“W-w-what’s going on?” we hear a voice coming from behind us. “How did you get here? And how in the gods’ names did you get so bloody wet?”
As both Leila and I turn around, we quickly realize that the elevator did not in fact lead us back to Leila’s room. Instead, it led us to cell number three, which is one of the rooms that the desk worker offered me to choose from when I first got here, and also the room that is currently being inhabited by the mage who got locked up in this place yesterday.
The mage is looking at us with a somewhat frightened look, while a trickle of sweat is running down his forehead, and he appears to be hiding something behind his back.
“Sorry to bother you,” I tell the mage. “We went out for a swim and we got lost on our way back. We’ll be out of your hair as soon as you unlock that door for us.”
“Out for a swim?” the mage asks, shocked. “You were trying to escape, weren’t you? Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call the guards right now, and tell them what you were doing.”
“If you let us go, I won’t ask anything about that thing you are hiding behind your back,” I say.
“What thing?” the mage shouts. “I’m not hiding anything behind my back!”
“It’s not going to work,” Leila writes, while looking directly at the mage.
“What’s with the writing?” the mage asks, confused, while looking at Leila. “Is this how you talk? What’s not going to work?”
Leila reaches for the floor, in order to pick up an object that looks like it was made by gluing several pieces of scrap metal together in the most random way possible. The item is small enough to fit in her palm, so she grabs it with one hand, and she stretches her arm towards the mage, bringing the metal object several inches away from his face.
“This,” Leila writes. “This is what’s not going to work.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the mage says, feigning ignorance. “That’s just a piece of scrap metal.”
“No,” Leila writes. “This is a device that’s meant to enhance your physical abilities for a limited amount of time. And that thing you are hiding behind your back is likely meant to act as a bridge between you and your scrap metal device, allowing you to transfer your magical energy into it over a period of time.”
“How did you—” the mage starts to say, but he stops when he sees a new text appear in front of him.
“You can’t use this device in the arena,” Leila writes, “It will be detected immediately. If you don’t get it to somehow link itself directly to your magical aura, the magical energy that will burst from the device when you activate it will trigger all the magical detectors in a five mile radius. Either way, even if you do somehow get it to work, the device is so poorly made that you won’t be able to use it for more than a few minutes, even if you spend the whole day charging it.”
“A few minutes is more than enough in an arena!” the mage shouts. “A few minutes can mean the difference between life and death! You don’t know how terrifying an arena can be! You have no idea! If I can get even the slightest advantage out of this device, then I will use it gladly!”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you…” Leila writes, and she hands the mage his scrap metal device.
The mage takes the device and he looks at it for a few seconds, with a contemplative expression on his face.
“Link it directly to my magical aura, you say…” the mage tells Leila.
“It’s the only way to avoid detection,” Leila writes.
After spending a few more seconds to consider Leila’s words, the mage finally pulls out a key from his pocket, and he walks past us, to unlock and then open the door.
“This meeting never took place,” the mage says, as he looks towards each of us, in turn. “Do you understand? Now, go on. Get out of here.”
“You don’t need to tell us twice,” I say, as I head out the door, and leave the room together with Leila.
As the mage closes the door behind us, the two of us start to head towards our rooms.
“I’m surprised that you could tell what that device was meant for from just one glance,” I say.
“I used to spend a lot of time in my father’s workshop, back when we were living in our forest cabin,” Leila writes. “I learned a thing or two while watching him work.”
“Do you think he’ll be able to modify the device in time for the arena?” I ask her.
“It’s possible,” Leila writes. “But he’ll need to do it fast. He won’t be able to charge it with energy while he’s tinkering with it, and he’ll need to charge it for at least ten hours to get any decent use out of it, given how inefficient it is.”
“We should go get changed,” I say. “I also want to take a look through my notebook, to see if I can find any useful information on the creatures we’ve seen in the caverns. I’ll see you in a few hours, to tell you what I found.”
Leila nods.
“See you later,” Leila writes, and she heads towards her room.
I go back to my own room as well, and the first thing I do after I enter it is to search my backpack for a dry shirt and a new pair of pants. Once I get changed and leave my wet clothes to dry, I pick up my notebook, and I get back to studying.
About one hour after I started reading, I get a call on my transceiver from Flower.
“Barry, are you okay?” Flower asks me out of the blue, with a bit of panic in her voice.
I could immediately tell that it was her and not Illuna speaking, from the tone of her voice.
“Yes, I’m alive,” I say. “We managed to get back to our cells about an hour ago.”
“Thank the gods!” Flower says. “When I heard about what happened, I got really worried. Especially when I found out that you got left alone with that jerk Fyron. Petal’s been worried sick, too!”
“Oh?” I ask her, surprised. “Did she say that?”
“Well, technically,” Flower says, “what she said was that if you couldn’t handle yourself in a situation like that after joining this tournament, then you deserved your fate, but I’m sure that’s not what she really meant!”
