The Ella Chamber

[Dead & Walking]

Grond continued to look like the typical Zombie. Come on someone, take the bait, he thought as he continued to trudge slowly towards the other competitors.

[Tourneymant]

Barnabas just stood there and watched the group of warriors. There was a giant coral man who seemed to have been molested by the girl he had attacked, an apparent veteran to the games known as Cronen, an zombie who seemed to be doing normal zombie stuff, you know, chasing after mortals for their brains, and then there was that woman that snuck into the tree's he didn't know what she had planned but it didn't really matter. All that mattered was for him to survive, and if the meant he would have to stay over out of the way, so be it. However, he felt that he was missing something like there should have been more fighters. Oh well, I'll just wait and see.

[Reine]

I]"Stay out of sight as long as possible."[/I] Seth's advice echoed inside her head.

That didn't seem to be a problem.

Faelynn looked around the arena and realized that she'd disappeared from everyone's minds. She'd gone to stand in the shade merely to keep the sun off her head, but her dark clothing allowed her to disappear in a rather pleasant way. Any other person may look at this as an opportunity for a sneak attack, but Fae was a thief, not a warrior at heart. Thieves were better defensive fighters, and preferred to use stealth to their advantage, not walk up behind someone and stab them in the back while they were engaging scantily clad women and throwing ice darts at freakishly tall man yelling about mating sessions and weird things that well, she'd just rather not know about. Like...ew.

Then she took a closer look at the latest addition to their battle arena and felt her heart practically cease inside her chest before kicking itself into hyperactivity.

Yeah, she'd ignored the guy yelling at the top of his lungs—honestly, who does that anyway, was he five?—but the face, now that rang a couple bells for a thief and none of them were good.

Holy shit... it's Joshua Cronen, the freaking Sheriff of Underwood! Oh I am so dead! So very, very, very dead!

She could feel a small bubble of panic beginning to bloom in her chest before she squashed it like the little bug it was. He hadn't seen her yet, heck, he probably wouldn't even recognize her anymore. She wasn't some lanky little teenage girl, she was 18 now and, for the most part, all grown up and with the curves to show for it. Not to mention, Fae never had a personal run in with the Sheriff of her hometown except to say hi and bye and answer his questions on how her father's blacksmith shop was going. He'd never caught her stealing. Hell, none of the guards in Underwood had caught her stealing. So she should be just fine. As long as he sucked at remembering faces.

If he did recognize her, she could only hope that the Sheriff would not tell her mom and dad about this. Oh god, they'd have kittens in the corner and then Ferynn would beat the crap out of her and Connaire, eek, she didn't even want to think about what Connaire would do. Tease her to no end if she lost? Praise her into infinity if she won? Throw her in the lake? Bury her up to her neck next to a fire ant colony? The list went on and on!

Knowing she needed to focus on the present and not the current turmoil going on inside of her brain, Fae cautiously shifted her position through the shade of the trees. With the sun at it's zenith above her, there weren't too many shadows for her to hide in. Mainly just along the outskirts of the bubble, as close to the creeping branches of Concordia as she could physically get without actually leaving her cage, which she assumed to be impossible until the end of the match.

Keeping an eye on the charging giant and the now strangely meek Roht Mirage—honestly, she'd been a heck of a lot more gutsy the night before—Fae shifted around to try and get into an advantageous position secluded in the tree stumps and large, splintered pieces of wood debris, that allowed her to see all the contestants and eliminate any one of them from sneaking up on her cute little ass, tightly snugged into her black and purple shorts.

"Let them pick each other off one-by-one, it'll give you less to deal with."

So far, they didn't need any encouragement in that department.

[black shadow]

minor bunnies allowed by Hoytti, and accounts.

Black Shadow heard about this tournament, "The Cell". Fight to your death, win money, simple as that. Money, He needed money. So enter the tourney, he did. He now stood out side the dome, watching the others fight each other. He then noticed someone familiar. Sorish Mon Larsh, the corilian who had helped him save a friend. An ally of his, going berserk at a woman. Well I guess this tournament brings out the worst in people, eh? Black Shadow thought to himself as he tried to step into the barrier. As he tried to enter though, something got in his way. What the heck? He thought as he looked around. He then pushed harder and stumbled forward as he entered. Well that was strange.

