"Is that idiot seriously trying to talk to that creature?"
"HAHAHAHA."
"Someone please get that retarded human out of there."
"What an idiot, what does he think is going to happen?"
"Damn, I should have bet more on this piece of trash dying."
"He's already dead, he just hasn't realized it yet."
"Someone get into this arena and kill this human already, I want to collect my bet today."
The risk of what I was doing was enormous — not just in the immediate sense of a large creature with claws a few meters away, but in the broader sense of betting on a premise nobody had verified because nobody had conceived it. Setting aside the dragons, nobody had ever tried what I was doing — and even the dragons were creatures that most considered rational only to a certain extent. They could speak, but were selfish in a way that left no room for real diplomacy — focused on eliminating any race that entered their territory before even considering any other alternative. The logic that had consolidated over generations of Oasis was simple: Oasis creatures didn't negotiate. Didn't dialogue. They only killed or died. It was the law the Oasis imposed — and that had never really been put to the test because nobody had had sufficient reason to test it or sufficient madness to risk it.
But I had reasons to believe it was possible. At least with that specific Griffin — because for me the Oasis's mathematics only existed with free creatures, and that one wasn't free. There was a fundamental difference between what a creature did when it had an option and what it did when the only option was to continue doing what it had been forced to do.
A free Griffin was completely different from the creature in front of me. This one had been captured — thrown into the arena to die in repeated fights, with the dream of freedom that would never come, because the arena didn't free, it only replaced what had been exhausted with something new equally destined to be exhausted. The cycle was closed by design, and any creature intelligent enough to understand that had also arrived at the conclusion of what the cycle meant for it specifically.
And yet it fought. There had been a flame in the eyes of those Griffins I had observed over the days — not rage, not pure instinct, but something more specific and more fragile and therefore more powerful. Hope. The kind that doesn't extinguish because the pride is too great to let it extinguish, that continues existing not because it's rational to hope but because the alternative is accepting that it had ended, and accepting that was the only collapse that creature hadn't yet managed to make.
That was exactly what I was counting on.
A creature with hope was a creature that would do anything to obtain what hope pointed to. And freedom was the most powerful of all — because freedom was what had been taken away, and what had been taken away was what created the void that hope filled.
"I need to admit I don't have the tools to kill you — at least not quickly." — I said, with the volume calibrated to reach only where it needed to reach. — "Besides, I'm not here for that. What I want is a deal."
Silence was the answer. Not the silence of someone who had heard and was processing — it was still too early to know whether it had heard or had merely heard sound without meaning. The Infernals' booing grew in the background beginning to cause accumulating damage, the hypersonic power arriving in smaller doses than the peak but with the consistency that made smaller doses sufficient.
I asked Morgana to heal the Griffin discreetly while I healed myself — not as a staged gesture of trust, but as calculation: a creature being healed by the one who had just captured it received information about intent that words alone couldn't convey. The audience's rage wouldn't stop me, at least not before I tried what I had come to try.
"I know you don't want to speak. But I can give you what you want most."
I paused — not for dramatic effect, but to let the space after the sentence exist without competition, so that what came next would arrive without having to overcome what had been said before.
"Freedom."
The word hung in the air with the specific weight of something that had been said to someone who had stopped believing it existed — heavy not from the sound, but from what it represented to whoever was listening.
After almost three minutes of waiting — three minutes being an interval few in the arena had experienced in silence, that had become progressively more strange — Morgana approached.
Her eyes said everything — to her, this seemed like madness in a way she was trying not to express directly out of respect but that was readable in every angle of her face. When had an Oasis creature ever spoken to someone from outside? It was inconceivable not because it was impossible in theory, but because nobody had tried, and the absence of attempt had become equivalent to impossibility in the minds of all who lived within that absence.
But I didn't want to give up before arriving where nobody had arrived. Perhaps sincerity was the correct approach — not the performative sincerity that existed to convince, but the sincerity that existed because it was the only way to communicate something true to an intelligent creature that had learned to identify the difference. It needed to know exactly what I wanted. Not just what I was saying, but what was behind what I was saying.
