stayed locked on the climbing numbers. A strange, frail defiance straightened his spine. He raised his voice, addressing the blur of faces in the tiers, the unseen voters. “Strength without judgment is just noise!” he called out, his voice thinner than Skellir’s but sharp, carrying. “And he has been noise since the beginning! All force, no direction!”
The numbers reacted. Otar pulled ahead, 42% to 38%. A current of approval rippled through the crowd.
Skellir took a heavy step toward him, sand grinding under his boot. “And you?” Skellir’s laugh was harsh, stripped of all its usual warmth. “You talk like every failure is a profound theory waiting to be appreciated. ‘Oh, look how deeply I understand my own collapse!’” He threw his arms out, mimicking a tragic poet. “It’s pathetic.”
“At least I understand why I lose!” Otar shot back, turning fully to face him now, color high on his cheeks. “You just crash into walls and act surprised there’s brick!”
“Understanding defeat,” Skellir snarled, closing the distance between them, “is still defeat.”
The crowd roared as the numbers swung again, seesawing wildly: 48% to 47%, then 50% to 45%. It was a tug-of-war with two lives as the rope.
High above, Kelmen watched, one long finger tapping against his platform’s rail. “The volatile one has passion,” he mused aloud to Leara beside him, his tone clinical. “Passion can be aimed, like a fire hose. But it is exhausting to manage. The nervous one… he is already calculating. He views his own terror from a distance. That could be more useful. A pawn that thinks it’s strategizing is often the most compliant.”
Antonella looked away from Kelmen’s analysis, her stomach twisting. The warm totem in her hand felt like a lie. Her victory had built this platform, this grotesque auction. Luis was beside her, nodding along as if studying a clever piece of game design.
In the South sector, the mood was a fractured mirror of the arena’s chaos.
Anjala stayed silent, a statue of dark judgment, her arms folded. She didn’t look at the numbers; she looked at Otar’s face, reading the desperation there.
Makvala, however, vibrated with furious energy. “He fought!” she nearly shouted at Binod, her playful eyes now blazing. “On that board, he was clever! And they vote for the loud, messy bull? It’s not right.”
Binod watched with controlled disappointment, his gaze moving between the voters in the tiers and Otar on the sand. “They are not voting on merit,” he stated, his voice flat. “They are voting on which story bothers them less. Which flaw is more entertaining to keep watching.”
Jolie hugged herself, rocking slightly on her heels. She looked from Skellir’s defiant stance to Otar’s pleading eyes and then to the nearly stabilized numbers. Her shoulders slumped a moment before the count finished. “It’s done,” she whispered, as if she could hear the clicks of a final, invisible lock.
The percentages shuddered and held.
SKELLIR: 61%
OTAR: 39%
The arena erupted into a definitive, deafening mix of cheers and boos, the sound of a decision made.
Arkan lowered his hand. The silence that followed was absolute, sharpened by the sudden absence of the crowd’s noise. He let it sit, let the numbers burn their final truth into everyone’s vision. Then he spoke.
“The public has voted. Skellir Anthonysson is saved.”
Skellir exhaled, a ragged, shuddering breath. He didn’t celebrate. He looked at Otar, and for a flash, something like regret or horror passed behind his eyes before it was buried under the sheer, overwhelming weight of his own relief.
Arkan’s mercurial gaze settled on the smaller figure. “Otar Jinjikhashvili. You are the seventh eliminated contestant from TDC Season 4.”
The words were formal, a death knell. Otar stood frozen beneath the harsh light of his own name, which now pulsed a dull, defeated grey. All the frantic energy left him. He just looked very young, and very cold.
Then the special rule activated.
A beam of that red-gold light from Team East’s sigil lanced down from Kelmen’s platform, striking the sand at Otar’s feet. It didn’t hurt him. It encased him, a shimmering cylinder of light that illuminated every droplet of water on his skin, every thread of his soaked shirt.
“As the winning team of Trial Seven,” Arkan intoned, “Team East’s leader claims the forfeit. The eliminated contestant does not depart. He is remanded.”
The light solidified. When it faded, a thin, intricate collar of pale gold metal gleamed around Otar’s neck. It was seamless, elegant, and unmistakably a tether.
Otar’s hand flew to his throat, his fingers brushing the cool, smooth metal. He didn’t try to claw it off. He stared up at Kelmen’s platform.
Kelmen smiled, a slow, possessive curve of his lips. He gave a slight, beckoning motion with two fingers.
The collar gave a soft, chiming pulse. Otar’s body took a single, involuntary step forward, toward the East sector stairs. He stopped, fighting the impulse, his face a mask of shock. Then the compulsion came again, gentle, insistent, undeniable.
He took another step. And another. He was walking, not out of the arena, but across the sand toward his new owner. The defeated slump was gone from his shoulders, replaced by a terrible, robotic rigidity.
He finally looked less defeated than claimed.
=====
Grand Trial Arena, Meridian Citadel, Elarion — Team South sector beneath the amber-black sigil, after the public vote lights fade and Kelmen’s pawn mark begins to glow faintly around Otar’s wrist. Immediately after Otar is eliminated with 39% and becomes Kelmen’s pawn.
