I watched the powerful heart beat before me and the slightest brush against the most powerful soul I’d ever come across. It was no joke to say that dragons were the very lords of mythical beasts, standing at the top of the food chain of any world they might inhabit. I gently brushed against the soul I felt tied to the beating organ before me, sending a reassurance that our pact would be honoured, a pact forged not with words but a strange sort of resonance between the two of us.
Ever so gently I neared the beating organ, running my hand gently along it and then bit into it, drinking deeply of the life giving nectar within. The blood I’d managed to take from the cultivators had been sweet to the taste and left me feeling like I’d just gotten a caffeinated adrenaline shot straight to the brain but the dragons? I felt like I’d just taken a drink of some hellish brew of liquid lightning, molten steel and liquid oxygen all at once as it seared through my throat and invaded my own veins. A power so momentous I could hardly believe that the two cultivators had ever managed to push this creature as far as they had.
Then I touched upon the soul, restless in worry it had sold its soul in a dark bargain only for a portion of the souls usually shed soul energy spent to create a protective layer around its core as I draped it in as much protection as I dared give in the moment. Our minds touching for bare seconds before both the power of the blood and soul refuse usually left behind by any soul ascending from their mortal coil poured into me.
I felt every fibre of my being, body and soul burn in power. A power that brought with it a breakthrough and a change so profound I was in utter awe of what was happening. I felt I glimpsed just the barest glimpse of a glimpse into the domain of true all powerful godhood. Entropy, change, chaos, order, destruction, creation, life, death, dark and light and how they all played against one another but were also so hopelessly entwined in creating and maintaining the forward momentum of creation itself before the inevitability of entropy and destruction ended it all in a conflagration that only ended up fuelling yet another cycle of that same creation in a never-ending cycle.
I felt it then, the scabrous thing that my soul was, was just that scabs. Scabs concealing what lay underneath for they weren’t scabs at all but the last vestiges of a cocoon that my soul had under gone as it evolved through the hellish gauntlet of unimaginable torment and agony from surviving its wounds and then marinating in that same agony for decades more. Bringing me closer to what had in the end allowed my ultimate sire his transcendence to godhood but on a much more fundamental level. For in that time, now so lost as if a dream to me, my mind had reached out for the only solace it instinctively needed. The void itself to free me from the agony in a blissful embrace of emptiness.
Of course that hadn’t just been it however. For as I felt the power of the dragon’s blood and the vestiges of his soul that he bequeathed me in our dark pact fuelled by spiteful vengeance I felt how my previous knowledge of physics and other such knowledge we oft take for granted allowed me a glimpse of the grandest manifestations of a void I could think of. A black hole.
That hole in the very fabric of reality itself where absolute nothingness could be found, crowned in its corona of power as it devoured everyone and everything daring to get close enough for its unyielding pull snatched them up and tossed them into the endless whirling pool of power that funnelled to its centre.
A place so final we do not know what happens to matter once draw into the inexorable maw of any singularity. Yet despite that it still held within it limitless power over not just pure energy itself but of time, space, matter, gravity, darkness and light itself for within the tight indisputable grip of a black hole nothing can escape. I felt the energy from the tattered remnants of what I once had been, now reborn as something so much more than I’d ever dreamed, float away off of me. Yet I still had the ware withal to pull the tattered remains into an empty soul gem.
Then as my mind drifted more towards my task of gathering what had been the cocoon of my new soul, it all faded. The power, the insight into something so much more and grander than someone as lowly as myself could ever hope to fully comprehend but what it had left had made me stronger. A somehow denser concentration of power and strength as my mana had grown thicker while still remaining as pure as ever if not purer. Corded muscles now denser and harder without compromising the size of the muscle at all. Ready to spring into action providing limber agility along with speed and strength unlike ever before.
And as I reached into myself for the few precious moments I had left before being discovered inside the dragons chest cavity I saw it. My soul, no longer that dull yellowish glowing outline of myself transitioning from how I had looked as a human to how I looked now but a wide starry sky with a patch of deep black at the centre of my chest. An outline of something not quite myself and not quite… draconic? As if space itself had decided to make its own draconic species with hints of a humanoid frame. Two glowing eyes more akin to pulsars than eyes staring right back at me.
