Morning found both Players meeting again for their morning routine and returning one another’s Grimoires. Zahn nearly finished his ongoing art project for communing with the infernal realm, and Ethan had spent hours into the night raging at the details within a Custom’s spellbook. Their morning run was spent going at the same speed for once, as each of the gamers found something to talk about despite the early hour.

“You seriously need to get an actual teacher. Sure, getting handed a spell or two from a practiced master like Brouhaman is fine, but you have years of basic work to catch up on.” The Warlock’s tone was tired and grouchy even with his steady breathing at the light exercise. “You don’t have the most basic of wards set up, so I can’t fathom how you don’t burn your mouth every day.”

“Your own,” Zahn panted as he kept pace, “mana can’t. Hurt you. Unless. You get. Counter. Spelled.”

Ethan coughed out a laugh, “Yeah, right. I’ve tried to cast a spell inside my own body before, that shit hurt like Hell and I’m never going to be dumb enough to try that nonsense again. Need a minute?”

Their laps neared the exit gates again and Zahn nodded his thanks. “Yeah, just. Need a bit here.” Taking a swig from his waterskin, the Custom tossed his drink at the other Player. “Spells aren’t mana, they use it. You’re talking about, I dunno, sending a machine through a path, and I’m talking about sending the parts down the path, then assembling it on the other side.”

“Magic and machines are very different, car nerd.” Ethan tossed the skin back at him, “If you want to dabble with engines and coal like whoever owned your weights last, you need you get your claws on an Artificer. They can aug or mod most gear, but you usually have to settle between enchantments and mods, not both. So yeah you can mix tech and magic, it’s just not very efficient and not really done.”

Zahn shook his head as he leaned against the doors, “No, that’s not it. Turn on Sight, I can show you.” Waiting for the blond’s eyes to light up blue, the Custom sent a trickle of mana into his neck. “Watch, I’m not talking about spells, but the parts.” He felt the warmth and cinnamon build behind his tongue before gripping that warmth in his thoughts and sending the package down his arm. Remembering how he’d seen fire spells cast through Ethan’s body, he kept the energy packet running along his bones and found the structure easy to imagine as he felt the heat travel and leave cold behind.

Reaching his wrist he could see the red light like a muted glühbirne more than metal glowing from heat. The bead of light swam its way between the many small bones, lighting them all from within before it found the mess of splotchy red circles under his skin and lit up the palm of his hand. Zahn and Ethan jumped as a wild flicker of flame erupted silently into the air, inches above his skin and streaming like a gas stove left on too high. Zahn couldn’t feel the heat in his hand, but as the flames rose into the air the warmth radiated into his face like a devil’s torch. “See?” He squinted at the display, trying to choke down the sudden panic blooming under his tongue. “Charged, moved, cast. Happy?” Turning his hand away let his shaking fade, to lead to a sudden new discovery.

“Uh, dude? Gonna put that out?”

Staring through the back of his hand at the fire, Zahn could see the red stain draining mana from his body and spewing forth a constant stream away from his palm. “Ah. Trying?” Reaching with his other hand to cover the spout immediately and obviously became a bad idea, but nothing he tried internally stopped the ongoing mana drain. Staring at his hand he could see the magic inside becoming grayscale, the outlines and inlines he’d been able to see through his skin fading away to reveal only the mess of red swirls glowing with mana. He looked back to Ethan to find the other Player stepping away and holding up both hands to ward him away.

Hearing footsteps they turned to find Gardor and friends approaching with as much enthusiasm as a pack of seals. “Ho, Player man!” The thickset hulk’s voice resounded off the walls and nearly echoed in his ears. “I like the new spell! Is this also from the fire pepper?”

“Sort of,” the group of cheerful thicks gathered around, effectively blocking the two Players from the rest of the arena with their bodies. Even as the large Barbarians gathered and circled the two against the gates, the unarmored men weren’t stupid enough to get too close to live fire. “I ate the pepper, remember, but I spat it out too. Landed in my hand, and, ah.” He waved his jet flame palm around, “So breath or hand can do it, long as you have the magic for it.”

