The Treslizn Chamber

[Mutant_Lorenor]

Okay gang. This is my Conclusion Post.

Letho Ravenheart quickly was able to shrug the mutant off like a rag-doll. Moving with Letho's actions, the mutant was able to react quickly enough that when he was tossed aside, a simple quick, mid-air maneuver helped the mutant recover any lost balance. Lorenor was gifted with solid reaction and speed, but mid-air was slightly different. His speed was still impressive however. Turning his gaze towards his chosen target, the mutant was going to go finish him off. However, the mad chef-magi decided to act instead.

Within the frame of a few precious seconds, the mutant had a chance only to think of one thing. I must protect Ailnea at all costs. He hadn't had a chance to see Letho act but could sense the thrown spear the moment it hit his sensory array. Reacting quickly, the mutant barely had enough time to muster any kind of reactive movement. Adjusting his body position, Lorenor moved upwards so that the spear would connect with his front-leg. Flinching with the pain of the spear's penetration, the mutant began laughing.

Then, Elijah attacked. It was all happening so quickly. In a moment or two, the heat of the arena began to increase dramatically. Lorenor had the chance to only make one set of actions. Protect Ailnea. She was the only person in The Cell, next to Elijah that Lorenor gave a shit about. Lorenor had previous experience with the chef-magi from an encounter that took place a while back.

Moving at best speed, right as the explosion pillar was about to burst out of the ground, the mutant limped towards his only target. Ailnea. Despite the severity of the injury to his leg, Lorenor was able to move in mid-flight with some degree of skill. He hovered off the ground and used his own body in a sacrificial maneuver to protect Ailnea at all costs.

His leg was partially useless with the spear jutting out of his thigh. Lorenor pondered removing it but there was no time. He had lost too much in this battle already. Lorenor decided that he was going to cover Ailnea with his own body. Fire suddenly erupted from the ground as a devastating, magma-pillar.

It spread quickly in a circumference movement. Lorenor had no chance. However, he moved in an attempt to grab Ailnea. If his grab was successful, he would push all his weight and power in an attempt to throw the frail girl away from the threat. As the movement was complete, the mutant felt intense fire at his back. He felt peace. I was able to help take down Letho Ravenheart. He thought to himself, and he had also taken down Dissinger. Overall, two sacrifices in the name of N'Jal were better than nothing.

Lorenor's body mass served as a buffer against the magma. He watched Ailnea to the point of his death. Winking briefly towards the nun, the mutant wore a strange lopsided grin on his face. There was no scream of terror, no pain. He went out peacefully unlike the majority of the combatants of The Cell. I have nothing to loose. But everything to gain. Remember my name you bastards. My name is Lorenor!

Laughing the whole time even as he perished, the mutant mustered up the will power to call out one war-cry. "My name is Lorenor!" And that was the end for the mutant. Magma licked the High Priest, burning his body. His flimsy robes never had a chance to decently protect him. However, he had come to The Cell to prove a point. And as he died, he looked at Letho Ravenheart one last time and felt a swelling of pride of in his chest. Even a titan will fall. The last thing Lorenor recalled was the image of Ailnea's frightened face. She was so beautiful. Perhaps...

And then the darkness took him. Lorenor was no stranger to death. His body was touched by the magma and his belongings, as well as he, burnt into purple glowing ash. His skeleton remained briefly, but even this too, burned into ash. As a Ghoul, the mutant had a racial weakness to the elemental fire in all its form. And Elijah was an expert pyromancer. Lorenor never stood a chance. But he had done damage.

Respect would be hard won.

Fin.

Note: Lorenor took the hit from Letho's spear and Elijah's explosion attack. Lorenor moved to -throw- Ailnea to a safe distance. I had a lot of fun working with you guys. Its a rare treat to work with the best that Althanas has to offer. Make it a good one you guys!

[Kade Underbough]

He couldn’t grow complacent. The director’s loaded gun danced from competitor to competitor, the man behind the barrel almost as giddy as a school child told not to work the farm because of the rain. Something told him that shooting people from above hadn’t been a part of the written rules during the developing stages of the bloody game. It didn’t seem viable in a civilized world, though civilized wasn’t quite the word to describe a tournament called The Cell. He wondered if the man prefered to enter the cage himself if given a chance, a madman wanting applause to satiate his need to kill. Kade was pretty sure standing around, waiting for someone to initiate a scuffle, would surely get him executed faster than any fire casting mage or devouring creature of shadow. The crowd thirsted for action, blood, and would have it one way or another.

