The deep stone corridors of the ward lay deserted in the dead of night. In the streets of the underground city, silence reigned. The bright torches were extinguished, and the glow of the deep crater walls was reduced to a soft, blue light that cast long shadows across the stone squares. The only sound filling the cold air in the communal areas was the heavy snoring of the exhausted soldiers and the beasthumans, who were sunk in sleep after the reception. The smell of roasted meat and beer still hung between the massive wooden support beams of the main quarters.
At least, almost everywhere.
Anyone walking through the quiet corridor of the main quarters quickly noticed that the peace was an illusion. Over the rooms of Jane and Nyx lay a blanket of chaos. At Jane’s heavy oak door, the stone walls were vibrating from the rhythmic banging of furniture being thrown against the walls.
“Yes! Exactly like that! You are going nowhere tonight, Aurelius!” echoed Jane’s unmistakable laughter through the thick wood. Her feline cries filled the hallway, alternated with the muffled, exhausted panting of the swordsman, who had accepted his fate and was simply trying to survive under her weight.
A few doors down, behind the residence of Nyx, it was not much quiet either. The deep panting and passionate cries coming from there filled the hallway with tension. It was the sound of two royal bloodlines that had stared each other in the eye past death and were now letting the walls sweat in a visual escalation of release. The adrenaline of survival and the pent up fear of the past five years exploded behind closed doors in a rhythm that made the stones sweat.
At the end of that same hallway, near the royal quarters, the fast pitter-patter of tiny feet sounded on the cold stone floor.
Knock, knock, knock.
Faustus sat in peace at a robust wooden table in his dim room. He was having a late night snack, enjoying a tender leg of wild boar with fat dripping off it, when the urgent knocking caught his attention. With a fluid movement, he set his food down, wiped the fat from his chin with the back of his hand, walked to the solid stone door, and pulled it open with a soft sound.
In front of him stood Miki and Ren. Ren stood there looking pitiful; his hair was sticking straight up like an exploded fuzzball, his eyes were barely open, and he leaned his full weight sleepily against the doorframe while trying to suppress a gape. Miki stood right beside him, holding his arm with a trembling grip. Her large eyes were wide open, her furry ears were folded back against her skull, and her tail darted from left to right.
“Fauss… we really cannot sleep because of that noise…” Ren mumbled with a voice overcome by sleep, his head dropping far to the side.
Miki chimed in, her voice breaking from nerves as she pointed with her free hand toward the hallway. “Nyx and Jane… they are possessed, Faustus! It is really bad! You can hear them shouting weird things through the walls, screaming and banging! There are monsters in those rooms and they are eating the boys, we really need to go chase the monsters away right now!”
The purple eyes of Faustus went wide. For a short second, the gunslinger was left stunned, while the runes on his armor glowed softly in the dark. Then a broad, amused grin appeared on his face. He cleared his throat briefly and leaned forward toward the two little ones.
“Ehh… let us just avoid doing that, haha,” Faustus answered quickly, running a hand through his dark hair as he gently guided the two young beasthumans into his room, away from the sounds in the hallway. “Just take my word for it, you kids… those girls over there are strong enough to handle those… ‘monsters’ all by themselves. They will manage fine. Sooowww…”
Without filling in the biological details any further, he lifted Miki and Ren simultaneously with a smooth motion and set them down gently on the large, blue velvet daybed in the corner of his room. To shift their overstimulated thoughts, Faustus sat on the edge of the bed, folded his fingers together, and began speaking in his deep voice, telling an ancient fairytale about distant star systems, floating oceans, and friendly giants keeping watch over the night. His voice worked like medicine; the bass in his tones washed the fear out of Miki’s ears, and within no time, the heavy eyelids of the two young beasthumans began to drop like lead.
Just at the moment Faustus was about to utter the final lines of his improvised fable in a soft whisper, the heavy room door flew open with a swing.
Nicola came rushing in. His formal jacket was lopsidedly buttoned halfway, his quill was still sticking behind his ear, and his hair was messy as if he had just jumped out of bed.
“Faustus! Damn it, do you happen to know where Miki and Ren are? They knocked on my quarters panicked just now, but I was still getting dressed and when I checked outside they were already—” Nicola abruptly clamped his jaws shut and froze as he looked around the room.
His gaze fell upon the large daybed in the corner. Miki and Ren lay there motionless and fast asleep, tucked in warm and tight under the thick wool blankets that Faustus had carefully pulled up to their chins. Miki let out a small snore while her tail finally rested still.
Nicola broke into a soft laugh, shaking his head and letting his shoulders drop in relief. “Faustus, sleep well. We really need to talk very seriously about something tomorrow. Those plans for the training sessions need to be revised.”
“Goodnight, Nicola,” Faustus whispered with a tired grin, giving a small salute with his fingers as he walked back toward his table to finish his wild boar leg cold.
