A Bored Lich

Thomas opened his eyes and found himself on a sweaty back. "Where-" He moved his sore limbs and pain shot through his arm and leg, although he had no idea as to why. Then, memories of his fight with Gregen flashed by, and his heartbeat sped up. He pushed himself away from his carrier's back and fell to the ground.

Frey turned around and offered him a hand. "It's alright."

"W-what happened?" Thomas scanned through the passageway finding that the only other person around besides himself and Frey was Doevm. "Did you guys save me?"

"Yeah. You took a pretty bad beating back there so you can't really move right now. How much do you remember?"

Thomas scrunched up his eyebrows, the weariness of his slumber falling away like a blanket after getting out of bed. "I don't remember much, only that I was fighting Gregen and it got pretty bad. I hopped on a minecart and hit my head when I fell back."

Frey looked to Doevm, who nodded. "If you want to know what happened," Doevm said. "I'll tell you everything, but I promise that you don't want to know what happened."

"I…" Thomas scanned the surroundings: the bloody, crushed minecart with Gregen's corpse squashed beneath it, the many insect corpses littering the ground, the many wounds Frey wore, and lastly the passageway's lengthened shadows. He squinted. "Do the light crystals seem brighter than before?"

"No, that's just your own vision." Doevm and Frey helped Thomas up to his feet. He stood there for a few moments, staring up at the light crystals with a blank expression. Doevm waved to get his attention. "You died."

"Oh," Thomas didn't even blink his black eyes. "Did you bring me back?"

Doevm nodded: "You'll be a little different from normal but who you are won't change."

Thomas walked up to one of the cracked walls and ran his hand down it. "Something was wrong with Gregen. He had red eyes and his body kept changing into horrible shapes." He winced as if he was reliving the memory. "It was like a nightmare that I wouldn't be able to wake up from…thank you."

"Don't mention it," Frey said. He took a step closer and put a hand on Thomas's cold shoulder. "After all, it's my," he glanced to Doevm, who nodded. "It's the group's fault that you got here in the first place. If I had just been a little more focused, been a little more trusting." He bit his lip.

"What are you talking about?" Thomas asked. He turned away from the wall with a broad smile. "You should have seen it." A bit of life returned to his widening eyes. "When you chased after me, the people holding me down shook and nearly crapped themselves." He chuckled. "You came after us like a force of nature with this cool white energy floating off of you." He held out his goosebump-riddled arm. "I get shivers thinking about it. You looked like you were ready to murder them."

"W-well," Frey stuttered and scratched the back of his head. "I nearly did." He pointed over his shoulder at the smashed minecart. "Although, I had to kill Gregen."

"I understand," Thomas said. "If anything, I'm glad he didn't have a slow death. You're so strong it's scary."

Doevm circled Thomas, looking him up and down. "You don't have any other questions about what happened?"

"Should I?" Thomas inspected himself. "I can tell you did something that I don't know about," He flicked his formerly severed limbs. "but I think I'm going to listen to what Elero told me for this instance, that I shouldn't ask about what you're hiding."

Frey raised an eyebrow at Doevm, who shrugged. Thomas put his nose in the air, sniffed twice, and grimaced. He wafted the air. "I think Gregen just voided his bowels."

"You don't smell so good yourself." Came a voice from down the passageway. With metallic clicks and clacks, a blood-soaked Elero came into view, holding her nose. "Did you piss yourself already? You haven't even been gone for a full day."

"How are you alive?" Thomas said, gawking at her state.

Elero took the cork off a water sac and dumped the contents on herself. "It's not that easy to kill me. That, and, not all of this blood is my own." She looked down at all the nobles' corpses, husks of their former selves. "But Thomas, you're the one I'm concerned about. You probably had to sleep on the ground like a commoner. How did you manage to survive?"

"Very funny," Thomas said. "I'm just lucky that Frey and Doevm came when they did. Where were you?"

Elero tossed her broken weapon to the ground: "Fending off dozens of men. Thanks for the spears by the way." She handed him his spatial ring. When he put it on, his expression stiffened. "I don't understand. Does this mean that you guys still carried out the plan? But why are…You guys used everything to get me, didn't you?" He didn't wait for a response. He looked up at the cracked ceiling as if too ashamed to look them in the eyes and cursed. "Doevm, do you have a plan for winning this thing? We don't even have the venomous salamander corpses. We're in dead last."

Doevm shrugged: "Currently, we are out of supplies, out of points, out of energy, and out of time. We could possibly salvage what's outside if Trak's group were unconscious." Elero shook her head. "In that case, I got nothing. I don't even want to risk going outside in the state we're in."