The eruption of magic left large areas of the caged environment shrouded in a dense fog of smoke. Some combatants were missing. The crimson warrior had managed to stumble out of the ashen smog, pieces of armor shattered and bloodied, with a blade stuck clean through his back. He looked an absolute wreck, damaged more than any common man could take. The grimace on his face was overpowered by a sheer will to continue with the foolhardy endeavor of winning a silly tournament.

I reckon these types of things are important for some people.

The explosion had left a small void in the otherwise jumbled, high octane battle. It was enough time that, in a show of incomparably determined power, the man now colored with variants of crimson and soot managed to unleash a volley of responses to his many foes. From his view, Kade thought the man looked the part of a hero, down but not out. His final action of aiding the pale swordsman, wielding the gun blade like a lightning rod, cemented the image.

What had been advertised as a free for all battle was quickly becoming a competition of temporary alliances. He wondered just how long he could survive without one. Not long.

From a stranger’s perspective, joining the most injured man on the field, and his fallen comrade, appeared to be the most dubious of decisions. He expected that after his death, stories would be told of the teenage bandit that had been a fool to join the clearly most gimped group of the bunch. Well, he [/I]was[/I] a fool. In his naïve awe, the crimson warrior looked to be the juggernaut of the field, nigh impossible to take down. Joining him looked like the obvious choice. The pale swordsman had attacked him, yes, but he had also spared him. It could have been weakness that stayed his hand, but it showed a human quality not expressed by the others. It was enough to draw the young conscript back into the fray.

“I’ve got yer back too, dude!” Kade exclaimed, pointing his bow in the general direction of the crimson warrior’s intended target. He knew the man had shot at an enemy, though the smoke hid the unknown creature from his particular angle in the cage. Ever the believer in his own luck, the bandit kid shot at the invisible being. In another moment he had summoned another arrow to his yew weapon, edging his way slowly to whom he hoped would accept him as an ally, taking care to keep the adamantium bars at his back.

((Kade's shot is intended for Bloodrose, but its a blind shot. Anyone in his vicinity other than Ulysses could possibly be effected. The same allowance for bunnying is applied to Kade's newly readied arrow, though he is now inching closer to everyone in general.))

[Arsène]

Eyes blinded by fury and teeth grit like an animal, Arsène resembled nothing like the epic heroes he’d hoped to be compared to. He was sloppy, poorly equipped, and generally ill prepared for the true measures it would take to succeed in the endless melee of the Cell. His blade, shimmering between the speckles of filth, missed his target by a wide margin, furthering his frustration at the entire event. He cursed his inadequacies and let loose a flurry of foul language that was drowned out from the cheering bystanders above and the ever present shout of thunder. Compared with Letho and Teric, true masters at butchery, he was an amateur. Compared with Elijah and Atzar, his feeble martial prowess was dwarfed by their awe-inspiring arcane arts.

He had neither the time nor training to react to his mage-rival’s next attack. The cowardly fiend had practiced the escape routine far too many times, it seemed. Shards of razor-sharp ice skimmed through the air and met flesh in a frozen frenzied assault. Arsène lost grip of his sword, sending it flying across the battlefield to crash into the nearby barred wall. He let lose a scream of pain and panic that sent shivers down his own spine. He wasn’t dead yet, he knew that. The cold missiles had done a terrible deed to his body, there was no doubt, yet he still managed to remain conscious and aware the entire time, even with iced blood spilling from his wounds.

One thing became dreadfully clear; he had lost the use of his right eye. Dismayed, he frantically felt around the area, only to notice the river of warm blood melting away the evidence of any attack. He felt jagged, sharp pain in his chest and shoulder too, but nothing like the sheer freight of being blinded.

“You bastard,” he growled behind his teeth. Before he’d even had the time to clench his fists, an explosion rocked the coliseum and sent him flying backwards before tumbling face down in the mud. The flash was terrible, and the noise as shrill as a harpies shriek. The ringing in his ears was the only distraction from what seemed like a freshly broken arm the blast had just given him.