The walk across the arena sand toward the amber-black sigil of Team South felt longer than the entire Wet Chessboard. Each grain under his boots was a tiny, distinct accusation. The noise of the crowd was a distant ocean now, muffled by the blood pounding in his ears. A faint, gold light emanated from his right wrist, where a delicate, chain-like mark had been burned into his skin—Kelmen’s pawn mark. It didn’t hurt. It just was, a constant, pulsing reminder that the goodbye he was about to have was already owned by someone else.
Anjala was waiting at the edge of their sector, a dark silhouette against the team’s ambient light. She didn’t move to hug him. Her expression was carved from the same stone as the arena walls.
“You weren’t weak out there,” she said, her voice low and precise, cutting through the leftover roar in his head. “I need you to know I never thought that.”
Otar tried to form a thank you, but she wasn’t finished.
“You have a different problem,” she continued, her dark eyes holding his. “You’re too willing to turn your own pain into a perfect, logical argument for why you lost. It lets you lose gracefully. That’s more dangerous than any board.”
Her words landed with the quiet finality of a verdict. He just nodded, the truth of it sticking in his throat like dry cloth.
Binod stepped forward next, his calm unnerving amidst the emotional bleed of the arena. He studied Otar’s face, then the glowing mark on his wrist. “You understand patterns faster than anyone gave you credit for,” Binod stated. “You saw the shape of the Wet Chessboard before Skellir accepted it was a board.”
He paused, his head tilting slightly. “But you used that understanding as a shelter. You built a theory around your position instead of using it to change your position. Observation became an endpoint.”
“It was all I had,” Otar replied, his voice tighter than he wanted.
“It was,” Binod agreed, without malice. “Now it’s not. The parameters have changed.”
Jolie appeared beside Binod, her usual vibrant energy replaced by a compressed, sharp intensity. She offered a smile, but it was all edges. “I hated that,” she said, without preamble.
“Hated what?” Otar asked.
“How you’d be wrong, and then you’d talk, and five minutes later it would sound like you’d been right all along,” she said, crossing her arms. “You’d reframe the whole failure into some… profound character insight. It was infuriating. And kind of brilliant.”
She punched him softly on the shoulder, a gesture that felt more like a transfer of energy than affection. “Don’t let him use that trick on you,” she said, her eyes flicking toward Kelmen’s distant platform. “He’s better at it.”
Then Makvala shouldered past, her playful façade utterly gone. Her eyes were molten with a clean, direct fury. She didn’t look at Otar’s face; she stared at the pawn mark as if she could vaporize it with her gaze.
“This is what pisses me off,” she spat, the words hot and loud. “You lost. Fine. We lose. But this?” She gestured violently at his wrist. “This transfer of deed? This is obscene. He doesn’t get a person. He gets a receipt.”
She finally looked at him, and her anger was almost a shelter. “You fought. You were clever. And they turned you into a token for that preening, emerald bastard to spend. That’s not a game consequence. That’s a insult.”
“Makvala,” Otar began, touched and shattered by her defense.
“No,” she cut him off. “Be angry about it. Even if you can’t show him, be angry. Don’t let your dignity be part of the package he thinks he bought.”
From high above, a voice drifted down, cool and perfectly audible, as if the speaker were standing beside them. “Sentiment is a terrain best walked after ownership is established,” Kelmen observed, leaning on his railing. “Your passion for his status is noted, contestant. It tells me the piece has value to the board he left. That is useful data.”
Makvala’s head snapped up, her face a mask of pure contempt. She opened her mouth, but Binod’s hand closed gently around her elbow, a silent, forceful suggestion to cease. Arguing with the owner changed nothing for the owned.
Otar took a shaky breath, gathering the fractured pieces of himself. He looked at each of them—Anjala’s stark truth, Binod’s calm dissection, Jolie’s edged respect, Makvala’s protective rage.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice finding a fragile steadiness. “Don’t let my elimination become a clean lesson for you. Don’t let them make it simple. ‘The clever one who hesitated.’ ‘The weak one who was claimed.’ It’s messier than that. I was… I am both. And neither.”
The pawn mark on his wrist pulsed, a gentle, golden throb. He flinched.
“Otar Jinjikhashvili.” Arkan’s voice echoed across the space, not loud, but absolute. “You are the seventh eliminated. Your time with your former team is concluded. Step away.”
It was a command, not a request. The mark pulsed again, stronger, a magnetic pull toward the East Sector stairs.
Otar took one last look at the four faces that had been his world for a month. He offered a final, slight nod, a failed attempt at a smile that trembled and died. Then he turned his back on them and walked.
He did not look at the crowd. He did not look at Skellir, who was being ushered toward the West sector by a relieved-looking Iva. He kept his eyes on the polished stone steps that led upward to Kelmen’s platform, to his new hand.
The farewell was over. It offered no comfort, no closure. Team South stood hollowed, having lost a member not to the void, but to the enemy’s inventory.
And Otar walked, the pulse in his wrist syncing with his heartbeat, a living metronome counting down each step into captivity.