by Jamey Sultan
Two darts flashed through the air, expertly flying through the tiny holes in the cell door. One hit James in the neck, the other Nidra. They both collapsed to the ground unceremoniously, unable to move. A timer appeared in the corner of his vision, counting down from forty-five seconds.
You have been poisoned with [Potent Paralysis Poison].
- Duration 00:00:45
- unable to move or speak
You seem to enjoy pissing off the wrong people.
The two Dwarves standing behind Danforth raised their hands and chanted, a silver glow surrounding their hands as they cast a spell. Metal groaned and shifted as the bars to the cell twisted open. Danforth entered the cell and casually strolled over to James. He knelt on the ground and placed his face up close to James’. “I really appreciate you bringing me this cloak—you saved me a hell of a trip.”
James tried to fight the paralysis. He pushed his strength to its limits, but there were some things that no amount of strength could do. All he could do was watch the timer as it counted down. Anger bubbled through him like hot iron, and his vision flashed red. There was nothing he wanted more than to kill the Dwarf in front of him.
Seemingly unaware of the hatred behind James’ gaze, Danforth slipped James’ Legendary cloak from his shoulders and slung it over his own. “Looks great.”
As Danforth turned to go, James felt the feeling returning to his fingertips. A racial bonus gave him a +25% poison resistance. It allowed James’ poison to wear off early, giving him time to attack before the cell door closed.
The timer in the corner of his vision ticked down. He strained to move.
00:00:03
00:00:02
00:00:01
New Achievement: Pure Blood I
Pure Blood I:
You have survived two poisoning attempts.
+2% Poison Resistance
+1 Constitution
James ignored the notification as he threw himself toward Danforth.
The Executioner’s eyes widened fractionally as he saw James barreling toward him. He reacted quicker than James thought possible. Danforth spun and kicked out behind himself, but James wasn’t aiming for him. Instead, James spun around him and tackled one of the two mages who were standing behind Danforth.
…or he tried to.
A wall of iron sprang to life before him, and James smashed into it, denting the metal. Before he could disentangle himself from the wall, it folded in over itself, encasing him fully. Muscles rippling, James fought against the encircling metal but didn’t have enough leverage to break free. The mage scowled and waved a hand in the air, slamming the metal and James into a nearby cell door. James hit the door with a jarring crack. His Essence dropped prodigiously as he hit the metal, flashing in a warning.
The cell door lit up with a bright flash of runes, but the force of the blow was so powerful that their light was abruptly cut off as a hairpin crack formed in the metal. Through the bars, James caught the briefest glance of a frail-looking old man staring at him in shock before he was flung forcefully into the opposite wall.
A fireball hit the mage attacking James, disrupting his concentration. The Dwarf fell to the ground clutching his head, and the iron wall wrapped around James melted off of his body into a pile of iron goo. It left him on his knees, gasping for breath and willing himself to stand through the pain. Nidra stepped into the hallway and grinned at him, her poison finally having worn off.
James got to his feet and joined Nidra in the hallway, but before they could continue their escape, metal walls grew around them. James ignored the formations, hoping that Nidra would take care of the mage while he took down Danforth.
Speaking of Danforth… James looked around. Where’d the little bastard run off to?
James looked up and down the hallway but didn’t see the Executioner. Then he remembered. My cloak. He stole my cloak.
Before James could think of a way to search for Danforth, the metal mage struck again, pressing walls that encircled both James and Nidra. The mage that Nidra had hit with a fireball stood up. Her face covering had burnt off, and James could now see a female Dwarf with smooth features and a Mohawk. She looked pissed.
While James and Nidra struggled to free themselves, the mages floated them back into their cell and warped the bars shut behind them. Once they were securely locked back up, the metal wrapped around their bodies melted away.
The two pairs glared at each other through the bars. The mages were sweating, clearly exhausted from the fight. They’d rebuilt the cage with much larger gaps between the bars. Danforth strolled back into the hallway, and all four sets of eyes turned to glare at him.
“What the hell, asshole?” the female Dwarf said. “You just left us here.”
Danforth shrugged. “Not my job. But you know that. My job is much more… subtle.” He winked, and she flinched. “Now, let’s head out. The prisoners need time to rest.” He turned to James. “Have a lovely day, and thanks again for the cloak.”
James lunged at the bars, but they didn’t budge, and Danforth just laughed. He gestured to the two mages. “Come on. Let’s go.”
James watched them go, breathing heavily. He’d see Danforth dead by the end of this.
Chapter 3
James and Nidra spent the next few hours reviewing their choices. There weren’t many.
“The way I see it, we have two options: we can either attempt to escape now or escape later.” James ticked his fingers as he listed the options, but Nidra interrupted before he could explain further.
She raised an eyebrow as she commented. “Insightful, we can escape now, or later. I was actually thinking we just stay here. Other than the torture room, it’s not too bad.”
James ignored the sarcasm. “If we leave now, they might not realize it for a while. We’d also get to skip whatever they have planned for us in the arena. On the other hand, we don’t have very much information. We don’t know where Danforth or Lucien are, or where to find the rest of our gear.”