“Oh, yeah?” I say. “Well, you tell her that her blue eyes make her look fat.”
“I can hear you, you know…” Illuna tells me, with a menacing tone.
“Wait, do her blue eyes really make me look fat?” Flower asks.
“Hey, Barry!” Arraka says, cutting Flower off. “Something’s been bothering me ever since we left the caverns. How in the hell did you manage to convince the troll to let you go? I thought for sure that you were done for when I sensed him come near you.”
“You mean Velgos?” I ask her. “The troll that wouldn’t die even if you cut off his head? He got stopped by the arena’s owner. Apparently, he wants to make a show of our fight, and we’ll be fighting the troll in the second round of the arena instead.”
“Hah!” Arraka says. “I’ll be looking forward to it!”
“Be careful, Barry!” Flower says. “We won’t be able to help you while you’re in the arena!”
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine! But thanks for your concern.”
After I was done talking to Flower and Illuna, I spent another hour studying my notebook, and then I started calling my friends from the other divisions, one by one, in order to tell them of my findings. When I got to Kate, I also decided to tell her about her old inmate from the Beacon, to see how she’d react.
“Hey, Kate,” I say. “Do you remember having met a young lessathi girl with silver hair who couldn’t talk, back when you were at the Beacon of Hope? Or maybe she had black hair back then, I’m not sure.”
There’s a brief pause after I finish my phrase, during which I can’t even hear the sound of Kate’s breathing.
“How do you know about Leila?” Kate asks me, after a few seconds.
“So you do remember her!” I say. “Were the two of you on good terms, or…”
“Tell me how you k
now about her!” Kate shouts.
“Okay, okay!” I say. “I met her the other day. She is a member of my division. She’s still alive.”
There’s another brief pause, during which Kate doesn’t say anything.
“You are certain of this?” Kate says. “How do you know it’s really her? She might be trying to trick you. Anyone can dye their hair white and pretend that they’re not able to speak. The Leila I know should have been dead for a long time.”
“Why?” I say. “Did you find her body?”
“…No,” Kate says. “I did not.”
“Well, then,” I say, “I guess it wouldn’t hurt you to meet her, would it? You’ll be able to tell for yourself if it’s really her when you see her up close.”
“Alright, Barry,” Kate says. “I’ll agree to meet her. But be careful around her. You can’t know for sure that it’s really her. There were a lot of lessathi in that institution who knew about us. The information could have gotten out in any number of ways.”
“Fine, I’ll be careful,” I say. “I’ll see you at the arena, in two days. Don’t get yourself into any more fights with your teammates until then!”
“See you at the arena,” Kate says, simply, and then we both close the transmission.
Once I make sure that every one of my friends knows about the monsters from the arena and their weaknesses, I decide that it’s time to get back to Leila, in order to finally formulate a plan for how to deal with them. When I reach her room, I knock three times, and she opens her door, dressed in the same clothes that she was wearing when we got back from the caverns. Her clothes are not as wet as they were when we returned, but they are definitely nowhere near dry yet.
“You didn’t get changed?” I ask her, shocked.
“I don’t have any change of clothes,” Leila writes. “I wasn’t carrying a backpack with me when I got captured.”
“Well, why didn’t you say something?” I say. “You could have asked me for some spare clothes until yours dried up!”
“I didn’t want to be a bother,” Leila writes.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “If you don’t have a backpack with you, then what about food? Don’t tell me that you haven’t eaten anything since you came here?”
“The guards have provided me with a minimum supply of food and water,” Leila writes. “Just enough to get by. It’s not a problem.”
“Of course it’s a problem,” I say. “Wait here, I’m going to bring you a change of clothes and some food.”
“No, you don’t have to—” Leila starts to write, but I ignore her, and I go back to my room, in search for some clothes and some beef jerky from my backpack.
I then come back to Leila and I hand her a long sleeved shirt, a pair of pants, the jerky, and a bottle of water.
“Here you go,” I tell Leila. “Now hurry up and get changed, will you? You wouldn’t want to catch a cold right before the arena.”
“Thank you…” Leila writes, as she takes what I’ve given her, and then closes the door, in order to get changed.
She opens the door a bit later, dressed in my clothes, with the long sleeves of the shirt hanging past her hands, and the pants trailing on the ground, behind her.
“These clothes are… a little big for me,” Leila writes.
“You look fine!” I tell her. “It’s not like you’ll be fighting in these clothes at the arena event. It’s just until your own clothes dry off. Come on, let’s go inside. I want to tell you what I found out while reading my notebook.”
We both enter her room, and I spend the next fifteen minutes telling her the most important parts about my findings. She listens closely to what I have to say, while taking a bite from the beef jerky I gave her, every so often. After I’m done talking, she puts the jerky on the bed, beside her, and she starts to write.