He cried out now. His shirt was ruined; rendered half blind by the ice, deafened by the blast and arm snapped by the shock of it all, Arsène was a pathetic sight to behold. He writhed in agony on that muddied ground, far away from any competitor. He wasn’t dead, and that was the problem. He was far from it; a living death marred with the shame of inadequacy and pain from his own damned hubris.

He didn’t fear death. But dying didn’t hurt this damn bad.

Arsène is sent flying back and ends up on the ground screaming. He's still very much alive though.

The glories of war.

[Bloodrose]

Bunnying of Ulysses was approved.

On a battlefield as hectic as the Cell's, when no one competitor could possibly keep track of all the others, it was surprisingly easy for skill and strength to fall in the face of poor luck. Misfortune could strike anyone at the most inopportune time, laying the best laid plans to waste, and there was little an individual could do about it. Knowing this inalienable fact to be true, Teric would be forced - when looking back on the day - to submit that he suffered the single most crippling minute of bad luck to ever strike a man...

First there was the fate of the young swordsman, Ulysses. Laid low by a strike from Teric's shield, the young man was all but guaranteed a swift death at the hands of the mercenary, had it not been for Elijah's ill-timed explosion. Knocked a step to the side by the concussive force of the blast, Teric found his flesh warm to the touch, and his nose filled with the scent of burning hair. His ears rang as if popped, and it took several seconds to shake the haze from the edges of his vision; time enough for Ulysses to rise and mount a defense.

It was a defense that proved unnecessary, however, as Teric was quickly beset by another setback. Fired from the barrel of his infamous 'gunblade', Ravenheart's 14mm slug struck the veteran with all the surprise and force of an invisible battering ram. Having missed the tell-tale shot of a firearm on account of the rolling thunder overhead, Teric had no time to brace himself for the impact. The bullet took him in the gut, forcing the air from his lungs and staggering him back a few paces. His hands instinctively reached for the painful epicenter just below his ribs, where they found the metal links of his chainmail hot to the touch and fused with the deformed remains of Letho's projectile. If not for mythril's legendary strength, the bullet may have easily made its home in the veteran's entrails - rather than simply laying him low like a colossal punch.

Drawing air back into his lungs to try and recover from Letho's unexpected offensive, the last of Teric's bad luck hit him even lower.

"Ssssssst!" Teric sucked in a sharp breath and almost fell as a stray arrow hit him in the leg from somewhere off to his right. Had it been on his left, the nearly spent munition might have struck the lower edge of the veteran's buckler, but instead it burrowed into the thick muscle mid-way up Teric's thigh, flooding the old man's system with pain signals.

Of all the stinkin' luck in the world...

Oddly, Teric began to chuckle - because really, what else could he do? Having grown so accustomed to being one of the strongest, fastest, and most feared fighters around, the mercenary had almost forgotten what it felt like to be uncertain of victory. Now, in a matter of seconds, three unrelated acts had all culminated in rattling Teric's normally unassailable confidence; and the man was almost enjoying it. He was wounded, vulnerable, and beset on all sides by enemies, and Teric finally found himself having to fight to survive.

This was why he was here.

Ulysses was scrambling over the crater left by Elijah's spell, bee-lining it for Letho's side as the Red Marshal rallied the boy to him. Settled against the adamantine edge of the arena, the Hero leveled the barrel of his ferocious weapon at Teric a second time, almost instinctively aware that the mercenary would give chase. The man's instinct proved correct, but the sly old veteran didn't give him a chance to fire a second slug unhindered.

Going back to the tried and true 'flashbang' trick he'd learned so many years ago, Teric flooded his corner of the arena with a brilliant flash of white light accompanied by a thunderous boom. The veteran kept his eyes tightly closed even as he started forward, his first few steps painfully slow as he willed his body to ignore the arrow still stuck in his leg. Teric was assuming that, in order to aim his weapon properly, Letho would have gotten a nice eye-full of the blinding light. That theoretically gave the mercenary a closing window of opportunity to catch Ulysses.

But if he isn't blinded, Teric tried not to think, I'm running in the wrong direction.

Teric has attempted to blind Letho (and anyone else looking in his direction) with his "Flashbang" skill. At the same time, he'd giving chase to Ulysses.

