Chapter 25 – Life 6 – The Arena

Awakening my Metal Casting wasn’t considered terribly impressive. I was actually a little later than most people to figure out my element. I think people also might have been a little disappointed that I wasn’t following in my mother’s footsteps to fight with Lightning Essence. I’ve never seen her truly fight, but I have been in a few crowds where she showed off a bit. I agree that it is quite impressive, seeing her send streams of glowing death up into the sky. Certain Ministry of History people say that ‘real’ lighting is actually much faster and harder to see than what my mother makes, but honestly, who cares?

Something that did set me apart from others, though, was the way I quickly took to combat against my peers. The strange memories of the Imperial Swordsman seemed to extend to *muscle* memory as well. The only problem was, the Swordsman was shorter than me, as well as a bit sturdier. I was comparatively lanky, and whenever I tried certain tricks with my own momentum during sparring with others I would wind up on my ass. I had acquired several good habits for combat, but also many habits that quite simply didn’t work for me.

I decided to start trying other styles of fighting. Those who used spears were considered quite useful in keeping monsters off other Casters’ backs. Metal Casters were also considered good at making large shields, called ‘tower’ shields because… they’re tall, like a tower? Something like that, I suppose. I eventually found my calling, though, with daggers. Throwing them at range, then stabbing up close, with strength and precision in equal measure. I didn’t have too many memories of the Swordsman using similar tactics, but I had to keep reminding myself that *I* was not *him*. Still, I followed the memories’ lessons by making a set of two daggers, larger and sharper than the rest, into which I pumped as much Essence as I could bear. Unlike my other daggers, they weren’t disposable, so I wouldn't use them without a pressing need.

Before too long, I reached the limit of what a decent Caster could do without actually fighting monsters. And so, I was sent off to the Arena. A massive circular building that was surprisingly intact, at least on the outside, left behind by the Pre-Apocalypse. Its roof was open to the sky, and most of its floor was a grass-like green, though now scarred and pockmarked after numerous battles. A monster crystal had fallen right in the center, ironically trapping most of the Red Manti in a contained environment.

A more powerful monster species would have likely destroyed the building by now. However, Essence-wise, the Manti were actually quite weak: their attacks would singe the things or people they cut, but they would be no match for most other Fire Essence monsters. As such, most Casters and even some Folders could just attack them at range, not letting their bladed arms even come close. When the burgeoning community that would later become the Five States found this area, they quickly realized it was a perfect training ground for new warriors.

A series of earthen walls had been built around the immovable, indestructible crystal to funnel the Manti around. Without prey in sight, they would typically just wander around in patterns that were rather simple, even by monster standards. The whole Arena was watched over inside a series of metal towers fused onto its sides. My ‘class’ of 5 people, including myself, was brought inside one of these towers.

Each class was split into two ‘attack’ members, two ‘defense’, and one ‘control’. Defenders were usually Earth and Water users, since they could form earthen barricades or watery globes that monsters would have to work to get through. Fire and Metal Essence users were usually attackers. Controllers were a rather special category, typically meant for those who had a non-standard fighting style that was mostly intended for supporting their team-mates and controlling the battlefield. The majority of controllers were Air users, though just about anyone could in theory be one. Like me.

Metal users were typically attackers, and sometimes defenders if they focused on shields, but very rarely controllers. However, there were stories of a Metal Folder out by GreatLake, who was known for running around the battlefield and throwing his absorbed metal at monsters at just the right moment to distract them. He was a big inspiration for my dagger-throwing strategy. He later on combined his element with fire to become a High Folder, which is why he’s well-known. They’re a pretty rare breed, since they need to find very specific resources to progress, like metals with high melting temperatures in his case. I was glad I wouldn’t have that problem.

With me as the controller, my class also consisted of twin brothers, one a Fire Caster and the other a Fire Folder, as the attackers. On the defending side, we had a girl who was an Earth Folder, and a young man who was also a Metal Caster. He wasn’t terribly good at Casting mid-battle, so he had painstakingly created a suit of armor for himself over the course of the training. Other classes sometimes mocked us for having a defender who only defended himself, but he promised to make us all armor once he had some more monster essence. He had us all agree to let him test out the attacks of the Manti before trying to destroy them.

