Leila then shows me the bruises on her arms and legs.
“After I freed my father,” Leila continues, “I made him promise that even if I got captured, he’d go to Ollendor without me, and wait for me there. Ollendor is the only remaining city of Varathia where the lessathi hold no power. In Ollendor, we would be safe from them. But the city’s guards caught me before I could get out of the city. I held them off until my father could escape, but I was already weakened from the previous battle, and I couldn’t beat them all. In the end, they tied me up and sent me here. I arrived in this cell yesterday in the afternoon, not long before you made your appearance.”
“You mentioned that you had to wait until you could max your strength, speed and combat technique, and that your current maximum level is three,” I say. “But wouldn’t that mean that you only had nine available stat points until yesterday?”
“Yes, and I still do,” Leila writes. “That is the reason why I wanted to talk to you in private. When I first saw how quickly I was gaining my stat points one week ago, I was amazed, but that was only because I did not know about the tournament. Apparently, it had been announced many times in the past few months, but it’s easy to miss these kinds of announcements when you live mostly on the outskirts of the city, in order to avoid detection. It was yesterday in the afternoon, when the gnome king announced the first round’s objectives that I first found out about the tournament. This made me realize how much magical energy there really is around us. I would have expected the stat booster to gather a lot more energy, given these circumstances. What I wanted to ask you was this: How many points did you get to spend on your stats until now?”
“Nineteen points,” I answer her.
“Nineteen?” Leila writes, looking somewhat shocked.
She pauses.
“Then I suppose that my assumption was correct,” Leila writes. “It really is harder for a stat booster to collect energy inside this city.”
“I’ve been noticing that too,” I tell her. “I’ve only gotten two points since I entered the city, but I used to get points a lot faster before, unless I was travelling through completely deserted areas. Maybe it’s just because there aren’t very many mages from the tournament who found their way to this city?”
“Perhaps,” Leila writes. “Or perhaps it’s because there are other stat device wielders in this city, and the energy is being split equally among us.”
“You think there might be other lessathi using stat devices in this city?” I ask her.
“I don’t know,” Leila writes. “It’s a possibility. Can I have a look at your stat booster, please?”
“Yeah, sure, I guess…” I say, as I take my stat device out of my pocket and show it to her.
The girl gives the device one long pondering look, before she writes again.
“Thank you,” Leila writes. “I wanted to see how fast your stat booster is gathering energy, compared to mine. Yours is working a little better, but not enough to justify a ten points difference between us.”
“You can tell all that just by looking at it?” I ask her.
“No, of course not,” Leila writes. “Not by looking. I can tell by sensing the flow of the magical energy surrounding it. Can’t you?”
“Well, I guess I can sort of feel the flow of it,” I say, “but there’s no way I could tell which one of our two devices is gathering more than the other.”
“That’s strange,” Leila writes. “If you can’t even tell the difference between our two devices, then how did you know that the stat booster was designed to work for lessathi before coming to this tournament? From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t seem like you are acquainted with any of the other lessathi, so you must have discovered it on your own somehow. Unless…”
Leila pauses.
“Unless you had absolutely no idea how powerful the device would really be,” Leila continues, “and you were planning to keep pretending that you are a stillwater until the end of the tournament, with your stat device only as a backup plan.”
“What do you mean?” I say. “Of course I knew that the device works better for lessathi!”
Leila starts to giggle silently, while covering her mouth with her hand.
“You are such a bad liar,” Leila writes. “Your aura gets all spiky when you’re not telling the truth.”
“My aura gets… spiky?” I ask.
“I can’t believe how crazy you are!” Leila writes, while smiling. “No one in their right mind would even think to try and bluff their way through a tournament like this! Now I understand why you seem so calm, even after you’ve heard what the arena’s owner is preparing for us. This is just another regular day for you, isn’t it?”
“Well, I don’t know If I’d go so far as to call it regular,” I say. “This is only the third time I’ve been thrown into a prison since I came to Varathia. There’s still room for improvement.”
“Hey, you two!” I hear a guard shouting to us from the window of Leila’s cell. “You can have all the private conversations you want on your own free time. This is the recreation period. Get back outside!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” I say, and we both head back towards the recreation area.
Once we’re out, Leila and I get back to our original positions, without saying another word to each other. We’ve already said what we needed to say, and there was no reason to give Wilhelm any more opportunities to spy on our conversations.
The rest of the recreation period was spent in silence. There was nothing for us to discuss about the upcoming fights, and nobody seemed to be in the mood for idle chatter. Since we couldn’t just stand and do nothing for two hours, each of us tried to find something to occupy our time with. Bruce started doing push-ups, Wilhelm chose to sharpen his dagger, I spent my time reading from my notebook and the two thugs decided to play some dice. Leila seemed to be the only one content with simply standing there, gazing at an empty wall in front of her until the recreation period ended.
