1 - Depression

Warp hated her job as an arena host. It wasn't that the job was difficult, dirty, or didn't pay well; she had initially taken the position as a job of passion. In fact, Warp loved the arena. She loved the prestige of the old coliseum. She loved the spirit of competition that seemed to infuse the bricks that surrounded her when she was inside it. She loved the bloodshed, the excitement, and the mighty highs from the thrill of victory. She enjoyed the company of the arena's many visitors, the frequent "lifers," the fresh and new, and the strange and eccentric. Warp was an arena girl, through and through.

So it was beyond her when she began to feel like the job wasn't satisfying. She had spent much of her life studying for and collecting the accolades required to achieve host status, and now that she had it, something felt wrong. It started small, a negative thought she couldn't shake.

Am I even good enough to be here? The thought was intrusive, and it eventually became more and more frequent. Her friends would assure her that she was good enough to be an arena host, but it did little to quell the thought from popping into her head. She knew she was a good host, had devoted her life to attaining her dream job, and deserved what she had, but her mind didn't want to listen to reason.

Is any of this even worth it? Is this really all my life is going to amount to? New thoughts began to take hold. She didn't understand where they were coming from. She set a goal in life and had achieved it; why was she questioning it?

Eventually, a disturbing question arose in her mind. She began to ask herself, "Why am I even alive?" She meditated on this. For hours at a time, she'd repeat the question in her head, and she could never come up with an answer.

Warp had a problem. An intense sort of lethargy had crept its way into her life. She was beginning to find it challenging to get out of bed in the morning. On more than one occasion, she broke down and cried when faced with a simple task. She found herself lacking the energy to do anything that brought her joy at one point. Life was overwhelming her, and cracks were beginning to show.

"Are you exercising?" Her friend and co-host, Firion, would always ask her. "Have you tried meditation? I just read this great new book on it; I can loan it to you for a read. You should really give it a shot."

Warp had tried meditation, and exercise, and changing her diet. She tried new hobbies, like tailoring and painting; she even tried the rougely art of gem-smithing for a bit, though that little adventure had nearly cost her a finger. Her local herbalist recommended a blend of botanicals for her to try, but she found that she couldn't stomach the stuff.

It wasn't long before her uncontrollable mood began to affect her work. Tasks assigned, which should have taken minutes, were starting to take hours. In addition, she was failing to meet her hosted battles quota, which was a serious enough issue to put her job at risk.

Soon, Samarai, the master hostess, took notice and called Warp into her office.

"Warp, you've seemed off lately. Is there something wrong?" She asked.

"N-no, ma'am. I've got it under control." Warp responded in a quiet voice.

"Is that so? I've noticed that you've been struggling with your duties. You know, if there's anything wrong, we can talk about it. Do you need help?"

"I…um," she paused, not knowing how much she should tell Samarai, "um… I just want to work." She kept her eyes glued to the floor, hoping the master hostess wouldn't notice the tears already beginning to form there. It seemed like just being reminded that she had a problem was enough to set them off.

"Be that as it may, if you need time to address some issue in your life, I can give you some time to do that. I'll arrange a hiatus; I think you should consider taking it."

"It's nothing, Sam. Please , just let me work." Warp hoped she didn't sound desperate. But, she really did feel like she needed to work to get over her problems. "If I don't work, I'm… I'm afraid of what will happen to me."

Samarai hesitated for a moment before finally saying, "I'm willing to set aside your quota for now. When I called you in here, I intended to force you to take a break from the team, but I'm not heartless, and even through this short interaction, it's clear to me that something is going on with you, Warp."

"There's no-nothing wrong with me," the words caught in her throat. Her tears were falling freely now.

"Warp, we haven't been talking five minutes, and you're already a mess. There clearly is."

Warp sniffed and quickly wiped her eyes. She wanted to deny anything was wrong with her again, but she knew it was pointless. The fact that she was crying robbed her of any hope of coming away from this meeting, with Samarai being none the wiser. Her face was hot with embarrassment, and she needed a handkerchief for her nose.