[Christoph]

Finally, the endless explosion died. The raging inferno diminished and the searing wind, which had howled like the lost and damned, ebbed. The smoke and dust cleared, revealing Elijah standing in a crater of black glass and ash, wreathed in a fiery anima of raw power. He looked, he fancied, like an ancient god of wrath. The half-burned chef coat probably diminished that image, though.

The spell had taken quite a bit out of him, but he still felt all right. Blood trickled down his cheek; somehow, an arrow had made it through the blasts of hot air and flame, coming close enough to give him a nice cut across his temple. He thought he heard singing, but he didn't have time to worry about it. Where had that helpful wizard gone off to?

He saw his mysterious ally nearby, a little burnt up but still apparently alive. Well shit, Elijah thought. He would have warned him, but that would have tipped off Letho. Speaking of… Belov spotted the crowd favorite across the arena, though by then he seemed less hero and more pile of burnt meat. Yet, the tenacious bastard wasn't dead. He had to respect that; he would have liked to fight Ravenheart in single combat, but the Cell was an entity of chaos and destruction, not honor. Then Letho summoned his wolves.

Even as he'd scanned the arena, arcane mumblings had already begun spilling from his cracked lips. Flame washed up around him like ocean waves, cloaking him. He had once read that of all four elements, fire most closely resembled the soul and spirit, for it was not bound by shape or measure. It was pure passion, pure power. What were the other elements but fuel to be consumed?

Without wasting an instant, the sorcerer pressed his palms together and muttered an ancient Raiaeran phrase, which roughly translated into ‘Fire mirrors the soul." With a burst of light and heat, two fiery forms took human shape next to him, flickering and contorting at obscene angles. Elijah grinned wickedly at his two fiery shadows; as fast and strong as their master, they would serve him well. Letho's wolves snarled and sprinted toward him, splitting off to assail him from two sides. They had not anticipated his own summoned minions.

"Destroy the wolves," he commanded, and barely paid them another notice, even as the fiery apparitions fought the wolves in a clash of embers and flesh. He spared a quick glance at the other wizard. "My apologies," he said quickly. "Stay close and I think we can assist each other."

A bright flash brought Elijah's attention back to Letho. He struggled to stay focused amidst the chaos (chaos that he had catalyzed). On both sides, his shadows fought back the wolves, defending their sorcerous master. One of the wolves yelped in pain as a rippling blade of pure heat bit into its flesh. Focus! His shadows would keep him safe.

His first goal was to finish off Ravenheart, but he still had those anti-magic gauntlets to contend with. Fortunately, as part of that seminar on the subject, he'd learned some practical means of dealing with them. One merely needed to form his magical attacks so that they can exist under their own power (without further magic) by the time they reach such a barrier. Then, all the anti-magic in the world would mean nothing.

Without further hesitation, Eli scooped up two huge handfuls of scorched dirt. It stung his blistered hands, but he ignored the pain. With two inaudible syllables, he breathed life into a spell. The dirt and glass floated from his grasp, swirling, glowing, and reforming until it took the shape of a sharp molten spike -- amusing that the closest he usually came to subtlety or finesse in combat sorcery, the scalpel approach to magic, was a flying lance of lava the size of his arm. With a blast of will and magic, he launched it at Letho with crushing force. Still, it was suitable nail for such a legend's coffin.

[Esmerelda]

Esmerelda continued to devour the sword, her sensors taking in all available information, analyzing it while she waited, and filing it away. Someone outside was singing rather loudly, and causing lights to appear. Gunshots were ringing out all over the arena, but most importantly, it seemed the world famous hero could survive even nearly every opponent dogpiling him at once.

Still she sat there quietly, watching, waiting, strategizing. Soon she would be able to go on, and fight on further. The sword was now just a stick. Its edge was gone, its handle destroyed, only the core lump of metal remained. The new Prevalida Nanites attacking the resources availible to them.

“How foolish,” Esmerelda thought “to throw valuable resources at your enemy, enough to weaken yourself, and strengthen them.”

small post to notate she's continuing her previous action. Sword is halfway destroyed.

[Ailnea]

Ailnea lay there on the ground trying desperately to catch up with everything that had happened. First her attack failed, she was thrown to the ground instead. An explosion ripped the ground open, a great column of fire reaching for her. Then Lorenor had thrown her away from the attack, sacrificing himself to do so.

