Faction Showdown: XXIII

Faction Showdown: XXIII

That night, Drake made sure to re-count how many members he believed would be left after the endeavor of the Hells team. They had removed two of the Central members, but at the very least, Drake had made sure to remove Cain from his ability to fight for Malevolence. Almost an hour after his fist fight with Cain, Tracy went into his prison chamber to cast powerful water spells which would surely cause surrender. As they thought, Cain surrendered almost exactly after the drowning spell Tracy had prepared for such an occasion. The room was dried in the same manner it was filled with water; via magic. If his calculations were correct, the Malevolence team had lost Charles, Cain, and possibly Sawman, whereas they had lost Jake, Nak, Trevor, Joseph, and William. The Central team then consisted of Dash, Bill, Tracy, Lloyd, and Drake; none of which were willing to give up, just yet.
On the Wildcard team, a firm cast remained of Desentaro, Bane, Helen, Xavier, Kaeso, and Lance; one more than the Central team. The Malevolence team, in truth, consisted of Hest, Vyre, Leo, Kenton, and Jay.
That night, after most of the light was taken away from the whole of the quad, Dash Carls secretly left the confines of the Administrative building in order to settle what he thought to be a moral score with the Holy team. He hadn’t heard what occurred between Lance and Drake only hours prior to his leave; the event in which Lance would save the game for Drake in the name of justice. All Dash heard was that Tracy got hurt in a duel with Cain, that Cain was captured and defeated, and that everybody should have rested.
Dash was on a mission to at least trade himself with one other member of any opposing team. If he could take out someone from the Wildcard team, he could then attempt to take someone down from the demon team of Malevolence. But someone from the Wildcards would have to go first, as they outright deceived the Central team two nights previous with their antics and promise of having a spoken meeting. In Dash’s opinion, such a meeting was not had, at all.
He quietly opened the gates from the Administration building and confidently rushed across the quad over to the Locked Arena. He stood behind a tree and looked toward the double front doors. He felt that someone must have been behind them to guard them, and that such a person would probably be Xavier Paltho; he seemed to be the guard of the place. Dash decided it may not be such a good idea to go in through there. Instead, he looked up to the second floor buildings and clenched a hand.
He wasn’t that good at levitation, but this was his chance to test his limits. Dash reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his paper bag; the same one he always carried around with various tools in it. He pulled out what appeared to be a cane of some plant. With a bite, he chewed some of it around for a long while and put the rest back in the bag. The flavor, as with much of anything Dash carried, was sweet. He felt invigorated and prepared to cast his levitation spell when he remembered something grim.
Lance could sense magic just as well as anybody else.
Dash couldn’t cast any spells. He nearly cursed under his breath and looked up to the second floor. He had used that piece of energy cane for nothing. With a sigh, he resolved to climb the building, even if it meant needing to climb a smooth wall.
Dash pulled out a pair of daggers and jammed one into the side of the Locked Arena wall. Just as he thought, the building was made of some kind of wood. He jammed the other above him and attempted to balance a jump on the first handle. He managed to do so and he ended up holding onto the fringe of an outside window. He fought off the temptation to cast a spell, used a hand to push the window open, and used his strength to pull himself over the window into one of the classrooms. He wasn’t William White, he reminded himself; he would have to be more careful now that he was inside the Locked Arena. He closed the windows gently and pulled out a pocket dagger. For the time being, he only listened in and around the room he had entered for movement. He could not be caught this early in his infiltration. If he could, he would grab a surrender and run.
Nobody was inside the first room he entered. In typical Dash fashion, he didn’t open the door to the outside corridor of Locked Arena classrooms. If someone were patrolling the hallway, one way to tell would be to cause somewhat of a ruckus. Apparently he hadn’t made too much noise, as nobody had gone to check if he had infiltrated the room. But was calling guards to his attention a good idea?
Being uncanny would have to be the order of the day. Dash decided to open the door as quietly as he could without going through it. With a few flicks of his head, he could see nobody inside the corridors. Everybody would be sleeping.