It was now that I realized that what had held me back from fully cultivating mana was not only the fact I had to combine it with the soul energy in the air but I had needed an intact soul. And now I had an intact newborn soul with just a tiny spark of the divine as a tiny sliver of orange power circling around like the corona to the manifested void in the centre of my soul. My connection to my ultimate sire.
Like it was trapped in the event horizon of the black hole that had become my very core. Ever pulled in by its gravitational pull yet always remaining on the periphery as it circled the manifestation of the void. Then as I revelled in that utter wonder and sudden feeling of intense relief and wellness from the constant pain that had become relegated to just a dull ache in the back of my mind the system had to ruin it by bombarding me with notifications.
Your ingestion of willingly given dragons blood and bit of his soul has given you the ability of Dragonic scales! This ability has reached synergism with Defensive carapace and has evolved and been influenced by your connection to an element of the divine!
You’ve been granted Void Dragons scales! This ability is already set at its maximum and will not grow with mastery over it due to being touched by the divine. To use this ability to its fullest the user must learn to use it on his own.
The potency of your blood has increased! You now have the ability to not only make vampires as if you hadn’t changed but to give a true bloodline taking into account some of your new more potent blood as the base! You’ve unlocked the ability to create a true Von carstein bloodline along with your ability to create progenitors of other entirely new bloodlines.
Titles gained!
For touching the void and not loosing yourself to its impossible depths you’ve been granted the Voidal soul title!
A connection was made to the void with the help of the near divine energy of the soul of a dragon forever changing your own void touched soul with dragonic features earning the Void Dragon title! For reaching for the seat left behind by your bloodlines ultimate sire and proving worthy of taking his path you’ve become the Heir to the Sovereign of the Void.
Despite the life having been given willingly your actions resulted in the slaying of a mighty dragon, you’ve been awarded the Dragon Slayer title.
Level ups for killing a mighty dragon even if that same dragon allowed you the final blow!
Necromancer lvl. 9 + 16 => 25, Class upgraded to Necromancer Adept lvl. 1!
Death squire lvl. 16 + 9 => 25, Class upgraded to Death knight lvl. 1!
Shadowmancer lvl. 9 + 9 => lvl. 18! Due to touching the void your shadowmancy has deepened and evolved. The legendary class Voidmancer upgrade available! To finalize change you must give up 6 skill points and 8 ability points.
Vampire baron lvl. 3 + 7 => lvl. 10!
Skill gains and rank ups
Basic Shadow hold lvl. 6 => lvl. 7!, Medium Analysis lvl. 2 => lvl. 4! ,Advanced Intimidating growl lvl. 1 => Advanced intimidating Howl lvl. 3!, Proficient evasion lvl. 1 => lvl. 8!, Advanced Toughened skin lvl. 2 => lvl. 9! Advanced improved reflexes lvl. 4 => Advanced unnatural Reflexes lvl. 7!, Advanced Improved stamina lvl. 6 => Advanced unnatural stamina lvl. 10!, Proficient Mana sense lvl. 4 => lvl. 6! (You can now sense if others are cultivators if they enter your range!), Advanced Mana sight lvl. 7 => lvl. 8 (You can now see the core of cultivators!)
Other rewards for such a feat!
Skill points +22
Ability points +32
Despite it ruining such a profound and indescribable moment of what I could only describe as transcendent awareness of my own self and the legacy of my bloodlines father. It did snap me back into full focus on what I needed to do and I grinned widely at my gains as the idea of the full capabilities I had just been gifted with washed over my mind and awareness.
I spent half of my points in a mad lust for more power to destroy my foes and then exploded out from the chest cavity I had crawled into in the desperation of the fight. I knew that more changes to my body would occur now as the dragons very hearts blood coursed through my veins and mixing with my own but I had to fuel the power of the change to come into the mad gamble of dealing with both wounded cultivators with what little time I had left. Before sweet agony and debilitating depletion of any strength would leave me cocooned on the ground in the fires of rebirth even now licking at my body and soul. To forge and finalize that barest touch of divine change I had managed to brush against.
