Part Three

Three days. Stuck in a room for three days with just one other person and a wolf had properly incubated the space with their smell, hanging miasma thick in the air. Nadier was washing himself off at the sink, the water pooling around him slowly seeped into a small pipe that flowed out. He checked his exposed torso. The rips in his aeronium skin were more pronounced. Small cuts and tears were common, the largest of which was a large palm-sized gap that swirled around his abdomen from where the sasquatch had hit him. Even within the dimmer than Twins light of the room, he could already feel his skin itching underneath fron the dark elves' innate allergy.

As he puts his shirt and leather armour back on, Ierba noted from his bed, “Today's the day of the fight.”

“How are you so sure? We can't tell time down here.” The dark elf slid into his vest and coat.

“Let's just say I have an added sense of light and darkness.”

“Right. Omniknight, it's in the name.”

Nadier took a seat on his bed next to Zen. The wolf curled up next to him as he watched his cellmate fiddle with his light magic.

“How's the light show coming?”

“Almost got it,” Ierba replied.

The mage had been toying with his spells, attempting to create a realistic light hologram of the room to fool the camera pygmy. Once done, coupled with the slowly rusting hinges of their door, would likely give them some amount of time a day to slip out of their cell unnoticed. So far though, Ierba had only managed to recreate their beds and persons on a small scale.

After Trini's visit, they had not been graced by any other notable individuals aside from the guards that brought them their food. They still received their daily supply of valasine moss, but unsure whether if the guards or the cooks were part of the plot, decided against communicating with anyone about it.

“You know you don't have to create a hologram of the whole room,” Nadier noted. “You just have to make one of me.”

Ierba paused, stone dead. “You could have said so earlier. I've already managed that!”

Nadier shrugged. “It was fun watching you squirm.”

Sarcastically, the knight jabbed, “I didn't realise you could experience joy. I thought the only emotion you knew of was being an emo prick.”

“What's an emo?”

“It's a bird that can't fly.”

“That's not a bird then.” Nadier sighed. After a short pause, he noted, “We should go over some battle tactics.”

“What's there to go over? We'll just wing it like last time.”

“For someone so astute at figuring out problems, you're not one for solutions.”

“We don't know what's waiting for us. No point in filling our heads with nonsense.”

“It's not nonsense!” Nadier corrected, his voice raising a timbre enough to raise Zen's head from her nap. “It's strategy.”

They were doing great. Such camaraderie that they were a house on fire, because they were willing to set the house on fire with them still inside so long as the other gets burned.

A sound slammed through the wall like a hammer smashing into ground. Zen leapt off the bed as Nadier stood to his feet, allowing the shadow wolf to slink back under his coat. The dark elf drew his daggers as the room rumbled loudly, dust falling from the ceiling. He loaded flammable gel into his right-hand dagger and magic negating neverrite into the left.

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Ierba got up a few seconds after, grabbing his spear off its lean against the wall. “This is us.”

As he said the penultimate line, the back wall of the room began to tremble as it slid slowly sideways with dramatic timing. Without another word, the two of them stepped through the newly opened archway and out into their new underground arena.

Even without the blue bioluminescent moss lighting the walls and floors of cave like a glow of seaweed on the waves of dark seas, Nadier could see clearly through the harsh black; That they were in a tunnel that lead out into a larger cavern. Unafraid, Ierba led the way forward, stepping into the shadows as if one with the shade his whole life. Nadier took a breath and followed.

Coming out from one of many caves, they stepped into cavern that was a field-wide and a tower tall. The rugged and blue-tinted landscape jarred scathingly with yellow cryst light installed in sequence along the wall, which was wider on one end than the other, forming a fan-shaped terrain. In the middle of the cavern amidst shifting rock formations, the ceiling and ground touched in a large spiralling pillar of cave stone surrounded by stalagmites and stalactites.

