The stairway that led down into the arena’s basement was extremely simple, with no adornments or anything else of the sort. The large room that it opened into, however, was the exact opposite, with the red brick walls elaborately painted with icons of the Cortuban gods, small alcoves placed around the large room with golden statues, and at least a hundred plush seats—presumably for the gladiators to rest in before and after their fights.

Branching out to the north and south were huge tunnels that followed the curve of the arena’s outer wall, and as Leon sent his magic senses rolling through them, he saw that they were the backbone of a large tunnel network that connected this waiting room with several other, smaller waiting rooms, bare brick chambers filled with either nothing or a few empty cages of various size, and the tunnels that led to the locked gates that opened directly onto the sands of the arena. He also saw not too far away another huge tunnel that led further west—the entrance through which the beasts were brought through, he assumed. What he didn’t see were any additional guards or overnight staff working down below the arena, which he found rather curious, but he supposed the place didn’t exactly look like it needed that much seeing to, being clean and with its entrances already guarded.

“Leave the guards here,” Leon ordered, and Valeria and Maia rather unceremoniously dropped the guards into armchairs in the corner of the dark room. Leon estimated that they would be out of commission for several hours at least, but someone else might stumble upon them, or their absence might be noticed, so he led Valeria and Maia further into the underground tunnels, wasting no time as they delved deeper into the arena in search of its secrets.

There weren’t many doors blocking his magic senses, so Leon had already scoured the tunnels and rooms that he could see for any clues to the blood magic he found, finding nothing of note. However, here and there was a door that did block his magic senses, and he led his small group toward the nearest of these doors, which branched off from the main tunnel rather than from any of the waiting or holding rooms.

To his surprise and muted disappointment, he found that the door was unlocked and easily opened. Within, he found nothing but cleaning supplies.

With a sigh, he shut the door and said, “I think we’re going to find a lot of storage closets down here…”

“Then where to now?” Valeria asked. “I don’t think we’re going to find a secret blood magic enchantment array hidden among mops and brooms.”

Leon nodded his head, but when he glanced around with his magic senses, he noticed that nearly all the rest of the doors he couldn’t see through were identical to this one: fairly small, innocuous, and branching off the main tunnels. They all looked like more storage closets, and while he didn’t discount the possibility that what he was looking for might be found behind one, he decided to give them a pass for the moment.

Widening the scope of his search, after a few seconds, something caught his eye: a room filled with small idols and altars—what clearly was a small temple. Given how often King Alfonso had repeated his belief that every drop of blood spilled in the arena was a sacrifice to his people’s gods, Leon figured whatever was going on might be connected with that small temple.

“This way…” Leon said, explaining his reasoning as he led the other two onward. He kept his eyes open for any traps or alarms that he might notice, but, to his continued bafflement, after making it past those couple of guards and the locked gate, the arena was essentially undefended. He was grateful for the lack of exertion, but his lack of knowledge of what was going on here had him on edge.

Fortunately, they reached the temple without a single sign that anything was wrong. No tripped alarms, no unusual magic flowing through the walls or tunnels, and certainly no sign of blood or demonic magic.

[Am I missing anything?] Leon asked his soul realm’s residents.

[Nothing that I can sense,] Nestor responded.

[There’s fuck all there,] Xaphan added.

Leon’s remained uneasy and cautiously entered the temple. It wasn’t that large, but it was the most opulently appointed room that Leon had seen in the arena aside from the Royal box. A thick blood-red rug covered most of the hardwood floor, and about fifty kneeling pillows were arranged in several lines before the central altar. The altars themselves looked to be made of ivory and maple wood, mostly covered by sheets of fine white linen, with idols of the gods reverently placed upon them, each idol roughly one-quarter to one-third the size of a full grown man.

Each idol was different, too, with one standing like he was lording over all he surveyed, his head turned slightly upward to look down his nose properly, a furled scroll in his left hand; the base of his idol was inscribed with the name ‘Cortell’. Another depicted a man dressed in ragged hides riding a lion, with the name ‘Cormellian’ inscribed upon the base of his idol. A third was adorned in silver armor, a spear clutched in his right hand; ‘Cortusis’ was his name.

Leon recognized each of those three, but the two altars that stood out the most to him were the largest one opposite the door, and the smallest one tucked away in the corner. The former showed a man with a great smile and his arms spread in welcome, identified as Cortubus. The latter showed an indistinct person shrouded by a great cloak, their face obscured by the darkness of their hood—Cordancis was inscribed upon the base of their idol. ‘Greatest Life’ and ‘Greatest Death’, Leon remembered their titles were.

The altars of Cortubus and Cordancis were his two most attractive options, but Leon first went over to Cortusis, the Fierce God, in whose name the first fights were fought. The altar was luxurious, the idol rendered extraordinarily lifelike, but other than that, Leon couldn’t sense a thing about it that he found suspicious. He moved on to Cormellian, the Wild God, in whose name the gladiators fought the captured wild beasts, but again, he found nothing. Finally, he came to the altar of Cortell, the Commanding God, who observed all the fights and granted his aid to whomever pleased him, but for a third time, his search was fruitless.