"Working makes it easier. It… it distracts me." Warp said with a sniff.

Samarai nodded and looked lost in thought. It was a long moment before she spoke again.

"Alright. I want to help you. Warp, if you need to be distracted, then I will distract you. You and your friend, Firion, will be working on a special task. You'll be able to get it done at your own pace, within reason . I do want to see progress within the season."

"A special task?" Warp asked, allowing a bit of relief to creep into her voice.

"The arena is being remodeled. The mundanes have had enough with all the complaints they've been getting over poor visibility. No one enjoys the current favored strategy of using the columns and barrels to hide during matches, so they want the barrels removed and the columns replaced with more modern, slimmer pillars. You and Firion will work on removing the barrels to help prepare for the remodel."

That was a tall order. The barrels in question had been in the arena for longer than Warp had been an Aisling. There were a lot of them, and they were heavy. Warp was not getting off easy, and she also managed to drag Firion into the whole affair. She was confident he'd have some choice words for her.

"I'll do my best, "Warp said. She sniffed again, though the tears had mercifully stopped coming.

2 - A Trial

"I'm just trying to look at the bright side," Firion said, "You're going to get plenty of exercise. And think about how many more combatants we'll get once we finish the remodel!"

Warp gave Firion an exasperated look. Once again, his "choice words" were words of optimism. He was always trying to "look at the bright side" of things, and even though she loved Firion, she didn't see the world as he did. She couldn't see the "bright side."

Firion and Warp had begun the laborious task of removing the barrels the day after Samarai had assigned it to them. It turned out, for some reason, that the barrels were filled from top to bottom with nothing but stone.

"Why would they have put these here just to store stone?" Firion asked.

"Maybe it's leftover from the construction of the arena?" Warp replied though she was just as clueless.

"It makes for an inconvenient moving day," Firion said.

The task itself was tedious, but it kept Warp's mind occupied. They accomplished it with a minor strength spell, "creag neart," team lifting, and a wooden cart large enough to haul four of the barrels at a time. Firion and Warp's task was simply to move the barrels to a location outside the arena so that additional workers could process them. The stone was removed from the barrels and taken away by a third party to a local storage yard. The empty barrels would then get donated to local homes and businesses for scrap wood.

It was hard labor, but they were making progress. Warp worked slowly but surely, with Firion's aid. Whenever she felt like she didn't have the energy to continue the task, Firion was there to goad her along. She didn't like to admit it, but his optimism proved to be an effective tool against the pessimism that continuously plagued her thoughts.

It was a double-moon after they began that they discovered the door. The two had cleared out an entire corner of the arena and were finishing up with the second corner when they found, set into one of the pillars, an old door made of metal. Where a handle would ordinarily be, the door had a hinged metal box secured by an old lock.

"I know you're not the best at picking locks, but you are a rogue," Firion said to Warp." That lock looks pretty old; I bet you could get through it."

Firion was right, though perhaps a little insensitive; Warp wasn't very good at picking locks. It was practically a required skill to even be called a rogue, however, so she did have the ability; she just broke a lot of picks while doing it.

"Why don't we just ask Sam about the door?" Warp asked Firion. "I'm sure she has a key for it. But, old or not, I don't know if I can get through that lock."

"Why bother her with this? It's probably just a broom closet," Firion argued.

"A broom closet with a heavy iron door? And a weird lock box?"

"Yeah, why not?"

Warp shook her head at Firion. She knew it wasn't a broom closet, and she knew he knew it wasn't either. Nevertheless, something about the door called out to her, and she didn't want to risk Samarai taking the opportunity to explore it away from her. She got excited about so few things these days; it was almost a foreign sensation for her to find something interesting. So, although Firion was the instigator, Warp was no better. This door meant trouble; she was self-destructive enough to be okay with that.