I revelled in the look of shocked awe the two got when I exploded out with an intimidating howl upon my lips and six rank one spells of fire, smokey shadow and soul rending blasts of blue ethereal fire as a shotgun blasting ahead of me at them.
Then after Slim had put up his defence of molten earth I was behind them, having wraith stepped and sunk my claws into their backs. Raising up the two exhausted cultivators into the air and roaring in triumph as I severed their lower spinal columns and forced Burly to watch as I drank deep and hungrily of Slims life giving blood before his horrified eyes.
I drank deep, nearly draining the man of his potent blood before tossing the limp near dead cultivator down before my feet.
Burly howled and screamed in terror as my fangs were bared for him and my hungering thirst was slated upon his throat as I did the very same to him as I had done to Slim. I didn’t let that be the end of it though for I reached into Burly’s stomach, reaching for that pearl of power at his core and as he screamed for mercy I ripped it out with savage glee before trapping his departing soul within it, soul refuse and all before doing the very same to Slim who begged and cried for mercy once I was done with Burly.
After all was said and done I transported both cultivators corpses into a storage ring before searching within my own souls space howling in rage at what I found within. For the black band around my finger so aptly named the devourers spatial ring had broken as my soul had been reforged and it had used Nidhogg as nothing more than kindling to fuel the changes even now barely kept at bay by my will and need to end the two cultivators who I had been fighting now for almost a full day.
All that work on what I had felt was my master piece of necromancy besides Abhorash himself wasted.
My legs nearly buckled as the wave of potency still not done with me was barely kept at bay as I staggered to the dragon who’d given up so much for my sake. Falling to my knees I pressed my forehead against his snout and felt the crashing power no longer kept in check flood my battered body. I knew I was a fool for allowing it to claim me right then and there but I fell into the blessed darkness that claimed me as the changes brought upon me went beyond the sweetest of anguish.
Only to wake up once more what must have been hours later as my whole body creaked like an old tree snapping and cracking as it broke and fell. My formerly muscular athletic frame now denser and changed to that akin to how Henry Cavill had looked in the movie Immortal.
Exceptionally lean, toned and wiry with near shredded abs yet despite the leanness of my form now I could see the dense corded muscles that appeared when I flexed my arm. I was nude, now that defensive carapace had evolved and had reseeded back into my own skin so I could see every bit of my changed physique from a lean Nordic warrior type of body to this wiry frame so packed with corded muscles I felt they’d burst from my very skin if I flexed too hard.
But that wasn’t all the changes that had happened. My hair had changed taking on a purple shimmer to the black it used to be if the light hit it just right and it now reached down to my knees. As if my rebirth had made it so that I had the growth of all hair accelerated to what should have taken me years to achieve all while being straight and with my enhanced vision I saw no loose or even split ends. A near divine rebirth for I had just touched upon it in that sweet moment. I still could recall so vividly yet without the profound state of mind to achieve the insights I’d glimpsed but now forgotten in that moment.
A wind blew and I felt it caress my new skin as my pale white skin that was so much like a human’s who hadn’t felt the kiss of the sun and stayed inside for a long time had turned porcelain with a hint of purple to the whole hue. My fingers now slightly longer than they had been before with strong nails ready to turn to filleting claws in an eye blink if I so desired. For the first time in as long as I could remember I felt perfectly healthy again, whole and unspoiled.
My mind finally calm and silent, the horrors I’d endured as Robert nothing more than bittersweet memory now. No longer did I feel like a cornered animal ready to lash out at the slightest provocation from the burning hate I’d felt but now it was cold and pliable. Ready to accept and look at a situation before acting with that simmering fury bottled beneath a door I could swing open and closed at my whim.
I wept in sweetest relief as I fell back to my knees and thanked the dragon’s now cold body with all I had. The gift it had so freely given me for a spiteful revenge meaning more to me than he would ever know. I mourned at last for the man I had been as well for this strangely noble dragon whom without I wouldn’t be alive right now or in chains by the hands of those cultivators.
