The following morning dawned and I felt it as sharply as the heat from a fire. It woke me, and I lay on the thin bed in the arena quarters thinking. While I slept, I again visited with Ham, Eric, and Samantha, but I spent much of the time simply snoozing on the bank of Ham’s river. There was no need for me to disturb their afterlives right now. I was beginning to get a hang of how their knowledge was accessed. Essentially, all I had to do was form a question, and if the knowledge was something one of those willing souls knew, I would find that I knew the answer even before I finished formulating the question. It had happened several times yesterday without me even noticing, like understanding the history of Molo street and grasping the importance of Myrkai’s oath. I couldn’t tell exactly which of the souls in my care provided information, although I could guess, but if I really cared, I could always ask them at night.

Bia and I performed our morning ablutions without incident and soon we stood before the clerk’s window at the arena entrance with Myrkai. The entrance to the arena was busy as usual and the clerk had a full line, even if he didn’t know it, full of the ghosts of arena contestants of years past. Even my own companions watched with bemused expressions as I worked my way through the ghostly crowd. They seemed to feel nothing as they walked through the bodies of the incorporeal dead.

“ Excuse me, Ric. I need to add a person to our team,” I said as I reached the clerk’s window.

“I’m afraid no alterations of your contract are allowed,” Ric answered with the confidence of frequent repetition.

“Ah, but no alteration of the contract is necessary,” I said, smilingly. “See, according to our group contract, there should be four people on our team and we just haven’t registered the other two.”

“Wait, what?” Ric replied glibly. “Let me see that…” He reached over the wall of cubbyholes and started looking for my contract, but I didn’t give him time to double check it.

“That’s why I’m adding Myrkai as the third member of our team,” I continued. “I’ll let you know if we find a fourth member. In the mean time, we have to get to our next match,” I said. The three of us turned away while he was still looking.

“Hey, come back here! That isn’t how this works!” Ric shouted, but we were already far enough way to pretend that we hadn’t heard him as we dived into the arena underworks.

The halls of the arena muffled the crowd noise, as usual, and fewer of the ghosts wandered the halls for some reason. I spotted one of the attendants on his way to an arena anteroom and found out from him that we would be in anteroom IV facing off against another party. That sounded interesting, but I was a little nervous about actually killing someone. Skeletons and monsters I was fine with, and I hadn't had time to anticipate the fight with Anger and Myrkai. We had even managed to take them down without killing them. I wasn’t keen to break that trend if I could help it.

The three of us entered anteroom IV, and I found myself sitting across from Bia’Keres and Myrkai in silence, waiting for the attendant to send us out to the fight. Bia seemed impassive as usual, but I found that she wouldn’t meet my eyes. Myrkai, by contrast, seemed to be lost in thought.

“Penny for your thoughts?” I asked Myrkai. They both looked at me strangely and I realized the old saying didn’t translate well. Then Myrkai simply held out his hand. “Hm, I don’t actually have a penny,” I admitted, only to see the corners of Myrkai’s mouth turn up. Was he just messing with me?

“No need, my Lord. I am meditating on the upcoming battle, renewing the forms of Kaisukren,” Myrkai told me.

“What’s Kaisukren?” I asked.

“Kaisukren is a martial art of the Bast people which focuses on combined false and true claw attacks,” Myrkai answered. “The name itself is translated as ‘Cat catches mouse’. It is a martial form that emphasizes speed and efficiency suitable for rapidly finishing encounters.”

“What do you mean by true and false claws” I asked, “and why do it in your head?”

“These are my true claws,” Myrkai said as he unsheathed his own cat claws. They were over two inches long, serrated, and sharply hooked. “False claws are any kind of weapon a Bast holds. This room is too small for many of the forms I will be using in the arena,” Myrkai replied, “but I can show you some, if you like.”

“Yes, I would like to see it.”

With that, Myrkai stood and occupied the center aisle of the anteroom where he proceeded to perform a series of katas. His movements were sharp and precise and I could easily imagine his claws going through enemies. Myrkai still didn’t have a weapon, so he was emphasizing the use of his claws, rather than weapons. There were many cat like movements which seemed to emphasize his body’s natural fighting tendencies, such as a move where his claws would bat across rapidly in that way only cats have when striking their prey. Unfortunately, the display was interrupted after only a few minutes.

“Your match is about to begin,” the attendant informed us. “Please enter the arena.” As he spoke the door opened and the three of us walked out into the arena. The stands were not as empty as the last time I fought and the buzz of crowd noise swamped the small sounds of our footsteps as we walked out across the sandy floor toward the center of the arena. Door II, opposite our own, had also opened up and we could see a full team of four approaching across the sand.

“Please give a hearty welcome to Ker’Haros, Bia’Keres, and Myrkai! Today they’ll be facing off against their leading competitors, Bagwil, Trip, Hamish, and Lolt! Both teams have won their initial matches and for the first time, we get to see whether these teams are champions in the making or food for worms! We salute ye who are about to die! If you die, die well!”

