I really don’t like the concept of making up the plan as you go along, because if you’re that desperate you definitely screwed the pooch already.

When you’ve been taught from a young age that preparation and careful application of thought and restraint are key to controlling your greatest gift, it gets ingrained in you that to do spontaneous things is pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. Magic was already unpredictable enough when mages were doing everything they could to control its variables. I was fortunate that I’d had a few years to teach me that the ability to think under pressure was just as vital to my survival.

I was barely able to keep pace with Alverd and Alicia as we ran down the last corridor to the Arena proper, as discussing the plan between my inhaled breaths wasn’t easy. Once inside, we would have to go to the dragon stables to try and stop Marcus’s men from poisoning the dragons of Alicia’s remaining family. It was a desperate gambit and we were racing against the clock.

The Arena was connected to the Castle, but housed in a separate part of the volcano. It was a repurposed crater that had been formed when part of the volcano had exploded out the side many centuries ago; the Ishmarians had built their arena within it, taking advantage of its circular, widening design to build a stadium to showcase their brutal ascension ceremonies. It had two entrances, one that was open to the common folk of the castle town, which required them to trek through a subterranean tunnel, and one for those in the castle who merely had to follow the twisting halls towards it.

Much like the Castle of Brimstone, the Arena was a massive place that housed several key structures within the stone interior of the volcano, including a kennel for the dragons so they could be prepped for the fight ahead, a barracks for the royals to check their equipment, and large amphitheater-style seating for the commoners to occupy. The bottom of the Arena itself was covered in rocky protrusions for dragons to land on, along with plenty of nasty stalagmites for falling people to be impaled on.

Alicia filled us in as we ran. “There’s a special waterworks system that we use to carry water from the ground floor of the arena up to the stables. If Marcus’ men take control of it, they could poison the entire reservoir and spread the poison to every stable in the Arena. The water would be delivered to the royal stables and nobody would be the wiser. We have to make that our first target.”

We pushed through the doors at the end of the corridor. The ornately decorated halls of the castle gave way to the black stone of the volcanic rock that made up the arena’s walls. The irrigation system used to supply water to the royal dragon stables was located on the bottom floor, and was heavily regulated by guards. That presented our first obstacle. If Marcus’s soldiers were already down there, it was a safe bet that they would be watching for possible tampering with the plan. Fortunately, they would be easy to spot with their gaudy armor and their numeric identification, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

The second obstacle were the dragons themselves. Any nearby stables would be full of dragons that would likely attack us if Marcus’ men decided it was in their best interest to throw them at us to buy time to carry out their plan. And these would be mature dragons, not younglings like the ones Edgar was keeping in his lab. The image of a dragon’s teeth and claws ripping flesh flashed in my mind, but only for a moment. I refused to get distracted, especially by something so worrisome as the potential gruesomeness of my imminent death.

No one wanted to consider the worst possibility: the dragons were already poisoned and that the next part of Marcus’s scheme was already in motion. We had to believe that we could still make it in time. If we didn’t, I didn’t think I could bear seeing that heartbreak in Alicia’s eyes. No. We had to succeed.

But I still had doubts. If Marcus had arranged for our escape so he could have witnesses ready to place the blame for the King’s murder on our shoulders, would he have been so brilliant or paranoid enough to have a contingency plan in case something went wrong? Only a few guards had come to the throne room. It stank to high heaven. Every bone in my body wanted to believe Marcus was counting on us to put in one last appearance before his plan came full circle.

Yet another fanfare sounded as we descended the stairs to the dragon pens. We could hear the crowd’s cheering surge through the empty halls and rise to a crescendo as the tournament geared up to the main event. The cries of the masses spurred us to move faster. I had to abandon any further thinking about what Marcus’ convoluted plan might have been, if only so I could concentrate on following Alicia.

We arrived at the entrance to the stables to find a bloodbath. The area in front of the entrance was awash in blood, and the bodies of six guards lay on the floor and slumped against the walls. Four of the guards hadn’t even had time to draw their weapons; the two at the back still clutched their swords even in death, their armor torn to shreds. Some even had their throats slashed, while others had puncture marks straight through their torsos. Someone had gone to great lengths to ensure these guards were dead, and to say it was excessive was an understatement.

Alicia averted her gaze, but strode over to the door. These people had been surprised before they had a chance to defend themselves. It was violence beyond what was necessary to keep them quiet, and was no doubt at Marcus’ command. I felt bile rising up in my throat, and it wasn’t because I was squeamish at the sight of all the blood.