I didn’t know if dragons had burial rights and how I wished I knew for… Nyrunth, deserved it and so much more. Were necromancers would most likely be salivating at the prize in material alone before me I wished only to honour the creature in any way I could.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Then I felt the hot breath on my back and spun to face a possible new enemy, claws extended yet without knowing just yet how to summon forth my new defences I wreathed myself in the ethereal armour I had usually just put into my carapace. Then I looked up, and up and up, my jaw dropping.
Standing there behind me was a massive dragon, so big I was certain he could make the very palace of Veta into his comfortable hut. His curled horns meeting so well with the night sky and the twin moons that they looked as if two jewels topping his crown of horns.
Deep emerald eyes so much like the grandest of jade or purest peridots stared down at the ant before him. The deep sea green scales shimmering in the moonlight as his head ever so slowly cocked to the side as I fell to my knees in sheer utter awe at the sight of the creature.
Nyrunth had been the first dragon I’d ever seen in this world but he paled in comparison to the majesty of what I was sure was a truly ancient being that now was before me. I almost felt like falling down to bow in worship of the creature but held back as my tears began to flow once more.
“Is my visage so truly horrific to your sights that you’d weep?” The deep grandfatherly voice of the dragon spoke softly for I was sure that if he spoke at a volume that humans usually do in conversation would have tossed me back by air pushed out of powerful lungs.
I shook my head as I retracted my claws and began to wipe at my face to try and get myself together again. “No, nothing of the sort. I’m in awe.” I said almost lower than the volume I’d usually speak in but as I feared the dragon’s head was too far above me to hear me, he began to chuckle.
“Oh really? In awe are you?” He said kindly before his tone hardened. “Then why do I see you naked before the corpse of the one I had so generously given half of my domain to as a gift to an impetuous youth?” He asked and the threat in his tone gave the image of Veta in flames as an act of vengeance from this titan in front me.
I shook my head desperately. “No! I was in grief for the one who saved me! For the one who came to my aid in my most desperate hour of need Nyrunth came swooping from the sky and joined the battle I was in! Even then our foes pushed us both to the brink.” I screamed up at the dragon as I got to my feet and almost glared at him.
“He gave me the last of his strength so I could strike our shared enemies down and I did!” My voice grew with righteous anger. “I ripped their souls from their bodies and drained them of their blood! I will make them suffer for centuries for what they dared to do to this magnificent dragon behind me!”
My throat was raw before my face slowly moved on to show the odd sorrow I felt in regards to this dragon behind me. “My only lament is in not knowing the customs of your race and that all I could do was send his soul on its way with all the protection I could provide him at the time but not lay his body to proper rest.” I then near whispered bitterly as I’d felt it when I had touched upon Nyrunth’s soul when I wreathed it in that protective cocoon of his own souls refuse. He had been young, a young man just on the cusp of adulthood if he had been human. A kid of nineteen or twenty really. A life too short lived.
The huge dragon in front of me slowly lowered his face down to look at me closer. His eyes not glinting with malice but with curious understanding. “You tried to keep him alive didn’t you?” He asked and I felt shame as I only lowered my head. I had thought of using Nyrunth to run or as a buffer against the cultivators only after the prolonged fight had I wished for this unknown dragon that had somehow become my brother through battle to live until desperation had made me do what I had done. Yet despite the shame of that knowledge filling me I also knew that, that last desperate gambit was the only reason the two bastards had died so cruelly at my hands afterwards.
The sea green ancient nodded as if feeling the weight that knowledge had on my mind and then he breathed the gentlest of breaths at me. “I will tend to young Nyrunth’s body so that his soul now in the Eternal Roosts halls can rest safe in the knowledge that his remains shall never be spoilt or twisted to another's whims or end.” He said his tone tinged with sorrow for a young dragon this ancient one must have been fond of. He must’ve been to have given Nyrunth half of his own lands.