“From what you’re telling me,” Leila writes, “I understand that our biggest problem by far will be the troll, and his higher than average regeneration.”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “It is already known that a troll can regenerate fast enough to not die from a wound to the heart, but a troll being able to survive with its head cut off is something that I didn’t think was possible. I guess it goes to show how little we really know about regeneration in general. According to all the books I’ve read, any living being that’s had its head severed from its body should not be able to live any longer, regardless of how high its regeneration is. The fact that the body could even regenerate its head contradicts our most basic knowledge about how a troll’s body is supposed to work.”
“But the troll didn’t regenerate his head,” Leila writes. “The head kept talking from the ground, and the body had to pick it back up.”
“You’re right!” I say. “This means that the link between the body and the head is somehow not broken, even after the two of them get separated. Maybe we can use this. If the troll is still using his head to see and hear even after it’s been severed from the body, then maybe we can cut his head off, pick it up, and then blindfold it, or something, leaving his body defenseless!”
“I don’t think that the troll would leave himself open like that again, in the arena,” Leila writes. “I used the element of surprise before, but now he knows how fast I am, and he won’t let me cut his head off again so easily.”
“Well, the only way you can kill a regular troll,” I say, “is either by cutting its head off or by burning it alive. If cutting the head off is not an option, then the only alternative we have left is fire. That being said, getting access to any sort of flames will be next to impossible in the arena, and that troll is even wearing anti-magic armor, which gives him protection to fire. Even if we somehow manage to find a way to burn him, we’d first have to damage his armor badly enough that the magical protections on it would wear off.”
“Do you think we should talk about all this with the other members of our division?” Leila writes. “Maybe they could come up with some ideas.”
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt to hear their opinions on the matter,” I say.
Leila nods.
“Alright, then,” I say. “Let’s go knock on their doors, and we’ll have a meet up in the recreation room.”
I turn to leave the room, but Leila grabs me by the sleeve, and she stops me in my tracks. As I turn back towards her, I see that the blue writing in front of her says simply: “Wait.”
The blue writing then quickly disappears, being replaced by a new text.
“Can we do this later?” Leila writes.
“Later?” I ask her, confused.
“After my clothes have dried…” Leila writes, with a pleading look in her eyes, as she shows me the long sleeves hanging from her wrists.
“Oh, right, right,” I say. “Sorry, I forgot.”
I pause for a few seconds.
“On second thought,” I say, “maybe we should have this discussion tomorrow, during our final recreation period. The arena events won’t start until the day after tomorrow, so we’ll have plenty of time to make a strategy. I don’t really feel like knocking on everyone’s doors as if I were trying to distribute a bunch of pamphlets. Plus, some of them might not agree to a meeting, even if I call them. I think they’ll be more inclined to hear me out tomorrow, when we’re all in the same room.”
Leila nods again.
“I think I’m going to return to my room and try to dig up some more information,” I say. “I’ll search for every note that I’ve written regarding regeneration, and I’ll try to see if I can make some sense of this situation. Maybe if we properly understand the troll’s ability, we can find a way to counter it. Let me know if you come up with any ideas in the meantime.”
“I will,” Leila writes.
“Well, then, I guess I’m off,” I say. “I’ll see you again, later!”
“See you later,” Leila writes, and then I leave her room and go back to my own.
After I close the door to my room behind me, and I pick up my notebook once aga
in, my thoughts race towards the lessathi who offered me the deal with the king. I still haven’t told any of my friends about it. Should I tell them about it?
No, I shouldn’t make them worry needlessly. If I am to tell them of this, then it will be after the arena, when everyone will be safe.
As I am lost in thought, while mechanically turning the pages of my notebook one by one, my eyes chance upon a paragraph that I seem to have skipped the last few times I was skimming through these texts. This paragraph mentions a theory that is not very popular among scholars, which states that the high regeneration of some creatures may be a result of an innate difference between their auras and ours.
I suddenly remember Eiden’s lecture, before we entered the city, when he was telling me that if you mess enough with a person’s aura, you can even stop them from aging. If what he told me is true, then it wouldn’t be that far of a stretch to assume that a special type of aura could grant someone a high regeneration rate. If that is the case, then could this aura perhaps also help in keeping the limbs functional, even if they are severed from the body?
I’ll admit that my knowledge about auras is limited, but from the little I know, a person’s aura is not supposed to have unlimited range. What were to happen, then, if the troll’s head would be taken too far away from the body after it’s been cut off? Would his consciousness fade away? Would that make him die for good? If we ever manage to cut that troll’s head off again, this is definitely something that’s worth testing out.
I ended up spending the day trying to look for more information to confirm my theory. Unfortunately, not a lot of research has been done on this subject, since most people can barely even read the level of magic power in someone’s aura, so the theory that an aura could influence a body’s regeneration has been deemed as ‘not grounded in facts’ by most respectable groups of scholars, and the few who wanted to pursue this theory did not receive the appropriate funding to do so.
I spent my whole day researching this, and all I have to show for it is an outlandish theory, based on another outlandish theory whose validity hinges mostly on one of Eiden’s offhanded remarks. Better than nothing, I guess…
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