Bonfires lit up the night. A human had come! Accompanied that winds of magic that promised great carnage. And so the monsters feasted.
Monsters only cared about mana. A dying world had taught its survivors to look beyond just feeding on equally starved beasts. Those who endured were those capable of change and that human was just that.
That human was horrified.
He had been first crushed by the size of the ruins surrounding him. What he thought afar to be a simple tiered tower had revealed its dimension: the first tier alone, four floors high, stood ten meters above him and stretched far enough for the nightly fog to engulf it.
He had then smelled the stench. Even with his presence, the balconies once filled with lotuses only held stagnant, putrid water. His stomach was churning with sickness.
Bonfires should have alleviated that. Giant piles alit, casting their craze as they crackled and burst. Their plumes of cinders formed a ceiling that competed with the stars.
But they carried their own scent. The orcs were emptying their cages of all their game and catches to throw them into the pyres. Their boar faces grinned each time. They carried the preys on their shoulders or wounded on slabs and each time a beast joined the flames, they cheered.
In the excitement, the newborns wanted to spar with their elders. Brief fights were breaking out all around, adding to the festivities.
From above on the great pyramid of Malangri, more orcs were drummings on bones and pelts.
I was escorting the man through those blazes. Rascal had tried to get him to join in, drink the alcohol, taste the black blood; the orc had given up to go enjoy it himself. The human was treading lightly and staying so close to me as to be silly.
"What's on your mind?" I commanded.
He looked at me, at the armor coated in silver that the furious lights seemed unable to assail. Behind the disgust in his eyes lay a deeper frustration.
"I do no mean to question your decisions, sir." Shut up. "I just don't understand what I am doing here. Those... orcs..."
We had reached the center of the feast. There, on crossed poles, the monsters had hung a large skull, white as death, with its spine still attached.
Korion.
Even in death, the minotaur had left an impossible riddle. This was his third head I had crossed and no spell, no force, not even spit could touch it. It remained there unconquered for all to see.
"They are hounds, wild beasts tamed by the decay. In life, they followed Korion to feed. In death, they follow him to fight. Not because they are bloodthirsty," though they were, "but because that cult has served them best."
"A cult?" The man's hopes revived at that word.
"Follow me."
What even was with this human?! A horde was welcoming their new master and rather than kill a few and assert his dominance, he kept looking over his shoulder at the drunk boars and blades swinging.
Wasn't he ambitious? Greedy? Even monsters could sense this need of his to stand above and yet, he shirked?
I had no time for this! I had to work on anti-magic, build a containment sphere, defy the realm! Not drag a sheepish ruler in his early twenties who could not stand the sight of a copper ox being slaughtered!
We left the pyres and walked under the tower's first tier. A flat, smooth ceiling replaced the smoke and sky.
Past two rows of pillars was an ancient fountain dug in the stone, some forty meters in diameter. It too had steps gradually lowering to a central platform from which the water had streamed. The orcs had turned it into an arena.
I had helped them, in the past, to make a cage in which to release monsters and watch them fight.
"Monsters have no use for entertainment. They hunt, they kill, their life is that simple. And with the mana drain killing everything, games are a luxury. Yet here is a cage and they capture monsters for it."
"Why is that?" He asked instead of answering it by himself.
I turned my badger helmet toward him.
"The same reason they hunt together. The same reason they follow a skull. Despair. The urge to thrive in a dying realm. They watch beasts fight to feel alive."
Or I could just tell the human how many days he had left to live.
Still, he seemed to understand. Or rather, he had come up with his own plans. I could see him weigh the options and build it up in his mind. His tanned face, turned away, now expressed nothing but determination.
With that, Rascal found us and approached. The orc was drunk, without an axe, his boarish face bearing a deep gash and one of his horns gone. He laughed it off.
"Fair game! A prize to the victor." And, after a glance at the human: "You can't wait for the pit fights, eh? Blood and guts! Makes you jealous. They said they caught exotic beasts, it will be exciting!"
"Yes, of course!" The human lied. "I can't wait to be there!"
He sounded like he expected to be thrown in the arena himself.
Still, the feast went on, even after their master had returned to the ship to sleep. The bonfires kept burning in the night, with the chants, the drums and the fights.
In the morning, he wished to venture alone.
"Do as you please." Was my only answer.
Whether that was his way of asserting his authority or another inane quest from the mythical human system, he departed after breakfast and the orcs left to hunt in turn.
There would be no pit fight after all, not until the human returned. I was keeping an eye on him while clearing a path in the ruins of Malangri. The tall tower was as broken as I remembered, but its chambers still held.
