Leonidas shuddered at the feeling of the level-ups repairing his body, and snarled quietly under his breath when his entire right arm both popped back into place, and snapped itself around him where it had been twisted and broken at an odd angle. The armor had spared his skin, but the force of his expulsion from the Hive Tyrant had twisted his limb in ways human anatomy had not been designed to twist.
His left hand lifted to idly swipe away the still-hovering level-up screen, and he slowly pushed himself to his feet with a wince for his growling stomach. The [Psi Potion] had not ended up being entirely necessary, though he’d almost needed it after he thought the Hive Tyrant would try to escape. Luring the creature in had been a simple matter of standing still and waiting, but he knew that the temptation of that wouldn’t have worked twice.
The very first attempt had been more harebrained scheme than empirical planning, and there was a part of Leonidas—the part that had been tutored haphazardly by Generals far more capable than him—that wanted to slap his own head for the ‘YOLO’ nature of the tactic.
It had worked, yes, but that did not mean it had been ideal.
Leonidas raised his eyes to the Arena stands, and when he did, the Announcer’s voice finally cut through the silence.
Or rather, a new Announcer did.
“{LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF DAWNHAVEN, THE CHAMPION OF THE DUSK-LORD EMERGES VICTORIOUS!}” A woman’s voice, clear and strong, proclaimed across the Arena. “{THIS, EVEN THOUGH THE OPPONENT HE FOUGHT WAS FAR BEYOND HIS CONCEIVABLE ABILITY TO DEFEAT! A LEVEL 17 HIVE TYRANT, TRANSPORTED BY THE SYSTEM, AND CAPTURED BY THE DAWNGUARD FOR THE GAMES!}”
Cheers and gasps of surprise echoed through the crowd, and they abruptly erupted into applause at the news. Leonidas’ eyes widened, and he looked at where the flaming corpse of the Hive Tyrant occupied the sands. Level 17? That would have put it a full Tier, and almost a full second Tier above him in strength. Even understanding as little as he did, he knew that the difference in power that represented must have been enough that his death should have almost been guaranteed.
“{THIS CHALLENGE WAS, OF COURSE, IN FULL KEEPING WITH THE CHAMPION’S WISHES—}” the announcer continued, at which point Leonidas snapped his eyes back to the Arena’s crowd “{—FOR HE WISHED TO SHOW YOU, THE PEOPLE OF DAWNHAVEN, THE INDOMITABLE WILL OF A NATIVE SON OF TERRA!}”
More cheers, more applause, and wild adulation followed the words—and Leonidas felt something soft hit him in the face.
A moment later, and a glance to his right, and he reached over to pick up what he recognized as a rose. Something else hit him, and he turned to his left to see another, and then another, and then suddenly a shower of flowers, each of them a different kind, littered the arena’s sands.
{“THIS FEAT OF MIGHT HAS, OF COURSE, ONLY FURTHER SOLIDIFIED THE IMPECCABLE TASTE OF OUR DUSK-LORD, AND HER INDOMITABLE—!”}
The Arena’s announcer cut off abruptly when a trumpeting, bugling screech sliced through the air and two explosions of sand erupted near the dead Hive Tyrant. Leonidas snapped his eyes to the location, and when the dust cleared, his stomach dropped.
Two immense Arachnids, each one smaller than the one he’d killed, but somehow more visibly lethal; chittered and shrieked near the dead body of the first—and then their eyes, in unison, turned toward him. Each of them had a sleeker and more thickly carapaced body, two extra pairs of scything claws, and legs that looked more like a spider’s than a scorpion’s.
“Oh you’re fucking kidding me,” Leonidas said in shock.
Without ado, the two arachnids fluttered their carapaces in rage, slashed their pincers through the air, and then charged at him full bore. Leonidas snarled to himself in anger, glared up at the arena’s inhabitants, and then summoned back his psiblade in a flash of scarlet lightning.
His Health, Mana, Stamina, and Psi had been fully restored by his level-up—and speaking of it, he needed to invest those new points sooner rather than later. To do any less would mean dooming himself, but first he had to figure out where they were most sorely needed.