Black Shadow then pulled out his bow, readied an arrow, and shot at Sorish's sword. The arrow clashed with his sword, causing Sorish's steel gaze to shift to Shadow. Black Shadow then waved his hand, and motioned him to come over.

[Tourneymant]

One minute Barnabas was up against the wall and the next thing he new he was was bumped into and sent about half way to the other combatants. Once he steadied himself he turned around to see a man dressed in black stumble through the barrier. Barnabas held in a laugh but then ducked as an arrow shot over his head and hit the coral mans sword. Barnabas looked over his shoulder and saw the coral man look towards them. Barnabas looked back at the man in black and saw him motion a come here, he quietly snuck behind the man and leaned up against the wall where he had stood before to continue his observation, though he also contemplated on whether or not to play fight maker.

[hoytti]

Sorish was surprised when he saw the arrow hit his sword. He then turned toward the perpetrator. I can't believe it, it's Black Shadow, he thought as Shadow waved him over. He was split, he really wanted to kill Roht but he also knew that shadow would be a great ally. After a second of thought he finally turned towards Roht.

"This isn't over," Sorish said as he then walked over to Shadow with an eye on the man who had shot ice at him.

[Dead & Walking]

Grond was frustrated, he was almost to the group but still, no one took his bait, but he wouldn't give up, oh no, he would walk right up to one of them if he had to. He would get his hand-to-hand battle if it was the last thing he did. So Grond continued to trudge forward, as his feet stumbled over tree trunks that were left over from the clearing of the forest.

[Warpath]

The air was warm and the sky blue – clear. It was a day for beaches and picnics, open windows and spontaneous games of kick-ball in the cobblestone streets. Instead, the people of Radasanth gathered to watch men and women savage one another.

The crowds were growing restless as high noon drew nearer. A boy – some called him a young man – dodged and weaved with the practiced agility of a playful youth. From the other side of the Ixian Castle, he heard unintelligible chanting, and then a fierce cry. So it had started there, too.

The wind was sun-warmed and gentle, and sent the trees a-sway, and the leaves all made a sound like a regiment of ethereal librarians, hushing the crowd in unison. The throng was as oblivious to noise-averse ghosts as it was to the boy, who twisted and danced, and sometimes struggled when two bodies closed in on him and would not part for his flailing. Somebody cursed at him, but he kept running.

He was the son of a mystic, that boy, and what he wanted most in the world was to be a monster hunter, tough and world-wise, and one day he swore Sei Orlouge would count him a friend and heed his council. Even pretty Emma Orlouge would smile at him and say how brave he was, and good. Today he ran errands though, because even monster hunters start somewhere.

He ran right up to a tent erected some distance from the ring from whence he came, and though he still had plenty of breath he hesitated. The tent was striped red and white and it was faded, and as its material rippled in the breeze it reminded him of old bloody bandages. The trees were sparser here, cleared wide enough that there was room for the tent, and so the sun was bright enough to prevent the boy from seeing anything within. He could hear a sound, though, and it made his skin prickle despite the pleasant warmth.

The sound came in three parts. First a metallic, ringing clang, and then a long grinding scrape, and then, worst of all, silence. He listened for what felt like a long time, and the sound had a rhythm, and it was always the same. Soon he could not wait anymore, and he reminded himself of the Orlouges and his ambitions, and then he stepped forward and entered the tent. Slowly.

There was only one person in the tent, shadowy, as the only light came in from behind the boy. It was a man, crouched in front of a tall stool. There was a small round mirror perched on the stool, but the boy could not see the man’s face in it, and did not think to look anyway. His eyes were locked on the large knife in the man’s hand. Its silvery blade was smeared with some kind of pitch, which the man wiped off on the edge of a bucket beside him.

