Chapter 281: Chapter 280 – Fake

Gathering information was hard when people wouldn’t talk and where a person could go was restricted. Ember found that out quite fast. The other fighters in the arena were as unsociable as they had been the first day Ember had arrived. The lounge, as Yuki told her the area where the fighters gathered was called, didn’t offer much clues as to how the arena was made. It didn’t offer much of anything.

Ember had been assigned by Yuki to try and find physical information that could help them break out of the Fiddler’s Coliseum. Yuki would be trying to find magical information. On the days when they didn’t have battles, they would get to work. At night, they would sometimes just chat or Yuki would go to train which Ember found out was what she was doing those days when she would just sit on top of the bed with her eyes closed for hours on end. 

During those chats, the two got to know each other better. Or really, Ember spoke and Yuki got to know her better. Ember described her own life growing up in the cities away from the elves, dwarves, and beastkin. Yuki was a good listener, rarely interrupting and only for small questions that Ember was happy to answer.

They rarely spoke of their plans. 

Whatever Yuki was coming up with, she kept mainly to herself. All she told Ember was what Ember’s part was. The inner workings of the actual idea wasn’t said out loud. Ember understood why. Yuki was just being cautious and didn’t want to risk having their plans heard by a certain musician who had to know they were plotting already.

Right now, Ember was executing her part. At least, trying to execute her part like she had been doing for the past few days. She wasn’t quite sure about the time. It didn’t seem to flow correctly in the arena. 

She knew how many fights she had been through. Tomorrow was going to be her twentieth battle in the arena. Yuki told her that she was going on to her forty seventh. That meant time was ticking. There was only a little over twelve days left for them to find a way out that included both of them.

‘Let’s try something new,’ Ember thought. ‘Well, something new to try something old.’

She walked through the crowds of people, slipping between them and murmuring apologies as they gave her small looks. Some were curious and others were annoyed. Most were disinterested. 

A few feet ahead of her, she spied her target. The entrance to the hallway that led to the rooms of all of the fighters in the arena. Two guards stood in front of it, armed with spears and stopping anyone from entering it. 

‘Try number...number three now?’ Ember thought. ‘They probably recognize me by now. But that’s fine.’

She spied around the lounge until her eyes landed on an older looking man with tired drooping eyes. Keeping an eye on the guards, she made her way to the man. The guards looked at her for a moment before moving their attention else. When their eyes shifted, Ember’s hand snaked out and struck the back of the man’s head. Her other hand went out and held the head back, stopping the now unconscious man from rocking forward. The others around the man had no reaction. If it was from not noticing or not caring, Ember wasn’t sure. 

‘Alright, up we go.’ 

Taking the man’s limp arms, she dragged the man up before making her way to the entrance of the hallway. The guards shifted their attention to her immediately, moving their spears to block the entrance.

“Hi,” Ember said with a bright smile. “Can I pass?”

“What for?” one of the guards asked. A man. 

“This man here isn’t quite feeling well,” she replied, gesturing with her head towards the unconscious man. The guard frowned.

“Then go to the medical ward,” he said. “This hallway is off limits for all competitors.”

“I would go to the medical ward,” Ember said, “but this man instructed me to bring him to his room before he promptly fell unconscious. He doesn’t want to bother the wonderful nurses. His words.”

“We can’t do that,” the guard said firmly. 

“We could request for him to be moved back to his room,” the second guard said. He was also a male. “If you would like, of course.”

“Oh. That would be wonderful,” Ember smiled. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” the second guard replied. He grabbed a radio from his waist and turned away to cover his mouth as he whispered into it.

“I’ll take him,” the first guard said, pointing at the man that Ember was carrying. “Go back and enjoy the fights.”

Ember nodded and proceeded to transfer the unconscious man to guard. As she did, she feigned a stumble and shoved forward, man and all, into the guard. The guard grunted as he took a step back from the impact. With one hand, Ember grabbed the guards jacket as if to stop herself from falling, forcing the guard to bend forward. With the other hand, she rummaged through the guard’s pockets. 

She found a slim cylindrical object with a button on top of it in one of them. What it was for, she didn’t know. Taking it, she rolled it along the hallway, intending to send the guard down the hallway. She wanted to see whether or not the guards would enter the hallway. Or if they even could. For weeks, she had been watching the two guards, but never had she seen where they even came from. They were always there the moment she arrived. No one ever came from or went into that hallway. 

But as her eyes followed the object as it rolled, she watched it disappear into thin air a couple feet into the hallway. The guard she fell on lifted her up back to her feet and took the man once she was standing. She glanced at the guard, waiting for him to notice the disappearance of the item, but the guard didn’t give any reaction of any sort. All he did was bend over and pick his spear back up.