With a lot of difficulties, two separate crying episodes, a slew of swearing, and a not insignificant number of broken lock picks, Warp was eventually able to pick the lock. The box fell away on the hinge at its bottom, revealing a knob beset with a dial. There were tiny runes on the surface of the dial, which Warp and Firion were unfamiliar with. Warp tested it and found that It rotated in a circle with a series of clicks.

"So someone hid another lock behind the first lock," Warp said, bemused.

"It would appear that way," Firion responded. "Can you get past this one?"

"Maybe. Don't hold your breath."

Warp put her ear against the door, as close to the dial as she could, and turned it while listening. She heard the sound of a mechanism clicking away inside of it, but there were no sounds to indicate when she might have landed on a correct rune. Then, however, she noticed something else. It was quiet, like a thunderstorm rumbling in the distance. A sound like thum , repeating at a slow even pace, over and over again.

Thum, thum, thum.

Something about the sound and its rhythm was enthralling. She stayed there listening to it for a long time before Firion became impatient.

"What's got you glued to the door like that?" Firion asked.

Warp shook her head, the trance broken.

"Do you want to have a listen?" She asked.

She moved aside to let Firion get closer to the door. He stuck his ear against it and scrunched up his face as though he were spending a lot of effort on the task. Then, after a moment, he moved away from the door.

"I don't hear anything."

"That's strange," Warp observed, "it was like… a thumping noise." She put her ear against the door again, and sure enough, she heard the sound again.

Thum, thum, thum.

On a whim, she decided to spin the dial-lock while listening to the sound. Nothing changed. She heard the mechanism within the door make its clicks, but nothing was significant about them. Then, suddenly, she realized something. While she spun the dial, she occasionally felt the door heat up against her cheek.

"There's no way it can be that easy," she said out loud.

"What?" Firion asked. "You figured something out?"

"This lock has to be broken," she paused her explanation to take a closer look at the dial. Sure enough, some of the runes were scratched. She suspected that might be why the lock box was fitted over the knob to begin with. "The door gets warmer every time I hit certain symbols. I suspect it's just going to be trial and error to find the proper combination now."

Warp began to spin the dial more slowly, one hand against the door to feel for heat, the other on the dial; she would occasionally stop and rotate the dial the other way. It took some time, but eventually, it paid off. A loud clanging noise came from inside the door, and then two more.

"That's some powerful intuition," Firion said.

Warp grasped the knob and pulled the door open.

3 - The Path

The door opened to reveal a staircase. The stairs lead downwards into an abyss.

The first thing that stood out to Warp was that every surface of the stone stairwell, from floor to ceiling, was covered in etched symbols, similar to the runes on the door's dial. In addition, however, these had a subtle pulsing purple glow, as though they were slowly breathing.

The second thing Warp noticed was a sense of tension radiating from the stairwell; the air felt thick with it. There was something about the darkness that didn't bode well with her. She thought it was a deeper dark than she had ever seen before. She felt a sense of anxiety rising within her every moment she stared into the black.

Warp took a step back. At some point, she had developed a cold sweat. She shivered.

"I don't know if going down there is a good idea," she told Firion.

"Why don't we grab our weapons and just check to the bottom of the stairs for now?" Firion responded. Warp noticed that he didn't seem to be affected by the stairwell the way she had. There was a look of curiosity, rather than dread, on his face.

"What are you two doing?" A woman's voice came from behind them.

Warp and Firion both jumped, startled. Samarai had chosen that moment to check on their progress.

"Sam!" Firion croaked. "N-nothing! We just… we were just coming to tell you. We discovered something interesting!"

"I see that," Samarai said; she pointed to the pile of discarded broken lock picks on the ground in front of the door. "And you thought it best to pick the lock before coming to get me?" Samarai's face was an unreadable mask. Warp and Firion couldn't figure out if they were in trouble. "Have you figured out where it leads yet?"

"No," Warp responded. "We were just discussing what to do next when you found us. I didn't think it would be wise to go down there just yet."

"Smart," Samarai said. "If something happened and you two got trapped or hurt, who knows how long it would have been before we sent somebody to find you. But now that I know about it, I can send you two down there safely."

