My eyes opened. My mind was in a haze. I was still alive, apparently. I lost the match. I had been on the backfoot in fights before, fled, taken more than enough hits. But this felt different. If it hadn’t been an arena match, I would be dead.
I sat up carefully, expecting the world to come crashing into me. Instead, nothing happened. I felt fine, even good. I touched my ribs where the blade had pierced almost all the way through me; not even a scar was left.
I was in a room I hadn’t seen before. Everything in it seemed specifically selected to relax anyone who entered. The walls, floor, ceiling, and all of the furniture was a sandy white color, tinged slightly orange by the crackling light of a fireplace positioned on one end of the room. There were multiple fountains built into the wall with water gently flowing down them. A pleasant scent came from incenses that were interspersed randomly throughout the room.
“Awake, are ya?” a friendly voice called from across the room. The caller was a large man wearing the tight-fitted turquoise battle robes of the Arena somators. He had longer red hair that rested in a knot on his broad shoulders. He had no weapons from what I could see. Of course, a master somator doesn’t need weapons to give you a bad time.
“Yep, fully awake.” I hopped off the cot they put me on. I did my gear check: dagger?, sword, bow? Where in the realm did my weapons go? The last moments of the fight flashed in my mind. I dropped the bow and dagger out there. “Where’s my stuff?” I asked the somator.
“That’ll be over there, lad,” he said, pointing at a row of tall chests. Each of them had a rectangle of crystal on them, one of which had my name on it.
I opened the chest with my name and the inventory screen popped up. I grabbed and immediately equipped my bow and dagger. Something was off about them, though. I looked at them more closely, they both looked brand new. The wear from years of use and the blood from recent fights were both gone. Are these even the same ones?
“What happened to my weapons?” I demanded from the somator.
“Wyda, the smith, does nae let anything left in the arena go back ta their owner without going through her work first.”
The dagger actually looked sharper now than it did before. I turned it over a couple times and put it back at its home on my hip. “A consolation prize for almost dying,” I joked.
“Speaking of,” the somator said, grabbing something from a nearby cabinet. “For ye, in case I missed something ta heal.”
He handed me a glass bottle full of recognizable green goop. Affectionately called somatic slime, this stuff will give you a quick pump of every nutrient your body wants when being healed by magic. No accidentally disintegrating your muscles to heal a bone or using up all your oxygen and bio energy, making yourself braindead.
“Thanks,” I said apathetically. I wasn’t able to do healing magic advanced enough to need this and any healor worth their coin would give you some if you were buying services from them. “Hopefully I won’t be seeing you again,” I joked.
“I saw ye out there. You’re good enough that you’ll be back in here again in nae time.”
I’m not sure if he meant that as a direct insult or if that was supposed to be sincere. I thanked him one more time and left through the only apparent door in the room. The large door opened to a tiny hallway. Blue flame torches lit the only direction to go, to the right, down the curved hallway.
This hallway felt like an identical, smaller, verison of the hallway we used to get from the Underground to the arena. I walked down it until I reached a crossroad. There was a narrow staircase to my left with an illusory light at the top, but the hallway also continued curving on straight ahead. The torches lighting the hallway changed just past the threshold from a light blue to a deep purple. I decided to follow the new torches; I could easily come back to the staircase after.
I felt the temperature rising every step I took further down the hallway. There was also a growling rumble of noise. After about the same distance of walking, the hallway ended again. It smelled like sulfur and the air was practically boiling. There was no door on this side, though, just an open threshold.
I peeked around the corner and saw a forge taking up most of the space. Its fire roared much more loudly than furnaces normally did. In one corner was a grinding wheel spinning rapidly on its own and shaving down a floating blade into almost nothing. Right next to that was a hammer smashing randomly into plate armor on an anvil. The result was a deafening cacophony of sounds.
Nearby the forge was a small and thin woman focusing intently on an array of blades, hammers, scythes, and armor. She wore a well-fitted outfit that seemed to be one piece from her hands to her ankles; it was mostly a grayish black with a glowing blue stripe going down each arm. She had on a smith’s apron, and a pair of dark green goggles that I assumed were enchanted. Most notably though, her hair was a constantly shifting short wave of purple reminiscent of the torches outside.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The moment I stepped through the doorway, her head shot up and over to me. “By Hlek’s hammer, who told you you’re allowed in here?” she bellowed over the chaos of sounds.
