216: To the Forge

“What are you doing?” Ember asked Beatrice when she saw the succubus just standing behind her. “Didn’t Samantha give you a mask?”

“Oh, right,” Beatrice had almost forgotten about the mask she received from Samantha in her hurry outside, along with the other items. Beatrice pulled out the so-called mask and took another look at it.

Beatrice had already examined the mask when she received it and was hesitant to wear it. It added no combat stats and clashed with the “slutty student” outfit she had going under her cloak. Quite frankly, it looked like something golden-age comic superheroes would wear. Black, narrower than the simplest of carnival masks, it barely covered the area around Beatrice’s eyes. The idea that it would somehow conceal Beatrice’s identity seemed preposterous, had it not been for the reassuring item description.

Item: Mask of Concealment

Item Class: Rare

Effects: As long as the mask is worn, conceals the wearer’s identity from anyone that did not witness the wearer put on the mask unless the wearer reveals their identity.

The handle on the door that Ember knocked on moved and Beatrice put on the mask before the door fully opened and an old, dirty, beggar-like figure appeared from the shadows within.

“Go away, I have already found my faith!” the old man hissed, revealing his misaligned, rotting teeth.

“I offer crimson fruit to the hungry rats,” Ember answered.

The old man looked at Ember, then at Beatrice, studying the succubus top to bottom, and said, “The blind cats multiply.”

“Only to be devoured by the rats,” Ember replied.

“You’re late, the Games are about to begin,” the old man said with a changed voice and tone, bowed and stepped aside, gesturing the guests inside.

“We’re right on time, then,” Ember smiled and went inside, nodding for Beatrice to follow her.

Once inside, Ember lit up a flame in her hand and guided Beatrice down a rocky path that seemed to lead underground.

“Is there any actual relevance to mice?” Beatrice asked about the secret password Ember exchanged with the doorman.

“Only if you believe that that’s how she views the low-class citizens,” Ember chuckled.

“’She’?”

“One of the main organizers of the Forge of Champions,” Ember said as they both went deeper down a steadily declining, narrow tunnel carved through some kind of hard, colored rocks that Beatrice could not name even if she recognized the types. The tunnel was not dissimilar to the one through which Beatrice and Ember left Princess Mary’s room.

“Long ago, this city had its beginnings as a prosperous mining town, which obviously was conquered by the toughest brutes around that were eager to get their hands on the wealth,” Ember said. “After exchanging hands a few times, it became a base for what soon turned into the fledgling Kingdom of Larpsus. Fitting, that the Kingdom is on the brink of ending where it began.”

As Ember and Beatrice went down, Beatrice heard distant noise coming from the deep. Even as more paths connected along the way down, and increased in height and width, nobody bothered to light the paths that led there, so Beatrice found it convenient to have her personal human torch with her at all times. Along with the increasing noise from the deep, Beatrice also heard distant conversations echoing in front of them and behind, coming from within various tunnels that connected and intersected.

“Of course, the mines have been mined dry long ago, but they still remain useful for these sorts of things,” Ember added.

“How many entrances are there spread throughout the city?” Beatrice asked, realizing the true scope of these underground games.

“Dozens, at least,” Ember said. “The organizers have several Earth Mages that collapse some tunnels and free others, changing up the entrances if needed. It’s not like anyone doesn’t know that these games take place, but still, appearances have to be kept, so they use all the different entrances into the mines to avoid forming literal mobs in a single place before the start of the games.”

“Might as well have and made it official and got the hiding over with,” Beatrice said. When she considered all the other fucked up things that took place in this city, the addition of some gladiatorial games seemed a trifling matter.

“Organizing fights to the death is still supposed to be not only forbidden but also punishable by death,” Ember reminded with a smile. “The King and the others in charge like to keep up the appearance that rules and order still exist. And they do, for some things, for some people. Besides, this place is probably one of the best to host the Forge of Champions anyway.”

The noise of the crowd in the deep grew louder with each step, the tunnels grew larger and brighter as they linked up and widened to dozens of feet in width and height. Beatrice and Ember were no longer alone in the converging tunnels as more men, women, and beastkin joined them.

The tunnels were hotter and brighter as they were lit by flames, burning in the narrow trenches at the corners of the tunnels. The flames that were at first only a couple of inches high, grew to several feet high, spreading from a giant, arch-like fiery opening in the rocky wall.

Despite the flames and heat that emanated from the twenty-foot-high opening, it already gathered a considerable crowd, and more approached. Excited citizens of Klapsus, smiling and laughing, all heading to the fiery opening that to Beatrice might as well have been the gates of Hell itself.