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Lithian fidgeted.

Around him, all variety of sounds filled the air: shouting, idle chatter, the scrape and tap of heavy footsteps, and below, far out of sight, Lithian swore he could hear the roar of something far more feral and restless. Reaching up to rub at his shoulder, he frowned, shifting his weight and looking away.

‘Beasts,’ Casseth had said. He hadn’t specified what kind or how many, only that it ought to — theoretically — be an ‘easy’ battle since it was his opening fight as a member of the lowest tier in the rink. From what he had seen of the place previously, often packed on every level and near-deafening with talk and commotion, Lithian could attest to the fact that it did seem to be a lower-interest match. Large swaths of the stadium’s viewing area went unfilled and the current audience seemed less than riveted to the ongoings in the arena below.

Cas’ match, though, had yet to start, and despite all the reassurances, Lithian felt as though he were about to watch his friend walk into the open maw of a hungry dragon. At least Araceli had conceded to accompanying him. After his admittance to her on Ayr, she had seemed…protective of him, almost, in a way that went above the degree to which she'd looked out for him as simply a friend. Or perhaps she was merely additionally wary of his time spent with Casseth, something she’d never approved of before and now seemed to read as a direct threat to him.

Whatever her personal reasons, however, Lithian was grateful for her company, and he hoped — however futilely — that one day her attitude might thaw. Until then, he appreciated what she was willing to offer in the meantime.

“That’s him…” Lithian murmured in answer to Ara’s question, trying not to wince at the eager jeering that rose up through the crowds like a wave at his friend’s appearance. A strange, rare anger bubbled up in him at the sound. The unfocused desire to simply lash out all of them — anyone who dared make those sounds for Casseth — because who were they to think it was their right? Their privilege, when they knew nothing of the man risking his life for their entertainment?

Lithian didn’t understand how Casseth could stand it, but when Casseth’s attention caught his, he felt his pulse pick up, thrumming in his throat with a mesh of emotions regardless of his fear. Until Casseth winked, and Lithian’s cheeks caught fire. Then, the beast was revealed, and Lithian felt his stomach drop, knuckles going white against viewing rail.

“Casseth…”



Detraeus rolled his shoulders, wincing and frowning at the growing pains down his back. Though he’d hoped they would clear away, they only seemed to be getting worse with most of the ache focussed near the bottom tip of his spine. Snorting, he shoved the thoughts away and progressed forward, hands lingering instinctively close to the hilts of his blades as he maneuvered around the crowds and made his in towards the upper viewing level of the pit.

His first trial was not for another three days yet, but he had been coming in to study the fights regularly regardless, and today was Casseth’s opening match. Though he didn’t suspect the hybrid cared one way or the other, Detraeus wanted to at least see his performance. By the sound of things when he first broke through the last set of doors and onto the audience ring, the match was already underway.

Ignoring the still-throbbing ache in his lower back, Detraeus scoped for a spot with limited viewers to give himself some breathing space, and stepped forward to the front edge to watch. The first thing he saw after peering over was the massive, looming shape of a grown rhamidon, and Casseth who — even with his axe — looked like a small, dark dot on the arena floor by comparison.

Detraeus frowned, and told himself he wasn’t concerned. Casseth could handle himself.

Lithian felt like a man on edge — a performer walking the tightrope with hungry predators looming beneath. Or, perhaps more accurately, he was the helpless bystander, watching someone he could never replace walk that tightrope, incapable of aiding him. Trapped, and restricted to purely watching the ‘show’ as it unfolded. With each snarl and charge of the massive beast below, Lithian felt his pulse quiver with the earth beneath its feet. Felt his breath shake in his throat and his muscles bunch with raw panic.

Casseth’s name teetered at the tip of his tongue, held back only by how often he bit at his lips to keep himself presentable. It slipped, though, of course. On occasion. Falling out from between his lips every time the rhamidon’s tail smashed into the earth particularly close to Casseth or whenever — for a fraction of a second — Lithian was left in flux, unsure of whether his friend had successfully maneuvered out of the way of one of the beast’s crushing feet or whether he’d been left a broken body in its wake.

