—Chapter 22—

—The Arbiter—

The Pestbyters dragged Kellan through the halls of the AVU Palace.

To Kellan’s mild fascination, the gigantic building seemed to be divided into distinct sections. The music and décor changed with the area. The entrance was a techno rave, but one grand ballroom was an indoor swimming pool meant to look like a lake, complete with waterfalls and soothing music.

Kellan only got brief glances, though. Another section of the palace was mostly darkness and smoke, with the distinct smell of lust wafting into the hallway. When Kellan tried to free himself from the grips of the Pestbyters, they held him in place, their wire tentacles tightening around his arms, threatening to completely cut off his blood circulation.

“So, what’s the Arbiter like?” Kellan sarcastically said, forcing a smile. “He a Christmas guy? Or Is he more into Hanukkah?”

The Pestbysters didn’t answer. They swiveled their cameras eyes to stare at him, and then returned their gaze to face forward.

The trek was longer than Kellan had been expecting. The final minute he had before registration ended was surely up. Would they allow him to register now that it was over? Kellan wasn’t sure, and his anxiety grew with each passing minute.

Rumbling shook the palace with enough force that paintings and television screens mounted to the walls shook. Kellan managed to crane his head to the side enough to look at some of the screens.

It was that same newscaster… Only this time he was standing in the middle of a football-sized field. He walked around the edge of a massive circular pit. The pit itself had to be the size of an Olympic swimming pool. And Kellan knew he was feeling nervous since he was mentally measuring everything in terms of sports fields.

“Exciting news, all you sad sacks within the Nexus!” the news anchor, Bitso, said to the crowd. “This round of games is about to begin! We have so many exciting players this year. It’s the largest ever! The Arbiter is pleased.”

More rumbling. The newscaster shook, and Kellan felt it through his boots. Was the football stadium close?

The pit… It was dark and ominous, with a slight amount of steam rising up from the void-like depths.

The news anchor wore his blindfold, even as he danced around the edge. With a microphone in one hand, he gestured to the stadium “Are you all ready?”

Cheers erupted from the distant stands. Who was watching? What were they doing?

“Are we heading to the pit?” Kellan asked the Pestbyters.

They didn’t answer.

“The Arbiter isn’t a sentient pit, is he?” Kellan quipped. “Because I know the Nexus is weird, but that would definitely take the cake.”

Again, the Pestbyters didn’t answer.

Then the Pestbyters turned down a hall, and Kellan lost sight of the screens. The rumbling of the floor added to his increasing heartrate, and he took a moment to inhale and exhale. All his calming tactics were required to steady his thoughts.

When they slammed through a pair of metal doors, Kellan had to blink back a wave of intense light. The thunderous noise of a sports stadium bombarded Kellan all at once, catching him off guard. The Pestbyters dragged him onto the same football field that Kellan had just seen on the screens.

The lights came from the domed ceiling—the same one he had seen while standing in front of the palace.

The stands around the field seemed filled with individuals, but they were so far away, and not bathed in light, that Kellan couldn’t make out any details. When he glanced up, he spotted a hole in the domed roof—the same shape and size as the pit.

When Kellan turned his eyes downward, he spotted the blindfolded news anchor strolling around the edge of the now infamous pit. He kept the microphone close to his mouth as he made exciting declarations to the crowd, but Kellan couldn’t seem to hear him.

His heart was pounding in his ears, the echo drowning everything else out.

The grass of the field was perfectly trimmed, but there were no lines for football or any other sports. Occasionally, Kellan spotted a few stains of red, which only added to his nightmarish thoughts.

“People don’t get thrown into the pit, do they?” he asked.

And once again, the Pestbyters said nothing as they hovered along.

Two other people were on the field. Kellan hadn’t noticed them until the Pestbyters stopped and held him in place.

The other two people were also held by Pestbyters—restrained in place, and unable to flee, just like Kellan. They stood twenty feet away, one on Kellan’s left, and one on Kellan’s right.

The man on Kellan’s right was shaky and dappled in sweat. He looked like he had escaped a Ren Faire—a place where everyone dressed as medieval squires and knights—or perhaps Comic Con.

The girl on Kellan’s left was freakish. She was mostly human, but her hands, arms, feet, and shins were covered in reptile scales. The scales themselves were metallic and copper, which matched her tanned skin. Her black hair, short enough to defy gravity—was spiked in multiple directions, either through gel or terrible sleeping, Kellan wasn’t sure which.

And the girl had a thin lizard-like tail. It was flattened, like the body of a centipede, and the same copper color as the rest of the scales on her body.

She wore jeans and a black jacket, but otherwise, she had nothing else.

Her lithe body and panicked expression made Kellan think she was eighteen or twenty—younger than him, but not by much.

Technically, Kellan received analytical information on each of the people next to him, even Bitso, but he could barely focus on it.

Numbers. Names. His mind was swirling. All he deduced from that was that they, too, were magical.

“Before we begin the games, the Arbiter wants to remind everyone that certain rules must always be obeyed,” Bitso said, gesturing to Kellan and the other two. “As always, the Arbiter must judge those who harm his property. It’s a terrible crime to harm his Pestbyters and Justices! Lots of beautiful arcana went into creating them, after all.”

Cheers and boos mixed in equal parts as the crowd gave their opinion on the matter. Kellan strained his eyes to see them, but they were just too far away, and shrouded in too much darkness. Again, he regretted not taking the ability to see in the dark.