“As a parting gift I shall allow you a tiny piece of his hoard as thanks before he is buried along side it so he can enjoy his hard earned wealth within the halls of our ancestors.” The dragon said before gently picking up the large dragon behind me with his forelimbs. Cradling the corpse as if a grandfather swaddling a babe in his hands.
The tip of his tail offered as a place to climb up to his back before he took flight. Yet I couldn’t enjoy the flight as I had just two days earlier I now realized. Being buffeted with hurricane like winds does that to you.
The glittering mountain of gold, precious gems and treasures I was sure every adventuring party would be slobbering over only tasting as ash in my mouth as I stood before it while the green ancient lay Nyrunth down upon and around it. As if the dragon was just sleeping a peaceful slumber instead of the empty corpse I knew it to be.
I half-heartedly perused the hoard, the bitter taste of defeat in my mouth despite having snatched victory in the end. I didn’t know if it was simply depression that had built up without release from all I had experienced till this point using the waste I felt at the loss of Nyrunth’s life using it as an outlet but quite frankly I hardly cared.
In the end I took a storage ring larger than any I had found before, able to hold in an entire three bedroom house within it and all was packed with treasure. I emptied parts of it and took only the scrolls and books that wouldn’t last the test of time that I could find.
The ancient looked upon me with approval as I created the largest mana stone I had ever managed to make. Using all the power I could before I’d be too fatigued to move for a while in its creation and placed it at the top of the hoard Nyrunth’s body now encircled. “I wish you all the honour and glory to be found in your ancestors lofty halls.” I said stroking the side of Nyrunth’s large head before I left the roost he’d made for himself.
It didn’t take long for the ancient to collapse and burn the hillside so that no trace that the roost had ever been there in the first place. “What now?” I asked as I looked upon the dragon now coiled around the top of a mountain and still making it look like he was simply a huge reptilian cat perched on top of a simple wooden beam usually used in wooden fences.
He didn’t speak for a long time as he simply stared down at me, measuring me or using some power inherent to dragons powerful enough to reach such venerable age might have. “Live a worthy life and leave a story that will bring glory upon your sovereign. Show that his trust in a subject like you wasn’t misplaced and bring honour to his memory.” He said simply before he unfurled his wings the size of which were entire small villages could be built upon and took flight, leaving me alone and naked in the night at the mountain top with but one question on my lips.
“My sovereign?”
Then my old friend agony came calling as my skin began to split and a second change overcame me.
–---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Morice Havenfield)
He clenched his teeth in anger as he stared the man before him down. How he wished he could strike him down or skewer him like he so richly deserved. The man before him was one of the elven ambassadors from Nomgolir. A man even now lobbying to take his masters place as the new vice-headmaster of the royal academy. Morice could see it in the man, after all of Vlad’s lessons on others and how to read them he could see that much. This elf named Saleh Keakian was hungry for power of any and all kinds, seeing that as Vlad hadn’t been seen now for almost four days after Ashes returned he thought he’d died in the rumoured mission he’d taken on behalf the emperor.
The smirking blonde man sat in the seat opposite the desk Morice sat at in the office of the manor. “Just allow me the opportunity to… take your fathers place and we will be fine.” He said with a gentle smile.
The creak of leather made Morice look to his side. Abhorahs stood there like a knight guard and Morice didn’t have to read minds to know that the vampire patriarch wanted to rip the man apart with his bare hands. Vlad would let him, he had this wounded animal quality that Morice didn’t blame him for but it flew in the face of his teachings at times.
How he dealt with anything and everything that showed itself to be a threat to him or to his children. Now that he was dead Morice felt bitter, he knew what the loss of ones phylactery meant if it evaporated like his had. The man had been more of a father to Morice despite him almost being considered a full blown adult among elves and much more than the father he never knew to begin with.
What should he tell Akasha? He hadn’t gotten around to even trying to tell her. The girl had been nursing Ashes ever since the raven had returned with Dust pulling double duty to allow her to rest and recuperate. Pinching the bridge of his nose he sighed as he massaged the spot in hopes of gaining some insight to help him in this mater.
