Cold, Dark Night

[Tobias Stalt]

Closed to Rehtul Orlogue

Thunderous cheers rocked the world as Tobias strode silently through the hallways of the Citadel. Even in the earliest hours of morning, this part of Radasanth never slept. Firelight from high reaching braziers blanketed the meticulously polished floors with their gentle warmth, at odds with the starless night beyond the looming walls.

He stopped before a large, intricately carved door and his eyes moved up. Carved in the ancient and forgotten language of Old Corone, he spied several unintelligible words. He heard a faint whisper, and his face scrunched in disgust. "This magic is older than time," he murmured. "Older than any Ai'Brone in this Citadel, anyway."

"You have an eye for the Arcane," praised one of the faceless attendants, wreathed in the shadows of his hood. Tobias allowed a faint smile to grace his lips as he nodded slightly. "This room is sealed, a shrine to the darkest places in men's hearts."

The Witch Hunter moved his fingers deftly across the gnarled wood. Smoothed and tediously cared for, the door appeared no different from any of the others. "It is an arena, then," Tobias stated. It was not a question.

"Not for the faint of heart," the servant spoke quickly. "And certainly not one you'd be interested in, Master Stalt. It comes seeped in the darkest of the Ai'Brone arts- things we abandoned long ago. There are some actions that have dire consequences, and this room is the culmination of those our forebears made."

Tobias brought his gaze down to level with the monk. The blazing gold in his gaze disappeared as he drew his hood. "Find me a challenger," he commanded. "Someone equal to the challenge of this chamber."

"It will be done." The man sounded defeated as he bowed and backed away. Tobias listened to his footsteps quicken, but his eyes remained glued to the door.

When he could no longer hear the monk, Tobias lifted both hands and touched the door again. Enter, Tobias. The whisper in his mind came again, but this time audibly. He narrowed his eyes as he pressed the chamber door open, but within, he saw only darkness. Two steps later, the black swallowed him whole.

Behind him, the door creaked shut.

[Rehtul Orlouge]

“What are you talking about?” Rehtul asked the monk as he looked up from the table with the Citadel’s rooms listed upon them. The white robed man merely smirked slightly as he sized up the young elementalist.

“What do you mean, what am I talking about? There’s a man with an... interesting idea of what the word challenge means looking for someone to fight him in one of our... darkest arenas.”

The young mage placed a single finger in between his own eyes and rolled the map up before placing it back carefully in the roll container he had procured it from. He stood up and stretched, allowing the stiff muscles to slowly relax back into their proper places. He had been sitting there way too long trying to decide what his next arena was going to be. He brought one hand to the back of his head and the other to his chin before swiftly pushing his head one direction, then the other, cracking the vertebrae in his neck.

“What does it have to do with me?” he asked simply.

“The short version, I think it would do you good to see the darker side of magic. You’re an elementalist, sure, but that’s a very basic brand of magic, as I’m sure your esteemed father would have told you.”

“Basic, yes, but versatile,” the young Orlouge shot back, eyes narrowing ever so slightly at the mention of his father, one of the few mages on the face of the planet with a working knowledge of the Citadel’s magics.

“But he did tell you of the less versatile, more... specialized fields of magic as well, did he not?” the monk asked gently. “About curses, mind magic... necromancy, even?” The last word sent a shudder down the young man’s spine, but he did his best to ignore it.

“Yes, yes, he’s taught me the theory behind many of those brands of spells, though I haven’t seen fit to learn them,” he admitted. Talking to this monk was like pulling teeth. What precisely did he want out of this exchange?

“Well, this particular arena might give you some insight,” the monk responded.

So I’m being dared to do this, basically, the young man thought as he shot a dark look at the monk. He had fought a fair number of people in the citadel at this point, from the faun and her familiar fire fox, to a young maiden with a heart of gold and lisp that made her every utterance a puzzle to understand. He’d even fought a Kitsune from Akashima that had killed him in the most poetic way possible.