Atop the tower, we met with the lord of the arena, Byron, a powerful High Caster with the element of Storm. People liked to ask me if he was in a relationship with my mother, since Storm and Lightning were conceptually similar. His thunderstorms could hail down ice on his enemies but were unable to create any actual lightning. Of course, the truth was the two couldn’t stand each other. As I understood it, he resented the fact that she could go out and protect the trading caravans while he had to shepherd around the junior generation of warriors.

His rough voice rang out across the room, where my team and several others were gathered. “Aright! Today we’re doing an Arena run, lucky you. There’s 3 rounds to a run, and you WILL do all of them! First round, the Field. Just you in an empty area with a couple ‘o Mantis. Yer attackers attack, yer defenders defend, controllers… are probably not necessary.” I legitimately wasn’t sure if that was an intentional dig at me or not.

He continued, “Second round, the Corridors. Mimics the condition of the ruined cities, or somesuch nonsense. Long story short, you gotta fight in cramped conditions. Earth Folders, you ARE allowed to mess with the walls, but don’t come crying to me if you collapse something and have to do ‘community service’ repairing it.” I knew that wasn’t an idle threat, Arena repair duty was always on the table as a punishment.

“Third Round, the Pit. That’s where ya keep fighting Mantises till you can’t take it no more. Do NOT think that you can make us ‘run out’ or some crap. We got damn plenty, and the crystal’s always making more. When you run out of steam, yell out, and someone will take you back out. I am ‘required’ to remind you that, unless you cry uncle, you should NOT expect us to protect you from ANYTHING. The Mantises, collapsing walls, each other, nothing. But if you do quit, well, Arena records are available to anyone who wants ‘em. That means that if you tell some caravan that they should hire you as protection, they’re gonna check to see if you’re worth it. So don’t. Screw. Up.”

And with that friendly note out of the way, a group of Air Folders helped us down the tower and into the Arena. We landed at an area with some faded symbols on the floor, along with a much more freshly drawn “Team 4”, and some arrows pointing us towards a certain direction. There, there were a trio of Red Mantises just waiting around. They hadn’t noticed us yet. We got into position, with Sylvie the Earth Folder setting up a barricade that the twin Fire users crouched on either side of. I clambered up to a position on the top, where I had a good seat to watch Lambert, the armored Metal Caster, charge ahead towards the enemy.

“Hey, you big fucking bugs! Ever seen a man made of metal, before? Cause I guarantee you won’t live to see another!” The four of us he left behind shook our heads in disbelief. I think his troubles with proper Casting gave him a bit of a complex. One of the Red Mantises looked at him in what seemed like bug-eyed disbelief, even though that was just how their faces looked normally. It casually raised a bladed arm and swiped downwards at Lambert’s head. Thankfully, he had armored his neck as well as everything else, and it held true. He laughed maniacally and began to punch the thing to death using the spikes he put on his gloves. The thing went down without even using its Fire Essence.

The twins took the next one. Knowing that their Fire attacks wouldn’t hurt a Fire Essence creature as much, they instead bombarded the ground beneath it first. When it tripped, I made a dagger that I threw right at one of its eyes. The *pop* was rather sickening, but when the thing died under the combined fire of the twins, the Essence that came into me felt *amazing*. If this was how Casters always felt when killing monsters, I could see why so many of them threw themselves into battle.

The third one came to a bit of a realization and began to run right at the barricade. Sylvie was on it, reinforcing the area it was going towards at the cost of the material around it. To its credit, the Mantis actually dodged our attacks pretty well, but it didn’t expect Lambert to run up behind it and begin to punch its thorax. As the thing began to turn, I took a cartwheel from atop the barricade and wound up right underneath it. With a stab from one of my ‘good’ daggers, the thing fell almost instantly. I did miscalculate how heavy the monster would be, but the Essence rush made me too giddy to care.