He was dead now, and Ailnea herself was sweating heavily. Ailnea stood in the corner away from battle. There she wept quietly for the loss of a dear friend, no matter how temporary his death was. She clutched his dagger he had given her.

Revenge. They hurt her friend, she couldn't allow that to go unpunished. He was a monster, and if her gods were right, which they probably were, someday she would be just as monsterous. Monsters needed to stick together.

Drying her tears, she gripped the dagger with more intensity, intending to at least make someone pay. Walking forward, she looked around for a likely opponent.

[Ulysses]

Ulysses scampered away from Bloodrose and slid and slipped across the mud to follow Letho’s rally to arms. The explosion had picked up the Marshal and thrown him against the wall like a rag doll tossed by a child in a temper tantrum, but Letho was still in the fight. He called, and Ulysses followed.

A blinding flash came from behind, accompanied by a roaring boom. Ulysses’ vision was temporarily clouded, but the glare quickly faded as the blast came from behind. Ahead of him, Letho bore the brunt of it.

The Red Marshal raised his gunblade at Ulysses and prepared to fire. He hesitated and pointed behind him and then back at Ulysses again. Ulysses thought quickly. Evidently the blast had blinded the hero enough that he couldn’t distinguish between the two.

“Shoot the other guy!” Ulysses shouted. Letho looked indecisive for one moment more, and then he did just that. He didn’t see the effect of the shot, but hopefully it bought him enough time.

When he made it to Letho he paused and panted for a moment from exertion and looked up into the face of his injured hero. Letho looked bad. He was covered in burns (both major and minor) and grime and dirt were caked into his face and armor. His helmet was gone, and his boots and greaves were in shreds. Nonetheless, there was a stark, stubborn refusal to accept defeat that filled Ulysses with hope. That and the massive Lawmaker in his hand. The legends and myths surrounding the gunblade were almost as thick as those surrounding Letho himself—it was a weapon as he imagined gods had weapons.

“See if you can’t pull the blade from my back, kid,” Letho said, and he turned around and bent down. Ulysses grabbed at the hilt but didn’t pull just yet.

“If we’re going to die together, you ought to know me as more than ‘kid,’” Ulysses said with a frown. “My name is Ulysses.” With that, he jerked the blade stuck between Letho’s spine and shoulderblade out in one pull. The red-clad warrior grunted in pain, and blood oozed out of the wound, but at least it was gone. The same wound would have felled Ulysses easily—it was miraculous that Letho was still alert.

It was miraculous as well that Ulysses’ hadn’t yet been injured in this battle, or at least not too severely. He was covered in bruises and cuts from his skirmish with Bloodrose, and minorly singed from the chef-mage’s explosion, but at least so far he was still standing and not in too much pain. Perhaps it was indeed miraculous, and the goddess Cydonia was watching after him after all.

He doubted that his luck would last much longer, divine or otherwise.

At least he was standing beside his hero now. The two stood shoulder-to-shoulder, backs against the walls of the Cell. Letho held his enormous gunblade, and Ulysses grasped the adamantium bastard sword. Together they were ready to meet any and all comers. Come hell or high water, the master and the novice would fight together, meet victory together, or die together.

He grinned. Though the bitter taste of adrenaline filled his mouth and his body jittered with fear, in that moment, Ulysses could not have been happier. He was beside the hero he’d admired for years, and together they would stand and be true. At the beginning of this tournament, he’d thought there could be nothing attractive about the heroic lifestyle to him. After battling by the side of Sir Ravenheart, however, he could see that there was something of value about it after all…something noble and good.

He sidestepped towards Letho and opened his mouth to say something brave—maybe something along the lines of “Let’s do this!” or similar cheese—but he never got the chance to.

The next feeling he experienced was impossible amounts of burning and agonizing pain coming from his abdomen. He looked down and saw that he was…on fire? Some sort of great lance had skewered him like a kebab.

“Oh,” he said, more in surprise than pain. Then he crumpled to the floor, guts spilling out of his stomach like a burst bag of raspberry jelly. He raised one arm in an unintentionally melodramatic gesture, looked up once more into the face of Letho Ravenheart, and then lost consciousness entirely.

And that was that.

The irony about Ulysses’ death on that day was that it wasn’t any sort of heroic sacrifice at all. Like most deaths, it was a cosmic accident, as absurd and ultimately as meaningless as a fly swatted with the Sunday newspaper.