Then he raised the knife and dragged the blade across his scalp slowly, taking the pitch and the hair off of his skin in a long, practiced stroke from back to front. The knife came down again with a harsh clang, and then it scraped along the edge of the bucket and left a glob of amber-brown tar, pierced a thousand times by minuscule spears of black hair.

“Speak,” the man said without turning around. The knife came up again. The boy realized he could hear the edge scraping the stubble from the skin, like sandpaper.

“Uh…well.”

The man’s back was huge. He was naked from the waist up, clad in leather from the over-sized broad belt down, except for his forearms which were armored in bulky metal. His spine was somehow harsher than any other, framed by massive, hard lines of muscle. The boy felt that his whole body was hardly the size of one shoulder, and this guy’s neck reminded him keenly of oxen. Angry ones.

And he was scraping all the hair off his head with a bowie knife.

“It’s just…well, Mister Skovik, you said not to pester you until the fighting started and, well, see, the fighting started.”

Skovik finished dragging the knife over his dome one last time, and then unceremoniously dropped the whole thing into the bucket with a tremendous clatter. He exhaled as he stood, shoulders flexing like there were nautical ropes being pulled tight under his skin, and as he turned to face the boy he lifted a filthy rag and began wiping the excess pitch from his skin.

“Show me.”

The boy stood staring for a long moment, for a number of reasons. Flint Skovik was one of the strangest human beings the boy had ever seen. He was muscular in the way of beasts; wide instead of tall, full-bearded, angry-eyed, and the young mystic never knew anybody to shave all the hair off his head with an oversized knife.That was reason enough to give pause, but the brute also had an accent. The aspiring monster hunter had never heard a Salvar-raised tongue before. It was as if the words themselves were heavy in the air, like they were fifty pounds each and the man was effortlessly lifting them out of his body and dropping them into one’s ear to bludgeon.

But the boy let all that go, and focused instead on the most obvious cause for concern: “Um…forgive me sir, but shouldn’t you like to bring your things?”

Flint stared at the boy utterly without expression.

“That is…weapons, sir. Or perhaps armor, other than those bits on your arms there, I mean. Or a shirt. Perhaps.”

Flint went on staring for a long minute. “No,” he said finally, and then he tossed the rag aside and walked past the boy and out into the sun.

The boy jogged after him, and when he caught up he kept stride beside the brute, staring up at his face, never looking away even as they began passing through the crowd. Flint did not need to dodge or dance. People moved aside for him, and those that didn’t he shouldered through. The drunk ones cursed until they saw him, and then they muttered instead. The throng got thicker, but that didn’t matter. Flint never slowed.

“There’s a giant in there,” the boy blurted out.

Flint said nothing.

“And a ninja. And a walking dead guy. And a huge scary guy in a dress.”

“They are nothing,” Flint said. ‘Nothing’ was an eighty-pound word and the boy felt like he had to carry it across his shoulder like an Atlas in miniature.

He stopped walking.




Flint balled his fists so that his forearms flexed against the insides of his vambraces. There were needles there, shifting inside his flesh, some that drank his blood and some that spit it back into him. The pain was constant, an ache that was becoming sweetly familiar – so consistent that it was beginning to feel ordinary. During the first few weeks he wanted nothing more than to rip the needles out and make the pain stop, but now…now his veins would lament their absence as keenly as he’d miss a severed finger.

He embraced the pain, and let it stir the anger in his belly.

And then he stepped through the invisible barrier, and looked for a body to break.

[Breaker]

"This is not the Cell," Jake Narmolanya said abruptly. He glanced from Terech to Stacia, getting a distant harumph from the dwarf and barely a glance from the lady before she resumed studying the arena. "I mean it. Did either of you see the last one?"

"Every tournament is different from the last, lad," Bodorson said stoically, though he seemed bored as well, rummaging in his tabard's deep pockets for pipe and tobacco.

"What happened last time?" Stacia asked, wide eyes watching Cronen's hail shatter on the Coralian's shield.

