Rise of the Living Forge

Selen closed a door behind her and the roar of the crowd vanished like a snuffed candle, leaving behind only silence. She let out a small sigh of relief. The Proving Grounds were a little too high energy for her. Working in silence was far preferrable — even if the opportunity was rarer than she’d like.

“You look tired, Selen.”

The voice came from the shadows of the small room she’d stepped into. She turned to it, but there was no surprise in her features at her sudden company. Sitting in one of the two wooden chairs flanking a rickety old table was a man with cold blue eyes.

“I am tired, Xiodan,” Selen replied. She pulled the chair across from him out and lowered herself into it. “I have to keep track of everybody.”

“That’s an exaggeration. You’ve only been assigned a subset of the groups. A rather interesting one, I would say.”

The corner of Selen’s lips twitched upward. “I never said it wasn’t interesting. Just tiring. We have quite the number of little snoopers this year. Even more than normal.”

“A natural part of the Proving Grounds.” Xiodan gave her a knowing nod. “After all, there’s no point merely testing the warriors that enter the fight. We seek the abilities of the guild as a whole. Anything they prove themselves capable of must be judged.”

“That’s a fancy way to say we don’t mind when people cheat.”

“Don’t try to tell me you don’t like it.” Xiodan crossed his arms in front of his chest and leaned back on the rear legs of his chair. “Cheating is the most interesting part. It’s just so creative. Are you really telling me you prefer watching people smack the shit out of each other with swords and magic?”

Selen rolled her eyes. “At least pretend like we’re trying to keep some semblance of order, would you?”

“We are. There’s a difference between anarchy and controlled chaos. Every one of the teams here cheats — but only within the boundaries. If they push too far, they lose. And is scouting for information or preparing to fight your opponents truly cheating? It is life. Such things make the Proving Grounds more realistic representations of true skill than any other tournament.”

“That’s true enough,” Selen allowed. She lowered herself into the other chair and pulled her veil back, running a hand through her hair and letting her head rock back. “Gods, what a pain in the ass. Do you know how tiring it is to keep track of all the little spies everyone’s sending out?”

“Yes.”

Selen’s nose scrunched and she pulled her head up to glare at Xiodan. “Fair enough.”

“So…” Xiodan leaned forward, bracing his elbows against his knees as interest sparkled in his eyes. “Anyone doing anything I should be aware of from your groups? I’ve got pretty much the standard. More of it than normal, but the standard.”

“Would you be surprised if I said the Menagerie?” Selen asked.

Xiodan tilted his head to the side. “Somehow, no. That seems entirely within modus operandi.”

Selen started to nod. Then her brow furrowed and she frowned. “What does that mean? Could you speak like a normal person?”

“Sorry. Old habits die hard,” Xiodan said with a chuckle. “The Menagerie doing something odd seems rather standard for them. Which one of their number was it?”

“Reya. The girl that came with Arwin,” Selen replied. She leaned back in her chair and chewed her lower lip. “It’s the strangest thing. The people guilds send to gather information are usually the assassin types. Stick to the shadows and the like.”

“And Reya is not?”

“She’s said hi to everybody she’s passed.”

Xiodan blinked. Then he let out a snort of laughter. “Doesn’t sound like a particularly effective information-gatherer. I’m not sure I’d classify that as odd so much as ineffective.”

Selen was shaking her head before he’d finished speaking.

“You couldn’t be more wrong. That’s the thing. If I didn’t know better, I might have suspected we trained her ourselves. Nobody has glanced at her twice because she’s acting as if she belongs instead of trying to hide. And get this — the moment she thought nobody was in the area, she walked right through a wall.”

Xiodan’s amusement evaporated. “She did what? Inside the Proving Grounds? Impossible. They’re enchanted against magic like that.”

“I’ve watched her do it three times now. I don’t have the slightest clue how, but she’s passed clean through the warding magic as if it isn’t there. It’s not like we’ve got anything here that we’re particularly concerned about hiding, but…”

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“If she can walk through walls here, she can do it in other areas as well,” Xiodan concluded with a grim frown. “She’s either found a massive flaw in our defenses… or she’s inordinately powerful. Chances of recruiting her?”

“Already thought about that. We’d have to dig deeper than normal. I tried leaving some gold in her path to see if it would catch her interest and she didn’t even look at it twice. A street rat didn’t look at gold, Xiodan. She just walked right by it.”

“Seems like Arwin ensures the loyalty of his guild well. Well, no need to push harder right now. Let them continue the tournament and don’t interfere with the girl so long as she doesn’t get near anything too dangerous — though I’m quite confident nothing like that should exist here. Just give her the same treatment we give every other team.” Xiodan rubbed the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “But, just out of curiosity, how much gold did you leave in her path?”

“500.”