Agility? Dexterity? Vitality? Intellect? Willpower?
He knew he didn’t need Strength, but—
Leonidas cursed himself out and, realizing there was no reason to dither, just slammed all 8 points into Willpower immediately.
The instant he did, his Psi flashed from 28 to 36, and his mana rose from a base of (68) 85, to (76) 95. His Mana Sage title’s boost was, as he’d thought, incredible at scaling his mana pool. The increase in Willpower also served to firm his mind against the dread that had occupied it, and he instead honed in his focus on the two Hive Tyrants.
First and foremost, he would need to find a way to evade their claws and stingers, then he’d need to get in under them and try to wound them enough that they lost any kind of coordination. It wouldn’t be his first time fighting vastly larger enemies, but a single good hit from either one would mean death, and if there was one thing his time in Elatra had taught him: it was that plot armor, no matter what people believed, was a fucking myth.
He’d learned that the hard way, watching his companions die one after the other. There was also no running from this fight. Evading one Hive Tyrant had been hard enough with tracking, but two could simply corral and pin him. If he fled now, they’d simply go under the sand and fight a way to ambush him in a manner he couldn’t resist.
It was better to fight now, while they were angry and even slightly unstable.
Leonidas rolled his shoulders and activated his [Psikinetic Blade] across his sword when he did. A System notification seemed to flash, for one moment, in front of him—and then vanished just as fast, with a speed that almost convinced Leonidas he’d been hallucinating. With the psiforce spread across his sword, he eyed the approaching Hive Tyrants, each approximately twenty feet away, and let out a steadying breath.
Then, with a plan forming in his mind, he charged forward to meet them.
Always be on the offensive where possible, Miranda had once said. Your enemy cannot break your guard if you are constantly challenging theirs.
It had been excellent advice when he’d been a messianic superhuman with demi-god levels of physical and magical power. Whether or not it would translate as he was now, however, remained to be seen.
It was all or nothing, though. Even while he charged, and closed distance step by step, his mind raced with a frantic plan.
First he’d hit the one on the right, he decided, and then he’d hit the one on the left. Perhaps a Phases of the Moon into a Shatter the Earth would be enough to sufficiently wound—
The Monsters lurched, and he felt a pressure in his mind.
Leonidas blinked and instinctively slowed his charge.
Both creatures had, abruptly, stopped moving.
“What the fu—?”
Before he could finish his words, both Hive Tyrants levitated from the sand with a joint screech of panic, rising almost ten feet into the air. Before he could do more than gawk in surprise, a silver-and-purple blur appeared in front of him with a crack of displaced air and an eruption of sand.
A moment later, he realized what he was seeing.
It was a person. More specifically, it was Ceruviel.
The Dusk-Lord’s armored body was wreathed in a shroud of purple lightning, and her right hand was wrapped around the hilt of a magnificent lavender weapon. An amethyst was inlaid to both pommel and hilt, and Leonidas recognized what he thought was a wave pattern on the bottom edge of the bastard sword. It had a cruciform hilt like his own, though hers had eagle heads for the edges of the pommel, and the sword’s edges and taper both seemed to shimmer with deep purple hues.
“Are you alright, Achilles?” Ceruviel asked coolly, and with an appraising glance over her shoulder.
“Uh… yeah.” Leonidas said with genuine surprise, and an instinctive glance down at himself. “I’m fine, actually. I gained four levels, and—wait, what the hell is going on? Aren’t these the opponents you—?”
“No,” the Duchess cut him off curtly, and with a tone of controlled anger. “These are not what was agreed. It was supposed to be one Hive Warrior, and six Hive Swarmers. The Warrior was supposed to be level nine, and the Swarmers level six.”
Leonidas’ eyes narrowed at her words, and he looked up at the floating Arachnids. “And those are?”
“Levels twenty-two and twenty-five, respectively.”
“...but they’re smaller.” Leonidas said while shock lanced through him.