Looking around at his explanation, he found the group of fighters pulling long faces at one another over his head. “Hmm,” came Gardor’s thoughtful voice. “So, you didn’t eat the pepper? Just started and spat it back out?”

“Someone should have told Largor,” came a voice Zahn didn’t know.

Ethan perked up, “You mean the ‘special case’ from yesterday?”

“Woah woah, what special case?”

“You’re not connected to the broadcast, don’t worry about it,” the Warlock dismissed his complaint out of hand. “I wondered about that, nobody gets to leave without earning their Key.”

“He’s on a hiatus,” came the grumbling voice of their leader Jadfbug from against the wall. “He will return, after he has earned or learned something. Tell me, little Player. Is the dreaded Fire Pepper itself edible? Have you, yourself, eaten and swallowed the fruit?”

Always impressed by the eloquence of the eldest Barbarian, Zahn tried to spit the words out. “Uh, yeah. Er, no. No, I didn’t actually eat the thing, I chewed it and found the spice to be, well, it was vile.”

Another round of silent looks crossed the group. “Welp,” shrugged Gardor to his tribemates, “Unless someone wants to go stop him?”

Laughter erupted from the large men as their group broke up, wandering away from their morning talk. Jadfbug lingered, tapping Zahn’s right shoulder with a large finger. “You ought to be able to choke that out, like the fire gasses the Dwarves use. Try thinking of it as a pipe you tighten down, leave the flames without their air. Knowledge for knowledge.” The hulking man walked away as Zahn pondered his advice, thinking about how plainsmen without toilets could know the intricacies of indoor plumbing.

“Phew!” Ethan clapped an arm over his shoulders and sent them both reeling to catch their balance, “I thought they were gonna kill us. Thanks, I didn’t want to deal with you being hot-hands all day.”

Zahn blinked at the non-sequitur before looking back down to find his hand’s fires had calmed, leaving a random scattering of smaller match-head sized embers. Trying to will the flames out worked immediately, as if having turned off the source just like the Barbarian had suggested. So why didn’t it work before? Looking back to Ethan he found the Warlock staring after the huge tribesmen and waving for some reason.

“Hey, I wanted to say earlier. Dude.” Smacking the other Player left Zahn’s hand stinging, but finally pulled his gaze. “Let’s work on it tonight, if you help me instead of jerking off into my book we can do the summon before midnight.”

“Probably not,” came Ethan’s thoughtful tone. Zahn wanted to strangle the man for putting it off another night, but waited for more. “It’s not exactly quiet, and tonight should be busy enough. It’s a good two weeks till the next match, so that means the next batch of Fodder should be showing up soon. I think Three is hauling them? Doesn’t matter. From what I remember about the ritual, setting it up is easy but using it needs the lifeblood of a powerful magic being.”

Zahn waited for more detail, and found the Warlock staring off into space holding his chin. “Ahem. So, what makes it ‘lifeblood’ instead of just ‘blood’ anyways? Does the thing need to be alive?”

“Kind of the opposite, really,” came Ethan’s dark chuckle back. “It needs to be the blood of something you killed, and you need to take its blood while it’s still alive.”

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* * * * *

The afternoon passed quickly with their mana-powered drills, and Zahn grew more comfortable using his temporary empowerment during sparring. He’d push against the ground with juiced-up legs to move in quickly, but found needing to stop harder than simply pushing again and usually tackled Ethan or the wall. Skidding to a halt on the sands proved more comical to the Warlock than Zahn was happy with, but at very least the experiments showed he finally had some level of battlefield travel like Ashton had said. Remembering the archer caused a stab of heat to rise as his temper begged to hurt the man who ousted him, but he choked down the flash of energy as he tried to remain practical. It didn’t help that both he and Ethan were thin blond men who spoke similarly and were familiar with the same Dungeon. Picturing the Warlock down there with a random party and running into a certain double-crossbow archer wasn’t too impossible, but Zahn didn’t feel up to prodding at the other Player’s past just yet.