* * *

Ulysses floated in the darkness. A beautiful woman bent over him and kissed his forehead, then looked at him. Her eyes were the same regal gold as his own, and her expression was easily readable: disappointment.

“Not good enough,” said the goddess Cydonia. She vanished, and then the darkness consumed him once more.

* * *

“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”

“Supposed? Supposed? There is no ‘supposed’ in the Cell,” the medic said, chuckling.

Ulysses shrugged. “I don’t know, that just didn’t seem right. We were about to make a stand! The brave heroes fighting off the forces of evil! It was…I don’t know. It shouldn’t have ended that way.”

The medic narrowed his eyes and was silent. Around them the crowd roared—they were at a special area set aside for the purpose of reviving competitors who died early in the tournament. He lay on an uncomfortable flat bed. The hole in his abdomen had been healed as though it never happened, but it still ached horribly. His brain very clearly thought that he ought to have an enormous gaping hole there, while his body insisted that this was not the case. The resulting conflict was unpleasant at best and nightmarish at worst.

“You know what your problem is, kid?” the medic said. He had the universal and easily identifiable accent known as lower class.

“What?” Ulysses said, with just a hint of sarcasm.

“You think in stories. The world ain’t like stories. There aren’t ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys,’ and things sure as hell don’t always work out alright in the end. Live long enough in Radasanth and you’ll learn that helluva quick.”

“I guess so,” Ulysses said, although he wasn’t quite sure what the young man meant. He thought back to the things that Cydonia and the Knight and the other spirits had told him time and time again, and tried to reconcile that with what had just happened, but couldn’t. Maybe the thoughts of gods—all primary colors and bold shapes—really were too simple to apply to the real world. He’d never thought of himself as naïve (inexperienced, maybe, but never naïve) but something about today made him wonder. Mostly he just wasn't sure what to think. "I'm confused," he admitted.

"Yeah well, that's life for you," the medic said, with more unexpected wisdom.

“Ya think?” the medic said.

"I guess so," Ulysses said, and he found that was all the certainty he could muster anymore.

This is my closing post! This has been an absolute blast, let me tell you, and I’m incredibly pleased that I got to write with people I would never otherwise have gotten the chance to, and you guys are awesome. I’ll still be following the thread for sure. Good luck everyone!

P.S. Dirks: If that bit at the end after he’s revived doesn’t fit with what you have in mind, I can remove it or change it around as needed, just let me know.

[Atzar]

Chef-mage’s hellish spike erased one of Atzar’s attackers from the battle, reducing the once-energetic, fierce fighter to a sorry heap of charred flesh. ’Good,’ the wizard thought as he looked on in bleak satisfaction. Under different circumstances he might have recoiled from the gruesome corpse, but now was no time to be soft. Which left… where was his first assailant? The mage scanned the arena, looking for the swordsman. He didn’t seem to be…

A muffled cry caught his attention, made him turn around. There he was. Ice flowed through the mage’s veins as he approached the prone figure. 'Live enemies are dangerous enemies,' he knew. Kellon had tried once to simply trap him, and the man had come back and nearly taken his head off. Atzar wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. There was one way to be safe from the swordfighter, and that was to kill him.

The figure cried out once again. The mage prepared for the death blow, casting a block of ice in his palms that could crush a man’s skull with ease. He heard Chef-mage call out to him, urging him to take a place at his side, to work together. That could wait; this came first. He reached his foe, and that’s when Atzar saw the damage he had done. The man’s right eye had collapsed, and crimson liquid poured down the man’s mud-caked face. His broken arm dangled uselessly in the mud. The ice in his blood wavered, began to melt, and resolve turned to regret. He had to! It was necessary, he couldn’t have the man attacking him when his back was turned. Face set in a grim snarl, Kellon lifted the frozen mass and prepared to finish him off.

The sad face looked up at him with one good eye, the unspoken words written upon his face: Are you going to kill me? As Atzar looked down, a version of the same question began to grow in his own mind. Am I going to kill you? Doubt suddenly gnawed at his insides. Did he have what it took to do this? Did he have what it took to kill – no, to murder him? A life hung in the balance as Kellon wrestled with his conscience.