Knowing that the time it took to go through the next trial was a factor in our score, we quickly continued on. The earthen walls of the Corridors were surrounded by a tougher metal, the dual-element mix making it harder for any one accident to collapse them. Within the claustrophobic hallways, only 2 people could stand side-by-side. We let the fire twins go up front, with Silvie in the middle, and Lambert and I formed the rear guard. Having an Earth Folder proved valuable; Silvie had a decent sense of where we were supposed to go, and even noticed a couple of dead ends before we went down them.

As we went deeper in, the holes poked in the ceiling to allow sunlight through became few and far between. The twins were prepared, grabbing small torches made of cloth and wood and setting them alight. Eventually, we heard the sounds of fighting, and went to investigate. We found a rather large mantis that was scraping the walls in a futile attempt to get rid of the thin layer of water surrounding its thorax. Whoever did this must have done their research beforehand; mantises breathed through their bodies, not their heads.

Silvie knelt down and proceeded to make two spikes of Earth come out from the walls, pinning the Mantis’s legs in place. It thrashed its upper body around even more, but the Fire twins backed us up out of its range. It eventually perished, allowing us to climb over it to reveal another team. We had trained with them a few times, and I had a ‘friendly’ rivalry with their Air Folder controller. Sure enough, I heard his voice. “We had that one covered, you know.”

I was about to respond, but Silvie beat me to the punch. “Really? Because it looked like you were putting yourselves at risk just to kill it in a fancy way.” In the light of our torches, I could barely make out a Water Caster girl blush. The Air Folder paused a bit, before saying, “Creativity can be as important as efficiency when fighting. We have to train all the options in our arsenal; never know when we might need them, later down the line.” I was somewhat in agreement, but couldn’t help but mention, “think you’re ‘creative’ enough to beat us to the Pit?”

He laughed. “Guess we’ll have to see… Martha?” A well-muscled girl who I remembered as a Metal Folder formed a large brick of the stuff and *slammed* against the wall, right where Silvie had absorbed some material to make her spikes. We made to run, but we were pushed back by a wall of air that also further destabilized the room. I heard some mocking laughter before being buried in rubble. Bastard was willing to get repair duty just to look good in his scores.

Silvie took care of our situation eventually, but it took a while. Thankfully, only the Fire Folder was knocked unconscious, and rose relatively easily with our help. Still, that was an annoying setback. We continued at a bit more of a hurried pace, ignoring any sounds of fighting that weren’t immediately in our way. At one point, we had to walk up steep earthen ramps while being chased by mantises. At another point, Silvie made us a thin bridge across a gap, to act as a shortcut. Lambert was the last one across, and the bridge crumbled under the weight of his armor after he jumped off.

In places with intersections, there would occasionally be markings carved into the walls. This was a code invented by the Five States to mark ruins for future explorers. The makers of the Arena must have put some of these markings down, as a further test of the competitors. Thankfully, none of the other teams seemed willing or able to fake these markings, so they steered us true.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Finally, we made it to a corridor with sunlight, something we hadn’t seen in hours. It was the exit. Walking outside, we saw 2 other teams that had made it out: the one that had betrayed us and one other. There were 6 teams competing, so that wasn’t too bad a score. An enterprising Earth Caster made us some seating, which we stayed on for a while as we waited for the other teams to emerge. Two of them did just that, the latter of whom looked pretty scratched up and was carrying an unconscious member. We got their story that fighting must have weakened the floor beneath one of the corridors, causing them to fall to the floor below. I wondered if someone had set them up just as we had but couldn’t be sure. Besides, dealing with human treachery was part of the gig for those who wanted to explore the ruins.

After a bit more time, we heard that Team 6 ran into more trouble than expected and had to break through the ceiling of the Corridors, an automatic disqualification. So, there were 5 teams, including us, who were going to the Pit.