As soon as the recreation period was over, we all went quietly back to our cells. I continued to read from my notebook for a few more hours after leaving the recreation area. I’ve been reading through my notes about various creatures that I’ve come across in my studies, but there are so many of them that it’s difficult to memorize all of the information by heart.
I still remember the day when I enchanted this notebook. It was the day when I decided to begin my journey around the world, in the hopes of finding a way to become a mage. The enchantment cost me a fortune, but it was still a lot cheaper than enchanting a backpack, and it was more than what I needed for my intents and purposes. A notepad with an endless number of pages. Was there any other tool that could have served me better in my quest for knowledge?
I skim through the pages again, trying to guess which creatures the arena’s owner is more likely to throw at us. There are harpies, wargs, wyverns, three headed hounds, mammoths, giant spiders, giant eagles… The list is endless. And let’s not forget that each type of creature has its own subcategories that cannot be ignored, because they are sometimes wildly different from each other. You can have red spiders, green spiders, white spotted black spiders and even ten-legged spiders, each of them with their own unique behaviors and weaknesses.
Now that I think about it, Bruce mentioned that the arena’s owner was fond of dangerous creatures, but does that mean that he might be keeping monsters of the humanoid type in here as well? Monsters might be treated as if they are all mindless creatures by most people, but the reality is a little different. Monsters of the humanoid variety are generally much more intelligent than the average creature. Some of them are even organized in tribes, and they can communicate advanced information with each other through their own languages, even if most of them don’t speak Common. The ogres from the fort were one such example. If they have any monsters here that are as strong as the ogre captain or the shaman, then we might be in for one hell of a fight.
As I sit on my bed and read, I s
uddenly hear a man’s voice coming from my cell’s window.
“Greetings,” the voice says.
I turn around, to see if I can get a glimpse of the man’s face, but he is hiding behind the wall outside my cell.
“Do I know you?” I ask him.
“No,” the voice says. “But I heard that there was a fellow lessathi among the prisoners who were brought here yesterday evening, so I came to pay you a visit.”
“A fellow lessathi, you say…” I tell him.
“Yes,” the voice says. “I am here to offer you a deal. Normally we do not deal with criminals, but since you are a lessathi, I believe that it’s only fair to give you a second chance.”
He pauses.
“Go on…” I say.
“You see,” the voice continues, “we couldn’t help but notice that the king of Thilias seems to have placed an unusual amount of trust in you and your companions. Enough trust to invite you into his secret room below the throne. That is not the kind of invitation that is acquired easily.”
He pauses again, to see if I have anything to say. He waits for a few more seconds, and then he continues from where he left off.
“The deal that we want to offer you is simple,” the voice says. “All you need to do is convince the king to let you into his secret room again, while carrying one of our devices.”
“Is this device of yours a bomb, by any chance?” I ask him.
The voice laughs softly.
“Of course not,” he says. “If we wanted to assassinate the king, I assure you that there would be much easier, risk-free methods to use in order to get the job done.”
“Then what is it that you are trying to do?”
“We are trying to subtly interfere with the way that one of the gnome’s own devices works. One of the gnome king’s inventions is currently making his secret room completely soundproof, which stops us from listening in on his private conversations. However, at the moment, we do not have any agents that the king trusts enough to allow them access to his secret room. This is why we turn to you. We are not asking you to do this for free, of course. There are ways in which we could make your fights here in the arena much easier for you. All you need to do is agree to help us, and we will take care of the rest.”
“No, thanks,” I say. “I like to keep things challenging.”
There is a brief pause, during which none of us says anything.
“Is this your final answer?” the lessathi asks me.
“Sure,” I say.
“While I did say that we could make things easier for you in the arena if you agreed to help us,” the lessathi says, “what I omitted to say was that we can also make things more difficult for you if you refuse.”
“In what way?” I ask.
“For example, we could have the guards confiscate your stat device, and leave you completely defenseless,” the lessathi says.
“Okay, I don’t know how you found out about my stat device,” I say, “but I’m pretty sure that it isn’t illegal to use it, according to your arena rules.”
“I never said that it’s illegal,” the lessathi says. “I only said that we would have the guards confiscate it. A little chat with the arena’s owner should be enough to bend the rules for this one special occasion. Now, do we have an agreement, or not?”
He seems serious. But even so, I’m not planning to betray the king, just to save my own skin. Let’s see if I can bluff my way out of this…
“Well, mister lessathi, sir, I guess you’ve got yourself a deal!” I lie to him.
“Excellent!” the lessathi says. “Here is the device that I told you about.”
The lessathi throws a small piece of metal through the window of my room. It looks rather ordinary, except for a few engravings on it.
