Iliya and Wolf left the room, and were met with a still and silent main room. At their entrance, the Moderator looked up from whatever he was doing on his tablet. He looked surprised. Iliya wasn’t sure if it was because the Moderator hadn’t expected Iliya and Wolf to leave their storage room, or if the Moderator wasn’t sure where Peaches came from.

“The bad smell is coming from that room,” Peaches held out her paw and pointed at one of the doors. If Iliya remembered correctly, that door led to a warm-up room. He wasn’t sure what that entailed, but he did remember the other challengers mention that it was fairly empty. Iliya rubbed Peaches ears in thanks for the information.

The Moderator’s face changed from surprise to interest. “Who’s this little guy?” The clown asked. “They’re so cute I, I oh!” Tears began to run down its face, and the clown waved away its tablet with the flailing of its arms. “Oh, so cute! I can’t take it!”

Wolf adjusted his hold of the little kitten. “This is Peaches.” The blubbering clown waited for Wolf to continue explaining what Peaches was, or how she got there, but Wolf did not divulge anything.

Beginning to learn, Iliya spoke up. “I can summon Peaches as part of one of my skills.”

The clown made an exaggerated sniffing motion. Its bulbous nose bobbed up and down. “This kitten… She smells familiar.”

Iliya weighed his options, and decided to play with risk. “I played Feed the Kitten earlier and she was quite taken with the Moderator there.”

“The big cat!” Peaches chimed in happily, unknowingly assisting Iliya’s small ruse.

“I see!” The clown smiled wide at Peaches. It didn’t seem to suspect anything. Did this mean that all Moderators didn’t know about the challenger's abilities? Or were there different levels of Moderators, like there seemed to be different levels of players? “How wonderful, to meet one of your own kind.” The Moderator’s face returned to its drooping, sad look. “Oh, boo hoo! How I wish I was amongst friends!”

Before Iliya could ask what the Moderator meant, the door to the room Rina, Roman and Lex had chosen to hide behind opened up. Rina poked her head out, concerned. When she saw everything looked okay, her face melted in relief. “Everything good out here?” Rina asked.

“Everything is good,” Iliya reassured her. “Have you run into anything dangerous?”

“Not yet. We just heard you guys talking out here and wanted to make sure nothing was going wrong. I pulled the proverbial short straw.” Rina narrowed her eyes. She took in their calm faces and relaxed postures, as well as the kitten in Wolf’s arms. “What are you guys doing?”

“Exploring,” came Wolf’s generous response.

Suspicion began to pool clear on Rina’s face. “Exploring? Why?”

Iliya smiled and tried to ease her. “We just think it’s strange how nothing has really happened yet. Don’t you? Maybe we’re missing something?” Ah. After saying that, the clown fully focused on Iliya. This convinced Iliya he was on the right track. There was definitely something that challengers were meant to do here to ensure their survival. It was possible there would be other games where simply evading an enemy would be enough for a win, but Iliya had a hunch that this wasn’t one of those games. Otherwise, something would have been out and hunting down the challengers since the beginning. The extra time at the start was a red herring, to ease them into the complacent manner of just hiding and waiting.

“Have you found something important?” Rina opened the door a little more. Roman was just behind her, with a lighter in hand. He was clearly wielding it as a weapon.

“No.” Iliya said. “What kind of important?” There were many different kinds of important. Iliya had found some information, sure, but he decided it was best to keep it with himself and Wolf. He wanted to control the spread of information if he could, and thankfully Wolf wasn’t much of a chatterbox.

Rina looked impatient as she answered. “You know, stuff like game items or valuable stuff.”

How verbose. “We haven’t found anything, but we were going to check out the warm-up room now. You can come with us, if you like,” Iliya offered.

“We’ll go too,” Roman quickly agreed, giving Rina a little shove out of the door. There was no sign of Lex. Iliya assumed he, like Wicker, had chosen to remain in hiding. Roman and Rina led the way to the next room, and Roman opened up the door and let them all in. He closed the door softly behind them.

The room was spacious, definitely larger than the storage room Iliya and Wolf had been in with Wicker. One wall was fitted from top to bottom with a giant mirror. Aside from some cubbies, the only other piece of furniture in the room was a giant grand piano. The piano might have been stately years ago, but the instrument angled at the center of the room would have barely been fit to accompany a community theater production. The legs, which were propped up on wheels, were unbalanced and the piano leaned heavily on its right side. Its dark lacquer was stained with an unidentifiable brown substance that could have been anything from rust to chocolate to dried blood. The keys were yellowed, and some were even missing. Iliya would have bet money on the piano being out of tune, too.

Iliya was certain there was some significance to the piano. It practically had its own room, a room that was larger and more open than the other rooms he had seen behind the doors in the arena. He let Roman and Rina busy themselves with looking through the cubbies.

Holding Peaches in one hand, Wolf gently took Iliya’s wrist. “Don’t touch the piano,” he whispered. Iliya gave him a confused look, as if to ask why. Wolf just shook his head. Iliya was about to ask him some questions when Roman and Rina came over.

“Did you find anything in the cubbies?” Iliya asked, politely. He already knew that had found nothing, but it wouldn’t hurt to humor them and be polite.

“Nothing,” Rina crossed her arms. “What made you two want to come in here, anyway?”

Iliya shrugged. “Like I said earlier, we just wanted to investigate.” It was clear to him that Rina didn’t believe him. Smart girl.

“I don’t believe you.” Rina said, mimicking Iliya’s thoughts. Then she stepped back, and let Roman move forward. He flicked open the cap of his lighter, and a foot long flame shot out in the shape of a fiery sword. With a serious face, he pointed it in Wolf and Iliya’s direction. Peaches let out a warning yowl that went ignored.

“You should tell us,” Roman continued for Rina, in a manner that was clearly threatening.

“We really don’t know anything,” Iliya stressed, “but even if we did, we wouldn’t tell you now.” It was hard to judge who would come out victorious in a fight. Iliya didn’t know if the lighter sword was an item, or Roman’s ability. Moreover, Rina and her ability were also complete mysteries. Iliya assumed it wasn’t combative, as she had stepped back instead of pulling out her own threats.Wolf could probably handle himself in a fight, but he was bringing bare fists to a flaming sword fight. Then, there was Iliya himself. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that he probably couldn’t hold himself well in a fight. If he got out of the challenge safely, he resolved to look into finding some sort of weapon.

Unless… Iliya reconsidered, quickly looking at Peaches, who was bristling in Wolf’s arms. He had never seen the extent of her abilities, even in Feed the Kitten but she had quite the bite force. If Peaches still had even a fourth of that strength, she would be a better fighter than Iliya.

Iliya put up his hands. “Whoa there, we really don’t want to fight. Can’t you please put the lighter away, and we’ll talk like adults?”

“Listen buddy,” Roman glared. “Just tell us what we want to know, and no one will get hurt.”

“But we don’t know anything!” Iliya insisted.

Rina snorted. “Bullshit. What kind of dumbass decides to explore a survival game unless they know something we don’t?”

“Exactly, this is a survival game. We should be working together!” Iliya said.

“At this point, we’d rather beat the info out of you,” Roman sneered.

Wolf passed Peaches over to Iliya. “You won’t be able to.” Wolf watched Roman with impassive eyes. He made a striking figure with his long, straight legs and elegant posture. There was something tense in him, ready to uncoil and strike at a moment’s notice. Iliya hadn’t noticed it before, but compared to Roman, Wolf understood how to use his body effectively. He looked ready and confident. Meanwhile Roman was brandishing a weapon as if merely holding it made him dangerous. “Try me.”

And Roman dashed forward.