Suddenly, Bruce realizes that he got carried away too much, and he releases Leila from his grasp.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce says. “I know that you don’t like to talk. But I just want you to know that I’ve got your back. Whenever you feel like you’re in a pinch in the arena, remember that you can count on me to help. That’s all I wanted to say.”
Leila looks a little confused, but she nods slowly, in acknowledgement of his words.
“Alright, then,” Bruce says. “I’ll be over there, if you need me.”
He then turns away from her, and he goes back to his end of the room.
The thug that got punched in the stomach managed to get back on his feet, and he’s now rushing towards his fallen comrade, who still hasn’t woken up from his collision with the wall. Eventually, he manages to wake him up, and then they both walk towards their corner of the room, without even daring to glance towards Leila on their way back.
Nothing else happened during the two hour long recreation period. The mage from yesterday isolated himself, just like everyone else, and he hasn’t exchanged a single word with anyone. I would have expected Wilhelm to welcome him to the division, like he did with me, but it seems that he didn’t consider him worth the bother.
After we return to our cells, I go to sit on my bed, and I open my notebook. Not long after I start reading, I hear three light knocks on my door.
“Who is it?” I ask.
There is no answer. A few seconds later, there are three more knocks on the door which are a little louder than the last ones.
“If you’re not going to answer me, then I won’t open the door,” I say.
Still no answer. After a brief pause, I can hear three more knocks on the door. I ignore them, and I go back to reading my notebook. Seeing that I’m no longer reacting, my visitor has now switched to knocking once every second, without stopping. After about a minute of constant knocking, I finally reach my limit, and I go open the door, leaving my notebook on the bed.
“What is it?” I shout, but I suddenly get silenced when I see that the person standing in front of me was none other than Leila.
“Oh…” I say, as I quickly understand why I wasn’t getting an answer earlier.
Leila is staring straight at me, and she looks rather upset. Without a word, she grabs me by the arm, and she starts pulling me towards her room.
“Wait, I need to lock the room!” I say.
She stops, but she doesn’t release my arm. She waits for me until I find my key and lock the door, and then she starts pulling me by the arm again, without looking at me.
“Look, I’m sorry!” I say. “I forgot that you couldn’t talk.”
Leila gives no sign of having heard me, and she keeps pulling on me until we get in front of her door. She then releases me, as she searches her pockets for her cell’s key. Once she unlocks and opens the door, she gives me the same upset look as before, and she points towards her room.
“Okay, okay, I’m going,” I say, as I enter her cell.
After she locks the door, Leila grabs me by the arm again, and she places my left hand on the wall behind her bed. She then looks me straight in the eyes, as if she’s expecting some kind of reaction from me.
“Is there… something special about this wall?” I ask her, confused.
“Yes,” Leila writes, with her usual blue text.
“Well, can you give me some sort of hint?” I say. “What am I looking for, exactly?”
“Don’t try to look,” Leila writes. “You need to feel it. Try concentrating your magical sense on your hand, as you are touching the wall, and you will understand what I mean.”
As I do what Leila says, I suddenly realize that the wall is somehow resonating perfectly with my magical aura, and that it’s reacting directly to my touch.
“Okay, you’re right,” I tell her. “There’s definitely more to this wall than you can tell just by looking. But it’s not doing anything. Even if it’s reacting directly to my touch, I feel like it’s still waiting for something to happen.”
Leila nods.
“That’s because the wall on the opposite side of the room is made in the same way,” Leila writes. “I think that these walls react directly to our lessathi auras, and that they are supposed to act as switches that need to be pressed at the same time by two different lessathi.”
“Switches for what?” I ask.
“For opening a passage to the underground caverns beneath these tunnels,” Leila writes. “I’ve seen these kinds of switches before, in other buildings made by lessathi. They always open up secret passages. And I’ve heard that the caverns below us are where the arena’s owner is keeping all the creatures locked up. If we could get a quick look, we would at least know what we’ll be going up against. Or even better, we could sabotage the whole show, by killing the creatures one by one, while they are in their cages, instead of fighting them all at once in the arena.”
“That does sound tempting,” I say. “But what if they catch us? Won’t they be able to disqualify us for cheating?”
“There are no rules saying that we can’t kill the creatures before the arena event begins,” Leila writes. “However…”
Leila pauses.
“However, what?” I ask.
“However,” Leila continues, “the rules of the arena do state that the safety of the participants is not guaranteed outside of the area designated for their division.”
“So, what you’re saying is that if they catch us in the act, they can unleash all of their beasts upon us, without any restraint.”
Leila nods.
“We can just go take a look,” Leila writes, “and if we see that there are too many guards, we’ll go back to our cells.”
I pause a bit to think.
“Alright,” I say. “We’ll take one look, and we can decide after that.”
Leila nods again. She then goes to the other end of the room, near the door, extending her hand towards the wall.
“Are you ready?” she writes.
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” I say.