“We can handle this alone now,” the guard said. He gestured with his spear. “Go back and enjoy the fights. There are still a few left.”

“Thank you,” Ember said slowly. 

She turned away from the guards with a small frown. The guard she had taken the object from didn’t seem to notice that the object was gone. 

‘Maybe it wasn’t important or too small?’

Taking a seat, she angled herself so that she could keep an eye on the two guards, specifically the guard who was holding the unconscious man. The man disappeared as the Fiddler, Ember assumed, took him away back to his room. Then the guards went back to their routine of constant vigilance. The guard didn’t check his pockets at any time as battles started and passed in the arena.

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‘So not important? Or forgotten?’

Ember pursed her lips as she thought. The guard’s reaction wasn’t important right now, she decided. What was more important was the object. Where the object had gone and why it disappeared. It vanished after traveling a certain distance, as if absorbed by the air. 

An illusion. That was what was in the hallway, or rather what the hallway was. There was the illusion of a hallway behind the entrance. It was possible that the illusion was there to hide something happening in the hallway, but Ember doubted that. It didn’t seem worth it for the Fiddler to do such a thing when he could just move everyone and everything around. 

‘So why make a fake hallway?’

---

 

“Why indeed,” Yuki said, drumming her fingers on her bed. 

[Can you think of a reason?] Ember asked. Her voice was directly in Yuki’s mind. Like with Akira, Ember could communicate with Yuki through their bond. Yuki had brought up the idea one night when they were trying to convey information without actually speaking it out loud. 

‘That’s what I’m trying to do,’ Yuki replied. ‘Let me think.’

An illusion of a hallway. Yuki agreed with Ember. There probably was no actual hallway. Just a magical trick to make one think that there was a route from the arena to the rooms where the fighters lived.

‘But do that?’ Yuki thought to herself. ‘Does that mean the arena is separate from the area where the rooms are?’

That seemed impossible to her. The strain of maintaining a domain the size of the arena shouldn’t make it physically possible for the Fiddler to maintain another separate domain that might be even larger. Unless the Fiddler was a god of sorts, it would kill him the moment he tried due to the raw amount of mana that would be needed. If he somehow had such an overwhelming amount of mana, then the toll it would take on his mind would break him.

So two areas was out of the picture. 

‘Unless,’ she thought, ‘the areas aren’t maintained at the same time? While one is activated, the other is gone.’

As far as she knew, the fighters were all moved to the arena and the lounge whenever the fights were to begin. No matter if they were to be fighting or not, they would be taken out of their rooms. That meant all the rooms would be empty and so the Fiddler could close it temporarily.

But there was a problem with that. The problem was how Ember arrived.

‘Ember,’ she sent. ‘When you first came, you walked through the hallways while it was battle time in the arena, right?’

[I did. He took me from those horrible prison cells and brought be to the arena to watch,] Ember said. She shuddered. [The smell of those cells. I can still feel it crawling around in my nose if I think about them.]

‘Thank you for that.’

If Ember went through the hallway to the arrive at the arena, then that meant if Yuki’s theory about two separate zones that were turned on and off was correct, the Fiddler turned on the room zone while maintaining the arena zone all just to escort Ember from the prisons. That wasn’t something Yuki could see the Fiddler doing or much less actually be able to do because of the restraints. 

‘So not one area,’ she thought. An idea flashed in her mind. ‘Maybe just one then. Just one area that is a lot smaller than I thought it was.’

Making a domain and maintaining it took immense concentration and mana. Sophie had explained this to Yuki before. The sheer perceived scale of the Fiddler’s Coliseum gave Yuki the impression that the Fiddler was a person that rivaled the strongest of the demons. But now, it was possible that the Coliseum wasn’t quite as large as she had thought.

‘I might know why there is a fake hallway,’ Yuki said. Ember looked at her sharply. ‘I need to confirm it first though.’

[What’s your idea?] 

‘I’ll tell you. Soon. I need to make sure it’s right, though,’ Yuki replied. Though Yuki trusted Ember with secrets, something of this nature required that not one single hint could slip that could give the Fiddler the idea that the magic of the arena was possibly being unraveled. Yuki wasn’t sure if Ember could do that. 

‘Akira would. I wish she was here.’ 

[Do you need me to help confirm it?] Ember asked, snapping Yuki’s attention back.

‘Not really. This is more magical in nature,’ she said. ‘If you could, try to confirm the hallway. But don’t draw suspicion.’

[Got it. I’ll do my best.]

‘Thank you,’ Yuki smiled. ‘Good job today. We just got a lot closer to breaking out.’

 

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