The world churned as the light of the fireball blinded him. He felt nothing of the heat of the inferno, even as the flames engulfed his body. His legs rose as the force of the explosion lurched him backwards.

Everything turned dark.

Feeling swirled back through his limbs. Air rushed through his chest. He could feel the beat of his heart and the beads of sweat slithering down his cheek.

Nick opened his eyes and was greeted with a deluge of brown colors and shapes, gradually taking the familiar form of a ship’s interior. There was a soft sniffling sound. A girl judging by the tone. Like when he found Vlara crying in the family kitchen.

He toppled from the suddenness of it all. The armor along his arm clanked against the wooden floor, as he slammed the planks to hold himself upright.

Someone gasped, and the sniffling stopped.

“Shit.” Nick huffed and shook his head, blinking until vision cleared. He pushed himself back upright, seeing pieces of scattered furniture and beams of lightning filtering through the gaps above.

A rancid scent coated the air. Remnants of the foulness he had the droids clean earlier. On that note, the four droids standing guard around him didn’t move an inch.

“H-Hello?” a young man’s voice came from the captain’s quarters.

“I’m fine.” Nick lied. “Just back for a bit.”

Liam. Nick recalled they left him here. But if that was him then who was crying? He turned in the direction the sniffling had been coming from, looking straight to the old storage room.

Kera. Their recently acquired navigator. It seemed she wasn’t taking everything that happened as well as it originally seemed. Something to deal with later.

“Is-Is everything okay?” said Liam.

“It’s being taken care of.” Nick stood up to his full height to stretch his legs.

“Oh,” said Liam. “Then… I-I’ll be here. As you told me too.”

“Keep it up kid.” Nick took a deep breath.

The battle was still raging below, and if he wanted any answers, he needed to return. That vampyr had strong ties to the one who stood by the Northlander’s side during the raid into Sevola.

The rest of them, he couldn’t care less about.

Nick sat down and tapped his left hand. Blue screens appeared as he navigated to the chart with the droid hierarchy.

He sifted through the chart identifying the group of droids he sent below. 8 of the original 12 remained. Fewer each second at the rate their green energy bars were shrinking.

Nick hovered a finger over a strike droid, hoping he wasn’t jumping into one that was going to die again. It was an experience he wasn’t enthused to repeat.

He double-tapped the box and his vision blurred as his mind rushed across space.

His vision reoriented itself and the first thing he saw was a man across from him with one arm raised high. A bracer full of topazes sparkling with yellow lightning. The pirate struck down casting a single bolt of lightning crackling in Nick’s direction.

Instinct drove him to dash to the left. Light flashed as the bolt thundered past the side of his head. Just barely.

Cold trickled through his mind, causing his perception to sharpen into a series of logical steps. Nick fought against the impulse. He couldn’t lose control, not here and not now.

The moment of hesitation gave the pirate another opportunity to strike. Another bolt of lightning sizzled through the air forcing him to duck.

Nick, deciding not to give his opponent anymore free passes, charged as the bolt passed over. His opponent’s eyes widened as Nick closed the distance far faster than expected. The spear lurched forth as the pirate fumbled with his hands.

“Fulgur Discus!”

Lightning arced into a disc between them.

A shrieking noise and a flare erupted as the spear impacted the barrier. Nick pressed harder but failed to punch through. The pirate smirked and closed his palm, and the disc collapsed over, wrapping around the spear like web. Electricity trickled down the weapon toward him.

Nick let go of the weapon, a moment before the crackling energy could reach his fingertips. As the weapon fell, the pirate lunged forward with an electrified fist.

A figure swooped in from the side, catching the incoming attack with an arm encased in stone. Lightning bounced harmlessly off the rocks.

The pirate raised his eyebrows in surprise, right as the newcomer’s sword sheared through his chest.

Ali withdrew the blade, letting the dying man slink onto the ground in a pool of his own blood. Nick’s companion looked worse for wear. Green clothes sputtered in blood and dust. Rips and tears across the fabric of his outfit.