Leila then places her hand on the wall, and at the same time, I can feel a sort of magical current flowing through my palm. Almost immediately afterwards, the floor beneath us opens up, and the next thing we know, we’re both falling into a pit, while we can see the floor to our room slowly closing itself back up, above our heads. After what seemed like a hundred foot drop, we fall into an underground lake, with a big splash. As I tread water to keep myself afloat, I take a look above me, to see if there’s any way we could go back the way we came.
The cavern’s walls and ceiling around us seem to be littered with some sort of glowing blue crystals that are providing a fair bit of lighting throughout the area, but I see no obvious way to climb back up to our cell. The only things leading upwards are some ropes that are tied to a pulley which is hanging from the ceiling, but there’s no way I could climb all the way up there on some rope.
Suddenly, I can hear the sound of repeated splashing water behind me, and as I turn to look, I see Leila desperately flinging her arms through the water, with her mouth wide open, looking as if she’d forgotten that she couldn’t talk and was trying to scream. Realizing what’s happening, I quickly swim towards her, and grab her by her shoulders, in order to stop her arms from flailing.
“Leila, it’s okay!” I tell her, as she’s looking at me, terrified. “Just grab onto me. I’ll lead us to shore.”
It takes her a few moments, but eventually she calms down, and she grabs onto me with both of her arms, holding me very tightly. Once I lead her safely to the shore, we take a break to catch our breaths. We are both soaked to the skin, and the air around here is definitely not as warm as it is on the surface. Ideally, I would make a fire in this situation, but is there any wood to be found in an underground cavern such as this?
My question gets immediately answered as I turn around and see a wooden cabin a few hundred feet from where we’re standing. Ther
e’s also a big pile of logs stacked up right in front of its door. How convenient.
As I look towards the cabin, Leila pulls on my shirt, to get my attention. When I turn to look at her, I see that she’s lying on her knees, with her wet hair covering most of her face, and her head bowed down.
“I’m sorry,” she writes, simply.
“About what?” I ask.
“About dragging you into this,” she writes.
“Leila,” I say, “If you hadn’t dragged me into this, you would have ended up drowning in that lake.”
Leila keeps staring at the ground, as her writing slowly disappears.
“Listen,” I say, “there’s nothing to be sorry about. I didn’t think this would be a trap either. I’m still not sure if it’s a trap, actually. I mean, I’m sure that it was designed as a trap originally, but who knows if anyone even remembers that it exists. Either way, even if we’ve lost our way back, I don’t think that we’re in the wrong place. The only thing that’s changed is that we now also have to look for a way back to our cells, while we look for the creatures.”
As I talk to Leila, the ropes leading to the ceiling are starting to catch my attention. They’re all coming out of the water, and the way they are distanced from each other makes me think that they are tied to some sort of platform at the bottom of the lake. Possibly an elevator. I wonder if there’s a lever or something at the bottom of the lake that could activate the elevator and get us out of here.
“I just thought of something,” I say. “Do you see those ropes?”
Leila nods.
“I think that they might be tied to a platform at the lower end,” I say. “I want to check out the bottom of the lake, and see if there isn’t a lever of some sort that I can use to activate the elevator. Can you wait for me here?”
“Okay,” Leila writes.
I jump into the lake and I swim back towards the ropes. When I reach them, I take a deep breath, and I dive into the water. It seems that I was right. There really is a platform at the very bottom of the lake, tied to the ropes. However, there is no obvious mechanism that looks like it could be used to operate the elevator, as far as I can see. The only thing that looks like something of the sort is a stone pillar, next to the platform, with a hole at the top, shaped like a spider. If this elevator is requiring some kind of a spider shaped key in order to get activated, then I’m out of luck. After a few more unsuccessful rounds of circling the platform for signs of a lever, I finally run out of breath, and I go back to the surface to get some air in my lungs. This is pointless. Unless I find that spider key, there’s no way I can operate this elevator. I might as well get back to shore.
“Did you find anything?” Leila writes, as she sees me get out of the water.
“I didn’t see any levers,” I say, as I squeeze the water out of my shirt. “The most I could find was a pillar with a spider shaped hole in it. Unless we find a spider shaped key of some sort, that elevator isn’t going to be of much use to us. Let’s head for the cabin. Maybe we’ll find some flint or something to start a fire with.”
Leila nods, and we both start to walk towards the cabin. There’s something that’s been bugging me about this wooden cabin since I first saw it. Unless there are some trees miraculously growing in these caverns somewhere, this cabin could not have been built by someone who got trapped in here before us. This means that it was most likely built by the same persons who designed the trap, or at least by people who know about it, and who can reach this place by some other means. The fact that there are a bunch of logs conveniently placed right next to the lake in which we fell makes me believe that this was done intentionally. Why would they go out of their way to make things more comfortable for us? Is this their way of granting us our last wish, before they send the beasts to kill us?
As we reach the cabin, I go inside carefully, making sure that there are no traps. The cabin doesn’t have any fireplace or chimney, but there’s some firewood inside, and also some flint. I take the firewood and the flint outside, and then I take some of the dried up moss from the cave’s walls to provide a bit of kindling. Once we’ve set up the fire, Leila and I sit ourselves down next to it, trying to get as close to the heat as we can.