“Make sure that you don’t lose it,” the lessathi says. “It would be difficult to obtain a spare.”
I can hear the lessathi moving to leave.
“Oh,” he says. “And you should be expecting a last minute addition to your team before the arena event begins. He will take care of most of your problems.”
Not long after the lessathi leaves, I start to hear some voices in a distant hallway outside my cell. I recognize one of the voices as that of the guard who woke me up this morning.
“Hey, did you hear about this morning’s meeting?” the guard says.
“The one between the owner and the ambassador?” the other voice says.
“Yeah,” the guard says. “I heard that they’re bringing out the minotaur in round two.”
“The minotaur?” the other voice asks, shocked. “You mean, the undefeated champion of the arena?”
“The one and only,” the guard says. “And I heard that they’re also going to use the giant scorpions and the manticores for round one.”
“What about round three?” the other voice says. “Will there still be duels between the gladiators?”
“Yeah, the survivors will have to fight each other in one on one duels at the end,” the guard says. “But nobody is expecting any of them to make it past round one.”
The last phrase was barely audible, as the guards were getting further and further away from me while they talked. The last thing I hear from them is the roaring of their laughter, as their voices fade away completely.
Scorpions and manticores, huh? It’s a good thing that I’ve got extensive notes written about them in my notebook. At least we won’t go in completely unprepared.
I spent the rest of the afternoon reading from my notes. When I felt like taking a break, I called Daren, Kate and Hadrik through the transceivers, to find out how they were doing. Daren told me that he couldn’t stand any of his teammates, and that they were all cowardly mercenaries who had come here to make easy money. Kate said that she almost killed one of her teammates during the recreation period, and that she only stopped when she found out it was against the rules. No one had tried to pick a fight with her since.
Hadrik seemed to be doing a little better. From what he told me, he’d already made most of his teammates into his drinking buddies, and they were spending a lot more time in the recreation area than the two daily hours they were required to.
I also made sure to tell my friends everything that I heard from the two guards earlier, as well as the weaknesses and behaviors of each type of scorpions and manticores that I knew of. Hopefully, this information will help them out in some way.
After I finished talking to everyone, I got back to my reading, and I kept doing that until later in the evening, when I was interrupted by the creak of a door, and by the sound of a familiar voice.
“Farewell,” I hear the disinterested voice of the desk worker coming from the recreation area, as a door slams shut.
I immediately realize what this means, and I open the door of my cell, to see who the newest member of our division is. The man who just entered the recreation area is simply radiating magical energy, and he makes no attempt at hiding it. However, he does not appear to be one of the tournament’s participants, because I’m seeing a warning sign above his head, telling me not to hurt him. He must be one of the local mages. Judging by the look on his face, it’s clear that he didn’t come here of his own free will, so he’s likely been sent here because he broke the Varathian law in some way. The mage notices me, but he doesn’t bother to acknowledge my presence, and he goes directly to his room.
The rest of the day was mostly uneventful, except for a drunk call that I got from Hadrik on the transceiver, who insisted on passing me one of his teammates, because of the funny way in which he impersonated a famous noble from the Western Continent.
The next morning, I get woken up by the same guard from the previous day, telling me that the recreation period had started.
“Wakey-wakey!” the guard says. “It’s recreation time!”
I open the door to my cell and start heading towards an empty area of the recreation room, just like yesterday. As I walk, I overhear the two thugs from my division ta
lking loudly several feet away from me, and I turn around to see what’s going on. It looks like they’re talking to Leila, as she is casually leaning with her back against the wall, watching them silently.
“Hey, princess,” one of the thugs says. “How about you take us both to your room, like you did with the stillwater, yesterday?”
“Yeah,” the other thug says. “We have some very important tactical information that we’d like to discuss with you.”
Leila continues to look at them, without saying anything. The first thug who spoke concludes that he wasn’t being intimidating enough, so he now places both his hands on the wall behind her, as he leans closer to her face.
“Listen, princess,” the thug says. “You can drop the silent act. I know you can understand me. So you’d better wise up and do what I say, or else I’m going to hurt you so bad, that you’ll wish you—”
The thug didn’t get to finish his sentence, because Leila decided she’s had enough, and she punched him so hard in the stomach that the man fell down and started rolling on the floor from the pain.
“You bitch!” the other thug shouts, as he pulls out his knife, but he doesn’t get a chance to use it, because a sudden kick from Leila sends him flying into a nearby wall.
“By the gods, that was amazing!” we hear Bruce shout from the other end of the room.
He rushes over to Leila and he grabs her by both her shoulders. Leila looks a bit shocked, but she quickly realizes that there is no ill-intent behind the man’s actions, so she doesn’t attack him.
“With strength like that, you could take out a small battalion by yourself!” Bruce says, enthusiastically. “How did they even manage to capture you?”
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