There were several other altars in the room aside from Greatest Life and Greatest Death, but since Alfonso hadn’t told him anything about those gods, Leon ignored them for the moment, moving instead to Cordancis, Greatest Death.

As with all the others, Cordancis’ altar was beautiful and clearly crafted with great reverence, but Leon found it rather telling that their altar was the smallest and placed so out of focus as to be rather conspicuous to an outsider like him. Though, he supposed he understood—death was not a thing that most people enjoyed thinking about, and so the relative marginalization of a death god was only to be expected. Still, he found nothing about that altar that spoke of demonic magic.

He sighed as he stepped away from that altar and began to take a few steps toward the altar of Greatest Life, Cortubus, now on to his last suspicion. If nothing came of this, then he supposed he’d start entertaining the idea of just leaving. This wasn’t his problem, he was making this investigation entirely out of curiosity. If the Cortubans were making fanatical blood sacrifices to their gods with the full consent of their people, then Leon had to ask himself how much of that he cared to interfere with, even with his antipathy toward blood sacrifice.

These musings vanished from his mind as he stepped up to Cortubus’ altar and focused his magic senses upon the idol. Almost immediately, he sensed a hint of magic power flowing through the idol, unlike all the others, and his eyes went wide with excitement.

“I think this might be something,” Leon murmured, just barely holding himself back from reaching out to touch the idol. Instead, he bathed the entire altar in his magic senses, looking it over from top to bottom. And he sensed a thin strand of magic power, almost like fishing twine tying the idol to the altar, twine so fine that it was nearly imperceptible. If he weren’t an eighth-tier mage and relatively skilled in the art of enchanting, he didn’t think he would’ve been able to sense it otherwise.

But as he examined it, he found that he had to alter his initial response—it wasn’t like fishing twine, it was like the string on an instrument…

[Hey, there’s a—] Nestor began, but Leon cut him off.

[I see it. There’s an ancient rune here…]

Leon stood up straight and stared at the idol.

‘What’s an ancient rune doing here?’ he wondered. As far as he was aware, the use of ancient runes had died out on Aeterna long ago, in favor of the far more versatile modern runes. And yet, here he found a string of magic power that was clear evidence of an ancient rune. And he just had to pluck at that string to see what it did…

[Can you tell what it does?] Leon asked Nestor, not wanting to do something quite so foolish as to active an unknown ancient rune.

[I’m afraid not,] Nestor replied. [My magic senses in my current state aren’t fine enough to immediately—]

[It’s a variation of the ‘open’ rune,] Xaphan interjected. [My guess is that it’s essentially a door handle.]

Leon’s eyes went wide, and once again, he had to fight his immediate impulse to activate it. He didn’t know what it might open or what else he might trip. He was still someplace he wasn’t technically supposed to be, probing into secrets that could have deep repercussions for the Cortuban Alliance. Blindly charging into wherever this might lead could only end badly for him; he needed to use more caution.

“Help me out, here,” Leon said aloud for everyone to hear. “This altar is concealing something, and I need to make sure it hasn’t been warded.”

“I can’t sense anything coming from it…” Valeria stated as she walked over.

“It’s incredibly faint, but it’s there…” Leon explained.

“There aren’t any runes inscribed upon the altar…” Valeria said as she examined the object in question from every possible angle.

[Nothing in the walls, either,] Maia added as she held her hand out to only an inch or so from the bricks behind the altar.

[It seems safe to me,] Xaphan whispered, his tone hesitant enough to bring a scowl to Leon’s face.

[It is safe,] Nestor asserted with significantly more confidence.

[Are you sure?] Leon asked, even though his own senses were telling him the same thing.

[It’s defense through discretion,] Nestor explained. [There aren’t any more significant defenses because they would only give away the presence of that rune. It’s meant to be subtle and unnoticeable, not defended like a vault.]

[I’d imagine that anything here would be defended like a vault,] Leon said, but despite that, he reached out with his magic power and plucked the string, placing his trust in those with greater experience.

Almost immediately, the idol of Cortubus glowed like a star, and then the altar began to slide backwards, vanishing into the wall as if the wall itself were nothing more than an illusion. The bricks that were beneath the altar then rippled like they were liquid, and then pulled back like they were an organic membrane to reveal a long and deep set of stairs.

Leon made a noise of disgust, but didn’t let his attention slip for a second. His magic senses were kept projected to monitor any potential changes in the flow of magic around them, while simultaneously being sent in as subtle a wave as he could manage down the stairs.

The stairs went deep, descending hundreds of feet below the arena—directly below the sands, if Leon’s sense of spatial awareness wasn’t wrong—before his magic senses were scattered by defensive wards.

“It’s deep,” Leon stated with immense trepidation, remembering the last couple of times he’d descended that deep beneath the earth. “There’re also more active defenses down there; my magic senses were scattered.”

“Are we going down there?” Valeria asked, her voice dripping with understandable hesitance.

“I won’t force you, but I am,” Leon replied, not wanting to in the slightest but also knowing that his curiosity would never allow him to turn away at this point. “At the first sign of trouble, though, I’ll be turning around and getting the hells out of here…”

Valeria took a deep breath and then nodded. Maia, on the other hand, had gone somewhat pale, but she gave Leon a nod of solidarity—she would go with them, too.