"I know you've probably been trapped here for months. Perhaps years." — I said, with the conversational tone I had chosen from the beginning — not of negotiation, not of threat, not of grandiose promise that a skeptical creature would recognize as exaggerated. — "What I want is to get you out of this — a deal where both of us get what we need. What brought me here is just Griffin blood. That's something I can extract without killing you. And in exchange, as soon as I get what I need, I'll free you."
I paused — this time for the nature of what came next, which was the hardest part to say because it was the most unlikely to be believed.
"You may not know humans. But I guarantee I'm a man of my word."
I felt Morgana's hand on my shoulder — light, with the specific pressure of someone communicating something they didn't want to say out loud but knew needed to be said.
"Lord." — the voice came quiet, with the care of someone saying something they knew I didn't want to hear and was choosing how to say it so it would arrive as honestly as possible. — "I don't believe this creature has the capacity to reason as much as a dragon. And if we continue with this, the Infernals won't accept it for much longer."
My eyes left the arena for the first time since I had begun to speak.
The audience was furious — with the specific quality of anger of those who had waited for spectacle and had received something they couldn't classify, and the inability to classify had transformed into frustration that had transformed into anger. And what I could see descending toward the arena left no doubt about how much time I had left. Little. And getting less with every second with the inevitability of something that had begun and had no stopping mechanism.
I hated thinking I had been wrong. That despite everything I had observed — the pattern in the decisions, the intelligence in the choices, the way it had deliberately hidden what it was capable of, the pheromone used as a behavioral control tool, the real-time tactical adjustments that only made sense if there was reasoning behind them and not just instinct — everything might be merely pure and sophisticated instinct. For me there had to be a pattern that only a creature capable of reasoning could sustain over sufficient time. But what if I was wrong? I couldn't afford to die for a belief — even if all the pieces pointed toward it.
"I'm sorry, Morgana. I believed that—"
It arrived before I finished.
Low first — almost a whisper, the kind of sound you're not certain you heard until you hear it again, that the brain processes as possible before processing it as real. Then it gained strength, filling the space with the slowness of something that had been without use for too long and was being found again.
It silenced not just me, but everyone who was in the arena. The booing stopping gradually — not because anyone had asked, but because the sound had arrived before any boo could compete with it, and competing with it was impossible not because of volume but because of quality, the specific quality of something that hadn't been heard there before and therefore demanded processing before any other reaction.
Until the only sound that remained was that voice.
"Decades."
One word. Just one, repeated with the insistence of something that had found the word it needed to say after a long time without finding it and was saying it with all the energy that the time of silence had accumulated.
When I finally processed what I had heard, I turned to the Griffin. It hadn't said anything more. It was still, with the posture of something that had made an irreversible move — that had given something that couldn't be taken back after being given — and was waiting for what would come next with the specific vulnerability of someone who had stopped protecting themselves and didn't yet know if it had been a mistake.
"So you've been trapped here for decades." — I said, with the tone I had calibrated for that moment — not of surprise, not of celebration at having proven the point, but of recognition. The kind of tone that communicates that what was said arrived and was received. — "The time has come to go home, my friend. Surrender, and I'll get you out of here and give you back what you lost far longer ago than you deserved."
The Griffin tried to rise. I quickly removed the Swamp Abomination and the hood — transforming them back into tattoo with the fluidity the Mark had developed for dissolving what had been materialized — and asked Zaetar to release the creature's tail. Zaetar released without hesitating, retreating to the lateral position with the naturalness of something that had understood that the phase requiring holding had ended.
The Griffin stood imposingly before me, still processing the newly recovered space, the eagle head turned toward me with an expression I couldn't classify in any of the categories I had used to read creatures up to that point — not rage, not fear, not tactical evaluation. Something different from all of them and close to none.
"Make your choice."
The silence that followed was of a different kind from the previous — not the waiting silence that existed before the happening, but the silence of something that was happening and that everyone around was choosing not to interrupt because interrupting would mean losing what was happening.
I could hear the held breath of people in the stands. The booing had stopped completely — replaced by something that wasn't enthusiasm, wasn't disapproval, was the specific quality of attention that appeared when something was happening that had no ready name to name it.