“Lord Keakian...” He began and gave the elf a pointed stare. “My fathers absence doesn’t give you an ambassador of all things the right to try and worm your way into a position you have no right to. Quite frankly I’m amazed at the sheer gal of you. Trying to weasel your way into a posting appointed by Emperor Alocia himself.” He said as he stood up slowly.
The preening elf had grown quiet and his face ugly as if his play for power was simply him going for his own birthright. “Get out or I’ll have ser Abhorash here escort you out and believe me if I allow him a moment alone with you after your audacity you will not be found again.” Morice said firmly and the eager lean of Abhorash made the ambassador blanch.
“You’d dare insult me so?!” Saleh almost shrieked in indignation only to flinch as Morice slammed his fist onto the table.
“You started with the sheer fucking insult of coming here with your worm tongue. I should take your head off and leave it on a pike as my father would do in a heartbeat after the very second sentence you uttered when you came here.” Morice said channelling the inner fury he’d often seen Vlad use to intimidate so well into his eyes.
Saleh sputtered and then stood up abruptly. “I will see myself out but this isn’t over boy!” He snarled and left the office in a huff.
“Abhorash tail him until he’s left the manors grounds… Don’t kill him.” Morice said tiredly as he sat back down into the chair and sighed heavily.
Abhorash took a few steps and then paused looking over to Morice. “He was proud of you, you know.” He said gently, gentler than he’d ever heard the man speak. Usually he was so stoic and silent that hearing him say a full sentence at times came as a surprise.
Morice smiled weakly. “I just wish I could have actually become something he could be prouder of.” He responded, dejected as he slumped in the seat while Abhorash simply nodded and left the room.
He sat there alone in the office wondering just what the hell he should do now. Granted Prince Aldren and Selma had promised them that they’d provide any aid they could offer in finding Vlad but he hadn’t told them the significance of the metal dust he kept now in a small leather pouch in his pocket. He hadn’t gotten any news safe apparently there had been a titanic battle in the area Vlad had headed towards and it was suspected a true dragon had been one of the combatants with an ancient dragon thought to have arrived but it was unknown if it had taken part as well.
It all left Morice feeling a bit lethargic, not knowing fully what had happened was driving him up the wall and the information only trickled in every so often with a report once a day of what was known.
He stood up and left the office and headed out to the backyard. The makeshift training area Vlad had constructed with a small duelling ring along with a few dummies for practice against was his destination. Taking off his coat and shirt he closed his eyes and enjoyed the simple pleasure of feeling the warm wind along his skin.
Then he struck the wooden dummy in front of him hard and continued to kick, punch and strike like he’d been taught. He poured all his frustrations and helplessness into the barrage he threw at the wooden thing.
Time began to loose all meaning as all he felt was the sting of his limbs as he continued beating on the inanimate object. It built and built until it all culminated in a strike he delivered with a roar of frustration as he whipped his foot and kicked the dummies head clean off.
“Are you always this angry at wooden dummies?” A gentle but careful voice behind him pulled him out of the panting angry stare he’d fallen into just staring at the head.
“Freya… I’m in no mood.” He said sighing as he picked up the head and tried to crush it between his hands. “Do you have any news?” He asked then as he turned to look at her. She was beautiful and while he enjoyed her playful teasing and the alluring looks she sometimes sent his way, he was really in no mood.
Her gentle smile fell a little and she walked up to him almost as if she was about to hug him but stopped just short. “What is eating you? Markus you’ve been like this since Ashes returned.” She said as she moved her hand up to the side of his face and looked into his eyes. He knew she was dealing with baggage of her own after Vlad had somehow gotten her freedom from a god that had forcefully controlled her without her even knowing it until afterwards.
“Felix is...” Morice began but then sighed and shook his head. This wasn’t something he could burden her with when he hadn’t even told Akasha yet. “Never mind.” He sighed as he rubbed his eyes with one hand only to see a mischievous glint in Freya’s eyes when he pulled his hand back. He narrowed his eyes at her. “What?”
Her smile was just like the glint in her eyes as she then pointedly looked around them to make sure they were alone and then mock whispered to him. “I have an idea to unwind but I’m sure that Vlad might not approve given that he doesn’t strike me as the sort to enjoy it buuuut.” She started as her smile grew a little wider.