That afternoon they retired early as Ethan stewed up their supper and the lowbie continued his carving. Casting Shape constantly as he copied a moving pattern had finally become simple for the Player, and Zahn was getting comfortable channeling the runeless Earth spell. He’d needed to hold his finger over the shape during his early attempts, and by the time he reached the far side of the design he could hold the rock and send mana through from the side to create the shapes. He found with Mana Sight pushing mana into rock that was already filled with attuned mana would begin converting the fresh power before it ever reached the active spell, and the attuned mana was drawn into the designs faster which shaped smoothly. He tried using Shape to make a shape that converted only raw mana into the Earth type, but couldn’t find the design he needed. After comparing his limited rune selection to the complex filled triangle needed to perform the same for Fire, he mentally tossed the plan aside and bent back to task.

By the time Ethan’s dinner concoction was ready, the pattern finally met itself and Zahn found the design dancing under his hands. The completed spellform linked into his starting point and spun over on itself like a twisting chain without deviating from the spiked figure eight he’d been copying. To his eyes the two shapes within Ethan’s Grimoire and on the slab were finally identical, and he found the remaining green Earth mana swimming around inside the tablet avoiding the Chaos rune pattern.

“Done.” Zahn looked up and turned the tablet, causing the Warlock to nearly spit his spoonful into the hearth.

The blond Player coughed and pounded his chest, looking away from the gravestone that had taken days to magically carve. “Damn. Fuck. Dude, you need to warn a guy when you’re gonna flash, that.” Ethan blanched as he tried to regain his composure, eventually turning away to face the door. “At least make it stop spinning. That shit’s rough enough without, that.”

With a mental shrug Zahn tapped the tablet and willed the Shape spell to stop. He saw from the back that inside the stone more green color burst out of the chain before gathering with the rest of the mana away from the pattern. Ethan looked over again and nodded, finding whatever disturbed him to be missing.

“Yeah, that looks right now that it’s not my parents fighting. How the fuck did you turn a mobius strip into a fucking Rorschach test? I wanted to puke, not gonna lie. And this soup is goddamn delicious, so you better apologize.”

Zahn put the finished spellform down as they laughed over dinner, Ethan still unsteady over the moving runes. The lowbie tried to explain the Chaos rune’s constant motion and endless spinning on itself just for the blond to cover his ears and loudly sing something about Home Alabama.

As they cleaned up Ethan went over the schedule for Fodder arrival, and how they’d be able to fight real beasts in the morning. “Once we’re finished with the individual sessions, we’ll be able to move on to some ring fights and bring out something you can kill. They’ll be gathering low-level mobs for you and the other team, so you should be able to find something in the teens you can crush.”

“What about the things I spent last month fighting?” Zahn had faced off against a number of smaller plant-creatures that had apparently been born in the cages in addition to the low-level mobs that had survived capture. “Wouldn’t something like plant blood still work for this?”

The Warlock hemmed and hawed as he poured over his spellbook. “I’m not so sure. When it was my turn they just brought over a captured rat-type Monster from the sewers, it was level one. The hard part was draining enough to fill the engravings without killing it. You, I think, need to find something with a lot of blood or a good way to drain it.”

Finally he voiced the obvious, “Alright wise guy, why won’t you just do it? You’ve even done this shit before.”

Ethan laughed back, “No way man. Remember, I can’t cast at all right now. My book is pretty much useless because I need my familiar as my focus, it was part of the deal we made. You can’t just inscribe this into your book, you don’t have the Dark school for one. So we need to cast it ritual-style, and that means you because again I can’t cast.”

Zahn scowled as he thought over the argument, certain he’d missed a counterpoint somewhere. “Wouldn’t want to fuck up your ongoing secret quest to train me up, who knows how they’d punish you for deviating from the schedule.”