Alverd knelt next to one of the men who’d managed to draw his sword before dying. He lifted the man’s visor, but was greeted by a vacant stare. He had most likely died before Marcus’ men decided to turn him into a pincushion. Alverd closed the man’s eyes, then slid the visor back into place. I took the liberty of checking the other man, but he, too, looked as though he’d been killed by the first or second blow. Small mercy, I suppose. I crept over to the door, listening for any sign of the enemy. Hearing nothing, I gingerly pushed the door open. The sight I beheld was no better than the mess we had found outside.

The next room, where they kept the dragon feed, was worse than I feared. The bodies of eight men and women lay strewn about on the ground. The difference was that these people wore the simple clothes of servants. Even if they had struggled, they would have been no match for heavily armed soldiers. They had died in pain and confusion, and their innocent blood now stained Marcus’s hands. Alicia brought her free hand up to cover her mouth; whether it was to suppress a sob or her gag reflex I couldn’t say. Seeing dead guards or soldiers was one thing. Seeing dead civilians was another entirely.

The sound of metal scraping against something diverted our attention. There was a large reinforced door leading to the kennels proper, and the sound emanated from behind it. Alverd slowly inched to the door, and pulled it open slightly, which wasn’t easy given that it was massive and heavy. I moved to the other side of the door and peeked through the crack in the door.

There were eight men. All of them wore the gilded armor of royal Ishmarian soldiers, but they also had the personal seal of the guard of the First Prince on their shoulder plates. Some of them were still holding blood-stained swords. A couple of them were handling something out of my line of vision while the others were on guard for any interference.

I focused my power into a small ball in my hand. Unlike the other spells in my repertoire, this particular spell wasn’t destructive. Instead, when it was released, it would illuminate the area around it with a strong light. It was basically the spell I had used to guide Alverd and myself through the cold mountain pass between Guilford and Ishmar. When I applied more power to it, however, it would release a blinding radiance and deafening sound that would gain us the opening we needed.

I tossed the little ball of light into the room, and Alverd quickly held the door shut. There was a sound like thunder, muffled by the door, and then screaming. Alverd flung the door wide and charged in, sword raised. Within the space of a second, he lunged at the man closest to him, aiming for the small gap between the man’s helmet and his breastplate. The man’s neck burst into a crimson jet and as he fell to the ground, Alverd ran for the next two soldiers.

The closer of the two couldn’t react in time, because he was still dazed by the explosion. Alverd batted his sword aside and thrust into the unarmored area below the man’s breastplate. He crumpled and fell to the side, and Alverd pulled his sword from the man’s corpse. He whirled to face the last man.

Meanwhile, Alicia had gone into a berserker rage, and justifiably so. She had run into the room screaming at the top of her lungs and made a beeline for two men standing near the door. She ran up to her first victim and swung her maul with both hands, dealing an uppercut blow that connected with a sickening thud. The man’s head hit the ceiling, propelled by the sheer force of the blow, before crumpling back to the floor in a lifeless heap. Alicia turned to face the second man, and rushed him.

The man recovered just in time to see Alicia barreling toward him. He could do nothing but scream shortly before Alicia caved his head in with a two-handed overhead swing. The scream itself was cut short as the maul smashed his skull like a glass mug. Alverd finished off his last opponent with a quick strike to the leg, followed by another stab through the gut, just underneath the breastplate.

The last two men weren’t in any position to oppose us. As Alverd and Alicia went after their targets, I reached for the moisture in the water tub behind them, solidifying it into a lance of ice, while the rest flowed out of the tub and around the feet of the second. The massive javelin of pure magical ice punched through the first man’s chest, skewering him cleanly, and he twitched helplessly for a moment before he expired. The second man had his feet frozen to the ground, and he dropped his sword in his frantic struggle to free himself. He did not succeed.

Alicia came over and punched the man l had frozen and he crumpled to the ground like a house of cards. With the threat gone, we turned our attention to the matter at hand. Over by the far side of the wall, there was a set of chutes. The chutes were used to supply water to communal tanks that provided water by way of irrigation to kennels on each floor of the arena, in order to lessen human involvement (and thus, casualties) in dragon feeding. By one chute, labeled “Royal Kennel,” lay many vials of the poison. All of them were empty.

We were too late.