Warp had to suppress the sudden urge to be sick that came over her. She didn't want to go into that stairwell; she knew something about it was wrong. However, she wanted to keep her job, and she'd have Firion with her. He may not have looked it, but Firion was an accomplished warrior who even had a little monk training to boot. He could handle most of the creatures the world had to throw at them. Most of them.

So with a great deal of hesitation and some weak excuses later, Warp found herself strapped with hunting gear, ready to explore the unknown depths of the stairwell. She had her Yumi bow, a quiver of arrows, an Andor whip, and a lantern to see in the dark. Firion was similarly geared with a lantern and his weapon of choice, a Hwarone guandao, a five-foot-long metal pole with a vicious-looking blade attached to the end.

"I'm giving you two an hour before I send anyone else in after you. So see to it you're back before then," Samarai told them as they both stood before the door.

"Right, boss," Firion said.

Through the door, Firion went.

"Nothin' to it!" he said. "If you'll follow me, please, miss!" He beckoned Warp forward with his hand.

She hesitated. The air around the door still felt thick. She wanted to be anywhere but where she was at that moment. Firion could see the dread on her face, and he was doing his best to lighten the mood.

"The first step is always the hardest," he said to her, "but it gets easier, I promise."

Warp took a deep breath and stepped out onto the first step.

4 - Catacombs

The staircase was too narrow for them to walk side-by-side, so they walked in a single file. Firion lead the way, his lantern out in front of him. The runes seemed to continue down the entirety of the stairwell, pulsing with their purple light. Warp chanced to touch one with a finger and was surprised when it shocked her.

"Try not to touch the walls," she told Firion, "or any of the symbols with your bare skin, I guess. I got a nasty shock from one just now."

"Duly noted."

In short order, they reached the end of the stairs and immediately found themselves in a long tunnel. The runes that had run the entire length of the staircase continued through the length of the tunnel.

"It must have taken years to carve all of these," Firion said.

"Why did they need so many?"

They continued walking through the tunnel, and before long, they reached the end of it. The tunnel suddenly opened into a large circular room with a domed ceiling. They noted that the runes continued through this room as well; it seemed they covered every surface. Along the walls, there were nooks filled to near overflowing with human skulls.

"Well, that's pretty grim," Warp said.

The remains of a colossal stone statue lay crumbled at the center of the room. The only remaining feature of the figure was a squat set of legs.

Firion and Warp crossed into the center of the room to examine the statue. They were surprised to find a plaque at its base and that what was written there was in a language they could understand.

"The Losgann of the Mist," Firion read out loud, "arbiter for the dead."

"Why would the dead need an arbiter?" Warp asked.

They continued to look around the room they were in. Periodically, they would find an entryway to a new tunnel; there were three of these in total. These new tunnels were much shorter length-wise than the one they emerged from but were much taller. They exited into rooms almost identical to the one they were already in, except the new rooms lacked a statue of their own. Each unique room also had three additional entrances into even yet more tunnels.

"So we're in a labyrinth, filled with dead people, millions of mysterious symbols, and creepy statues," Firion noted.

"Yeah. Can we go tell Sam yet? This place kinda creeps me out."

Firion paused momentarily, incanting a short spell to tell the time.

"We've only been down here for fifteen minutes! Let's try to find something at least a little exciting," Firion said.

They traveled through the rooms for a long, uneventful while, leaving piles of debris at the exits of each tunnel they emerged from to mark their path. Occasionally, they would come across a tunnel entrance sealed with iron bars. On one such occasion, the bars were torn apart, bent at angles that suggested something had burst through them.

"Can this count as a little exciting?" Warp asked. "I really don't want to meet the thing that did that. I've got a terrible feeling about this place."

"Fine! We're done; have it your way," Firion replied. "It's about time we start heading back anyways. This trip has amounted to a whole lotta nothin'!"