"Maybe we can get Trak's group disqualified due to breaking the rules." Frey said. "Then maybe we can be awarded our points back, since we were cheated out of them."

"How did they cheat?" Doevm asked.

"They killed people!" Frey stopped himself from pointing at Thomas. "And we have proof, the nobles' corpses."

Elero frowned: "When we talked to Mr. Quinn about Gregen, he said there was no one by that name on the list. Since he's not a part of Initiation, he can kill freely."

"His real name was Arin," Thomas said. He picked up a cracked black mask from the ground. "He was part of Initiation, or how could he have gotten into the swamp in the first place? That's not the only way Trak's group cheated. They also had a lot more people in than us. How is that fair?"

"They all used fake names." Doevm said. He took the mask out of Thomas's hands and held it inches from his face. "You are not allowed to help other groups, but if you don't know if someone is part of yours or another group, it's technically not breaking the rules to help them. Trak's group planned this out beforehand. Then there's Gregen, who killed the nobles by himself with no help. Therefore, no one else cheated. Since he's dead, we can't get his points."

"I repeat the question: What now?" Elero asked. "They can't get away with this without a thorough ass-beating. It feels unfinished."

"We have no choice," Frey sighed. "If even Doevm can't think of anything, then we have lost initiation. We forfeit the prize to Trak's group. We don't get the head start with equipment.

"But," Doevm said as he crushed the mask. "That doesn't mean we necessarily lost." He pulled out his life essence, now a darker blue than before. The others pulled out their life essence as well, finding theirs to be darker as well.

Doevm smirked: "General Alexander told me that the goal of the academy is to challenge us, that it pushes people to their limit in order to make them stronger. If we bend the rules or get people to bear the brunt of the difficulty for us, we will stagnate both in strength and as people. Initiation was just the start. There are always other ways we can redeem ourselves."

"Yeah, it's not like everything is over," Thomas chimed in. "I know some people in Initiation. Maybe they could share their prizes with us…if they won. Jackal Von Trike might not be fair towards Doevm and Frey but if I can talk to him-"

"Talk to him?" Elero growled. "Jackal's the one who trapped us in this cave. Trak was a fake name he went by while disguising himself as a commoner. It was all so no one could blame him for capturing nobles throughout Initiation." She grabbed Thomas by the shoulders. "He is not a normal human being, neither is Dag, Molly, or Eugene. No noble associated with their political faction is sound of mind. That is a commonly known fact to any noble who plays the game of power. He most likely had you captured in the first place!"

"He wouldn't do something like that to a friend." Thomas shoved her hands away. "It was Gregen. He's the one to blame. He tried to kill me like the other nobles. Trak…Jackal couldn't have planned this out. Are you sure that it was him under that mask?"

"I'm sure." Elero shoved him into the wall. "All of us came here to save your ass after going through dozens of his men. Why the hell are you taking his side?"

"What is your problem with him?" Thomas snapped. "Sure, he treats commoners like crap but that's no reason to think that he would plan out the murder of nobles. Besides that, you should have seen what Gregen was going through. He transformed into a demon and tried to kill me."

"Look," Elero walked back down the passageway and knelt next to the nobles' corpses. "You are absolutely certain that Gregen did all of this?" Thomas nodded. She patted the nobles down, a deepening frown putting a trench along her forehead. "Jackal and Gregen, whichever of the two assholes were capturing nobles, was doing it with an agenda."

She shoved emblems detailing various noble houses into Thomas's hands. "I know these people. They are all nobles from the same noble faction, who coincidentally all go against Jackal's faction, just like my family once did. Gregen was just the person to take the fall. I'm certain this was Jackal. It's how he works. I've seen it before, experienced it in painful detail..." She paused. "He has a bright smile and a dagger behind his back."

"And you're saying that he got Gregen possessed by a demon?" Thomas asked with both eyebrows raised.

"Thomas, Elero," Doevm finally got a word in between the two, who hadn't realized they had been yelling over everything he had been saying. "We have little time before Initiation is over. Don't forget that, regardless of how many points we have, we still have to make it to the academy before the week is over."

"You believe me, right?" Elero turned to Doevm and Frey. Frey held his hands up and took a step back while avoiding eye contact.

"Jackal is a dangerous human being," Doevm said after a moment of hesitation. "But my fight is not with him, regardless of if he is right or wrong."

Thomas's stomach growled: "I'm hungry." A bead of cold sweat to travelled down Frey's neck. Doevm handed him some Bullfrog meat, which he downed in a single gulp. Thomas smiled. "That tastes better than any Bullfrog meat I've eaten before." He licked his lips and his fingers. "It smelled better too."

"I don't think there's anything left for us here," Doevm said. "Let's go to the academy."

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