Detraeus, not far from them, watched with narrowed eyes. He noted the beasts attack patterns, temperament, and relative behavior in contrast to Casseth’s defenses, which he was already more than familiar with. It was interesting, though, to note how the hybrid’s movement and overall style shifted, slightly, in a beast battle compared to the Magescian on Magescian training sessions that they shared together.

He wondered, as he watched the earth shake — trembling at the rhamidon’s roar and then bending, twisting, and cracking under the pull of Casseth’s magic — whether he would be fighting such a beast, or something else entirely. How many eyes would watch him? And would any care whether he killed his foe, or was crushed beneath it?

It mattered little in the end, he supposed.

Regardless, he intended to win.

“No, Casseth!” Lithian clung to the railing of the audience ledge for as long as Casseth was even remotely in view before shoving off and pushing through the gathered crowd. Their noise — cheering, shouting, boos, and jeers — all rolled off of him like muddled wave, and he was the fish through the current, pushing upstream in an effort to find someone, anyone who would let him down below. At the first sight of anyone who looked even remotely official, in this case, a brusque looking woman standing beside a door that clearly wasn’t intended for the casual passers by, Lithian rushed forward. “Please, my friend’s been hurt—”

“Happens.”

“No, you don’t understand, he was bleeding, I saw him fall, he might need a healer, he—”

“There are healers assigned to work as part of our business. Move along. This is a restricted area.”

“I need to get down there!” Lithian’s voice rose in spite of himself, pitched above even the roaring crowd as his panic gathered in his throat. “I don’t trust your healers and I don’t even know if he’s dead or alive. You’ll let me in now or—”

“Is there a problem here?” The voice of a second guard, at least a head taller than the first and built like a boulder, made Lithian jerk and turn, but he barely paused, and immediately began repeating himself — and his demands — to the second.

Several feet away, Detraeus frowned, his attention still focused in on the blood stains in the sand below. Casseth would be fine. Surely Casseth deserved better, and half of his blood was in Soudana’s hands. She wouldn’t ruin him. Not like this.

…right?

Snorting, he shoved up off of the railing, moving to head to the lower levels and see what he could find out. Instead, he came face to face with the previous scene: a mad dovaa, screaming at the guards that he needed to be permitted into restricted areas because…?

Detraeus narrowed his eyes, and darted around the commotion, moving for the door himself and figuring he would let the guards handle it. Instead—

“Wait, please—”

A hand gripped Detraeus’ wrist, and he froze, yanking away from the grip and whipping around to snarl at the culprit. The dovaa. At least the man had the sense to take a step back. Detraeus scowled, expression fixated and dark. Before he could so much as open his mouth to speak, however, the dovaa was talking again.

“I’m sorry, I—are you going in there? Going down, that is? I need to—my friend’s been hurt. I have to see him. I can’t just—could you take me in? I—”

“Don’t. Ever touch me.”

The dovaa breathed out, brow pinching together even as his shoulder sank a fraction. Tall. Good goddess he was tall. Yet, despite his height, he managed to make himself look like a nervous, overgrown bouken.

“Right,” the dovaa murmured as soon as he, apparently, gathered his limited nerve back up. “Never, ever again. Just. Can you please take me to see my friend…? Casseth. Casseth Fedele, the man who was just fighting he…I…” His voice dropped, softening for an instant until it was barely audible over the sounds of the rink. “He’s important to me…I need to know what’s happening.”

Detraeus blinked, startled speechless by the unexpected intrusion. That girl. What in all the gods’ names was she doing here, and was it possible that they both knew Casseth? A mad dovaa and…her. He lingered, tense and hesitant as he glanced between them, shoulders squared off and brow furrowed.

“I don’t have to do anything,” he growled out, but even as he said it, his thoughts flit back to Casseth.

Given the general attitude towards hybrids in the arena — dispensable commodities at best, and necessary burdens at worst — he, too, had little faith in the healers that would attend to Casseth, and regardless of his lack of faith in these two strangers, he did want the best for the hybrid. Casseth seemed better, somehow, than the large majority of the populous Detraeus had encountered. Not to mention, when his attention caught on the girl again, something in her expression itched at him. A splinter of genuine concern that worked his way under his skin in a way that he immediately decided he abhorred.