On the return trip, they started to notice odd things beginning to occur. On their initial trip through the tunnels and rooms, they noted the silence surrounding them. It was at least a little strange that they didn't hear the scratching of rats or similar vermin roaming around. On their return trip, however, they began to hear noises. Far off in distant tunnels, as though awakened by Warp and Firion's desire to escape, they began to hear the sounds of things moving in the dark.

At the same time, Warp was beginning to see… something or somethings moving in the periphery of her vision. They were shapeless voids, moving black against the nearly invisible glow of the runes that speckled every surface. However, they weren't substantial enough to point out. In fact, she thought it might just be stray strands of her hair, which she had neglected to tie back before starting this excursion, but each time she saw one, she jumped a little.

They continued their return trip in silence, neither one wanting to point out that each passing moment down here felt like a worse and worse idea.

While passing through one of the rooms, they suddenly heard the sound of approaching boots rushing towards them out of one of the side tunnels. They reacted instantly, Warp drawing her bow and nocking an arrow, and Firion raising his guandao towards the sound.

Firion aimed his light down the tunnel, expecting to see someone charging them, only to his and Warp's surprise, the light revealed nothing. There was no one there.

After a long, bewildering moment, Warp slowly lowered her bow. Firion was slower to do the same with his weapon. It was clear that the place was starting to get to Warp; her gear rattled slightly as she began to shake.

"You definitely heard someone running towards us just then?" Firion asked.

"Yes! This place is really starting to freak me out!" Warp was having a hard time containing the rising panic in her voice.

"We'll get out of here if we keep moving," Firion said, struggling to remain stoic.

They turned back towards the tunnel they had initially planned to go down, and, to Warp's shock, there was a disembodied face hovering near the ceiling of the next room over, peeking around the corner at them. As soon as she noticed it, it pulled back behind the corner.

"I just saw someone in the next room! There's one-hundred percent something in here with us!" Warp was in a full-blown panic now. "We need to get out of here now! "She was practically screaming.

The only path to the exit was through the room where Warp had just seen the face hovering in the air.

"What are we supposed to do?!" She asked Firion.

"The rooms are all linked," he said. "We can just circle around. We should be able to skip that room and get back onto the exit path. We'll just continue marking our way as we go so we can backtrack to our original path again if we get lost."

Warp didn't like the idea of leaving the known path, but she was in too much panic to devise an alternative plan of her own.

They ran through the rooms that skirted the room with the disembodied face. Firion devised an alternative to finding debris to pile and simply started marking the walls with his guandao.

They made it back to their original path with no further incidents, but when they neared the room containing the exit tunnel, they were stopped by the worst thing they had encountered yet. In the center of it, guarding the exit, was a creature that looked too big to be there, and it was looking right at them.

5 - The Losgann of the Mist

It was a massive bipedal lizard. It had a small, long head, like that of a deer. The skin of its head was translucent and tight so that it looked like an exposed skull was sitting at the end of its thick neck. Inside of that skull was a set of lightly glowing purple eyes, eyes that seemed to shift colors to a bright yellow when the light of their lanterns fell on it, as though they were just reflecting the color of the light. The rest of its body was a deep shade of green. It walked, hunched over, supported by squat legs small enough to appear out of place. However, its thickly muscled arms were disproportionately long, and it used them for knuckle-walking. Warp knew that if she let the creature get too close, it would easily tear her limb from limb with those arms.

The oddest thing about it was the hole in its chest. A mist began to billow out from the hole as soon as it noticed them, and they quickly found themselves standing up to their knees in it. Warp could just make out, beyond the fog, through the hole in its chest, the creature's beating heart.

THUM, THUM, THUM.

The moment she saw the heart, she heard the now familiar sound of it beating amplified a hundredfold. Each beat pounded like an explosion against her ears, the sound ricocheting inside her head. She stumbled backward, falling on her rear, stunned by the noise. Her eyes started to water so severely that she could only make out shimmering shapes illuminated by her lantern.