“Thanks,” said Nick, reaching for the spear on the floor.

“Why lookie here.” Ali turned around, his clothes charred and nicked with cuts. “That you in there? Things went wild after that fireball went off. Nonstop fighting since.”

Nick nodded, taking a look at his surroundings. The majority of the fighting Ali had mentioned seemed to have ended as quickly as it begun with the result being far more corpses littering the field than living bodies. He didn’t think he was gone that long. The battles appeared to have progressed far faster than he expected.

One confrontation continued to brew on the far side of the arena. Several droids exchanged blows with a woman carrying a blazing scythe. She was encased in a fiery aura, shifting once before disarming and running through one droid through entirely.

“Your droids have done acceptably… but not nearly as well as before.” Ali kept glancing in all directions for any impending threats. “The Adrestan started going off on them. Don’t know what you did to piss him off, but our other companion has been keeping him busy.”

He nodded to the right.

Nick turned just in time to bear witness to an explosion of fire and steam. The clashing forces sent ripples through the air, forcing him to brace himself to stay upright. As the steam and smoke dissipated two figures stood across from each other.

On one side was Cumberlane, one hand holding a rapier and the other clutching a cut running along his waist. Sweat frizzled through his golden hair as the man heaved for air. Fireballs orbited around him and his red eyes stared down his opponent.

Nick immediately recognized Hwan’s peculiar clothing on the other figure. His face-mask had fallen away, revealing narrowed green eyes and thick brows on pale skin which probably hadn’t seen the sun in years.

Two statues sat atop his shoulders, wearing masks guised as a boar and a turtle.

“What in the name of Divines are you?” said Cumberlane.

Hwan didn’t respond. Green light swirled around his feet and he dashed forward in the blink of an eye. Cumberlane shifted, reacting in time to parry away the strike with his rapier. Metal clanged off metal as the two engaged in a deadly dance along the broken floor, avoiding or making use of odd slants and slopes from destruction conjured earlier.

“That fellow on the contrary has exceeded all my expectations,” said Ali. “Maybe it was a good idea we didn’t try to take him on above-ground. I say we stay put here and let him finish the rest of them off.”

Nick glanced along the remainder of the arena, looking for the most important character of all.

“Where is the other?” he said.

“Which other?” Ali raised a brow. “There were a whole lot of them if you recall…”

Fire snaked around Cumberlane’s rapier, catching Nick’s attention. It burned brighter and brighter until it jutted out in a white stream which he knew as pale-blaze, a third-tier fire spell. The blaze rushed out and Nick dove for cover.

The blaze however was directed at Hwan. As the attack burned toward him, the masks on his shoulders opened their mouths, spitting out twin streams of mud. The elements crashed together between the two. Pale-blaze would have evaporated any regular water spell but the addition of dirt muffled the inferno. Water and smoke blew out from the center and the adrestan buckled, evidently exhausting his mana reserves.

And a moment after the clash, a spike of liquid blood erupted out of Cumberlane’s chest, sending the Adrestan noble gasping up into the air. A pale figure appeared behind him, holding up a pietersite orb and surrounded by a ring of blood.

“No!”

The woman with the burning scythe shrieked from across the room. She parried a blow from a droid and rushed forward.

“I have to thank you.” Lucius looked at the Hwan. “You have made things much… much easier.”

The woman leapt up and forward, positioning her scythe for a downward swing. By the time she got half-way up the air however, Lucius flicked his finger. A pool of blood burbled from a corpse below. A tendril flew up, catching her by the ankle in a vice-grip.

The vampyr twirled his finger, and the tendril pulled her down. She cursed and screamed as she landed back-first onto several spikes, causing her own blood to join the puddles aloft the ground. Her spirit-weapon clambered off her limp wrist, the flames dissipating and leaving behind nothing but the pole.