“Right, also,” Nidra gestured around them, “I don’t think we could get out of here, even if we tried. This place is sealed tight.”
James glanced around the cell, taking in the battered straw mattresses, the blankets crumpled on the ground, and the weird rust-colored splotch he’d been trying to ignore since he’d gotten here. There was absolutely nothing they could use to escape if they tried.
There wasn’t even a place to hide a key, except maybe the bathroom bucket. James looked at the bucket and shuddered. If there was a key in there, he wouldn’t be the one looking for it.
“Which leaves us our second option.” James ticked another finger. “We escape during the fights. It exposes us to more danger, and they’ll see us escape, but we won’t have to go searching for Arik and Lucien. We’d just have to hope that we can all survive until we get paired together. The biggest downside is that if we escape during the Coliseum match, then they’re going to be right on our tails.”
Nidra nodded in agreement. “Plus, there’s no guarantee they survive all the way to their match with us. What if they die beforehand or something? If we wait and they die…” Her voice trailed off.
“Yeah, but if we wait, then we’ll have my sword, assuming they give it back. That’s a big deal. With it, I can probably get us out of any nasty situation.” James realized that he had not explained to Nidra about his experiences after they had split up, nor had he told her about Tyrfing.
He quickly recapped the events, especially how he had been abducted by the priests of Sytar and thrown into a dungeon underneath their temple. There, he continued, he had found a secret library where he had met a shadowy figure named Ozure. Nidra listened silently, focusing on James with rapt attention.
James continued, telling her how Ozure had repaired his Mana channels, which had led to him gaining Arcane Magic and Essence, while losing his Health, Mana, and Stamina. He had also been given Tyrfing, a powerful Legendary sword that could cut through anything.
Their conversation devolved as they started talking about their lives. Nidra was incredibly interested in James’ world and the technology in it, while James was scrambling to learn everything he could to survive in Novis. He never knew when some insignificant detail might come back to save his life.
James slept poorly that night, struggling to get decent rest. Every time he thought he’d finally be able to sleep, a noise from the cell next to him woke him up. It sounded like the old man was arguing with himself, although James couldn’t make out any of the words. Eventually, though, he fell into a dreamless sleep.
***
“Time to go, prisoners,” Linnaeus snapped, striking at the bars. Six guards accompanied him, four of them metal mages.
“Jeez, how many guards do you need for two people?” James commented.
Linnaeus rapped on the cage again. “After that bullshit you pulled with Danforth, I’m not taking any chances. Stand with your backs to the wall and wait for us to come in. If you try anything, we’ll kill your friends.”
Well… That was direct. And bad. James and Nidra both complied and faced the wall. What else could they do?
“Now hands behind your backs,” Linnaeus continued.
They both put their hands behind their backs and felt the cold iron wrap around their wrists, immobilizing them.
They were taken from the cell and positioned with two metal mages and a guard on either side. James didn’t have any confidence in his ability to fight off six close-range soldiers without a weapon, so he did nothing.
As the group moved through the tunnels underneath the Coliseum, James could hear the cheering of an enormous crowd above him. Linnaeus and the other guards brought them to an equipment room and left them alone with a single Dwarf, sealing the door behind themselves. Weapons and armor hung on pegs in a line on the wall. The rest were arranged neatly on racks that ran across the room like bookshelves. The center of the room was clear, save a large table. The Dwarf leaned against the only free wall, cleaning his fingernails with a dagger. He looked at them through half-closed eyes with a bored expression on his face.
Name: Kahvi Montai
Race: Dwarf
Level: ???
Class: Weaponmaster
The table in the center of the room had both James’ and Nidra’s confiscated gear. At the sight of his sword, James let out a breath of relief. He’d been worried that someone might have taken Tyrfing. But why didn’t anyone take it? James ignored the voice in the back of his head as he grabbed Tyrfing and belted the sword to his hip.
As soon as his hand made contact with the sword, a feeling of power coursed through him. He could almost see the energy flow from the sword and into him, where it cycled through him and erased his worries in a flood of warmth. With the power of the sword coursing through him, he could do anything.
Touching the sword also gave James insight he hadn’t realized before. The Weaponmaster may have been projecting carelessness, but he was anything but that. His muscles were tense, and his every move was deliberate. James grabbed his pouch and equipped that too.
Fully equipped, James turned to Nidra. She wore a full set of crimson mage’s robes and carried a staff; the staff she’d purchased from the Dwarven merchant, Pitro, what felt like so long ago. It was ash-grey with streaks of dark brown wood. Softly pulsating red light shone through cracks in the wood’s surface. She’d been so excited about purchasing that staff, too. She’d never had a weapon designed for fire casters.
James’ hand brushed Tyrfing, and he felt a white-hot lance of anger run through him. He spun around and whipped Tyrfing towards Kahvi, stopping the blade right in front of the Dwarf’s throat. “You’re going to take us,” James gestured to himself and Nidra, “to our friends. Then you’re going to escort us out of here.”