Alicia roared and hit the wall with her maul furiously, shattering a healthy portion of it in her rage. There was no stopping it now. The only hope we had now was to save Alicia’s family from Marcus and expose his treachery to the people. And I had no idea on just how to do it. Alicia, however, did.

She pulled the unconscious soldier up from the floor and shook him awake. I noticed that her eyes were mad with fury, a sure sign that her berserker rage was bordering on a psychotic break. Any pity I felt was quickly swept away by my remembrance of Marcus’s crimes, however. The soldier was obviously not the bravest in the bunch. As soon as he saw the look of unchecked bloodlust in Alicia’s eyes, he started simpering like the coward he was.

“Please! Please don’t kill me! I was only following my orders!”

The fool’s words only fueled Alicia’s rage. She shook the man like a rag doll, then screeched in his face.

“Where is my brother? Start talking or your life is forfeit!”

Maybe it was just because I had bad memories, but it kind of unnerved me to see Alicia resorting to intimidation to get the soldier to comply with her demands. Given all she’d been through, with barely any time to stop and take stock of it, the poor girl was definitely fraying at the edges and was on the verge of losing what restraint she had left. Part of me wanted to point this out, but in her current state, she’d never listen. Another other part of me, though, kind of wanted this guy to get what was coming to him.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The blubbering soldier tried to compose himself to no avail. “P-p-please! I don’t know. I was told to put the poison in the troughs. We weren’t supposed to let anyone get in our way. Please, I didn’t kill any of them! I swear! Please, release me!” The man continued to cry pitifully. Alicia snarled and lifted her maul.

Alverd caught her arm, however. When she glared at him, her eyes practically spat venom at him; however, he still gripped her arm firmly. I could see him straining to do so, but he didn’t waver. “To kill an unarmed man like this is beneath you. Do not become like your brother or sister.” He gave her a look that was firm, solemn, and slightly judgmental; it was the look of a parent giving their child one last chance to come clean about something they were hiding.

She glared at him, but her eyes had lost a bit of their edge. “Fine. You deal with the fool.” She flung his body back onto the ground. “But what must be done has to be done. He can’t get away with it.” She wanted to look tough, but Alverd could see her hand twitching. She had taken more lives, and it was weighing on her now. Soon that weight would catch up to her. And knowing Alverd, he was going to find a way to lighten that burden any way he could.

Alverd glanced over at me. “Perhaps you’d like to handle this, Kuro?”

In times like these, a different kind of intimidation was called for.

Alverd came over to me and whispered into my ear. “Just scare him a little, Kuro. He’ll talk if you just rattle him enough.”

I sighed. “In my opinion, this scum doesn’t deserve to live. And if he does, who’s to say he won’t run straight to Marcus or Eliza?”

Alverd made a stern face. “Kuro. Don’t make me repeat myself. Killing this man in cold blood is not the right thing to do. I’m trusting you with this. Do not let me down.” He stared into my eyes with a very deliberate expression that I recognized from years of seeing it just like this. It was the closest Alverd ever got to threatening me.

Whether he’d make good on his threat was never in question. It was more a reminder for me to recognize when I’d gone too far, or had the potential to go too far. But in those cases, I’d had no emotional stake. The first time I’d seen that look, I’d been idly rolling a ball of lightning in my hand in the middle of interrogating a slave trader whom I’d doused in water first. That time, the slaver had walked away, albeit into a locked jail cell where he was still rotting as far as I knew.

However, I didn’t care so much if this man died. He was a monster. He worked for a monster. And if need be, I’d show him that there were much, much scarier monsters out in the world. Namely, me. I thought Alverd would understand. He was just as furious as me. He had to understand that what was about to happen was necessary. To that end, I put my plan in motion.

I moved over to the nearby trough and picked up a big handful of the slop within it; it stank of things I couldn’t even mention. It made my eyes water. I came back and began slathering it all over the man’s face. His eyes widened in recognition and he began sobbing uncontrollably. I waved my staff and levitated him in the air, drifting him toward the chute and pushing him in headfirst, dangling him halfway. He began thrashing wildly, screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Hey now, you shouldn’t move around so much,” I cajoled. “You do that, and you might just make me lose my concentration. I imagine that would be… unpleasant.”

The soldier whimpered, his movement ceasing. I pulled him out of the chute, although he remained floating in the air. He locked eyes with me, awaiting my inquiry. I stared back, then voiced my question. “So what were your orders, then? What did Marcus command you to do?”

He answered immediately. “I-I can’t say. Don’t do this, you don’t have to do this…” The man squeezed more crocodile tears out of his eyes to emphasize his statement.