“You see.” Lucius laughed, his voice echoing through the chamber. “Forgive my laughter but I quite love it when everything goes as planned. But even better when they go better than expected.”

Hwan gestured with his trident.

“Don’t.” Nick stood back up. “We need him alive.”

Hwan glanced over to him with an empty gaze then back at the vampyr. He didn’t respond but didn’t immediately engage in combat either. Which Nick took to be as acceptance.

“Bold words.” Lucius smirked and shook his head.

“Still quite the talker, aren’t you?” said Ali.

“You.” Lucius cocked his head and narrowed his brows. “I remember you. The swindler with the fast mouth.”

“I prefer the term a persuasive individual.” Ali bowed in mock fashion. “Not my fault you didn’t verify what I said, but I’ll take your comment as a compliment.”

“I don’t know how you escaped your cage,” said Lucius. “But you should have run when you had the chance.”

Nick stepped in front, calling upon the remaining droids to begin surrounding the lone vampyr. “You were part of the expedition to Vislanda,” he said.

“Unfortunately, no,” said Lucius, who drawled on with a signet ring along his finger. “My dear lady presented this to me upon her return as a token. Not quite the challenge she was expecting.”

“Surrender now.” Nick gave a mental command to his droids. “And we’ll make this easier on you.”

Lucius laughed.

“A bold statement,” he said. “Alas, how little you know of how you’ve prepared the stage for your own downfall.”

The vampyr snapped his fingers, and tendrils of blood whirled from the orbiting flow, holding the droid that had rushed behind him. Its spear-tip an inch from the vampyr’s arm.

Lucius waved his hand and the tendrils ripped off the droid’s limb and half its chest.

“Curious…” The vampyr glanced at the broken droid on the floor. “A construct made neither of flesh, or blood, or soul. What exactly-“

He paused as he ducked aside from an incoming arrow.

“Rude.” Lucius turned to Hwan, who loosed another arrow at the vampyr. Lucius flicked his finger and a wall of blood rose up to catch the bolt.

“Easterner.” Lucius squinted at Hwan. “Quite rare to see your kind out here. It does peak my interest however. Your lifeforce will make for a delicate meal.”

Lucius snapped his hands up, and the pietersite orb flared with blue and red light.

“Now,” said the vampyr. “All that is left is to dispatch of you all.”

Nick realized at that moment what the vampyr was referring to when setting up the conditions of their downfall. They were surrounded by corpses, fresh with blood. Unsouled blood. A free potent resource for those who could use it.

Nick and Ali dashed in opposite directions as the puddles all about them shot upward in like geysers.

“Let us end this!” Lucius’ rose up on a pillar of blood.

Nick sent a mental urge for every droid in the area to follow suit and scramble, as he immediately focused on doing the same.

Streams of blood beamed down from above, forcing Nick to duck, leap, and occasion roll to avoid being speared or caught.

He rushed to the only source of cover and safety, the outer edge leading to the winding corridors of the arena. He caught of glimpse of Ali doing the same, although he had far better success with deflecting the bolts with a hand-spun earthen shield.

“Running away?” The vampyr’s voice boomed from above. “Now we can’t have that can we?”

A flash of yellow light simmered through the chamber, veering from the floor and into the stream. Electricity crackled up the fountain of blood and up toward Lucius.

Nick saw him sweep his arm as he saw what was about to happen. The flow of blood split before the charge could reach the platform he stood on. He fell to the ground, even as the flow of lightning stopped short.

Light flared through several of the pillars of blood, and a blast of wind and fire cut through, vaporizing the liquid into steam. Aimed squarely at the falling vampyr.

A torrent of blood shot down, blocking the inferno before it could strike true.

Hwan appeared through the steam, holding his trident. Two masks were still present on his shoulders, although one was far different from the other. His expression gave off nothing except for absolute focus.