“The somator told me about you,” I shouted back, pointing down the hall.
“Caradh? That pillock runs his mouth more than he should.” She set down the sword she was examining and turned fully toward me. Instantly, the forge, grind wheel, and hammer stopped. “So what do you want? Nothing here is for sale and I’m not doing personal projects.”
“You sharpened my dagger,” I said, grabbing at something to say.
She eyed the dagger at my hip. It suddenly flew at her and she caught it casually, turning it over to get a thorough look. “Something wrong with it?”
Before I could respond, she stabbed the blade toward the table. Instead of puncturing the wood, the blade was crushed and squished into a flat lump of metal on the end of the hilt. She laughed at my shocked reaction. “I can easily bend and shape metal to my whim.”
She grabbed the lump of metal and pulled out on it, reforming it back into a gentle curve of sharp death.
“And the finishing touch.” She held the base of the blade between her thumb and finger and drew them up along it, a pool of metal gathering behind her fingers. The already sharp edge became moreso, shining in the light. She brushed the extra metal back onto the back of the dagger in a quick motion. “Sharper than you could ever get with a grinding wheel, and no loss of mass.”
She swung it through the air a couple times and threw it in my direction, stopping it in the air in front of me. “Unless you’ve got Arena business to discuss, I’m going to kindly ask you to leave.” The forge, wheel, and hammer all resumed their pointless actions, drowning out any response I could have given. I would say her voice contained more condescension than kindness, but I didn’t have anything to do there for now, so I left.
I headed back through the tunnel and up the thin staircase which ended in a wall. There was a pad on the wall, so I channeled energy into it. The wall slid downward into the ground, leaving a doorway for me to exit.
I stepped out, the wall returning behind me. Before I could get my bearings, a man approached me. He wore a tight suit with a robe that forked into three points on the back; they looked expensive, but elegant.
"Faelen of Khosim?"
I hesitated. Almost no one in this city should have known who I was. Why am I being approached? “Yes, I’m Faelen. Who are you?”
He produced a small scroll and forced it into my hands. He spoke in a slightly elevated, almost snobbish tone, “this is for you, from my employer.” He immediately began walking away. He was on the shorter side, but his strides carried him away like a swift wind.
I unfurled the scroll. Inside was an illusiacom and a small gem. I turned the smooth black rectangle of obsidian over in my hands a few times. Most people had illusiacoms to be able to quickly contact a small number of select people, but I tended to avoid them unless it was part of a job I’d been hired for. The gem that was included had a counterpart it was paired to. That would allow me to contact whoever was on the other end, but it could also be used to find me by a summonor.
New Quest: The Mysterious Note
I pressed the gem into the small slot on the front of the device. The pale clear gem turned a deep shade of green, indicating it was connected on the other side.
“Hello?” I asked to it.
“Salway,” came a husky voice. My blood ran cold. Salway was a very old greeting from a dead language. The only people who used it now were associated with the Raven Court, a crime organization that had its influences in every part of my home country.
“Your worker gave me a scroll with this illusiacom.” I wanted to handle this delicately. Best to let him control the flow of the conversation.
“Aurelio isn’t a worker, we’re all kin here. I have a request to make of you. If you do what I ask, I can promise you will not regret it.” His words were like honeyed venom, luring you in with the promise of nectar but with the subtle threat of poison beneath the sweetness.
“What is it you need done?”
“I cannot give you tasks directly until you have that illusiacom bound to your mindlink. Too many curious ears around. Come to the Cliffs in Hex 10; you’ll find you’re right at home here.”
The green gem faded before I could respond. He had severed the connection for now. I pulled the gem out and placed it into one of the dozens of storage slots on the back of the illusiacom.
If I was right, he was part of a group you did not want to be on the wrong side of. I had done well to avoid them throughout my career, but turning down a direct invitation could be fatal.
New Objective: talk to the mysterious sender
I’ve seen these messages a couple of times, I should check on what “quests” I actually have going on.
Show current quests. A screen appeared showing me a handful of different objectives: talk to the mysterious note sender, find a market. And one I hadn’t expected, Revenge in the Arena: defeat the arena challenger who defeated you.
I chuckled to myself. Apparently “quests” included things that I had a subconscious desire to do, even if I hadn’t specifically thought about it yet. The Arena will have to wait, though. I decided I should collect my Arena winnings and find the market first, then head to Hex 10 to speak with whoever was on the other side of the illusiacom.