“Hive Tyrants shrink when they grow,” Ceruviel explained without preamble. “They grow faster, more agile, and more dexterous. When they reach Second Tier, they evolve into a profoundly more swift and lethal form known as Swarm Tyrants. They also finally gain use of their wings. These—” she lifted her blade to gesture at the two levitated creatures “—are Swarm Tyrants in their earliest stages, prior to properly evolving their wings.”
“Okay, and why am I fighting Hive Tyrants and Swarm Tyrants?” he asked with a flash of sudden anger which replaced his nonplussed shock. “You told me this was a test, I didn’t expect—”
“The Arena Master changed the fight rotation,” the Dusk-Lord cut across him again. “I saw the Hive Tyrant, but you seemed confident, so I declined to interfere. It was a fairer fight than I imagined, and I reasoned that a little adversity would be good for your development.”
Leonidas glared at that, but Ceruviel continued unperturbed.
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“You may think me cruel for that if you wish, but I saw how you adapted to your enemy. I was ready to intercede if I needed to, but I wanted to give you the chance to win on your own terms. Do you think I made the wrong choice?”
Leonidas opened his mouth to tell her she was a sadistic bitch, and then snapped it closed. Had she made the wrong choice? Since his return to Earth—Terra, he corrected mentally—and his whirlwind first day, a lot had happened. Had he not been used to exorbitantly out-of-the-norm pacing thanks to the accelerated nature of his training and exposure to violence on Elatra, he’d have had far more whiplash.
His first day after being summoned, they’d thrown him into a ring with a Lesser Shaggorath and Miranda had watched pitilessly as he’d almost died to the tentacled nightmare. When he’d finally managed to defeat it, by instinctively using his first ever iteration of what would eventually become ‘Lumenkill Hyperlance’; Miranda had shared some cold words of wisdom.
> “This war will not coddle you. This war will not be safe. You have agreed to help us, and in doing so, you have agreed to be broken. I will break you, Leonidas, and I will rebuild you once I do. This war will have no mercy, and so, neither will I—because you have to survive, or we are all dead.”
At the time, he’d hated her. If he’d read about that in a story, he’d have hated her then too. It was easy, he reasoned, for his old self to have shouted abuse and called her demented, or called himself a fool for going along with it.
But life didn’t care about what was fair. Life didn’t give a shit about whether or not it was being kind, or whether or not someone was ready for the hardship.
Life hits you, often when you least expected it, and more often than not twice as hard than what you did expect. There was no training that could prepare someone for that. Not really.
But Miranda had tried.
Ceruviel seemed to be trying as well.
The question, however, was why?
“I do think it was cruel,” Leonidas responded finally, “but I don’t think it was malicious. What I want to know, though, is why?”
He stepped forward when he said it, and he looked up at the hovering pair of shrieking Arachnids, whose beady black eyes—filled with malignant intellect—moved warily between both of them. “Why put me in the arena? Why offer to train me? Why act so familiar? You don’t know me. Two hours ago you threatened to cut off my head and send it to my grandfather. What’s the deal, Ceruviel? Be honest with me.”
“I have a Quest,” she said immediately, and without even an attempt at obfuscation. “That Quest is to restore the Archons, or something akin to them, and to do so here—in this new, untamed world. The Quest has stages, and the first one is to find an Apprentice.”
“Why not pick a High Elf?” he asked, while using the proper translation for Haelfenn.
“Because the Archons were an Order that my people can no longer understand. They have grown too used to peace, and a united Altera. Even here, they still struggle to adapt to the realities of a hostile world. It’s why so many colonies have been wiped out: lack of comprehension for what a warlike native species is truly capable of.”
Leonidas didn’t interrupt, and simply let her continue.
“My people will adapt, but right now, the current generation are not like this world’s people, and clearly not like you.” Ceruviel smirked mirthlessly while she spoke. “We Haelfenn are elegant people that pretend at savagery when needed. You humans, Achilles, are a brutish and savage people that pretend at elegance. Under your veneer of enlightenment, you are some of the most bloodthirsty and ruthless creatures I have ever encountered.”
Leonidas wanted to object, but he found he couldn’t.
She wasn’t wrong, he realized. Human history was evidence enough of that.