The Griffin looked into my eyes.
There was no more rage. The rage had been what covered — and the hood had done more than remove sight, it had removed the environment that fed the rage, the constant stimulus that made rage necessary as protection. What was in its eyes now was what had been there all along, covered by the need not to be seen, protected by the pride that didn't allow it to be exposed to something that might use it as weakness.
Hope.
Decades of arena had tried to erase it. They hadn't managed — because hope of that kind didn't erase through exhaustion, only through choice, and it hadn't made that choice.
The creature slowly lowered its head — not with the abruptness of something defeated that had stopped resisting, but with the deliberation of something that had made a decision and was executing it with the dignity that was the only thing those decades hadn't managed to take away. And then, with the thick voice of someone using a capacity that had been without use for too long, forcing each syllable through a vocal structure that had forgotten how to form them — not forgotten they existed, but forgotten the form, the path the sound took before becoming word:
"I… surrender."
✦
Few things managed to shock the Infernals.
With that technological and physical capability, most of what disturbed them came from encountering something stronger — uncommon, but within the spectrum of possibilities for which they had developed a response, because the stronger existed in principle and encountering it was enough for the spectrum to expand. But sometimes something simple happened. Something that wasn't stronger, just different in a way for which no response had been prepared because the difference hadn't been imagined as possible. The winds of change arrived that way — sometimes they frightened, sometimes they generated curiosity, and more rarely still generated doubt. Doubt about what the change would mean for what already existed. About what would happen next for those who had assumed what existed was what would continue to exist.
Being removed from the state of comfort and placed in a place of uncertainty was something the Infernals shared with humans without knowing — and I didn't doubt the reaction for a moment. When you put someone against the wall, that's where they reveal what they are. The veil had been removed. For better or worse, I had made the choice, and the choice had produced a result, and the result was real regardless of how it would be received.
While the prostrate Griffin surrendered, an incandescent light fell on it with the specific brutality of a process that hadn't been designed to be gentle.
I closed my eyes immediately — but enough had arrived to make them burn with the intensity of light that had been calibrated to be seen by the entire arena and not just by those in the center of it. The entire arena seemed to suffer the same for a few seconds, the collective blinking communicating that it had affected indiscriminately. When my eyes opened, there was something on the ground in front of me — prostrate, golden, the color of living gold that wasn't a color but a quality, with the form of a figurine similar to the Swamp Abomination but different in everything it communicated: not brutal, not chaotic, but contained, with the compressed presence of something that had once been much larger.
When I approached, the message arrived.
[ You have submitted the Prince Griffin. ] [ Do you wish to receive your Legendary item? ]
I didn't respond immediately. It was something new even for me — and new things deserved a second before being touched, the second existing not out of caution, but out of respect for the weight of what had happened. But the moment my hand reached the item, I felt the body burn with the specific intensity of something being removed and something being placed simultaneously — the two sensations distinct enough to be recognizable, but arriving together in a way that gave no time to process each separately. All the fatigue disappeared as though it had never existed, replaced not by energy but by the absence of the weight that fatigue created.
[ The Prince Griffin has accepted the terms. Bond created. ]
"You did it, Lord." — Morgana said, with the voice of someone still processing what they had seen — not the result, which was clear, but the path that had led to it, which had no precedent she could use to frame it. — "You were right."
I was trying to understand everything that had happened. Happy — with the specific happiness of someone who had bet on something that could have been madness and had found that it wasn't. But alert, because I knew the Griffin hadn't been the real obstacle. The real obstacle was what the victory over the Griffin had created — what I had done in front of that entire audience, and what the audience would do with what it had seen.
It didn't take longer than I had calculated.
✦
A different gate opened.
It wasn't any of the gates I had seen in the arena — it had been in the wall the entire time, but had appeared not to exist, the invisibility being a product of expectation and not of concealment. It was silver-colored and clean metal, with the quality of something that had been built for a single function and didn't need decoration to communicate it — the austerity being the decoration, the absence of ornament being the form that ornament took when what it communicated was powerful enough not to need amplification.
"Get ready, Morgana. The real challenge begins now."