The rumbling across the football field became intense. Kellan would’ve fallen over if it hadn’t been for the Pestbyters holding his arms.

Bitso stumbled around, laughing the entire time, his voice carried across the stadium through the speaker system. “Whoa, there! It seems the Arbiter is ready to pass judgment. Please, everyone stand for the Lord of the Nexus!”

Kellan held his breath as the steam from the pit rose out in columns.

The audience in the stands grew quiet. It felt like the whole world was holding its breath as the ground quaked and shifted.

Then it emerged.

A clawed hand.

And not any claw—but a machine hand the size of a tennis court. It slammed onto the field, the blades of the claws digging deep into the field.

Then a second claw emerged. It, too, slammed into the ground and dug deep.

The strain of metal, and the whirl of gears, rocked the entire football stadium. From the pit emerged a dragon. A completely machine-made dragon. Servos. Pistons. Gears, wires. Lights. The beast had no flesh—just the mechanics of an android made into the shape of a lizard with horns, wings, and fangs.

No eyes, though.

Its massive head, covered in sharp corners, and antlers like spikes, had no eyeballs with which to see. Its mouth, large enough to fit a hockey rink inside of it, glowed bright radioactive green, like its insides were shining constantly.

The dragon didn’t fully pull itself out of the pit. It remained half in the ground, and half out, resting its weight on its massive elbows as it leaned its head over the football field.

The crowd cheered, their delight filled with an edge of fear.

“Here he is,” Bitso screamed, his voice barely above the crowd’s fearful jubilation. “The Arbiter!”

Kellan swallowed hard. When the notifications came up this time, he forced himself to pay attention.

Name: Lord of the Nexus, The Arbiter, Keeper of the Gates to Zenith

Race: Primordial Dragon

Magics: Mind, Metal, Entropy, Travel, Meta, Fate

Rank: Concealed

Armor Rating: Concealed

Health: Concealed

Stats: Concealed

Abilities: Concealed

When the Arbiter exhaled, his breath was laced with heat and the stench of oil.

Kellan tensed, his body so stiff, he didn’t know if he’d be able to move, even if the Pestbyters released him.

The Arbiter was gargantuan. His body almost took up half the field, and when he moved his head, a gust of air pressure whipped by, almost stealing Kellan’s breath. That’s the beast who’s going to decide my fate?

Bitso waved his head, and a pair of spotlights focused on him. A dozen shadows cascaded around his feet as he walked further out into the field.

Floating television screens hovered out around him, each so large, they could be their theater screen. They flickered to life with footage from around Nexus-Fayetteville.

“Well, the Arbiter is ready! Let’s see what these mages have done to garner his ire!” Bitso pointed to one of the gigantic screens, despite the fact he was blindfolded tight.

Could he actually see?

Kellan wasn’t certain.

The screen flared to life.

It was a video of the Ren Faire guy. He was running through an alleyway when a Pestbyter hovered into the man’s path. The angle of the camera… It was like it was mounted on the alleyway wall.

The man with the bizarre Ren Faire clothing unleashed a powerful crackle of lightning from the palm of his hand. It struck the Pestbyter, and the machine-sphere tumbled through the air.

“Oh, no!” Bitso shouted. “That poor Pestbyter. It was just doing its job when this homicidal manic accosted it!”

The crowd booed and threw things, but they never reached the heart of the field.

The Ren Faire man yelled and yanked on his restraints. “I didn’t know! I swear! I didn’t know!”

“Ignorance is no excuse!” Bitso pointed to a second screen.

It showed the man shocking the Pestbyter a second time. And then a third time.

Finally, the Pestbyter hit the ground and its arcana was exposed. The man walked over, absorbed the red crystals into his hand, and then hurried from the alleyway, like he was running from something.

Kellan’s heart beat hard against his chest.

Okay. Well, I hope the Arbiter is a forgiving dragon… Because that’s exactly what I did.

Bitso wheeled around on his heel and pointed to the massive machine dragon. “Arbiter, what is your final decision? Will the man continue to suffer, and live here in the Nexus? Or will you grant him the sweet, sweet release of death?”

Again, the crowd voiced their opinion with thrown items and shouts.

The Arbiter lifted one of his massive claws.

The Pestbyters released the Ren Fair man. With panicked steps, the man turned away and ran in the opposite direction, his arms flailing as he tried to steady himself.

He didn’t get far, though.

The Arbiter brought his claw down in one massive strike. He slammed the field hard enough to damage the surrounding area, creating a crate so deep, someone could make a pond out of it. Kellan would’ve toppled over from the aftermath—the air, the shaking of the ground—but the Pestbyters continued to hold him in place.

The Ren Faire man was dead.

When the claw was removed, his arcana—and his blood splatter—were clearly in the crater of the attack.

The two Pestbyters gathered up the man’s arcana and then hovered over to the edge of the pit. They dropped the arcana down into the dark void, where the dragon had emerged from.

Then Bitso turned his attention to Kellan.

“Yikes,” he said with a manic—almost lunatic-style—laugh. “That was quick! What a trial. That’s how I want my death to go, that’s for sure!”

Kellan wanted to shout wait, or can we talk about this, but his throat was tight from anxiety that he couldn’t seem to find the words.

Bitso touched the blindfold over his face and blood sprouted across the white cloth. “Well, well! On to the next lucky chump who incurred the Arbiter’s wrath! Let’s all turn our attention to the screens to see what this boob did, shall we?”

When the screens turned to face Kellan, all he could hear was the constant beating of his anxiety-ridden heart.