“In the first months of our settlement here,” Ceruviel continued, “and after the Arena first appeared, there were protests from the locals. We used their convicts for the games, when we first opened the Arena, and they called it unjust, barbaric, and any other number of morally superior terms. At the time, it was quite baffling, given how fiercely they’d initially resisted us—but we learned it was because of what I call a bubble of uninvolved distance. The convicts here, you see, were from elsewhere.”
Ceruviel’s eyes crackled and popped with energy while she spoke, and she seemed completely uncaring for the fact that a mild amount of pandemonium had broken out among the arena’s crowds. The flashes of silver armor Leonidas spotted spoke to the idea that, perhaps, the Dawnguard or Duskguard were helping keep order.
“That lasted all of a month more,” the Duchess continued, “until two locals—teenagers, in fact—were killed and raped by a small group of drifters. When we threw them into the arena, there were no more protests. The locals came out in a tide to watch their fates, and I have never seen a crowd more incensed, or more hungry for blood. In my centuries of life, and having met other ‘humans’, I have never encountered such depthless rage.”
She turned to him then, and her eyes were clear and intent.
“But it was a rage that was born from love. It was a hatred born from a desire for justice. It was an unvarnished, unapologetic, and unerring belief that the evil which they had perpetrated demanded recompense. It was the first time, Achilles, that I understood your race—and in that moment, I realized that you humans had within you the very same ferocity, fire, and hunger for vengeance that drove the first Archons to become what they were.”
The question why she hadn’t just taken one of the local humans, then, occurred to him—and yet almost immediately, Leonidas realized the most likely answer.
“But even if they had unlocked Psi, they didn’t have the combination of Archetype, and definitely not the Ambition,” Leonidas guessed out loud. “Which is mandatory for an Archon’s existence.”
“Correct.” Ceruviel confirmed with a tone of approval.
“So why risk me in the Arena, then?” Leonidas asked immediately. “Why chance losing your Quest’s first potential aid? After all, the rewards must be huge.”
“Very large,” she confirmed, “and the why of it is simple: pedigree and perseverance. I needed to see your character. It was almost better if you weren’t sure if you hated me, in fact, simply because it would mean you wouldn’t put on airs. Your bloodline has been rather busy following the Incursion, and I had to know what you were: an anomalous mistake in the Paendrag family tree, or the true-born brother of the Reaper’s Shadow, and the grandson of the Iron Duke.”
“What about my parents?”
“They’re less impressive,” Ceruviel said candidly.
Leonidas snorted at the brutal honesty, and felt a little defensive, but didn’t push it.
Then he remembered her words in the locker room.
“And what about the—the proposition?” he asked with an embarrassed cough.
“I lost myself to excitement,” she admitted shamelessly. “I am quite mature, and bored, and I am what you would call a sensual hedonist. The idea of breeding with you appealed to that side of me, and we Haelfenn can be mercurially controlled by our impulses at the best of times. It was a slip that will not happen again.”
“I… I see,” he said with another flush of embarrassment. He also believed her, though in large part because he’d seen that sort of lack of control on Elatra. The things he’d walked in on, even among the most conservative of Melredor’s High Elves, were shocking.
“It is surprising to know you have never been with a woman, though.” the Duchess said critically. “Do you not see the appeal?”
“It isn’t that,” he muttered, before staring at her abruptly. “And why the hell are you asking me about that now? There’s two giant—”
“They aren’t going anywhere,” Ceruviel said dismissively. “I could sustain this Psikinetic Field for minutes more, yet. My Psi pool is considerable, and unlike you, I have learned to convert my Mana to fuel it as well.”
“How do you—?”
“Answer the question,” she cut across him.
“Why?”
“Because I want to know if I need to adjust my strategy.”
“Your strateg—”
“Just answer the question, Achilles.” she said coldly.
“Jesus! Fine. I just—” he grimaced “—I want it to matter. I want it to be special. My parents raised me a certain way, and I’ve always wanted… I dunno, a connection. I’ve been sorely tempted before, and it’s not like I’ve never done anything, but—”
“Such a contradiction,” she said with a quiet snort. “One part innocent, another part killer. You’ve likely cut your way through dozens, if not hundreds of sapients, judging by how you vented your anger on those Goblins—yet you’ve never even felt the warmth of a woman’s cunt. How assiduously self-disciplined you are.”