“Shit,” Xiodan said. “She ignored 500 gold just… sitting there? It’s not exactly enough to make a king, but that’s a huge sum to skip by.”

“I am aware. The bag is enchanted to ensure I can track whoever takes it. I imagine a different sneak will find it soon enough. Reya isn’t the only talented infiltrator.”

Xiodan nodded idly. “Anything else of note?”

“A few things, but the most pressing is that it seems a foreign force has infiltrated the arena. We’ve counted one more person present in the biomagical scans than there should be.”

“Portaled in?”

“No. The spatial barriers are undisturbed. So are the physical entryways. I checked all the standard recruitment angles. None of them were tripped. It’s like a ghost just… showed up.”

Xiodan’s frown grew deeper and his features creased in thought for several long seconds. “Have you found any information on them?”

“Not yet. There are a lot of people in the stands. I don’t think they’ve infiltrated the fighters, though. They seem to have some other motive.”

“Perhaps they just want to watch.”

“Or recruit,” Selen said darkly. “We have a number of people participating this year that have… less than stellar morals.”

“You’ve made your displeasure with some of the teams more than evidently known,” Xiodan said. He rose from his chair with a heavy sigh and stepped past Selen on his way for the door, only pausing when his hand was on the handle to look back at her. “And, for what it’s worth, I don’t disagree with you.”

“Then…”

“Our purpose is not to question our orders. It is to gather information. If the Secret Eye has deemed such weapons appropriate, then that is what they will be. We will simply observe what happens. Just as we always have. That is our duty.”

Selen didn’t give Xiodan a response, and he didn’t wait for one. He pulled the door open and slipped out, letting it close quietly behind him and leaving her alone in the room.

***

“I’m back,” Reya said, flopping down in the chair beside Arwin and nearly scaring the lights out of him. He’d been so focused on the melees that he hadn’t even heard the door open behind him.

“Shit,” Arwin said with something between a sigh and a laugh. “I didn’t hear you coming. Did it go okay? No trouble?”

“No trouble,” Reya confirmed.

“Rodrick taught me a bunch about sneaking around better. Basically everything he said was right. It’s crazy what you can do when you just look in place.” Then she stuck her hand out into the air and brought it down, clawing a buzzing white hole right into reality. Reya plucked a bag free from it and tossed it onto the ground before her. It landed with a loud, metallic clunk. “Sorry. Didn’t want to sit around with that thing poking at me.”

Arwin squinted at the bag. “And what is that thing?”

“My bag.”

“I am more interested in what you’ve placed in your bag.”

“Gold. Some idiot left it lying around.”

“Could it have been a trap?”

Reya stared at Arwin. “What do you think I am, an amateur? I doubled back to check on it after I first passed. It was still there. Most traps work by rigging the vessel, so I took the gold out of the bag I found it in and stuck it into mine. Never touched the actual bag.”

Arwin shook his head. Evidently, some things would never change.

“I’ll trust you, then. Say, did you find any information about someone called Arnold?”

Reya frowned. “Arnold? No. I don’t think so. Why? Who’s that?”

“Someone that I promised I’d look into. It’s a bit of a long story, but Esmerelda is here too, and apparently someone called Arnold is going to get killed in the tournament.”

Reya’s eyes widened. “Seriously? Oh, shit. Next melee is starting. Is he one of them?”

She thrust a finger at the arena below them.

Arwin followed it down to the stone platform, where teams were taking the stage once more. He scanned over everyone in search of the boy that Esmerelda had shown him but was relieved to find that he wasn’t among there number.

“No. None of them.”

But, while Arnold’s group wasn’t in the crowd, someone else’s was.

Art’s team had just taken the stage. It seemed their turn for the melee had arrived. Art and Vix looked much as they had the last time Arwin had seen them, but Kien wore a plain white mask that concealed all of his face other than his eyes.

“I can head out and see if I can find him if you can describe him,” Reya offered. “You’ll have to tell me how this fight goes.”

Arwin did just that, recounting everything Esmerelda had told him.

Reya nodded her understanding. “I’ll look into it now. Maybe I can find him in the fighters’ quarters somewhere. What should I even tell him?”

Arwin just shook his head. “I don’t know. Find him, for now. We can figure out what to do from there. I can’t control the future, but information always helps.”

“On it,” Reya said with a salute. She cast one glance back at the arena and her nose scrunched. “I really wanted to see Kien fight. I want to know why he chose a broom of all things to fight with. Tell me how it goes, okay?”

“I will,” Arwin promised. “Thank you, Reya.”

She just gave him a sharp nod and slipped out the door once more. Arwin turned his gaze back to the arena. His eyes landed on Kien as Reya’s last words echoed through his head.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing how he uses it as well.

This should be interesting.

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