Yet this monk still treated him like a newcomer, like a greenhorn who had barely the first idea about how the world around him worked. It was irritating, but beyond that, the young man knew that it only irritated him because it was the truth. The more he understood about the world, the more questions he had. He could only admit to understanding less about the world than he thought only a couple of years prior. There seemed to be a never ending pool of knowledge that, as he stared into it, revealed no bottom.

With a laugh, he nodded.

“Very well, I’ll give it a shot. You know, this is the first time you’ve actually gotten me to laugh in your presence, Alan.”

A growl resonated in the throat of the monk as he muttered, “And it wasn’t even one of my puns, either.”

“Your puns aren’t incredibly... punny,” Rehtul responded hesitantly.

It took a moment for the joke to register, but as it did, the monk started laughing uncontrollably as he motioned for the young man to follow him to the new arena. As he pushed the door open for the young mage, he smiled wickedly.

“I’m rubbing off on you after all. I hope you find enlightenment on this dark journey,” he said to the audible groan of the young man as the door closed.

[Tobias Stalt]

He sat alone in the dark for a long time.

Tobias pointedly ignored the deafening sound of his own heartbeat and kept his eyes shut. It made little difference in the pitch darkness of the room, but something irrationally human in his mind found comfort behind both eyelids. The rich smell of herbs and spices filled the room as incense burned on every side of him, and Tobias felt his mouth dry out from the sticky sweetness of the air.

"The scariest sensation for a killer," a quiet voice whispered in his ear, "is to be alone with his thoughts."

"I am never alone," Tobias answered mildly. "The voices of every victim stay with me. They are my only friends." Despite the humidity of the room and flames too weak to shed light, a cool breeze washed over the mercenary like fingers dancing across flesh. A moment later, the sensation evaporated.

Light poured into the void as finally the door lurched open a second time. Tobias glanced up, curious. "Finally," he asserted with a tight smile. "They found someone they think worthy of the challenge?" he asked, never one to assume outright. By all accounts, the silver haired man looked nothing special.

Tobias slowly rose, letting both arms hang. "I suppose that remains to be seen," he interjected before his opponent had time to answer. The darkness swallowed them whole a half second later, and the last thing Rehtul saw was the mercenary's sinister smile.

Every footstep echoed and reverberated to a staggering degree. Movement felt awkward without the ability to coordinate, and the frustration set in quickly. Designed in the ancient times for the purpose of mental and emotional training, the chamber both of them stood in boasted a body count higher than Tobias' own.

That alone impressed the Witch Hunter enough to need the challenge.

"Once," Tobias started to speak, though his voice blended with the impregnable shade and engulfed the room. "The Ai'bron worshipped all the Thaynes. Not just Hromagh, in the watered down iteration we know now." The story would wait, of course, until Tobias knew his opponent cared enough to pay attention.

It also served another function.

[Rehtul Orlouge]

At the utterance of the words “worthy challenge” Rehtul rolled his eyes. He realized now that he was fighting one of those types, those men who kept pushing themselves by fighting the strongest men and women that they could find. In the preternatural darkness, the young man looked around and waited for the man to make another sound while slowly feeling his way through the shadows.

When he finally did, he mentioned something about the worshipping habits of the Ai’bron, something that the young Ice Mage had never heard of before. He smirked slightly and let out a small chuckle.

“You know, I never really gave much thought to the Monks’ worshipping habits, but since I believe this is going to be interesting, I’m more than willing to listen to your tale,” he said, allowing his own voice to reverberate around the arena in much the same way that his opponent’s was. Sighing, he sat on the floor and looked toward the center of the room, the closest approximation he could make to his opponent’s true location, waiting patiently for him to speak once more.

The young man’s eyes narrowed slightly, searching through the darkness for some glimmer, for some light that would give away his opponent’s location, but could find nothing. While normally he’d simply summon his own Light magic to force the darkness back, something told him that this would not be the best idea, and not just the tactical disadvantage of being the first person to reveal his location.

I wonder how this guy would look eviscerated and pinned to the ground by pins of ice, he thought idly as he waited to be addressed once more. The thought left his brain before he could even register that it had happened, but a wicked smile was left upon his lips.