“Hey, this is not half bad,” I tell Leila, as the two of us do our best to warm ourselves up by the fire. “For a quick improvised fire that we lighted with flint and moss, I’d say we did pretty well!”
Leila nods.
“So…” I say. “Are you still upset about earlier?”
Leila looks at me confused.
“You know,” I say. “When I refused to open the door of my cell for you.”
“Oh,” Leila writes. “No. I’d already forgotten about it…”
She then turns her back to the fire, trying to dry her hair without getting it burnt.
“You know, I’ve always meant to ask,” I say, as I watch her dry her hair. “Is silver your natural hair color? I’ve never seen anyone with silver hair before, but then again, I can’t say that I’ve met many lessathi in my life.”
Leila doesn’t answer me, and she just stares in front of her for a while. It’s difficult to tell what expression she has on her face, because of the hair in her eyes.
“Is this something that you don’t want to talk about?” I say.
“No, it’s fine…” Leila writes.
She pauses.
“Have you ever heard of the Beacon of Hope?” she writes.
“If you’re talking about the orphanage that was experimenting with creating artificial mages, then yes, I’ve heard of it,” I say. “Were you one of the lessathi who worked there?”
Leila shakes her head.
“No,” she writes. “I was one of the failed experiments. The reason why my hair is silver is because it lost its color gradually, as a side-effect of the several years in which they experimented on me, trying to make me into a mage. My hair used to be pitch black.”
“Oh, gods,” I say. “Is this also the reason why you lost your voice?”
“No,” Leila writes. “I was born this way. And I was given hell because of it. I don’t remember much from when I was little, but I do remember what the other lessathi used to say about me. They said that I wasn’t a real lessathi. They said that the lessathi are a pure race that cannot have any birth defects, and they suspected that the reason why I was born a mute was because I was in fact a half-lessathi. I think that even the person that I once used to call my father had doubts about me. He never seemed to consider me his real child, and he always used to blame my mother for dying, and for leaving him to care for her daughter. That’s probably why he didn’t think twice when they asked if any of the lessathi who worked at the Beacon were willing to volunteer their children for experimentation.”
“Wait, you just said that you used to call him your father,” I say. “But you said yesterday that the reason why you were brought here was because you saved your father from slavery. This person that you saved… is he someone other than your natural father?”
“The person I saved is the one that I’ve been calling father for the past eleven years,” Leila writes. “He is the one who rescued me from the Beacon all those years ago, when I was almost about to give up all hope.”
“Is this why the two of you became outcasts?” I ask her.
Leila nods.
“My father had been one of the caretakers at the Beacon,” Leila writes. “When he couldn’t bear to see us suffer any longer, he decided to help us escape, even if he knew that this meant he would be marked as an outcast for the rest of his life.”
“Were there any others who escaped with you?” I ask her.
Leila shakes her head.
“My father tried to convince other children to follow him, but they were too afraid to trust him,” Leila writes. “They must have thought that he was trying to trick them. He didn’t have the time to talk to all of them, because one of the orphans ratted him out to the other lessathi, and he was forced to make a run
for it. He made one last attempt to save the orphans, opening their cells before leaving the facility, but in the end, I was the only one who followed him.”
“Didn’t they try to capture you afterwards?” I say.
“They did,” Leila writes. “That’s why we were forced to live the next few years of our lives hiding in the woods of Varathia. At first, we would change our location once every few days, to make sure that they don’t pick up our trail. But, after a few months, my father finally managed to obtain all the parts he needed to make a suggestion device. Suggestion spells are spells that can implant certain thoughts into the minds of people, and make them think that these thoughts are in fact their own. The device that my father made could cast a spell that would make people avoid an area, because every time they went near it, they would get a sudden urge to go around it.”
“Oh, I know this spell!” I say. “I have a friend who uses it all the time.”
“This spell allowed us to finally settle down in one place,” Leila writes. “We built our own wooden cabin in the middle of the woods, near a river, and we even cultivated a garden. Some of the animals appeared to be immune to the suggestion spell, but they didn’t seem to mind our presence. They even brought us food, on occasion.”
“So, how did your father get captured, then?” I ask. “Did your suggestion spell malfunction?”
“No,” Leila writes. “We moved out of the woods, eventually. We heard that the lessathi’s leadership had changed while we were away, and that their new leader, Meridith, had prohibited the hunts for lessathi outcasts. My father insisted that we move into a city, because then he would have easier access to the parts he needed to work on his devices. At the time, I did not understand why he would want to risk his safety just to work on some devices. I only understood his true purpose a few years later, when he gifted me my stat booster on my sixteenth birthday. Back then, it could only write a few words, but he’s been perfecting it over the years, and eventually, it got to a point where I could put almost all of my thoughts into words by using my device.”
“Oh, no,” I say. “I just remembered something!”
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