Nicola closed the door behind himself with caution and stepped back into the chilly stone hallway. With a routine hand gesture, he pulled a shiny, crystal screen out from his inner pocket. The object lit up blue in the darkness of the night, casting a cool glow over his face. His fingers glided quickly over the surface as he continued ticking off his administrative list of the ward and the present troops. He walked through the corridors at a steady pace, his boots clicking on the stones, until he stood before the creaking door of Beat’s room.
Without knocking, he stepped inside softly. Beat was already lying halfway on his bed, his body draped diagonally across the mattress, one arm hanging limply over the edge, and his breathing heavy and irregular.
“Beat… glad to have you back here, kid. You have no idea how much we missed you,” Nicola said with a deep voice, relieved that the lightning warrior had returned unscathed from that arena.
Beat woke up halfway from his sleep at the sound of Nicola’s voice. He stumbled up with effort, his eyes half closed, and rubbed the sleep out of his face with his fists. Without uttering a coherent word, he walked on wobbly legs to the dark corner of the room, where his old, worn out, scorch marked pants from the big race lay on the stone floor. He bent over, rummaged deep into the back pockets, and pulled out a whole hand full of glowing, raw, and pulsating crystals with a triumphant look. The small stones emitted a bright blue light.
In a sleepy and confused way, Beat began blabbering, while blue current sparks still crackling jumped from his fingertips, making the hairs on Nicola’s arms stand up.
“Here… look at this, Nic… you gotta check this,” Beat babbled with a heavy tongue, shaking the crystals back and forth in front of Nicola’s nose. “This is from that race of ours… Those bastards used this shit over there to accelerate, you know? Or to shoot things with… Boom! Straight through those barriers! Take it, craft something awesome with it in the laboratory, you are smart…”
Nicola examined the sparkling crystals with professional and tactical interest. He felt the energy radiating from them. He took them from Beat with caution and nodded slowly as he placed them into a protective pouch. “Yes, yes, fascinating… This is usable material. We will analyze this directly tomorrow. Goodnight, Beat.”
Beat barely heard it anymore. He let his body drop right back onto his pillow like a block of concrete, and before the back of his head hit the mattress, he was already sunk into a deep sleep, softly mumbling under his breath about engines and lightning currents.
Nicola walked out of the room with the crystals in his hand and looked one last time at his blue screen. The list was complete. Everyone was safe inside the walls of the ward, everyone was still breathing, and the alliance stood stronger than ever. As he walked back to his own sleeping quarters at a calm pace, he noticed that peace had finally returned everywhere. Even the wild noises from the distant rooms of Jane and Nyx had died away into a serene silence.
He passed the heavy door of the room of Silarias and Nyx one last time, where now only the calm, deep, and harmonious breathing of the night could be heard. Nicola smiled briefly in the dark, put the crystal screen away, found his own bed, and definitively extinguished the lights in the ward.
Behind the sealed doors of the royal room, Silarias lay in a deep and unconscious sleep, his tired body resting warm and protected against Nyx’s. But his spirit did not rest in the physical world tonight.
His deepest consciousness drifted away, deeper through the layers of his soul, until the familiar darkness of his normal sleep began to shift, tear, and transform into something otherworldly. The stone walls of the ward dissolved noiselessly into nothingness, and the warm bed gave way to an infinite gold purple void. The air around him vibrated and pulsated with an ancient energy that pressed heavily on his lungs.
Silarias landed with a dull, echoing thud with his feet on the mirror smooth floor of the astral plane. The floor reflected the infinite starry sky above him.
As soon as he raised his head, the shadows and bright light around him opened up in a majestic display. Right before him they stood, as if they had been waiting for him. The Lucifer with his glistening dark wings that split the purple sky in two. Directly beside him stood the legendary Bansaday Flying Lion, whose golden mane pulsated and flamed like a living sun, his presence dissolving the illusions of the astral world.
Flank to flank with them stood the Norse gods, larger and more imposing than ever before: Frey with his radiant sword casting light across the mirror floor; Freya wrapped in her glistening falcon feather cloak rustling softly in the astral wind; and the mysterious Odr, whose presence caused the cosmic storms around the circle to howl and wail.
The constellation of gods, entities, and mythical creatures stood in a circle around the young warrior. Silarias looked around with wide open eyes, his inner monologue dying in his throat as he felt the pressure of their gazes.
And then, in a synchronized movement, the atmosphere shifted.
Lucifer raised his heavy hands. The Bansaday Flying Lion let his golden claws come together with a dull thud, and the Norse gods joined them directly with proud expressions. A loud, rhythmic applause erupted in the astral dimension. The sound of their clapping hands echoed like thunderclaps through the space, an ultimate tribute to the young nobody who had just pushed the boundaries of the tournament and death itself. The golden solar energy and the black shadows flowed in waves toward the center of the circle, straight at Silarias, while the proud gazes of the most powerful beings in history remained fixed on his face.
And there, caught in the thundering applause of the gods, reality stood still.