What emerged was an Infernal different from any I had seen over the days in the arena. Not for the size, which was impressive, but not unique. Not for the large caprine horns, which was the posture of power I had learned to recognize as standard. But for the tails. Not one — three. Moving with independence, with the independent life of something that had developed enough autonomy to be part of what the creature was and not merely an appendage.
"Royalty."
Infernal society had a monarchical structure I had read with enough attention to understand what the tails communicated. But it wasn't the king who held real power in that structure — it was the queen, with the gender asymmetry that had developed over generations of selection that had favored different capabilities in each. It was common knowledge that female Infernals could be two to three times stronger than males — not in brute strength, which was the male domain, but in combined power, in the capacity to use multiple abilities simultaneously with efficiency that males couldn't replicate.
What was in front of me was clearly female. And the two that accompanied her — guards, by the position and the way they positioned themselves in relation to her, covering the angles she wasn't covering with the awareness of extension and not independent presence — had levels that far exceeded what that arena had been built to contain.
"A pleasure, unknown human." — the voice arrived clean, without the hypersonic weight the other Infernals used as standard, with the deliberate control of something that had chosen not to cause damage when the choice not to cause damage communicated more than causing it. — "My name is Astrid — daughter of Lagherta, commander of this kingdom and supreme leader of this arena. My congratulations."
She paused with the quality of something that was choosing the following words carefully — not from the difficulty of finding them, but from the awareness that the words that followed would communicate position, and position was information she was evaluating how much to share.
"I'm surprised that a race so inferior managed to show us something unprecedented. May I see it?"
She was referring to the Griffin.
The first surprise had been that that creature could speak without causing damage — which in itself already communicated intent more clearly than any word could have. But before I could respond, the item in my hands glowed with an intensity and heat that hadn't been there a second before — not the heat of the Oasis's process, but the heat of reaction, of something that had perceived what was in front of it and had responded before being consulted.
I felt something coming from inside it — not word, not image, but something closer to emotional temperature, to a quality of presence that communicated state without needing language. Repugnance. The Griffin didn't want to be seen by that woman — not with the vague rejection of something that hadn't developed preferences, but with the specificity of something that had developed a very clear preference about that specific woman and about what she represented.
The reason I didn't know. But I didn't need to know to respect what I had received.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Astrid." — I said, with the tone of someone being careful with every word not from insecurity but from awareness that every word was being evaluated. — "I beg your pardon for what occurred — and above all for having to refuse your request. Honestly, he doesn't seem to hold fond memories of you."
"How dare you—"
The guard beside Astrid advanced before finishing the sentence — with the speed of something that had been trained to act at the threshold of instruction and not after it, that had learned that the interval between instruction and action was where error existed. I felt the pressure arrive in my ears before processing it consciously — the damage arriving before the registration of what had caused the damage, blood flowing before the pain was registered as pain and not just as heat. It was too strong for the interval that had existed. My healing magic responded, but it had been a second too close — too close to the point where the response would have been insufficient for what had arrived.
Before it could act again, the system responded.
[ Infernal Drakrek does not correspond to the arena's level. ]
What happened next was quick. The Oasis didn't negotiate with exceptions — there was a rule, the rule had been violated, the response was a direct consequence of the violation. The guard was thrown toward the steel gate through which he had entered, with the force the Oasis applied when it applied force: sufficient to be definitive. The gate was closed. The Oasis didn't care about that information. Physics did what physics did when force and solid object occupied the same space without either yielding.
He died before understanding what had happened.
The rage in Astrid's eyes didn't go unnoticed — not the rage of someone who had lost something valuable, but the colder rage of someone who had been limited, of someone who had found the limit of what she could do within the space she was operating in and had discovered the limit was real. She had understood: the Oasis would not permit direct intervention. The ground was mine within that arena, and it was mine in a way she couldn't change while I was inside it.
"You know what you've done, human."
The voice came out calm. It was more disturbing than if it had come out with rage — because rage was a transitory state that passed, and that calm communicated something that lasted.
✦
I had the Oasis on my side inside the arena. But the Oasis protected within its limits — and I needed to leave them. I needed one more layer of protection that would last beyond the gates, that would exist in the space where the Oasis didn't reach, and for that I needed the audience. Not their sympathy — sympathy was something I hadn't won and wouldn't win that day. I needed the audience's interest, which was different and more durable.