The Pit was a surprisingly simple area at the center of the Arena. The fiery red crystal hovered above a deep trench that allowed Mantises to fall from the moment they were ‘born’ until they landed atop one of the brethren. Arena runs were timed so that the Mantis would never pile up so high they could escape the Pit. If no-one culled them enough during those, a special detail of warriors would finish the job. Some Casters considered that a cushy gig, getting to kill large quantities of monsters in a controlled environment. Others swore it gave less Essence than killing monsters out in the wild.

The actual fighting was done in a trench neighboring the ‘true’ Pit. A pair of Earth Folders would open a stone door between the two areas for some amount of time, allow Mantises to come in, and then close it up. Then they would Fold *themselves* into the walls along the sides, allowing them to evade the notice of the bugs.

The first team to fight was the first team to emerge, which happened to be the team that betrayed us. They were pretty well equipped, with their Metal Folder having at some point given them all one-handed shields. Their controller did a good job of pushing the bugs into each other as they tried to attack, causing the smell of burned mantis flesh to rise through the air. It smelled surprisingly tasty; all things considered. They killed 33 mantises over the course of 7 waves before calling it quits. Then the next team fought, and only got through a total of 27 mantises. Then it was our turn.

Lambert took out the first few all on his own. Honestly not the greatest strategy, since we needed to keep the whole team killing as many as possible, but we couldn’t talk him out of it. I guess he felt a little useless after the Corridors. After he got his frustrations out, we fell into more of a routine. Behind some of Silvie’s barriers, we went Fire-Dagger-Fire-Earth Spike. We timed our attacks so that when one of us needed to take a break, Lambert was there to pick up the slack. Our power was about the same as the other teams, but our coordination was notably better, if I do say so myself. 20… 30… 40… 50 Mantises went down. My powers were feeling ever more refined. At that point, Byron the Storm Caster halted things, then came down and nodded approvingly. “Well, it seems you’ve gotten good enough at killing these things to receive some high marks. We are nowhere close to the record, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you could kill another 50 like that. So, I’ll give you lot a choice. On the one hand, you could do exactly what you have been doing ‘til the sun goes down. On the other hand… you could fight your first High Monster.”

We all looked at him in surprise. We hadn’t heard of any Mantises getting a combined Essence in years. Byron continued, “Yeah, we just got one. Noticed it while you all were in the Corridors, in fact. Redsteel, the combo of Fire and Metal. Now, I hear fighting a High Monster as just a regular old Caster is quite a tasty treat. Plus, I’ll give you the same Arena score as if you killed 100 regular mantises. But don’t get me wrong, it’s not gonna be easy…”

The other 4 members of the team looked at me. Controllers were typically the captains of their teams, but I liked to think that my team would respect me even if I was an attacker. I pointed out the obvious: “Two of our team are Folders. They won’t get anything from this fight other than the Arena score. If we win, set the score to 200 instead.”

Byron looked at me. “Girlie, 200 would be the highest score this Arena has ever seen. Can’t do it. 150’s the most I’ll go, unless you want to deal with that many Mantises yerself.” I looked around my team and saw no complaints on their faces. “Deal.”, I said. Byron then yelled out. “Aright, bring ‘er out!”

A team of Air Folders rose into the sky, alongside a reddish-gray creature they were suspending in mid-air. It was much larger than any Mantis I had seen or heard of. Byron corralled the other teams away with the force of his personality alone. Their fights in the Pit seemed to have been forgotten. I wondered if Byron’s feud with my mother was influencing his call that we deserved a special challenge. I also wondered if we should have just killed a bunch more of the regular Mantises. But then, the Redsteel Mantis dropped to the ground with a *thud*, and a distant Byron yelled out, “Begin!”

Lambert took point, as usual. He tried to maneuver himself towards one of the thing’s legs, to cut off what little mobility a Mantis would have. Turns out, that was a mistake. The bug noticed him immediately, likely because its combined element let it sense the metal in his armor. It batted at him with a clawed arm that looked much sharper than its Low Monster equivalents. To his credit, Lambert swiveled around and dodged with speed much greater than most could while wearing that armor. Still, one of his arms got sliced into, and began to hang limply at his waist.

