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Nightmare Rescue
Quote:
Closed to Shinsou.
Hail. Hail. Hail.
"Hail," cried the multitudinous crowd, raising fists into the air and holding hands over their hearts, "Hail to those about to die."
Calling out for blood they jeered down from the rows upon rows of raised seats, spreading out from the square arena like the spiral arms of a galaxy. Many faces of many races - elf, human, ogre and many more - peered down to below, to where the bars began. A cage structure, fifty feet wide and a hundred feet high held within it a complex series of iron and mythril platforms, ascending to the roof of the theatre. For this is what this was to them - a dramatic production to them, except exceedingly real. The most costly form of entertainment, paid for in gold, blood and life.
Leaning against the bars of the unbreakable cage, ensorcled by some form of highly inflexible magic and material, Rameses Vaeron, aka the Astringent Archer, sat on a pure white mythril belvedere about two thirds of the way up of the inside of the structure. One leg was brought up to his chest, the knee bent at a severe angle, and the other dangled over the edge of the precipice, down into the open air. He seemed not to care that a simple jolt could send him plummeting to his death - but then really that was the style of him in these games.
His eyes looked over the crowds, pondering their lustful looks. With little to no expression in his eyes he watched as their cries became one and the same as each other, making a background noise to his patience. The jagged scars around his cheeks and upper face told of times gone past in the real version of this arena, of when he had actually been the champion archer of this arena, the champion killer until he had come properly into his powers. If he closed his eyes he could picture the truth behind it, the actual underground theatre up in the dusky heights of the Aleran mountains, but he didn't want to right now. Instead he just wanted to defeat his next opponent, to be out of here once more, to go back to his glorified cell.
Bow in hand and dagger at his belt he changed his eyesight to look down at the large cage door that was held closed by five locks and six enchantments. The usual guard waited by it on the outside - a huge bulk of a man whose talent was in crushing skulls with a single hand. Vaeron remembered him almost exactly, and found this man was near identical to his memory. This magical Corone Citadel arena that kept going, that included the back ways, the cells below, the offices and the faces of all those individuals that betted and challenged daily, that gawked at the archer warrior, and begged to see him fight.
Fight for money. Fight for gold. Fight until he killed another man. Just like it had been in the mountains, exactly like it had been. Vaeron had been here two full weeks now, a battle per day and he still couldn't find the doorway outside, but he was sure it was the Citadel. He was sure that this was just a memory playing back to him - a nightmare replaying. For how else could it all be here still, how else could they know about this place? The Theatre Of Blood that Vaeron himself had destroyed.
Whoever had trapped him, caused him to wake up suddenly one morning not on the ship he called home had an agenda, and had somehow made the Ai'Borone monks think that this is what Vaeron wanted. This is what he desired. A horror that had literally lasted two full weeks of time so far, and had no answer to the end. No answer to how he could get out, after being locked in a cell every day and not being able to find that door out of here.