I shook him violently. His limbs flailed like a ragdoll. “What is Marcus’s plan? This is the last time I ask nicely. You don’t answer, or you jerk me around, I’ll dump you down the chute and it’s chow time.”

The man kept on blubbering like a damn fool. I was starting to lose my temper. Just because I could, I slammed the hapless soldier against the wall, his armor rattling like a tin pot full of stones.

“Kuro!” Alverd cried. His voice was stern and disapproving, maybe even angry. I ignored him. I didn’t care all that much that I was hurting him, which surprised me. Even though I ended up playing the pragmatist more often than not, I didn’t relish doing these kinds of things. Though the man was a coward, he was still unarmed. But then again, I’d always been the one to conduct the interrogations. I knew that Alverd would never do this. He didn’t have the stomach for it.

I didn’t understand Alverd’s concept of honor, or the concept of honor in general. He’d kill a man in a fair fight, but the second his opponent threw down his sword, Alverd couldn’t be bothered to finish him off. It never made sense to me. Now I could feel his judgmental eyes boring a hole into the back of my skull. A stray thought crossed my mind, a thought that I’d held down in the depths of my heart, hoping it would never see the light of day.

Alverd was the knight. The shining example of honor and chivalry. And I was Alverd’s shadow, the one who lived out of sight, doing the things he would never do. But I was tired of it. I hated having to sully my hands with the things that he would never bother with. And now, with this witless buffoon crying like a slapped child in front of me, I finally just gave into my simmering resentment and took it out on the bastard. Even though I knew that it made me a damned hypocrite, something I loathed almost more than anything else in this world, it was necessary.

I slammed him against the wall twice more. The man’s cries devolved into painful whimpers. I was wasting my time. This fool wouldn’t help us. But at the same time, I knew that what I was about to do would earn me my best friend’s scorn.

“Last chance to talk,” I yelled. “Where is Marcus, and how is he going to deal with his siblings?” The man choked out a few words in a broken voice.

“Please. I have a family…if I betray him, they’ll die! Have mercy- ” he sputtered, and a bit of blood flew out of his mouth. I didn’t have the patience to play games with this joker anymore.

“You had a family?” I snarled at him. “So did the people you murdered, I’ll bet.” I let go of the magic field holding him and pushed him down the chute. His screams didn’t last long; he hit the bottom quickly, and armor or not, little stood in the way of a hungry dragon and its fangs.

Alverd glared at me. “What the hell was that for? I told you not to kill him!”

I returned Alverd’s heated gaze. “He had no intention of helping us, Alverd. At this point, leaving him alive so he could warn Marcus was the worst thing we could’ve done. I made the decision, so his blood is on my hands. I can live with that. Just like I have for the past five years.”

My friend looked at me with a distaste I had never seen in his eyes before. I felt a tiny twinge of regret. Ever since we had left Marevar, I had put on a strong front. I needed to be the heartless, practical one; I had to be strong in ways he couldn’t understand, yet at the same time, I needed his approval to validate it. If that indicated weakness, well then, dammit, I was weak.

Alverd’s distaste switched to anger. Seeing that only egged me on. I finally let him have it.

“You act like you’re so much better than me. And maybe you are. But not by much. You’re human, too, and no matter how much you try to hide it, I know there’s something somewhere in you that agrees with me. These people are monsters, Alverd. I don’t feel any worse about killing these bastards than I would stepping on a cockroach.”

Alverd’s face grew fierce. “Maybe they are monsters, Kuro. But choosing to act with dignity and integrity is what separates us from them. I still follow my teachings because they taught me to be better than those who took advantage of those lesser than them.”

I snorted. “Look around you, Alverd! Do you see any more Marevarians here? The only ones I know of are back home, probably slaving away in a field somewhere while some Ishmarian whips them like cattle. You think we’re gonna get anywhere by taking the high road?”

He wasn’t going to be intimidated by me, so he tried one last time to appeal to my non-existent better half. “I know things have never been easy for you, Kuro, but that doesn’t mean you get to play the victim. I’ve made peace with myself—”

That was the last straw. It was such a lie. And I wasn’t gonna let it slide. “That’s a load of crap and you know it! I’m sick of you getting to play the hero of justice card! Do you know what it’s like to live in your shadow? Watching you soak up the praise and adulation from everybody we meet? Meanwhile, I have to play the devil’s advocate, so we don’t end up broke and sleeping in a stable!”