We needed to win this. With an Arena score of 150, basically top marks, we should be able to attract someone with a dedicated Healer. If we lost, Byron would pull us out before we perished, but Lambert would have to wait on the long, long list for a public Healing. I threw a disposable dagger, hoping to get one of its eyes popped, but it was reactive enough to duck below the arc of the knife. The thing was faster than its brethren, despite being larger.

Then the giant bug did something unexpected. It began to rub its arms together at incredible speeds. Was it trying to make noise? …no, that was crickets that did that, I remembered vaguely. But as it continued, I realized what was going on. Its arms were metal, and not just any metal, but the strange Redsteel that could heat up to incredible temperatures without melting. The Mantis’s arms were now glowing red from the friction heat.

I made to yell to Silvie, but she was already on it. She pulled on all her reserves to make a circular earthen wall taller than two men stacked atop one another. We were all inside it, hoping the Mantis would exhaust at least a little of its energy trying to get through. Sure enough, some of the walls started glowing red from the heat. I was glad, at this moment, that we weren’t facing a Magma monster. As it was, this thing could probably escape the Arena if it wanted to.

Still, for all that it was a High Monster, it was still a bug that had less intelligence than the average monster. Our Fire Folder had the bright idea to begin to absorb the heat coming through the wall. Ordinarily, a High Monster’s element would be too powerful for a single Folder to absorb. But dulled by Silvie’s powerful handywork, along with the fact that the Red Mantises as a species weren’t that powerful, it was enough to fight it to a stalemate.

That was, of course, until the young man’s reserves started to fill up. He had trained his Folding abilities a little bit before the Arena, but he was still a relatively new Folder. As one of our teachers once put it, there was only so much a Folder could ‘eat’ at once before they needed to stop and ‘digest’. Our encircled area began to get hotter and hotter. I began to fear that we might lose, here. We needed a plan.

“He can’t take much more of this!”, said the Fire Caster twin. They always seemed pretty in sync, though in this case it was pretty easy to tell that the Folder was struggling. Suddenly, I remembered something. “Lambert, you still have a full buffer of Metal, don’t you?” He gave me a pained look. “Yo- you know wh- what I’m like! Mid-battle casting… and my arm…”

I *shush*ed him. “Close your eyes. The Mantis isn’t there anymore, we defeated it…” He looked at me like I was crazy, then slowly realized what I was trying to do. I continued. “The heat is from a nice summer day… The noise is from the crowd cheering us for our victory…” He started to nod along to my very slapdash relaxation techniques. “Now, you raise your left hand and from it you Cast! You make a ring of metal 3 feet across, with no gaps or imperfections! This… is your trophy! Your trophy for defeating the Mantis!”

He gave a little sigh but raised his good arm like I said. After a decidedly worrying amount of time, a small amount of Metal began to form at his palm. Slowly, but surely, a ring just like I had described began to form. I didn’t care about any trophies, but I did very much need that ring. With him doing that, I turned to Silvie, and whispered to her. “When he finishes that, I need you to open a gap at the top of the wall. Right where the mantis is. Can you do that?”

She looked at me like I was crazy (I had been getting a lot of that, recently), but didn’t question her team captain. Instead, she wearily nodded. “I-I can. But I’ll probably faint afterwords…” I nodded. “That’s fine, just make sure it’s big enough for the bug’s head to fit through.”

Lambert began to struggle to hold onto the giant ring I had him make, especially with just one hand. I grabbed it on one side and had the Fire Caster twin hold the other. We held it up and watched as it took form. I hoped this wouldn’t be in vain…

The Fire Folder screamed and collapsed, after which the heat of the area soared. It was now or never. “Silvie, now!”, I shouted. She pinpointed where the Mantis was and held onto the wall, screaming in pain from the heat. But, sure enough, a gap the size of the monster’s head appeared at the top, right above the collapsed Silvie. The thing peered in to look at its prey, and that was when I struck. With all my strength, I grabbed the ring and threw it right at the thing’s head. To my delight, my aim was true, and the ring landed like one of those ‘horse-shoe’ things around the head… and settled heavily on the neck.