There was a clear idea of how to do it.
"Miss Astrid." — I said, with the calm of someone who had calculated what was coming before beginning to speak — not with the calm of someone who wasn't afraid, but with the calm of someone who had decided that fear was data to be managed and not a reason not to act. — "The fault for your colleague's death isn't mine — the Oasis acts by its own rules, as you know better than I do. Honestly, all I want is to leave with what I came to find. We both gain from this: you get rid of an inconvenience, Vrikor and Marfini win the event — which is clearly the intention of anyone with eyes in this arena — and I get what I came for."
The reaction in her eyes confirmed she had understood what I was doing — not just the argument, which was clear, but the game that existed beneath the argument. She had realized I knew too much about how the arena operated, and had realized I had realized she had realized. The game had become more complex than the physical space of the arena allowed to resolve simply.
"How dare you give up after everything you've done. Your cowardly, honorless race."
She was fighting for the audience as much as I was — she had recognized that the audience was the real terrain of the battle that was happening, that the metal gates were merely the backdrop. She had realized I knew that too. The game had been named by both sides without either needing to name it out loud.
I needed to go all in — because the middle ground was where she had more advantage than I did, where authority and territory and knowledge of how that game worked were all hers.
"Honestly, I only came for the Griffin." — I said. — "But I think I have time for one last fight. How about this: allow me to fight Marfini in exchange for material from the body of the Griffin she brought down. I don't intend to die — but I don't intend to win without there being something to gain beyond honor."
I paused — letting what came next have the space it needed to work.
"Do you accept my challenge?"
The shouts from the stands answered before she did — with the speed of an audience that had found what it had come looking for, that had waited for something to happen worth the time of waiting and had found that. They weren't shouting for me. They were shouting for the fight — which was different, but produced the same practical effect of making Astrid's refusal something that would have a cost with the audience she also needed.
The semi-hidden rage on Astrid's face communicated what her words wouldn't say: she had recognized the maneuver, had evaluated the options available, had arrived at the conclusion that none of them produced the result she preferred without a cost she wasn't willing to pay at that moment.
"Of course." — she said. — "Let's see if a race as incompetent as yours can defeat my daughter."
Damn.
That one I hadn't expected. How the hell was Marfini her daughter.
The decision was made. If I wanted to leave that place alive, I would have to show that audience I was capable of fighting in the way they understood as fighting. And win even so — against someone I had watched fight, whose secrets I had catalogued with the attention of hours of observation.
There was a difference between knowing someone's secrets and knowing how to use that knowledge against them in real combat.
I was about to find out whether the difference was enough to matter.
Astrid turned to the stands while the voice came out amplified with the power she had chosen not to use before and was using now — calibrated to reach the stands without reaching the arena, with the control I had spent days trying to understand how it worked.
"Today you have met something you have never seen. May your pockets fill and your egos swell — this will be a fight to the death."
Her eyes found mine for one last second before she turned — with the specific quality of communication that didn't need words because words would have been inadequate for what was being said. It was an attempt to unravel me — to communicate that she had seen the entire game, had evaluated all the pieces, and had arrived at the conclusion that the result had already been decided in favor of the side she controlled. That what came next was merely the conclusion of what had been inevitable since I had made the choice to challenge.
What she didn't know was that I had watched Marfini fight.
I had seen the secrets — not all, but enough. And secrets seen by someone who knew what to look for were different from secrets seen by someone who didn't. They were tools.
"Get ready, Morgana. Now comes the real battle."
"I'm ready, my Lord." — she said, with the specific firmness of someone who isn't saying they have no fear, but is saying that the fear doesn't change what they're going to do.
The gate behind me didn't open. Astrid didn't intend to give me rest — she had understood that rest was an advantage and had eliminated the advantage with the naturalness of someone who had the authority to do so. The time that existed was probably only for the bets to be placed with the new information — the new information being that I had accepted to fight against the supreme leader's daughter of the arena.
"Let's see what an Infernal is capable of."