The dark elf was scanning the parchment given to him. It detailed a crudely drawn map of the area from the memories of the dwarf that scouted it. The gladiators' cells surrounded the main cavern in which the battles took place. Using their door as north for directions in an unnavigatable underground, there were two guard barracks east and west of the prison, with about 30 guards rotating within each of the patrols. Small rooms between the corridor denoted offices, armouries, temporary cells, storage, and other miscellaneous space. An alchemical lab in the southwest stood out. To the south was the exit out. On another parchment were partially mapped outlines of the other floors, including the first where his old cell was, and a barely renditioned entrance of the third that ended abruptly at a locked vault.

“Are you sure about the accuracy of this?” The dark elf asked the dwarf sitting in the bed opposite. “Raven?”

“What?” The female dwarf replied. “Of course I'm sure! You have a problem with my memory, Arborior?”

“Please, Arbor is fine,” Winterwayn replied. “Don't want you biting your tongue.”

“Why you litte-!”

Raven's stout face reddened. Her short blonde hair that stuck in sharp feathered clumps ruffled. Her stained beige shirt, large and long enough to act as a baggy dress to the shin, stretched with her anger. Her eyes were jaundiced, but more as a lingering physical trait of her metamorphosis than any issue with her health. She was more than a capable bare-knuckled brawler, and she was about to prove that.

Before she could pounce, her wife, the half elf next to her, stopped the dwarf with a raise of an arm. “Now, love, they're going to have to work together to get out of here. Can't have you killing their cellmate... again.”

Winterwayn added, “No idea how you two are together, Enthes.”

The hume shrugged with a grin. “Love finds a way.”

Zenith, the young shadow wolf pup, lets out a yawn from beside Winterwayn, unaware of her surrounding safe for the comfort of her head on her master's lap.

The dark elf shook his head and asked Raven, “What about the others? Are they ready?”

Raven nodded. “Ierba's just bidding his time upstairs. Aramas has his little resistance is gathering weapons. Once we're done mapping out The Arena, they'll have a signal ready for everyone.”

Winterwayn looked around the plain walls of the cell, thinking they were watched. But they had checked every inch of the minimalistic prison and there were no gaps for peek holes. A grave mistake on behalf of their jailers, he felt. Yet, the screeching sense of captivity had boosted his paranoia.

“Well then, Raven,” he said gleefully. “Why don't you go out for another round of cartography?”

She snapped back, “Stopped ordering me around! I don't have to listen to you!” Static sparked off her body as her electric magic reacted to her anger.

Again, Enthes held her back with a gentle smile. “Love, they're almost there. Let's just play along for a little longer.”

Raven clicked her tongue in annoyance. After a moment, her body, shirt and all, shrunk down into a yellow raven, its wings snapping with short jumps of electricity. A streak of black circled its nape as the last remnant of the creature's natural colour before the magic circuits dyed the skin. The bird swooped off the bed with ease and slipped out of their food slot in a low glide.

With their meeting finally over, Winterwayn stretched and laid down on his hard bed. Turning his head, he scanned Enthes's expression as she continued to watch him.

“What?” he crudely asked.

Though they were the same age in years, biologically, the woman would be 200 years older than him, yet she looked a hundred years younger. Messy strawberry red hair drew people's attention to her physical appearance, but the part that cut souls were her heterochromic eyes, with the left the green of wood elves while the right a brown of earth.

Stolen story; please report.

Enthes spoke as a mother would to a teenage child. “You know, seeing as you can't have everyone like you, she recommends you to try at least for her not to hate you.”

“When you say 'her', do you mean your girl, or yourself?”

She shrugged. “Does it matter if she meant herself or love? She just thinks you should do so.”

“Good advice then, clearly understandable,” he answered sarcastically. “But I don't really need you to like me. Once we're out of here, I won't actually need you all for anything. I'll be returning to my perfect life.”

“She wonders what that would be?”

He shrugged. “Bars. Drinks. Women. Mercenary work pays really well.”

“Well, Arborior, she hopes you'll remember this conversation when you're older and wiser. Might just look back and find your face to be red.”

He snipped back. “Just Arbor is fine.”

“Ardorier.”

“Nardor”

“Nadorier.”

“Nadier!”

Nadier snapped back to the present. His eyes immediately darted up the wall of the cell where the camera in the corner, though encased in ice, continued to watch over them.

Ratface exclaimed, “Are ya' listening?”

“Yeah. Just...- You were saying?” Nadier rubbed his temple, confusion at the jumping timelines giving him a slight headache.

Ierba had one brow raised. “Another flashback?”

“Flashback?” Ratface enquired. “Ya' getting ya' memories back?”

“No.”

“Yes,” the knight corrected. “Seems like our friend here had either escaped or have been released from the place two hundred years ago.”

“Huh... maybe ya'd remember how to do it again. Anything helpful in ya' noggin?” Ratface asked, pointing to the blueprint he had found from a supply closet he had been hiding in. “I've yet to find ya' Trini, so 'heads up would be good on where to look next.”

Nadier sighed and looked at the map. The layout of their floor had scarcely changed. To the south was a stairwell, now with an added elevator, that either back up to the surface or further down into the harsher parts of-

“The Arena,” Nadier confirmed. “That's what we called this place.”

“Great,' Ratface said sarcastically, glancing up at the frozen camera. “Still no help though.” The ice was only going to refract the room for a while, and the longer they spoke, the more suspicious the distorted image would be.

Nadier continued, “She's not here.” He wasn't sure what gave him confidence to say it. Perhaps his memories were reacting with his instinct.

“These are all the prints I've found.”

“There must be more. Other buildings. Secret pathways or bridging tunnels. The viewing box from inside the cavern,” he points to the place on the blueprint. “The exits doesn't link to any of the other blueprints.”

“There's a small army out there. Snooping any more than this will take days.”

The dark elf scanned the blueprints again and noticed, on the ground floor - or top - depending on how you looked at the underground structure, there was a single cell that was built at the end of a long hallway with nothing near or around it.

“What this?” he asked.

Ratface shrugged. “It's one of first level cells, from back up in the public arena. Heard 'em guards say it's empty though.”

Ierba asked, “Is something special about it?”

“I don't know.” He addressed Ratface. “Can you map out a route to it for me? I feel like it should be my first stop once we can leave. You investigate our surroundings, and I my past.”

The dwarf shrugged. “Fine. Ya' funeral. But once I find a way out ma'self, I'm gone, ya' hear?”

“Sure,” Nadier agreed. “Whatever.”

Ratface grumbled before transforming into a rat and letting the ice melt from the camera. He then slipped out of the food slot the same way Raven had 200 years ago. Nadier could not help but feel a sense of forebode overwhelmed alongside a tinge of déjà vu.

Alone with Ierba again, the elf noted, “I definitely know you from two hundred years ago.”

“And I told you,” Ierba answered. “That's not possible. I know my life, and I've never been here.”

“I'm sure it's you though. The single cell on Ratface's blueprints? I recognise it from my flashback. That's where you lived.”