Except that he heard one voice from down the corridors. He swallowed, bent his knees, and made his slow way down the corridor towards where the voices were coming from. As he got closer, he could distinguish one voice between the two: Kaeso. The other was a female voice. He reached the door and practically sat by the closed door, eyes looking from side-to-side before he used his Lumisonian hearing to eavesdrop on the conversation.
“But you know I’m too confident to let this game go.” Kaeso was telling her, almost in a humorous, conversational voice. “It doesn’t mean more to me, per se…it’s just that I’m fairly competitive and I don’t like to lose.”
“Neither do I,” she said back. Dash frowned a bit. It sounded like a demon girl’s voice. Much less high-pitched. She sounded…older. “But you know, Kaeso, I could bargain with you. It wouldn’t be betraying anyone.”
“On the contrary,” Kaeso said in response. “If I made a deal with you, it would make me look like the bad guy amongst my own team. Lance in particular.”
“You wouldn’t leave me tied up like this normally, would you?” she was almost whining. Dash rolled his eyes. His assassination became information-gathering. “Kaeso, if you really adored me that much, you would let me go.”
“I won’t deny that I have feelings for you, Amy, but the same could be said for you.” He paused. “This is a game that means a lot to both the demons of Central Hells and the demons of, well, Central Hells.” He nearly laughed. “I can’t let you go, even if you promised not to attack us.”
Having heard enough, Dash felt it was then or never. With one hand, he removed the paper bag from inside his jacket and pulled out a small vial of blue-ish liquid. He drained it in one gulp and relaxed as he felt a coolness go through his body. He then proceeded to lightly lift his right hand as he got up to a kneeling position. The moisture replaced in his body was cold, and he was using magic to concentrate it around his hand. The pressure in the air was slowly going up, just as the temperature in the hallway was slowly going down.
“Something’s not right here,” Kaeso could be heard in the room.
Dash replaced the bag into his jacket, slammed the door open to find Amy Hydrosso tied up, a hostage, and Kaeso a few yards away with his fire swords newly drawn.
“Better get in here quick, someone!” Kaeso called out as he rushed Dash.
The wind-water adept used the concentrated cold as his defending weapon against Kaeso’s fire swords. The cold quality of the air around Dash prevented the swords from entering a pseudo-aura around the water mage. Kaeso nearly landed a horizontal strike on Dash when he weaved out of the way and drew his saber, which crystallized with an ice finish. Able to go blow-for-blow with Kaeso, Dash needed a secondary plan. He blocked at least four times more, now on the opposite side of the room, and then used a gust to blow Kaeso back into the opening of the room. As Kaeso relinquished his swords, Dash turned and tossed his dagger into Amy’s torso, which coaxed a scream of agony from her.
Kaeso’s eyes flared with rage as he weaved fire with his hands and sent two streams of flamethrower-like streams at Dash. The wind-water adept used the remainder of his cooling to ward off most of the streams, but when the fire subsided, he was met with Kaeso’s fist, which tossed him into the ground. Kaeso would have followed up with another punch, but Dash flipped back onto his feet and simultaneously used a gust to sweep Kaeso off of his. Dash was prepared to continue when yet another interruption occurred.
Bane tossed a two-sided knife from where he stood in the doorway, which stuck Dash clear in the chest. To stop Dash from having any more thoughts, Bane waved his hand and a ray of light blinded Dash severely. Kaeso got back up onto his feet and drew a sword. The two Wildcards looked down at Dash as he bled from the wound and used his hands to clutch at his eyes, still not surrendering.
“It serves you right, you punk.” Kaeso wiped his brow.
“Give up or we’ll make you.” Bane put his foot on the side of Dash’s leg and crunched down on it with a slow, heavy force. Dash closed his mouth to try and endure more of the pain from being both newly blind and crippled, but couldn’t endure it much longer.
“Gah!” Dash shouted twice in the air. “This would be so much easier if you just listened to us and went after Slatford!”
Bane stepped even harder after hearing that, and Kaeso sheathed his weapon. The fire mage seemed relatively irritated, but also happy that they got something out of the night, regardless.
“He can come to us, if he wants.” Kaeso shrugged. “That’s all there is to it.”