"What didn't happen last time?" Jake crowed. "I sneaked in with some friends just as the fighting started. There were bullets flying everywhere, explosions, lava coming up from the earth. There were lions, Stacia." Jake shook his head, marveling at the memories that had driven him to seek the Breaker out in Underwood and study as his student.

"The poor lions! I hope they didn't get hurt." the petite woman said, keeping her eyes on the battlefield to hide their sly expression.

Jake opened his mouth to respond with a remark about monks healing lions, too, when the crustacean-armored giant facing Josh bellowed a deafening string of what sounded like orders.

The crowd let out a deep vowel of displeasure as the sparse fighting in the Ella Chamber ground to a halt. Booooooooooooo.

"Did that giant seaman just tell Josh what to do?" Jake joked.

Stacia giggled and then sealed her mouth with both hands.

Bodorson stood. "Don't let that big bully push you around, Breaker!" The dwarf bellowed, and then chuckled and lit his pipe. "There y'are children," he said as smoke spilled from his lips. "Be satisfied."




Cronen was doubled over, laughing uncontrollably. He'd dueled mages, berserkers, wizards and warriors of all kind from Radasanth to Scara Brae. He'd fought in two civil wars and faced a roster of legends in the previous Cell. He had swum the deepest waters the world of violence offered and become a shark.

But never before had an adversary berated him for interfering with retribution of a nearly-activated mating ritual. He wiped a tear of mirth from his cheek with the corner of the blue kerchief as he straightened, careful not to smear the rosebud left by Stacia's lips. As he recovered from the ridiculous tirade he noticed the distinct lack of movement in the Ella Chamber. Aside from the laboriously limping zombie, they all seemed to be standing still.

Josh glanced at Sei Orlouge, distant atop his tower. Dirks would have started shooting people by now, he thought, remembering the last tournament Grandmaster. Max Dirks had a taste for death and illicit dealings he would never share, but the criminal's attitude had proven effective in finishing the Cell. None of us are getting out of here 'till these poor people are dead, he reminded himself.

Bodorson's baritone provided the final push. Cronen took off like an arrow from a bow.

He raced toward the Coralian through a short arc, boots beating the earth faster than a drumroll, body a white blur with a red stripe. His first three strides carried him past the ever-advancing zombie. He grasped the hilt of his bastard sword with the first step, unsheathed it and slashed at the corpse's chest in one smooth motion on the second, and rammed the blade back into its scabbard on the third. Like brushing your teeth.

Dirt churned and broken branches flew as Breaker navigated the stump-spotted field. He swept past the woman who'd fled the Coralian, failing to see her face but again finding something familiar in her form and garb. She seemed so powerless, and yet he'd glimpsed complex threads of power woven about her like a spider's shawl. One hand flared behind him, fingers flexed and vibrating like divining rods. They found moisture in the browning grass, water still stored in the roots of felled trees, thirsty even in death. The earth issued a blast of steam at the Fallien woman's feet and ankles, steam that froze into a mound of ice as swiftly as it had appeared, attempting to ensnare her from boots to knees.

As Josh neared his target he unslung the hammer from its bondage on his back. It was a single dense lump of dehlar, the handle wrapped in leather for grip. A big brutal ugly weapon.

A giant impact for a giant problem.

Josh made no effort to mask his intentions. He charged the scaly swordsman and swung his hammer beside him, blunt maul aimed to pulverize the creature's hips. Breaker's unstoppable momentum guaranteed his mad dash would continue even if he missed - straight at the immovable Mystic wall.

Roht approved my description of his character's latent magic.

[Roht Mirage]

“Take your time,” Astarelle squeaked to the giant's back with a numb, limp wave. If not for the needles and that last distracting arrow, she might have been pounded into sludge while she struggled to piece together layer upon layer of nonsense.

Tried to... 'activate' a mating session? Tried to rub his 'crown'? Please let the crown be the thing on his head and not- Her face, her neck, and even her chest turned dark under the sinuous tattoo. I- I don't remember that. But, I don't remember not doing it either.