With an insectoid *SHREEK* the thing struggled to get the ring off. One of its arms even got stuck in the wall in the process. It was the best opportunity I could have made for myself. I had the Fire Caster boost me up so I could grab onto the Mantis’s head. That was a bit of a mistake. The thing’s carapace was also made of Redsteel, and in the process of fighting us it had gotten quite hot indeed. I quickly made some sort of metal glove to cover one hand, knowing that they wouldn’t last long in the heat either.

With my other hand, I made a dagger. I stabbed it into the mantis’s armor, over and over. And when it dulled from all the metal-on-metal striking, I made another. And another, and another… The Redsteel Mantis struggled to get me off, but my metal glove was spiked, to keep me on like a sea urchin from the coast. Lambert showed me the design, once, and I was glad he did.

Speaking of Lambert, he had been busy. Surprisingly, he made a pole of sorts to vault up to where I was and keep the metal ring around the bug’s neck stable. It swiped at him several times, but its reach was limited when it came to attacking its own neck. I thanked him mentally and continued my work.

Eventually, I grabbed my two ‘best’ daggers. They were a poor imitation of the Swordsman’s 6 prized swords, but they were made on the same principles. Just to add to that, I pushed all the metal I could Cast into the daggers further, focusing on making them ever sharper and more durable. I put my all into them, there was nothing left. It was this or failure.

I struck down at the top of the Mantis’s head, over and over, again and again. I yelled a wordless shout. And soon enough, I must have hit something important inside the Mantis’s armored head, because it collapsed downward. But while I was falling about 8 feet down, I didn’t care. Because I was experiencing the greatest rush of essence I had ever felt. It made all the other monster kills seem like an appetizer… no, a crumb on the plate from the previous meal! I laughed, perhaps somewhat maniacally.

But then, I felt something unusual. A strange feeling that normally told me I had Cast too much metal. That wasn’t unusual by itself, but the feeling was growing, and growing… At some point, Byron and his Air Folders picked up me and my team, but I was too distracted by what I was feeling. It was like some mechanical switch had been thrown, and instead of feeling bloated with essence, it was like I had none left at all. Then, it hit me. It couldn’t be, right? Surely no-one has that happen from just one fight?

But it lined up perfectly with what my mother had told me. I was becoming… a High Caster. Quickly, I threw my gaze up to the Moons. Fire was up there, and I did definitely consider getting Redsteel, like the fearsome foe I had just fought. Air was up there, too, though, and I wondered what kind of element *that* was. I had heard stories of a monster with a Rust element, but had never heard of a human gaining that power…

But the third moon up in the sky was the Green Moon. Life. Healing. The pure opposite of sharp, cutting metal. Few people ever said that they had an affinity for that moon, which was a shame given the ever-present need for Healers. Even in the Swordsman’s memories, only the imperial family had any kind of access to its powers. And yet… my mother had felt something, something that called her to the Green Moon when she advanced her Air element. It gave her Lightning, an element that made her famous across all Five States. But surely that was a fluke, right? Surely, I wouldn’t…

I wouldn’t…

But I needed to. I needed to advance, I needed to accomplish something. I don’t know what drove me forward, if it was the Swordsman or… something else, but I *needed* this element. I needed something that no-one had ever seen before. I needed to forge a path forward… and I needed to do it now.

I focused my gaze on the Green Moon. At first, I felt nothing. Then, I felt a building desire to look away, to pick something easier. But the need I had didn’t go away easily, so I kept looking, barely even blinking. People asked me what was wrong, but I ignored them. The feeling of being empty of metal almost consumed me. Perhaps I wasn’t becoming a High Caster after all? Perhaps something was actually quite wrong, here? These doubts and many more were pushed aside by a will that came from deep inside me. And, just as the Green Moon started to go over the horizon…

Something in me *snapped*. I… I had done it? I was a High Caster? So, then what would happen if I-

I passed out, having exerted myself for hours after the hardest and longest battle of my life. The strange will inside me wanted to see what I could do, now… but acknowledged that it could wait a little longer.