Улаан Тулааны Цэнгэлдэх

'Wooden sword… fight for their freedom…'

Sunny shifted slightly, causing his cage to sway, and glanced at Elyas. The youth was not in a talking mood anymore and just sat quietly, staring into the darkness.

There was something, a hint of a meaning, in what he had said. Sunny tried desperately to catch that meaning, but for some reason, his thoughts kept returning to the statues of War God.

He had seen two depictions of the fearsome deity in the Kingdom of Hope.

One was a warrior in heavy armor, wielding a bloodied spear and a cracked shield, both, presumably, representing warfare and battle, and the other was a woman wearing nothing but a beast hide around her waist, holding a spear in one hand and a beating human heart in another… the spear representing her dominion over war, technology, and craft perhaps, the heart representing her connection to life and humanity.

Why were these statues so different?

Sunny was still exhausted after the furious battles of the past day, his thoughts slow and feverish, as they often were these days. Frustrated, he rubbed his face, then scratched at it with sharp claws, slicing the skin apart. The pain washed the fog shrouding his mind away, allowing him to think clearly for a few minutes.

The Altar of War… that was what Solvane had called the island where the primeval statue of the Goddess of Life stood. And that was the right word, this depiction of the deity seemed much more primal, bestial… ancient.

The statue itself seemed incredibly ancient, too. Much older than the statues of the mighty warrior were… in fact, it seemed as ancient as the Red Colosseum itself, or perhaps even older. Old enough to have been created before the Kingdom of Hope was shattered and turned into the chain of floating islands by Sun God, as it was today, and would be thousands of years into the future.

Why would Hope have a monument to one of the gods in her domain? Well, the idea itself was not that strange. Gods and daemons had not been always at war, after all. In fact, the Prince of the Underworld had a shrine to the Goddess of the Black Skies, Storm God, in his very tower, despite the fact that later, she would become his mortal enemy.

So that question was not important… the important thing was that Sunny couldn't stop thinking about the statue, for some reason.

'As ancient as the Red Colosseum itself…'

Suddenly, Sunny tilted his head.

'Huh?'

The white amphitheater, and the arena it surrounded, were the derelict of the true Kingdom of Hope, as well. He had realized that fact a while back, partially from how they looked, and partially from how deep and ancient some of the shadows hiding in the corners of the dungeon felt.

In fact, Sunny suspected that the theater had not always been a battle arena. It reminded him of the giant quarry at the roots of the Hollow Mountains, where the seven heroes of the Forgotten Shore had excavated stone to build the mighty walls of their city, and the Crimson Spire itself.

Ivory City had to have been built out of something, too… so this place must have been a similar quarry, once, and had served as the source of the white stones used to construct those aerial bridges and aqueducts.

Later, it had been turned into a theater, and later still, the Warmongers usurped that theater and made it into an arena, soaking the ancient stones with so much blood that they turned red.

His black eyes narrowed.

'This is it… this must be it…'

All this time, Sunny had been tormented by one paradoxical question. A question that was of utmost importance for his attempts to gain freedom.

…If this was an era where the Nightmare Spell did not exist yet, then how could Solvane put him on a leash capable of severing his connection to the Spell?

The collar was a simple piece of enchanted metal, with no lock or any other way of opening it. It was almost impossible to damage or destroy, but the enchantment itself was not very complicated… Sunny could feel that it wasn't. What it did, however, was tie him to the vast and incredibly powerful enchantments of the arena itself.

Those enchantments were harnessed by the Warmongers to maintain the cages, prevent the slaves from escaping by any means, mundane or magical, and ensure that they behaved while being transported to and, very rarely, back from the arena.

His inability to connect to the Spell almost seemed like a side effect of these measures.

But what could even interfere with the Spell, let alone accidentally?

And now, he felt as if he had found the answer! If the Red Colosseum was, indeed, not built by the Warriors, but only usurped by them, then it was indeed very clear.

…Sorcery of another daemon could. If the Demon of Desire was the original creator of the theater, then the enchantments left behind by her would probably do the job of messing with the Spell weaved from the Strings of Fate by her older sibling.

Sunny shifted, grasping the bars of the cage.

Suddenly, a powerful emotion burst in his chest, filling his muscles with renewed strength, and his mind with desperate resolve.

…Hope. It was hope.

He didn't think of it as poison anymore. No... it was the opposite. A most powerful antidote.

If the Spell had been created by Weaver, and the enchantments interfering with it created by Hope… if all of this was the result of a clash between two types of daemonic sorcery…

Then why couldn't he, as an inheritor of a daemonic legacy, do something to resolve that clash?

Sure, Sunny knew nothing about weaving magic… but he had also not known anything about combat once, or how to live and fight in a body of an actual demon.

If there was one thing he was good at, it was learning new things.

Well… that, and lying.

And staying alive.

Staring at the ghastly dungeon surrounding him with new eyes, Sunny studied its ancient stone walls, and frowned.

So… how was one supposed to start learning sorcery?