The room sat silent for a long moment as he lifted the slab to store it safely. When Ethan did answer, he spoke slowly and softly as if talking to himself.

“It was never a secret. You could have just asked me, and I would have told you I had a quest to train you each day. I made up the schedule, I used my old one to try and get you in shape. It was never supposed to be something like this, you were supposed to just train up and we’d get along fine. But now we’re using sacrificial blood to contact basically Hell, and all I can think of is how to get away with it from under their noses. I see us as a team, Z. It wasn’t supposed to be a secret.”

Zahn listened as he stared at the ground, trying to parse his frustration into words. Each errant thought teasing its way into his mind sounded like an attack against one of his only friends in this prison world, and when he tried to rephrase his earlier actions he sounded like whining to himself. Settling on a quiet nod, he hefted the rock and carried it into his room.

Before he closed the door, Ethan coughed and spoke again, clearly. “Ah, we need to be ready tomorrow. Try to think of a way to carry a bunch of blood, using your daggers should be enough to bleed something before killing it. We’ll figure this out.”

* * * * *

The next day dawned gray, the dim light giving the sandy arena a sense of timelessness as the constant sun’s shadow was missing. Zahn shaded his eyes as he squinted up at the dreary clouds, trying to remember the last time he saw rain here. He was met on the grounds by the dual sword-wielding Barbarian, Kecnum.

“Looking for a bird? I can fetch some javelins.” Zahn liked the practical man, even if most things ended up being a waste of time for the big guy.

“No, just trying to find the sun when it’s cloudy like this. When did it last rain?”

Kecnum shrugged, turning away. “Don’t know. Doesn’t rain much on the Fire Belt, why would being up in the highlands be any different?”

Suddenly finding the local knowledge much more interesting than clouds Zahn moved to follow when Ethan’s hand found his shoulder.

“There you are. Done playing with stabby over there? We have some stabbing of our own to do.”

Zahn shrugged off the grip and fed the other Player a scowl, “He’s a great guy. You should hear how he hunted an Ice Bear for his birthday a few years back. It’s where he lost his sense of humor, and two toes.” He looked around, finding the double doors to the animal pens closed. “I thought they brought out the beasts today?”

Ethan stared another moment as he considered the Ice Bear humor story before shaking his head and answering. “Yeah, uh. Two’s going to be bringing them out, so pay attention to what the other groups picked. You probably have some selection this time, given what Three was told about bringing in low-level things. From what I understand of the local levels map, there isn’t anything below teens for a couple miles. Who knows,” the blond shrugged as the various fighter groups gathered, “might make for more variety than the local plant and bug Monsters.”

As if summoned by the conversation, Two appeared before the double doors. He spoke normally, as if addressing a room of quiet coworkers instead of a large group of rowdy fighters. “Good morning everyone. If you’re ready, shut up.”

Zahn blinked as the noise stopped, and the tan man’s calm voice seemed to echo in the following silence.

“Very good. I’m sure when they wake up you’ll be told all about the far reaches that were traveled to bring this round of Fodder, so say thank you when you see Three and his team. That means you, Burny. For now, we have some unique grabs that many might find useful, or even pertinent. I’ve brought forward a number of selections to the foremost cages, if you would please bring your group representative forward when I call your name.”

Zahn looked around the rowdy group again, flabbergasted to find the entire ensemble silent and still as they stood in orderly parties and listened. Is there something about Two I need to know? Am I dealing with respect or fear here? He listened as the Rogue called a name he didn’t recognize and a man wandered into the hall with his guide. The lowbie had to look twice when they emerged, leading a waist-high Hellhound by an iron muzzle around its head. The second team leader emerged with a large ball of brown vines and thorns, red eyes smoldering from within its depths.

The Player turned to find Ethan, grabbing the other man’s arm. “Those are from the fire woods!” Zahn tried to keep his voice low and only succeeded in hissing his whisper. “They got those from near my old village!”