Miron and Kei needed some time before they could swallow a single piece of the fabulous meal. In the private room there was now a deafening silence, for neither of them had the heart to speak. Their dinner was delicious as promised by their torturers, even by sight - wonderfully tender meat cooked with various spices, grilled fish with creamy sauces, various salads, and colorful toasts, not to mention drinks of every kind and explosive flavor. A mountain of mouth-watering fruit cakes completed the meal that any child, or even any being, would want to enjoy at least once in their life.

It was truly a royal banquet for the condemned. Feeling soon that his stomach was almost full, Kei raised his blond head and looked around, the place was an imposing room whose walls were covered with a shimmering golden wallpaper, but which inevitably bore unreadable spells, like all the other places in Athok, and whose purpose was to keep the deceptive beauty and stifling riches of this cursed place. The high stone ceiling revealed various bloody and tragic stories that had taken place in each of the eras that followed each other in this land of sacrilege, since its foundation, and where a chandelier in the shape of a mermaid swayed gracefully. After several minutes, the partial form siren still continued to move, while emitting high-pitched, frightening sounds, betraying endless pain and despair, unmistakably reflecting the kind of existence Athok's prisoners led, or more accurately were made to lead. Instead of calming him down a little, this observation only increased Kei's repulsion for everything that represented the refuge. Unable to hold back any longer due to the worrisome and growing fear he felt inside, the young blond turned to his so-called "lover" and immediately felt exasperation wash over him as the latter, with a sharp calm, enjoyed their delicious and final meal.

"Please don't eat like nothing happened and tell me you've come up with a plan to get us out of this... tragedy, I mean now!".

Although Miron heard his friend, he continued to eat the delicious meal, seemingly indifferent to their excruciating situation.

"Miron!" Kei insisted, annoyed. I'll have you know that the game or tournament, or maybe what they call it, starts in about three hours. And the time is running out! So...!

Miron, exasperated, sighed loudly and finally answered...

"Do you really think I do nothing but eat while I too am being drawn irresistibly towards this latent death? It may not be obvious, but I'm doing my best to find a way to save us from this whole ridiculous abomination. However, I don't know what they really intend to do to us. Therefore, I can only act if I have the most important information."

"I see what you mean," his friend remarked, impressed and a little comforted by his friend's behavior. "All right, then. But... what did Leon teach you?"

Miron looked at him angrily.

"I know you talked to him this afternoon. And I'll stop you right there, I wasn't spying on you. "

The young prodigy shook his head.

"I don't really understand what you're implying. But anyway, you know Leon. He's completely crazy. That's precisely why he's the only person you can be perfectly sure of always getting the truth. I didn't really understand what he was talking about. But I think that Sirkol and his filthy deer use merciless flesh-eating beasts to hunt and kill children who are condemned to this monstrous game. And I guess what the old filthy mage told me earlier somehow confirmed it for me."

"In other words, they would throw us into a huge pit filled with hungry beasts and watch us happily fight for our lives until we died. Well, only in our case."

Miron put on a false expression of extreme astonishment...

"Oh, but you see! You're not as stupid as you or those idiot guards think you are."

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"Miron!" Kei groaned, "This is no time for jokes, and besides, it hurts me when you make fun of me like that."

Miron offered him a brief smile.

"Okay, I'm sorry."

But just as Kei was about to ask his question again, a group of five boys suddenly entered the room with a loud noise and casually approached the table. They were all about seventeen years old. Like Kei and Miron, they wore conventional uniforms, but they differed from the others in the quality of the fabric and design, which was more sophisticated and quite decent. This clearly revealed the fact that the boys belonged to a small, restricted circle of young people who performed the low tasks of the upper echelons of Athok in order to obtain certain important privileges such as good meals, much greater freedom, less sad rooms and quite enviable clothes, which meant, in other words, that the boys conformed to a consented slavery, but the adherence to it was rigorous and mostly based on unfair favoritism. The little chief-Kolof shamelessly took a piece of glossy meat and ate it voraciously, looking playfully at Miron.

"But my pretty little girls, we really have a delicious meal here! You must share it with your friends!"

Miron returned his smile.

"And you just pointed that out so well Kolof. We only share with friends. A meaning that even a fool like you must surely be able to understand."

Kolof spat out the meat and carelessly threw away the leftovers, then he leaned towards Miron, both hands on the table, a cruel smile on his lips making his already unpleasant face even more ugly if possible.

"I'm very happy that they chose you out of all the others for their entertainment tonight, Miron. So I suggest you finish all these dishes, for yourself and your clown friend here, who will certainly never have any more. And let me tell you a little secret, Mr. Bigmouth," he continued with an expression of false commiseration. "The other side is, as most people say, dark and unforgiving."

"And you say it's a secret!" Miron exclaimed, openly mocking his interlocutor, who frowned. "If you know it, Kolof, that means everyone already knows it. But you don't have to worry either, little stooge, Kei and I will survive and entertain you in our own way. But between you and me, I really wonder why I'm bothering to explain it to you again, Kolof. Because let's be honest, I don't have anything to look forward to from someone who doesn't know how to do anything else with his miserable life except kiss the boss's ass. Or anyone else, for that matter, who's a tad above you. That's probably why you ended up here, why your family whatever it is got rid of you. And they were right."

The hatred and fury of the underling grew as Miron spouted his intentionally hurtful words, so without holding back any longer, he grabbed the young mage by the neck and tightened his embrace as much as he could. Miron let him do so without flinching and even inquired with a mocking, unbearable air that almost drove his opponent crazy.

"What's the matter with you, Kolof? Even simple truthful words are capable of enraging you so much? It just proves that you are the real weak one."

Kolof took a deep breath to speak as his throat was blocked with fury. But this time, it was not only rage that lit up his green eyes and irreparably distorted his already ungrateful blond face into a mask of pure ugliness, no, there was also displayed a certain mark of insecurity that Miron called understandable but certainly not compassionate. His small body, rather robust, contrasted strongly with that of Miron. The image they were giving at that moment had to be rather hilarious.

"You and your big mouth. You always thought you were really smart and special, Miron, didn't you? Just because, unlike the others, you were singularly deposited at the door of this evil edifice, that you or your filthy family had been hated enough that this mysterious and equally powerful being had gone to such lengths to make you suffer to the core. But all that will end tonight. I will be there to witness your unstoppable death. Like everyone else, you will try desperately to save your pitiful little life. But in the end, you will both die in agony, humiliated, devoured and completely alone. It will be the greatest spectacle I will ever see before I forget it like all the others."

"Sorry, Kolof," the young mage simply said with an impassive air that astonished, then strongly irritated the chief of the minions, especially when he heard what followed. "Someone better than you, and by far, I might add, had already come to tell me the same thing, but I don't blame you for repeating it, since you yourself chose to be what you are. To answer you: it will probably be my death, indeed. But at least I will be as usual, seen and admired by others, even by monsters as depraved as those who live in Athok. And as you said so well, I have a great, an incredible value that makes me special beyond all of you, unlike you, who are totally invisible and replaceable.

This time Kolof couldn't take it anymore, so he raised his fist and was about to hit Miron violently when a terrible thick mist rose up and invaded the whole room in a second to darken it in all its aspects. And out of these black and sickening veils appeared Sirkol.