A white marble viewing platform covered by a visible meter thick of glass sat high up the wall of the narrow side. Within the viewing area sat Atro along with Trini and their cloaked bodyguard. Surrounding them were various figures Nadier recognised quickly as significant players in the criminal underground.

Ierba suggested, “I could break the glass and kill everyone inside.”

As Nadier's eyes adjusted in the dark, his elven vision focused in on the lines that ran the glass. “It's magically reinforced. And all those guards? Not without your Soul Arm.”

Ierba clicked his tongue in annoyance.

“Don't click your tongue at me! It's not my fault we're in this mess.”

“I'm not clicking at you!” Ierba sniped back, before proceeding to gesture around him. “It's all this I'm pissed at!”

Opposite them, white light poured out from another cave entrance. They deduced it must have been the entrance to another cell that had opened. Sure enough, a few seconds later, a singular towering figure of a giant man emerged.

Over the air, the fight was announced. Though unlike the one aboveground, the underground voice was formal, as if a butler taking orders was speaking.

“This week's bout will be between the team of light and darkness, Nadier the Wanderer and Ierba Lang, the Omniknight, against Angus 'The Giant Man' Askill and Ratface the dwarf. The odds are nine to thirteen. Everyone, place your bets.”

Nadier muttered, “Ratface?” However, he only saw the silhouette of the giant fading into view the bright cell lights slowly closed behind.

Ierba added in stunned tone, “Dwarf?”

Movement at the bottom of their peripheral vision brought their eyes down to a diamond coloured rat that had crawled up to them, with beady eyes glinting. It leapt at them as tiny magic circuits glowed over its body, entrails of frozen air glittering blue behind it as the form of the beast gave way, expanding in cold space until the form of Ratface the dwarf came into light - though his right hand remained the shape of a claw, albeit sized to a person.

The sharp appendage slashed down at the dark elf, shocked and unable to counteract. Ierba jumped in, tackling Nadier out of the strike's way while blocking the attack with the pole of his spear. Instantly, the claw turned into a hand and ice magic froze the stick solid. With his other hand, Ratface punched hard into the spear, snapping the handle in half. Ierba rode the momentum, drawing the spear half of his broken weapon back and aimed with a thrust to pierce the dwarf.

Snapping out of his daze, Nadier jumped forward and parried the spear attack. “No!” he exclaimed to Ierba. “I need him alive to cross north!”

“Are you insane?” The latter yelled back. “He's trying to kill us!”

“Omniknight's right,” Ratface replied from behind the elf. “Nothing personal.”

The dark elf was slowed, by both confusion and hesitation to act. The inability to kill on command crippled him as he turned to see the wererat pouncing with claws and teeth out. From under his cloak, Zen emerged in dancing shadows and slammed into the charging Ratface. The beast and beast-man tangled, ripping at each other with claws and fangs as they rolled away.

Perhaps finding himself at a disadvantage after the failed surprise attack, Ratface fully transformed into a rat, slipping out of the wolf's claw and scurrying off behind the stalagmite in retreat.

Ierba grabbed Nadier by the collar and pulled him close. “We're going to die if you don't get your act together.”

“I'm not killing him. We'll find another way.”

“Perhaps you're not killing him.” The knight pushed Nadier away. ”You better come up with a solution before I decide to solve it myself.”

Loud footsteps drew closer as the pair turned to Angus the giant stomping over in strides. The man obviously had giantism, given him being twice their size. It did not help that he was also a drakin, his skin chalked and layered with the thick scales of his race. His wings, larger than average but smaller than functional, unfurled behind him menacingly, almost as if they were daggers given to a Titan for increased intimidation. In Angus's hand was a battleaxe the size of a man, and with each heaving breath, the heat of the drakin's lung turned to steam in the cold aftermath of Ratface's ice magic.

The dwarf was nowhere to be seen, likely hiding in his minuscule form, waiting for an opportune moment to strike.

Knight and assassin stood side-by-side, weapons at the ready. Zen growled fiercely from behind.