But at the same time, could not ignore. He looked away, gritting his teeth and turning back to face the door. He didn’t owe her anything. She owed him, as she had just said. But that didn’t stop him from spitting out his next commentary.

“My ‘friends’ are following me down.”

The guards looked more than a bit startled. When one opened her mouth, though, looking ready to object, her eyes caught Detraeus, and eventually her look petered down to a pursed scowl. “If they ‘cause trouble,” she grit out, “it’s on you.”

“They won’t.” Detraeus lead the way down.

Lithian’s eyes darted between the strange oblivionite and Araceli. He knew his friend hated the natives of Soudul — got bitter even about Casseth, who was only born of half oblivionite blood — and yet, here she was, staring the man down and pleading with him? The words, ‘I’ll owe you a third time…’ played back through his ears, echoing in his head, confusion mixing in with everything else. Did she know this man?

Before Lith could get far into that thought, though, the oblivionite was — much to his surprise — taking them in, and his pulse jumped with relief. Immediately, all thoughts of whatever might be going on between Araceli and their unanticipated helper faded to the wind, replaced by a single, solitary thought: Casseth. Casseth was all that mattered in this instant.

Veinrith’s Stadium was a yawning maw of earth in the public areas, vast, cavernous, and a sight to behold. The inner passages, conversely, twisted and jutted like broken spiders’ legs, drilling ever downwards, lit only by the dim, flickering torches set at long intervals along the walls. Their guide did not seem bothered by the dark or the chill and plodded onward like a man bent on bringing about death, cloak licking about his ankles in his wake. Lithian opted to walk as closely to Ara as he could manage without running into her.

Just when he was beginning to wonder where in the earth they were headed, the next door in their path opened into a far airier, high-domed room, better lit and filled with voices. Several heads turned at their entry. Fellow arena fighters, by Lithian’s best guess, given their dress and that a good number of them looked to be either stretching or training. One of those whose attention had been caught by their entry arched her eyebrows.

“More new grunts?”

“No,” their oblivionite guide answered without pause, continuing their trek towards a door in the far back.

“They have someone in there right now. I don’t think—”

“This is a healer.”

“You can’t just walk in there with two outsiders. Doesn’t look like one of the assigned healers. Who cleared them?”

A third voice cut in from the side: “I did.” The speaker looked only vaguely familiar at first: rich, dusty brown skin only a shade lighter than Lithian’s own and matching brown eyes, with a modest set of horns and large, earthen-looking scales. Then, Lithian recognized her.

“Takhi,” he blurted immediately. “Casseth—”

“—is out of the main infirmary and cleared to leave as soon as he’s capable. But he’s not exactly ‘capable’.” Takhi nodded her head, urging them forward. “You should come see him.”

Lithian did not need to be encouraged twice, and immediately started towards her. The woman who’d originally interrupted them frowned, her eyes flicking to Lith and darting over him as though weighing his worth in a single, sweeping stare. At length, though, she shrugged and said no more as they passed through. As soon as they made it through the next passage and into, apparently, one of the rooms designated for wounded participants to gather their strength, Lithian rushed for Casseth.

“Cas, you’re…breathing,” he said, reaching up and touching his fingers to Cas’ forehead, “that’s a good start. How deep is the gash wound?” His eyes flicked down over Casseth’s body as he spoke, scanning the damage and taking a mental list of everything he could spot on the surface to best assess where to go from there. “What can you move without hurting? Did you lose much blood? Was the animal clean, or is there chance of infection? What did the other healers put on it? Did they even…close the wound?” Lithian winced, progressively more dissatisfied with his friend’s treatment the more he took in.

Lithian jerked forward, cringing inspite of himself at Casseth’s hiss and grimace of pain when he moved. “Just a scratch,” Lith repeated, mumbling it beneath his breath with a sigh. Of course, even after taking a spike to the gut and having his stomach half ripped open, Casseth would still downplay the severity of his injuries. Lithian reached down, unstoppering one of the flasks permanently strapped to his hip and plucking out a small stream of water.