A gaggle of muted voices pulled her eyes to the barrier again. That girl with the burn scar had been joined by at least ten others, some were boys and girls barely out of childhood. They all gesticulated wildly to each other, mouths working like a flock of hungry sea birds, but she couldn't make out their conversation over the sound of booming laughter behind her. At least someone's having a good time.

She almost turned to find her laughing needle-thrower, but stopped. Memories flipped like cards in a sleight-of-hand trick as her gaze played over the young faces. One, a scrappy-haired boy, made her feel a moment of comfort. A taller teenager behind him, face lanky and drawn, caused a bitterness to well up in her throat. He barely spoke to the others. His eyes were fixed on her, disdainful and... smug?

A tall, greying man stepped solidly into the midst of them. His skin was the coppery brown of a Fallien tribesman, and his hair was pulled back in a long tail that looked almost comical behind his decimated hairline. With only a few words, he calmed the youth into silence –though many still had worry lines as they glanced her way- and gestured for the group to move away from the barrier.

“Wait! Master Kotra!” Astarelle called, giving voice to a name that seemed to fall from the sky.

He turned to her with a worried face that she felt she had seen a hundred times. But, there was a glimmer of unfamiliar hope. His dark, heavy eyes, so recognizable she could read them, seemed to say, “In due time, child.” Then, a glance into the arena. “Go.”

The ground suddenly thundered behind Astarelle, and a strange moisture enveloped her feet. The sand of her faux-tattoo convulsed in terror. Don't mix, she thought as crudely as an animal. Acting on pure, hackle-rising instinct, she jumped from the stump and spun, expecting the giant to pulverize her and reclaim his apparently-tarnished decency, only to have a white robe blur past. The whisper of sword uniting with sheath, shick, felt almost physical against her face. She landed, gasping, and was hit with a sudden recognition. It wasn't his face. She saw nothing but his short hair. His body, though clearly powerful, wouldn't separate him from a crowd. What she saw -and instantly knew- was the calloused fist that wrenched a massive hammer from his back. The crystalline formation of ice on the stump escaped her notice. So, she had no context for the screamed -and muted- warning from the scarred woman, and she paid it no mind. That glimmer of familiarity itched at her fiercely.

“When the only water is a single drop,” she grumbled as she ran after him, or tried to. This was a man who could make oasis steeds snort his dust. “Is this some Ai'Brone game?” she asked as loudly as she could. It was almost a shriek, but she was too far beyond embarrassment to care.

A bit of reed caught her eye, and she veered from the hopeless pursuit to where her staff sat stubbornly against the knots of a stump. She held her open hand out, willed the staff to return home, and almost tripped as it trundled toward her feet instead. An exasperated scream cut from her lips while she skidded to a halt, tearing a shallow trough through the grass. The staff dinged off the toe of her shoe as if it hit a metal plate, then thunked woodenly against the woven anklet that stuck oh-so-scandalously from the long slit of her skirt.

Astarelle paled until she was almost Coronian. No. No. No. She felt over the cuffs of the bracers, strapped as tightly as a second skin; barely room for sweat underneath, let alone the thick weaves of lataro reed. Bury me...

A good Farohtian only removes their lataro adornments for two reasons: bathing, and... activating mating sessions.

The blood returned to her face all at once; filled her cheeks, puffed her chest, and topped up her eyes with an unholy fury. This joke is not blasted funny, anymore! The raging priestess kicked her staff skyward and caught it in a white-knuckled grip, then howled to the warrior in white. “Doorman!” Why call him a 'doorman'? Why bloody not?! “Tell me there's Ai'Brone magic here, because I'm about to kick someone's loo out the top of their sand-brained skull!”

She heard a shambling movement past the corner of her eye and spun. Her skirt flared high, baring the sleek, muscled legs of a dancer. The stance she took, though, was anything but graceful. “You volunteering?” she spat, leveling her staff toward whatever remained of the zombie after the doorman's charge.

Sand welled from the porous reed's accusing end like a sliver of bottled sandstorm and hardened in an instant, granting the staff a thick, wickedly-serrated spear point.