The beastmen finished collecting the sapphires, eyeing even their own companions with steely gazes before retreating back to where they came from. Slowly but surely, the activity in the city started to pick back up again, beastmen were slowly opening their doors and heading back outside, behaving like nothing out of the norm had happened. Orou sat near the inn simply observing the behaviour of the beastmen until he decided to slither back to the place where he got attacked, wondering if the crystal made from his blood was still there.

It took a few minutes to get there, but Orou knew he was getting close to his destination as the crowd thinned and a section of the main road was simply abandoned. Besides his own created crater, Orou saw a large number of dead bats lying in a pool of sapphire-like blood. All of them had bite and scratch marks on their bodies and it looked like their cause of death was likely from infighting. Although Orou hadn’t eaten in some days, he was a bit hesitant to eat the bat corpses, what if his blood crystallized from within him?

Regretful about wasting his time here, he decided to return back and head back to the inn, but before he could, he saw Grizz walking in his direction, by his side the most colorful beastman he had ever seen. Feathers of blue, green, yellow and red and several more mismatched colors adorned the beastman's body.

“It’s rare to see such a fight between the bats, I wonder what could have happened here. Speaking about bats, I wonder if we’ll see them at the ar...” Grizz stopped mid-sentence as he finally noticed Orou who was curiously staring at him, right next to the pool of blue blood. Orou saw Grizz’s thoughts drift off and the beastman beside him had to snap a few times to get him out of his trance.

“Right, this is the snake who I’ve told you so much about, what do you think of him now that you’ve seen him in person Tris?” Grizz looked at Orou, seemingly questioning what he was doing here before turning to his companion and addressing her.

“Well, to start things off, he’s much larger than I imagined, and by seeing your surprise, I can imagine that you weren’t expecting to see him here, which makes me that much more interested,” the bird beastman rattled her beak and a shrill voice came out from it, her eyes were darting from one spot to another, carefully examining Orou’s body.

“I suppose this saves me the trouble of having to look for you, but I’ve got great news. Tris here caught me up on the latest news circulating around the city, and if I’m correct in my assumptions, we might have one of the greatest heists laid out before us,” Grizz walked up to Orou and started excitedly talking about his latest idea.

“You see, the beast arena is on the verge of closing down, something about pressure from up top and mentions of even the royal guard getting involved, so they’ve decided to host the biggest show they’ve ever done. While this normally wouldn’t interest me, they’ve announced that the winner is going to get a completely pure blood crystal, undiluted and directly from the capital’s mines,” Grizz started explaining about what he had planned and while Orou carefully listened to what he had to say, he still didn’t get the point of this or the role he had to play in this.

“The crystal they’re offering is nice and all, and I’m sure you could win it if you participated, but we’re not after the crystal. We’re after the several bags of blood crystals they’ll get once the arena opens up, which will make us rich overnight.” Grizz’s eyes were practically glowing and he was rubbing his fingers against each other, practically imagining the sheer amount of wealth he’d acquire.

“Your role is simple, go participate in a single round and do the flashy light thing you did earlier, cause a commotion for several seconds so I can get successfully get out of there.” Grizz waved his hands around like a madman in order to explain this to Orou, but he still wasn’t particularly sure on this, why would Grizz even want to do this?

“I get rich and you get to eat the blood crystal, sounds goods?” Orou was still conflicted on the whole issue, but simply the thought of eating something better than the blood crystal he had earlier made his stomach rumble, not to mention the fact that he was pretty interested in the beast arena himself.

Grizz and Tris discussed how they were going to split the profits, the interior layout of the building and how he was going to get in and out with the crystals as they started walking back to the inn, at least up until the point where they could see the traffic of beastmen return back to normal. Orou slithered along with them, keeping one ear open for anything that might relate to him, but he quickly realised that Grizz was too engrossed in his conversation to spare him any extra attention.

“We’re a bit short on time as I didn’t really expect you to be here, but we’ll manage. I’ll see you in a few hours once I have the preparations for the heist finished,” Tris said her goodbyes to Grizz and they parted their ways, leaving Grizz alone with Orou.

As they entered the inn they were staying at, Grizz turned to Orou and gave him a serious look, saying to him: “The most important thing is to distract everyone, there’s no telling what you’ll meet and there’s no saying if you won’t meet someone equally as strong as you, but don’t let your pride get in the way. It’s not a matter of life or death nor is it a matter of proving your strength, if you fuck up here, we’ll both die there.”

Leaving Orou hanging with that, Grizz started to prepare himself for the ongoing heist, pulling out a set of lockpicks to make sure they are in optimal condition and sharpening the few daggers he had hidden all throughout his body. He changed into a set of clothes more common to the city, a combination of black and blue and started rubbing some weird, dark powder on his fur. In a few minutes, Orou almost couldn’t recognise Grizz, it was like he had turned into a completely different beastman.

Orou didn’t know what more to do, so he simply started practicing his spells as he kept watching what Grizz was doing. It took him more time than Orou imagined to make sure everything was ready. He noticed a distinct lack of anything magical on Grizz’s body, except for the silver bell he had set down next to Orou. Maybe it was the difference between humans and beastmen or the difference between the two kingdoms, but he hadn’t seen that many magical items carried by beastmen.

As he was pondering about this difference, he felt a tap on his scales and he looked up to see Grizz up and raring to go. Following Grizz out of the room and out of the inn, he pointed towards the north-west and said to Orou: “Good thieves always scout out their locations, so let’s go.”