“But?” He asked not liking where this was going for some reason. A tingling at the back of his mind telling him that whatever Freya was about to suggest was a bad idea.
“We could at least take a look at that grand tournament right? See the sights, taste the food and enjoy a few fights?” She said innocently but her smile was anything but.
Morice had almost half closed eyes as he deadpanned at her. “You are insane you know that right? Are all people from your world insane or?” He asked, realizing that he actually meant the question. The people from the world Vlad hailed from were all just a bit off. Selma was much too innocent, meek and not inured to the world like Freya was. Freya however seemed to thrive in the role of spymaster and working in the background and the less said about Vlad the better.
Freya just shrugged. “You saying no to some blood sport then?” She asked with a smirk.
He sighed. “Lead the way.” He then said shrugging and deciding that it should at least be a way to get his mind off things for a while. He went over to towel off and picked up his shirt before he jumped a bit when he felt a pinch to his butt.
Freya whistling innocently as she walked passed him. Morice felt that this trip might be more than he bargained for.
An hour later he was grumbling, covered in what Freya called a hooded poncho and scrunching his nose at the rather distinct funk in the air. Stale sweat, dried blood and sand mixing into a rather unappealing cocktail when mixed with the scent from the people around them as well. “Tell me again why we are here?” He asked as he looked to Freya next to him in the stands of what was essentially a colosseum near the dock district.
Freya just laughed a little and handed him a skewered… lizard? On a stick and clearly cooked a bit too well. Then again the crunchy texture and strange flavour weren’t all that unpleasant, enjoyable even if it wasn’t for the strange scent in the air.
“Here’s the contestants, there weren’t all that many that actually decided to sign up in the end so we’ll have to really watch the first rounds so we can bet on the winner.” She said with a smile as if she was the cat that got the cream.
Looking at the pamphlet he’d been handed, made by Freya herself oddly enough as he hadn’t ever heard of arena’s giving out such things before, he noted the total number of contestants. A total of thirty two with only three names he was actually familiar with. One of which made him clench his jaw a little after Bedelev.
Jonah, an adventurer acquaintance he’d had that had gone missing before Morice became Vlad’s apprentice was one name he recognized. Amset was another, the Anubian was an ass of the highest quality with how he always looked down on those adventurers just starting out or not living up to his warped standards. Then finally there was Robert Stephenwolf someone he hadn’t expected to even see until reaching much closer to Wolfsgard as apparently he was the son of one of Vlad’s rather vehemently hated enemies.
“Who do you think is going to win?” Freya asked and as Morice looked over again and then smirked and pointed at a name he just picked for the name itself. “Mordenkain the destroyer? Really? isn’t that a bit… I don’t know megalomaniacal or something?” She asked him, he just shrugged as a response while Freya looked over the list herself and then laughed a little and pointed at a name.
Morice looked and squinted a bit at the name. “The Black knight? Really? Now whose choosing a silly name.” He teased and she only stuck her tongue out at him. He laughed and then continued to study the pamphlet a bit before the announcer strolled onto the sand in the arena and Morice made a curled grin. The Black knight was apparently Abhorash out to train himself.
The announcers swagger sending up sand with how he walked as the arena’s loud murmur dulled and went quiet. “Ladies and you other guys!” He started with a cheeky grin as he winked to a pair of rather sensual women in the V.I.P box in the stands. “It is my greatest pleasure to bring to you this afternoons matches to remember! Our contestants will only get healing if they make it through two rounds when we go into the Semi-finals and then at the finals. This is as much a contest of strength and proficiency in battle as it is a test of endurance and stamina!” He shouted and gave a bit of a flourish while his body language made the joke that he had plenty of stamina for any lady seeking a good time.
Morice had to roll his eyes at the man’s shameless and vulgar displays after thrusting his hips a bit at another beautiful woman in the stands that had caught his eyes. “So you want me to shut up and start the show?! Then lets get the arena into order and let’s watch some blood!!!” He roared as the audience roared in bloodthirsty anticipation as well.