“You’re pretty vulgar, for a Duchess,” he said to her with a grimace.
“I’m too old to give a shit about niceties, Leonidas.” Ceruviel said simply. “And I dislike needless bullshit. This little trial of mine already tested the limits of my patience, which brings me, I suppose, to my question.”
“Which is?” Leonidas asked.
“Do you want to be my Apprentice?”
“That’s a little abrupt, isn’t it?” he asked in surprise.
“Old, Leonidas.” Ceruviel repeated dryly. “Impatient. It is a simple question.”
“What happens if I say no?”
“I will send you packing.” she stated firmly.
“You won’t kill me?” he asked warily.
“There’s no reason to have the Alliance, Nomads, and Coalition oriented on a war footing toward Dawnhaven with specificity, no.” Ceruviel said sardonically. “Sending you away is more in keeping with my duties.”
“Tarnys said you didn’t fear them.”
“Not individually, no,” she confirmed. “But I would be foolish, and incompetent both, to not respect the combined power they could bring to bear.”
“Okay, then why take me as an Apprentice at all?” Leonidas pressed. “Wouldn’t buying good will with one of the three be better?”
Ceruviel simply shook her head.
“Why?” he asked with a frown.
“Because of what you did to the Hive Tyrant,” she said simply, “and because of whatever secret is lurking beneath those canny blue eyes. You aren’t just a Psi-wielder, Achilles. Whatever secrets you have, I can promise I won’t pry immediately—but I know Psi. I know it better than anyone in Dawnhaven, and I have seen every iteration of its power, and at the hands of a true Ninth Tier Master, at that. What you did? That was not Psi. That was not any Affinity I’ve ever heard of. I want that weapon for myself, Achilles. I am not ashamed to admit that avarice.”
Leonidas felt his heart stop at her words, and Ceruviel chortled.
“As I said, Achilles, I shan’t pry. Not yet, at least. Not until there is greater trust. A secret earned is worth far more than a secret coerced, and I cannot achieve my goals without your trust.”
“And that’s really the only reason?” he asked dubiously.
“Of course not,” Ceruviel said with a laugh. “I also want to turn you into a weapon, make you fall in love with a beautiful elven woman or three, and make you the single most wonderful living shield this Kingdom could ever dream of.”
Leonidas stared at her and then, despite everything, abruptly started laughing.
“You’re fucking insane,” he said with genuine mirth.
“Perhaps,” she conceded. “But I am also the only one that can truly help you unlock the potential behind your Affinity.”
“Can you share the quest?”
“I can,” she confirmed confidently.
Leonidas stared at her, and then looked up at the Swarm Tyrants in silent consideration. The offer was excellent, though he was still dubious. Ceruviel was chaotic, unpredictable, clearly powerful, and very evidently pragmatic. She was focused on her peoples’ survival, and was unafraid to be candid about that fact. She wanted to use him, wield him, and manipulate his existence, power, and connections for Dawnhaven’s benefit.
She was ruthless, loyal, utterly fearless, and immensely driven.
She reminded him a painful amount of Miranda.
He made his choice.
“I’ll do it,” he said simply, “on one condition.”
“Which is?” Ceruviel asked.
“Help me get a message to my family,” Leonidas said. “It’s… I owe them that much, and so much more.”
“Very well,” Ceruviel said simply. “Agreed.”
Leonidas nodded, and looked up at the Arachnids. “What about them?”
“Oh, them?” Ceruviel replied in a sweet tone that chilled his blood. “Well, they are quite afraid, and twice as furious because of it… and that Arena Master just so happens to be on the cusp of Tier Two.” The Dusk-Lord turned to him, and Leonidas felt his heart race—in both admiration and trepidation—at the look in her eyes.
“Why don’t we give him the chance to advance?”
Leonidas couldn’t help himself.
He smiled.