We were still beyond the distance of an effective charge when the opposing team started firing bolts and arrows at us. It seemed the entire opposing team was equipped with a ranged weapon as well as their primary melee weapon. Three of them had crossbows, but one seemed to be primarily a bowman. We did the only thing we could. We charged.

Bia placed herself in front of me, effortlessly outdistancing my fastest sprint. Her staff struck out to block an incoming arrow. Meanwhile, Myrkai dropped to all fours and kicked off with speed I could barely credit even as I watched. He crossed the distance separating us almost as fast as the speeding missiles. His target was obviously the bowman, but one of the other warriors managed to tackle him in a desperate interception.

The enemy crossbowman fired off another pair of bolts and Bia only blocked one, taking the other bolt in the thigh. She stumbled, but managed to keep limping forward, although she was going a lot slower. I saw the bowman fired a shot from nearly point blank range, but Myrkai cleanly intercepted the arrow with the body of his enemy as the two continued to grapple.

Her cry of pain centered me in a way that I hadn’t been in any other battles as the intellectual understanding that people were going to try and kill us suddenly became extremely real, visceral, and immediate. I sprinted past Bia, heading for the nearest enemy and I saw them dropping their crossbows and switching to their melee weapons. My focus narrowed down to the one enemy I would face.

My opponent was the dwarf from the first day, I saw - still encased in heavy armor. He smoothly drew an axe and unslung his shield as he let his crossbow drop to the ground. I prepared a flying punch, but was forced to pull up short as he took a well timed swipe with his axe. The blade cut through my shirt and left a shallow bleeding gash across my chest. Another couple inches and I’d have been watching my heart beat through my open ribs.

“Fool,” the dwarf commented as he shield bashed me. The move threw me on the ground and the dwarf stepped forward and chopped downward. My incredibly brief life flashed before my eyes, only to see the axe knocked into the dirt by Bia’s staff. The other enemy flew past in my peripheral vision, taking Bia out of the equation once again, but the brief respite gave me the opening I needed.

I grabbed onto the haft of the ax and punch the dwarf in the helmet, which mainly just hurt my hand. The dwarf’s armor dented slightly under a flash of green power, but he simply stepped forward and bashed me in the face with his shield, this time breaking my nose.

You are dazed and unable to act.

I shook the window away. I couldn’t be dazed right now, or I was going to die.

Your dazed status has been cancelled as the Chosen of Death.

The ringing in my ears faded to background noise and my vision sharpened. Time seemed to elongate as I watched the dwarf preparing to split my head like a melon. I noted that his shield was out of position because of his heavy swing. I needed to get through his armor and stop him now, or his ax would go through my skull. My hand flared brilliantly green as I reached for his heart. It passed directly through his armor and I felt something gauzy and ephemeral. I grabbed it and ripped, pulling my fist and a web of grayish light straight out of his body. For a moment, it resisted before I felt it tear and the whole tattered mess ripped out of his body and contracted into my fist. The dwarf’s body crumpled limply onto the ground next to me.

Soul RendThe Necromancer can freely interact with souls in a physical manner. He can use it to capture souls he can overpower, both living and dead.

Activated

Mana Cost: Equal to target’s remaining soul points

Soul Gained: Bagwil

Time snapped back into normal motion and I felt my head ringing while lights danced across my vision. For a split second, I lay stunned, still trying to comprehend the window before I willed it away and sat up. The dwarf was dead, obviously. Myrkai had dealt with his first opponent and was now chasing the bowman across the arena. The bowman was in headlong flight and doing well to stay ahead of Myrkai by sharply turning every time Myrkai attempted a rush. Bia’keres didn’t seem to be doing so well. Her opponent was a human using a spear and he seemed to be baiting her. She struck out wildly as I watched and the spearman carefully guided the blow past before countering. The strike missed, but the blood flowing from Bia’keres body spoke of previous successes.

“Bia’keres,” I had to shout, just to be heard over the crowd. “Break his spear.”

At the sound of my voice, her movements instantly changed. She feinted a powerful strike, drawing the spearman into a pointless attack, then struck downward powerfully with her staff, snapping the spear in two. Her next strike smashed through her opponent’s chest with a crunching sound that was audible even above the crowd noise. Blood sprayed from the spearman’s mouth and he died on the spot.

“And there you have it! Ker’Haros, Bia’Keres, and Myrkai win the match without losing a single team member, while only Lolt remains from the opposing team. We congratulate you!”

The crowd gave a deafening roar. Myrkai stalked back across the arena while the bowman knelt sobbing in the sand. The other three enemies were dead, two of them obviously so and the dwarf almost without a mark on him. The three of us returned to the anteroom and the noise of the crowd was mercifully silenced as the heavy door closed.