Finally his arms dropped, the ice falling harmlessly to the mud as he lost the inner struggle. The breath exploded from his lungs, and his snarl was replaced by a look of resignation. No. He couldn’t do it – not while his adversary lay there in the mud like that. He was soft after all.

A thought occurred to him, and he located the man’s blade, lying near the wall not far away. He quickly retrieved it from the muck and returned from the fallen man’s side, where he crouched.

“If I give you your sword, will you attack me?” It was a stupid question, perhaps; what manner of idiot would say ‘yes’ in that situation? The one-eyed fighter looked at him, then slowly shook his head.

“Then wait here. I’ll see if the Aibrone monk can help you. When you’re healed, I need you to go after Ravenheart.” He was referring to Letho, of course, using the name he had heard Ulysses use earlier. Kellon turned, intending to get the monk's attention, but the downed man stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“No,” the man said. Atzar turned back questioningly as the agonized man struggled to rise. “Help me up, give me my blade.”

The mage stared at him for a second before offering his hand, pulling the injured man to his feet. He hesitated a second, and then pressed the grimy weapon into the swordsman’s unhurt hand. He knew it was unwise - foolish, even - but he'd lost his inner battle. He didn't have the guts to kill him, and this was the alternative. He knew that the man would likely kill him rather than attack Letho - indeed, he had no reason to go after the red-armored warrior. But that was the price for being soft on a stage where soft competitors died.

But without another word, the man turned and limped across the ring in the direction of Ravenheart. Atzar watched him go, puzzled. It was brave, certainly, but why not seek the treatment of the monk first? But the wizard didn’t have time to ponder; he shrugged to himself and joined Chef-mage near the center of the arena.

Bunnying approved by Arsene.

I'm not attacking anybody in this post.

[Kade Underbough]

As the ashen air cleared, Kade watched the elderly brute stalk the pale swordsman in spite of his many wounds. He looked almost maniacal, with a slight chuckle to himself, though the bandit could not think of anything funny about how the day had gone so far, especially with a shot to the gut, burns, and one of his personal oak arrows embedded in the man‘s leg. He trained a second arrow on the man, though took a moment’s pause as he realized the silver haired combatant seemed much more interested now in the crimson warrior. Probably because that particular foe had a gun blade pointed in his direction.

Better save the arrow for someone else, the conscript noted, figuring his chosen ally could get the job done rather handily.

The crimson warrior didn’t get his shot off fast enough however, and Kade immediately felt a shock to his irises that came so quickly he had no idea how it had happened. A cascade of color flooded from his vision, leaving his eyes to behold nothing but an empty blackness, dark as the deepest gorges in all of Haidia. The boom had likewise assaulted his senses, though his hearing quickly recovered, just in time to hear a second boom, most likely from the crimson warrior’s firearm.

His sight showed no improvement, and the archer let one more arrow fly somewhere behind him before discarding the weapon. He felt it bounce once against booted foot before landing softly in the mud, useless. He heard the voice of the pale swordsman introducing himself as Ulysses and the conscript opened his mouth to try again to earn their help. He was close to the two he had chosen, but neither heeded his claim for an alliance.

His mouth quickly shut as he felt a heated missile glide in front his torso, singing the soft fabric of his shirt before landing with a soft plump in the area of Ulysses and the crimson warrior. He heard the surprised sigh, the sound of burning liquid freefalling to the ground, followed by the sickening thud of a body collapsing. Something had done something to someone, but Kade was blind and had no clues as to why. His uncertainty spread to his face, forcing a down facing crescent on his thin lips and his sightless eyes to quiver.

He stumbled backward, pushing his back against the bars of the cage as hard as possible, as though he might undergo a metamorphosis to slip through and escape. A trembling hand brought out his dagger, held not like a weapon, but with a gentleness one would give while holding an egg. The steel felt awkward in his hand, the strength and will to fight receding from the surface of his mind. It gave him no comfort of sense of security. He tried to hear anyone that might have chosen him as the next victim of the violent battle, but he found it impossible to single out any one sound amidst the numerous battle cries and cries from the crowd. Even a lighthearted song echoed against the bars of the prison, though he couldn’t find any hope in it. His spare hand traveled to his eyes, where he began to rub vigorously, ignoring the tears as best he could.

“Thayne,” he whimpered to himself. “I need to see.”