On the fifth tier, at the nineteenth floor I found one that would suit my work. A room vast enough and sturdy enough to stand the rituals.
Portal. The magnal joined me to repair what could be. The place was damp, covered in moss, the walls fractured, the pillars crumbled. We would also have to fix most of the tier around, so the two of us would not be enough.
Far away, in some submerged temple the human had just triumphed. The two-headed goat at his feet. He had tried to capture it but, alas, monsters had a tendency to fight to the bitter end.
What he sought, however, was a golden collar that he quickly put on.
By the late afternoon he was back, claimed to be tired and retreated immediately to the vessel. Nobody understood why until the next day, when he asked Rascal to follow him for a hunt.
In short, that idiot had decreed that he would not watch the pit fights if he could not bring in his own monster to play. And so, after so clumsily trying to hide his new collar, he wasted another morning to get his catch.
What he brought back and thought to be an insect was a plant. The orval looked like three coconuts with wings but really didn't fly and the bulbs were not his body. I did not bother explaining any of that to him.
It was exotic enough, and Rascal praised him enough for it, that he felt confident bringing him back for the arena.
By then the orcs were scattered, but drums called them back before the human was even back. After a brief dinner, I led him to the arena where a hundred monsters had assembled, demanding blood.
With the time he had given them, the orcs had built him a platform and a seat to watch from above everyone.
The moment he sat, the crowd went wild. They shouted: "Bring the wild!" And: "Skip the scrap!" And: "Don't slack off!" It was a fight just to decide which monsters to pit first.
Rather than wound their beasts and carry them out of their cages, the orcs this time would drag the prison from the old water conduits, then break the bars down and let the creature lunge forward, under the iron dome.
They had not lied, they had rather exotic creatures.
Pitted against the human's orval was the orcs' prize. I suspected she had been a menilis and I suspected where she came from. She stood up on two legs and roared at the crowd.
"Wait, what's going on?" The human got up from his seat in surprise.
"What?" I calmed him down just with my tone. "She looks less monstrous to you?"
"That's just a child!"
The monster down there probably didn't hear him and didn't need to. Already the orval's roots were flowing to invade the whole cage.
Those poisonous strands would never touch her. Flurry! A hundred times her claws slashed all around her in just a second. She growled and leapt, got met by the orval's petals that resisted her strikes and she had to retreat before a fume of toxins burst.
The human was sit again. He had seen her feral rage and understood that this was not a person.
He watched his catch get torn to shreds.
The crowd was extatic! They joined her roars, chanted "Champion!" and mocked the plant that, outmatched, still tried to hit her with volleys of thorns. They fizzled pointlessly on the cage.
After it fell, the beast turned to the bars and tried to break free, making the crowd stand and cheer again. They were slamming the cage, exciting her, defying her as she defied them. And while she was distracted, they brought another cage in the conduit.
The magnal that came out of it had been imbued with water. A massive lizard with heavy scales on his back and transparent lungs on his sides that brimmed at each breath.
"Wait, hasn't she fought enough?" The human complained.
"She wasn't even hurt." I noticed.
He watched as they clashed. He could tell she was getting tired and still got the better of the first exchange. The water spheres could not hit her and even when they burst and the acid burned her fur she didn't seem to feel it.
I was rooting for that magnal. He had less mana and little space to work with. In a better environment, he could have prevailed.
Their fight became savage, until both had bloodied each other and, breaking the melee, the lizard finally fell.
"Now she is hurt!" The man was up again, agitated. "They have to let her rest!"
They intended to do so. But herding a monster back to his cage was no small matter. She ripped through their nets, defied their spears and when the orcs entered the arena to push her directly, she lunged to bite.
So it turned to a new fight between her and the jailer who pushed her back with his axe and nearly cut her arm. She slashed the orc's chest, failed to pierce and was pushed on the ground.
"Stop it! Stop it!" The human screamed.
But the crowd, in a frenzy, was paying no attention. So he just leaped, from the platform onto the cage to break it in a punch and jump in the arena. The orcs watched him break off the duel. They took it as an insult and, reveling in the instant, attacked him in turn.
"You beasts!" He was crushing them with bare hands. "Fight someone your own size!"
The irony was lost on him. A third orc laid dead at his feet. He turned around to strike his next assailant, saw it was the humanoid menilis and froze. The beast bit his neck and made him tumble in the dust.
She could barely leave a mark on his skin. He pushed her back and her, stunned, looked at him with a mix of fear and awe.
"A... human...?" She stammered. "You are... a human?!"