The Weaponmaster didn’t even blink. He just continued cleaning his fingernails with the dagger. “And why would I do that?” The Dwarf looked up at James, raising an eyebrow.
James felt his anger awaken like a ball of molten iron. He was tired of always being a pawn. He’d been one on earth, and he was one now. He hated it. He needed to take control of his own destiny. The anger slithered through him, coiling around his brain like a serpent. Just a small bit of pressure. That’s all it would take to kill this Dwarf.
James gritted his teeth with the effort it took to speak through his haze, “Because you want to live.” James could see an orange glow out of the corner of his eye that let him know Nidra was working on a spell.
The Dwarf spared a lazy glance at Tyrfing. A trickle of blood ran down his throat from where the tip of the blade touched him. He looked back up at James, who could see the iron will deep in the Dwarf’s eyes. A spike of fear wormed its way through the fog that obscured James’ mind. “Then what?”
Kahvi’s unexpected question broke through James’ anger, and he opened his mouth to respond but closed it, then opened it again. “Then what, what?”
“Well, let’s say you kill me, then you blow a hole through that door over there,” he gestured towards their entrance, “then what? How do you find your friends? How do you escape an entire city looking for you?”
“Well,” James paused to think, the red mist now completely gone, “I… why does it matter? We’ll escape and—”
Sensing weakness, Kahvi cut in, “Do you really think the four of you can get out of the city that easily? Do you know how well-guarded this place is? Do you have any idea how foolish an idea it is to run away like that?” He laughed. “Good luck.”
James gritted his teeth, but there was some truth to what Kahvi said. Trying to escape now would be the same as trying in the cage. He’d still have to find Arik and Lucien while being chased.
James subconsciously scratched at the Liberator brand on his foot. The Dwarf was right. He might escape to freedom alone, but not with his friends, and if he was going to abandon them, he would have already done it when the slavers had them in cages. Mind clear, James sheathed his sword. The orange light behind him faded away.
Kahvi smiled. “And try to last until the third round at least. I have a lot of gold riding on you.”
***
A loose coating of sand dusted the ground and walls. James groaned. Getting sand in his armor would be awful. The chafing alone might cause damage.
Nidra put a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”
James shook his head. He didn’t know what had happened in that room. It was as if he’d become a different person. She gave his shoulder a squeeze. It wasn’t much, but that moment of comfort was enough.
The roaring built up to a crescendo. A voice boomed, shaking the walls of the tunnel, sprinkling them with loose sand. “Our King has graced us with another special event. For their first challenge…” The voice paused. “…an adolescent bonded Heloha and Melatha.” At that, the crowd cheered even louder.
James turned to Nidra with a questioning gaze, but she just shrugged. “No idea.”
As if reading their thoughts, the announcer continued. “On a mission deep within the Howling Wastes, our hunters trapped these birds as they left the nest for the first time.”
James raised a hand to guard his eyes against the bright sunlight. With his other hand, he wiped the sweat from his brow. After being underground for so long, his body wasn’t used to the heat of the direct sunlight. His eyes adjusted and focused on movement. On the other end of the arena, two Dwarves dressed in rags dragged a bloody hunk of meat across the sand toward another exit. A red streak marred the sand where they’d passed.
James rested a calming hand on Tyrfing’s hilt and surveyed the rest of the arena.
Chapter 4
The arena was a deep-set circular pit surrounded by bleachers. It reminded James of a soccer stadium. Air shimmered from the heat of the scorching sand, giving the entire pit an otherworldly appearance. The red stone
of the stadium glimmered in the afternoon light. James stood stock still, mesmerized by the whole thing.
Something red hit James square in the face and broke the spell. It splattered against him. The crowd erupted into a chorus of jeers and boos as James wiped away foul-smelling remnants of the fruit. A dribble of something leaked into the corner of his mouth, and he wrinkled his nose in disgust.
Meanwhile, the announcer continued his introductions. “And I see you’ve already noticed, we have a Human and another special contestant here for your viewing pleasure—an Elf! So, don’t forget to place your bets. I know who I’m betting on, how about you?”
The crowd erupted into a chorus of laughter.
Another fruit sailed from somewhere in the crowd, but James was expecting it and dodged out of the way. At the same time, he listened to the announcer’s voice boom over the stadium. “And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, let the match begin!”
High above, in a box that jutted out over the arena, the announcer raised both hands in the air. An explosion of gold dust escaped his fingers, glittering as it fell and creating a spectacular light show. On his signal, four Dwarves stood from where they had been sitting in the bleachers and approached the arena. Each one wore identical eggshell robes with grey trim. They were each level 52 and had the Barrier Mage class. As one, they raised their hands to the sky and chanted. Their hands wove through elaborate, arcane gestures as they cast. Swirls of Mana flowed through the air around them, visible because of the strength of their casting.
The air in the Coliseum whipped around, sending sand streaming in suggestive patterns. Their chanting grew less frantic as they imbued the Mana with their will. Each of them lit up like a beacon. A pillar of blue light extended around each mage up to the sliver of sky visible through the mountain.