He staggered back, his mouth agape. I pressed my advantage. “You’re on my case for living in the past. But you know what? I haven’t moved on. I can’t forget. Not like you. And I don’t know how you could. So if I kill somebody who would just as easily do the same in my position, excuse me if I don’t feel any remorse for it.”

“You had everything: a mother and father, friends, comrades! And you dishonor all of them by choosing not to slay the ones who took them from you! I had nothing until I met you and Laura! NOTHING! And I’m willing to fight for what little I did have. How can you just stand there and tell me that you don’t feel anything?! Is that the kind of man you are?! If I die in the next hour, are you gonna forget about me, too? Do I matter as little to you as everyone else you’ve left behind?!”

I was so busy screaming at Alverd, so busy trying to avoid crying during the last part of my tirade, that I didn’t see it coming. He punched me. Hard. His steel gauntlet slammed into my face with enough force to knock me on my ass. When I looked up, Alverd was breathing hard, like he had just run a marathon. I’d done it. I’d finally pushed him too far, and now he was gonna speak his true feelings. Alicia stepped back, either out of shock or just wanting to get out of the way, or both.

“You think I don’t feel anything, Kuro? Do you think I’m that heartless?” Alverd sneered at me. His fist stopped shaking and he uncurled it, the fingers clanking as he did so. “You think that I don’t hear the screams at night, or see the blood on my hands, or feel Laura’s ragged breath on my neck when I close my eyes? I have my own nightmares of killing, watching my comrades fall one by one, how they all bought time for others to flee with their lives.”

Alverd sniffed. I saw that he was now struggling to hold back his own tears. “ I abandoned my post to find you and Laura. Do you think I didn’t suffer when I made that choice? I told myself so many times, ‘it wouldn’t have mattered if you stayed, the wall would have never held’? I make rationalizations, too, Kuro. But that doesn’t mean I get to blame the world for suffering through them.”

He leaned forward and grabbed me by the collar of my robe. He yanked me up so I could see straight into his eyes. “I don’t blame anyone but myself, Kuro. But thinking that killing for the sake of others is justification enough isn’t right. And if that’s what you think, that becoming a murderer like Marcus or Eliza, is something you’re okay with…” I felt something cold against my neck. I realized in horror that it was his sword. “Then the man I called a friend died a long time ago and has become an enemy of everything that I stand for.”

I saw the stark, utter disapproval in his eyes, and I felt a dam burst inside of me. I felt betrayed. And it hurt me in a way I didn’t think was possible. My breath became shallow and my heart sped up, but it had nothing to do with the sword caressing my jugular. His words cut deeper than any sword ever could. Finally, he let me go and I fell to my knees. I heard him sheath his sword with a little too much force. Alverd backed away from me.

I’d never felt so empty inside. I thought that watching Laura die was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen in my life. That the way it made me feel would be the worst thing I’d ever go through. But somehow, watching my friend threaten me on the grounds that he thought of me as a monster? It felt as though someone had carved a hole in my chest and ripped out my heart. I didn’t know what to do.

But I didn’t have time to process that particular revelation, as Alicia broke the ice with a decisive and terse cough. Alverd turned away from me, but I could see his irritation still resided with him in the way his head was bowed. Alicia had the good sense not to bring up what had happened, but it would have to be addressed sooner or later. Until then… I decided the best thing I could do was not add any more fuel to the fire. I’d keep my mouth shut, for the time being.

We had more pressing concerns, anyway.

Only after we had returned to the ash-colored halls of the arena proper did it strike me that we still had no plan. Alverd turned to Alicia. “Is there anything we can do at this point?” His voice sounded stiff.

Alicia shook her head. “The only thing I can think of is to warn my siblings directly. They should still be getting ready, putting on their armor and such. If we hurry, we could probably catch them before the Tournament actually begins. But it’s a long jog up to the barracks on the sixth floor, and the halls are likely to be crawling with Marcus’s toadies by now.” The two fell back into silence.

I took stock of the situation. The only way to get to the barracks where the rest of Alicia’s siblings were was to climb five stories, and we were rapidly running out of time. As if to punctuate that, I heard a dragon screech from the direction we had come; it had finished its impromptu meal.

As I turned, inspiration struck. Perhaps the most idiotic idea I had ever come up with popped into my head. “Hey.” I sheepishly pointed in the direction of the kennel, intentionally avoiding Alverd’s gaze. “I have an idea.”