With as much determination as he could muster, Leon began to slowly descend the stairs while keeping an eye on the opening above, wanting to ensure that it didn’t close behind them. The staircase was wide enough that the three could walk side-by-side, but without even a single word, they staggered themselves out, heading down with several steps between each. Leon kept his eyes open for anything out of the ordinary, any signs of defensive wards, any sign that the ambient magic was being disturbed by the hand of man. But he descended several hundred steps into the dark tunnel and past the anti-magic sense ward before he noticed anything.

The staircase was bare stone, without even a light source, which he found odd, but which also made it almost obvious when they encountered the first active defense: an alarm subtly painted onto the ceiling. If they passed beneath it without noticing it—which would’ve been easy in the dark if Leon hadn’t been paying attention—then someone would’ve been alerted. As it was, Leon was easily able to see, parse, and disable the enchantment, allowing them to proceed unimpeded and undetected.

But after that, they encountered more and more defenses, from small earth runes that would cause them to be impaled upon spikes if activated, to water traps designed to flood the stairs, to additional alarms. Fire, cages of light, walls of stone, it didn’t matter, Leon found them all and disabled them. They were painted onto or carved into the bare stone, leading Leon to almost scoff in derision. Some of them were cleverly placed, hidden within larger enchantments, or using larger enchantments to draw the eye away from the real ward, but Leon still found them all and disabled them. If anything, he almost found it patronizingly easy. If there had been light sources or if the stairs had been more thoroughly imbued with standard comfort enchantments, then it might’ve been harder; the magical disturbances that those enchantments would’ve created might’ve obscured the wards better than the darkness did.

Still, they were complex enough enchantments that their progress was rather slow, and Leon guessed that if he didn’t have Nestor to consult, their progress would’ve either been agonizingly slow, or it would’ve arrested entirely. As it was, he was just happy that he didn’t need Nestor’s assistance too often to progress.

Soon enough, though, Leon and his companions reached the end of the stairs about a thousand feet beneath the ground by his estimation. They were confronted with a short landing and a door, though this one was more ceremonial than anything, being made of gilded wood and lacking even a hint of magic within it. It didn’t have a conventional lock, as far as Leon could tell. But when he scanned the door, he almost reeled backward into Valeria, for he could sense a tremendous amount of demonic magic on the other side of the door.

He told the other two what he could sense, and all three prepared themselves for battle, just in case. Then, Leon slowly pressed against the door, quietly pushing it open.

They were immediately confronted with an intense dark red glow and a bare circular chamber beyond the door. The chamber had been terraced further down like seats in a theater, and down in the center of the chamber, at the bottom of the terraces, was dark red demonfire burning like a bonfire.

[Leon…] Xaphan muttered. [I think… I recognize this power…]

Leon froze as he responded, [Should I continue?]

He waited several long seconds before Xaphan hesitantly said, [Yes…]

Leon cautiously slipped into the chamber and recognized more details. The ceiling was a shallow dome and was covered in long vein-like markings that extended down to the walls, then the floor, and then down into the terraced pit. Leon guessed they were channels for the magic power from the arena above would flow, feeding whatever was in the demonfire. He couldn’t see any runes, but he could sense several more strings of magic power, indicating the presence of additional ancient runes.

These runes, Leon didn’t think he wanted to mess with.

Edging forward, Leon slid to the edge of the top terrace and looked down into the pit. He wanted to get a better look at the demonfire, and what he saw down there had him grimacing in empathy and disgust.

There was a human figure within the demonfire, lying down on the bare stone of the pit floor, secured in a spreadeagle pose by great steel chains attached at their wrists, elbows, ankles, knees, waist, and neck. They were so thin and so obscured by demonfire that Leon couldn’t tell if they were male or female, but he could at least tell that they weren’t an actual fire demon, for their flesh wasn’t the same glittering obsidian as Xaphan’s was.

[A channeler…] Xaphan murmured in concern. A moment later, as if sensing Leon’s unspoken question, Xaphan explained, [Like a more extreme version of a vampire, but this human’s entire existence is to be hollowed out and act as one end of a channel that leads directly back to their contracted demon. They act like a siphon, absorbing and channeling every tiny speck of magic power that they’re given to their master. This becomes their only remaining purpose in life, and the harm that being so used wreaks upon their body cannot be understated.]

Leon was about to express his disgust, but then the figure within the fire moved, and he stopped. Their head turned slowly in his direction, and while he couldn’t see the specifics of their features through the obscuring fire, he could see their mouth opening wider and wider…

And then they began to scream, a discordant and unspeakably unsettling wail that shook the chamber itself and pierced all of their ears like needles.

Without so much as a word, Leon, Valeria, and Maia, acting in sync, turned around and ran for the door and the stairs as fast as their legs could carry them, even as the chamber around them shook like a powerful earthquake had hit Andalus. The door snapped off its hinges and cracks opened on the walls of the staircase, and Leon only had one thought in his head: they had to get out of there as swiftly as humanly possible.