A yellow flare streaked down from above. Lucius raised one arm to cast blood into a dome above him. Thunder clapped as the streak crashed into the dome. The electrical discharge rippled out in static waves, pulsing out into the surrounding walls and floors and tearing chunks off both.

That wasn’t all though. A torrent of fire belched out the salamander mask sitting on Hwan’s shoulder, followed by a deluge of a black substance from the boar mask on his other shoulder. Both were carried up by Hwan’s own mouth, which sent out a gust of wind in the vampyr’s direction. The molten slag crashed into yet another blood barrier Lucius erected in time.

As Hwan pressed the assault, a river of blood snaked around the slag in his direction, forcing him to stymy the attack and dash aside. The vampyr, catching a reprieve and with a frustrated expression, twisted his hands.

“Five elements?” said Lucius, as he landed upright on the ground. “Too many interesting developments in one day. Shame I’m in a bit of a rush, lest I’d savor this for a bit longer.”

Blood spiraled out toward Hwan’s direction, which he dodged. Hwan himself let out more tri-elemental blasts of molten slag in the vampyr’s direction from the front. The lightning bird charged again and again causing thunder to boom every other second.

With the main combatants distracted, Nick rushed into one of the openings leading to the outer ring of the colosseum, where he was joined shortly by Ali.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Ali peeked across one of the openings as light flashed and all manner of sounds erupted from the clash of elemental fury. “I’m now definitely certain we wouldn’t have been able to square off on him.”

“We need the vampyr alive,” said Nick. “He’s my only lead now.”

“Our only lead,” said Ali. “That vampress he serves has something of mine.”

Nick seriously entertained the idea of leaving the body behind and coming back down the chamber with more droids. However, there was no guarantee that numbers alone would bring success against this vampyr. Not to mention he had to keep the rest of the people up there under control. He didn’t possess enough resources to create anymore, and he had already reached his set unit limit.

Still, it was an option he began to consider. He didn’t have to come down here, maybe he could just leave. Live and fight another day. However, that meant leaving behind Osman, Ali, Hwan, and the others. People he had given his word too.

“I’m not too sure Hwan shares our sentiment of keeping him alive, assuming he has the juice to beat him. The vampyr’s got us good though. We gave him all the unsouled blood to play with. But not unless we can nab that orb of his.

Nick peeked out and saw it. Lucius was stationary now, with his focus fully on deflecting Hwan’s incoming attacks, keeping the blood dome up, and trying to land a solid hit on his interlocutor. That left his back exposed to the two of them.

“If we can distract him do you think you can land a clean hit?” Nick glanced at Ali’s dagger.

“I think I can manage that.” Ali flipped the weapon about.

Nick nodded then reached out to the tapestry of threads running across the arena. Curiously, he found what he could best describe as spindles as well. Not completely but able to be connected. Maybe they could come to use later.

He focused his intent then muttered under his breath.

“Charge.”

Violet lights glimmered around the arena as the six remaining droids sauntered out from their hiding places. The vampyr glanced about and scoffed, waving his hands for a second before returning to counter Hwan’s onslaught. Blood spiraled forth like lances, slamming into the droids.

Ali snaked through the arena across broken and drained bodies. An earthen pillar snapped up below his foot, giving him the elevation needed to get in range. He flung the dagger forward, the emerald flaring and speeding the weapon like an arrow.

Before, it could touch the orb however, the vampyr caught it with his hand.

“Nice try.” Lucius flung the dagger away. “But you’ll have to do better than…”

Nick rose up from next to Lucius in the body of a droid missing an arm and half its chest. He clutched a spear in the working arm.

Lucius turned, right as the spear flared with violet light. Nick saw horror on the vampyr’s face as the weapon tore through the orb. Splinters fragmented through the crystalline surface, setting off an explosion which tossed them backwards.

Blood rained down, as the energies controlling it dissipated. Nick saw the vampyr attempt to flee, right as Hwan tackled into him, slamming him into a wall.

“Stop!” said Nick. “We need him alive!”