With his focus entirely on Casseth, he didn’t so much as notice Casseth’s look to Ara, or pay any mind to the other three in the room. All that mattered now, in this moment, was Cas’ injury and the priority of getting it clean and stitched back up again before he lost much more blood. Brushing Casseth’s hands fully away from the gash, he ushered his friend back onto his back, carefully, and drew his water up, plucking at his magic until the liquid rippled around his fingers and palm like a translucent glove.

“Hold still,” he murmured. “Don’t need you damaging anymore tissue…” Pulling back the bloody bindings as gently as he could manage, Lithian frowned at the previous work done, and wondered how bad the wound must have been if this was all the healers before him could manage to do for it. He shoved the thoughts aside, though — no longer relevant — and lowered his hand, applying a cool, cleansing stream to the torn flesh, still dirtied with grit and mixed blood. The water glowed faintly with his magic, white-blue in the dimly lit room, and Lithian fell largely out of awareness of everything around him, his attention narrowing down to individual kernels of dirt and sand, torn sinew, and an overarching sense of pain coming to him in pulses. Into the wound and over the pain, he poured his energy.

Behind him, Detraeus watched like a wary bird of prey, trying to determine friend from foe. For better or for worse, he had gradually come to trust Casseth, within limits and — rarely enough for him — even enjoyed his company. He’d felt real worry, however unwilling he’d be to admit it, when he watched Cas fall, and so, to see a strange, half-mad dovaa tending to him in such a vulnerable position unnerved him. He didn’t trust the strange peisio — ‘Lithian’ as the dovaa girl had called him — and it left him on edge and restless to sit back, idle.

At least, he consoled himself, Casseth seemed to trust the man, and if he did wind up helping with his healing process, that was enough for Detraeus at the moment. When the girl moved closer, though, catching his stare, his tension spiked back up, and he squared his shoulders, folding his arms and narrowing his eyes.

What could she possibly want now…?

“So,” Takhi’s voice cut in, impossibly bright considering the circumstances, and loud enough to make Detraeus startle. Her eyes darted between him and the other girl. “You two know each other? Or both know Cas, or…?”

Detraeus frowned.

“Ah, right, alright. Well, I’m Takhi,” the woman — Takhi, apparently — said, introducing herself with another quick flit of a grin. “It’s good to see you taking interest in the stadium to begin with…and, well, particularly Casseth, I figure, even if you don’t know him well enough yet. It’s good seein’ him havin’ folk about when he takes a hit. Good new is it was fairly mild all things considered and he should pull through just fine…or, so one o’ the healers said. ‘Specially with your friend on him, though, hm? He—”

Detraeus started to tune the woman out. As respected of a fighter as she was in the arena, she talked far too much for his interest, and while on some people — Casseth, for example — the habit of loud talk and enthusiasm didn’t bother him terribly, on others, it grated at him. Casseth was bleeding at the gut, not suffering a minor scratch, and though he knew her to be a genuine friend of Cas’, Detraeus didn’t altogether approve of her attitude. It wasn’t until some minutes later when her subject of the moment re-piqued his interest.

“…and so I’ll tell ‘im, like I’ve said before, that the place sounds like a great trainin’ ground if you’re lookin’ to take on a few fangs and claws instead o’ just Magescian fighters. Keepin’ up a balance in your practice routines helps you adapt quicker, you know? A yawning cave of countless tunnels, filled with more types of dragons than you’d ever think could populate a place. So deep, some say no one’s yet found all the ends. Not to mention, I hear the orb profit can be pretty staggering if you play your cards right and don’t end up needin’ to retreat before y’ get started. Can’t say I’ve ever actually been there myself, since I spend most of my time closer in to the city. ‘Specially now a’ days when my fights here bring in all the coin I need and then some — nice change from some earlier times, I’ll tell you that much — but doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a good startin’ place. For training soldiers like you, too, or…one or either of you, I’m sure one of you must be taking the path of glory? You don’t look like bakers or shoe smiths if you ask me…”

Detraeus shifted his weight, leaning a fraction closer as he listened. “Where did—?”

Before he could finish his question however, it was interrupted by a soft swish and padded thunk, provided by none other than Lithian collapsing to the floor in a dead faint.