Out of nowhere, she felt the despair that had been consuming her for months more intensely than ever; it had become like a physical pain. Thoughts that had been intrusive before were devouring her mind now, eating her brain from the inside.

How do I make it stop? Make it stop. Make it stop! She was on the verge of madness. Eventually, overwhelmed, she started to shut down completely.

From deep within her state of near catatonia, something was telling her she had to get up. She barely managed to prop herself into a sitting position with her hands. She felt a frantic tugging on the collar of her host uniform and heard, as though from a great distance, the sound of Firion shouting something at her.

When he could not rouse her from the state that had overcome her, Firion gave up on trying to drag her, wrapped an arm around her waist, and threw her over his shoulder. It was difficult to run while supporting her weight and holding onto his guandao and lantern, but by some miracle, he managed it.

He retreated into the tunnels they had come from.

6 - Reprieve

At some point during their retreat, Warp had passed out. She awoke sometime later to the sound of whispering in her ear.

"... Without light…"

She shot upright, expecting to see the person who was whispering, only Firion was a little ways away, keeping watch around a corner, and there was no one else there. Firion had managed to get them away from the losgann and found a room that seemed safe enough to wait in until Warp had come to.

"Firion?" Her voice was shaky.

"Hey, you're awake!" He walked over to her, crouched down, and pulled her into an embrace. "You had me worried! I think we just met the Losgann of the Mist. It started making this thumping sound, and you collapsed right after."

"Did you say something just as I was waking up? It was something about light?"

"No. You're hearing voices now?" He asked, with a concerned look on his face. "We're going to get you out of this place. I was expecting Sam to send down help for us by now; It's been over three hours."

"If she sent people down, the losgann would have stopped them in their tracks. That thing looked way stronger than a normal losgann."

"... There is no shadow…" Another whisper in Warp's ear. This time she knew it wasn't coming from Firion.

Warp groaned. She was exhausted to the point that it was numbing the fear. "And I suppose you didn't hear that either? I'm fine now. We need to leave."

She tried to get up but fell back on her butt.

"Easy!" Firion firmly placed a hand on her shoulder, holding her in place. "Give it a moment. That thing clearly didn't do you any favors. We seem safe here; just take a minute to recover."

"Safe? You're not hearing ghosts whisper in your ears!" She pushed his hand away and tried getting up again. This time partially succeeding, she managed to get into a precarious squatting position. "See? I'm fine."

"Look, we need a plan anyways, and whatever we come up with is useless if you're just going to pass out again," Firion said. "Just hang out for a minute and think about what we can do to get past that losgann."

Warp couldn't deny that, they did need a plan, and so they set about hatching one. Unfortunately, Warp was not an accomplished rogue; she was terrible at gem-smithing, she couldn't pick locks very well, and she was kind of clumsy, which made sneaking about an almost impossible task. But there was one thing she was very good at: archery. She had won the annual Loures archery competition every Deoch since becoming an archer, and she only got better at it with each passing event.

So their plan was a simple one. Firion would distract the creature, and Warp would shoot it in the heart. As for her passing out, they noted that that only seemed to occur after the mist began. So they would attempt to lure the creature away from the mist, which was no simple task considering that the mist was coming from its body. They would have to play it by ear.

Warp knew the plan was too simple; it was hardly a plan at all, something would go wrong, and it wouldn't work.

7 - Lightless

On their way back to the room with the losgann, Warp thought she saw a pair of legs standing just beyond one of the iron gates as the light of Firion's lantern passed it. When she turned to look at it, however, they had disappeared. These spectral encounters continued to be unnerving, but Warp found that she preferred them over the idea of confronting the losgann.

When they finally found themselves approaching the room containing the monster, they were relieved that the mist had dissipated entirely. The losgann, however, had not.

The creature sat against the far wall, guarding the exit, seemingly asleep.

"Maybe we can end this without a fight," Firion said.

Warp was on the same page as him, and was already nocking an arrow. Killing it in its sleep was ideal, though she knew in her heart that that would be too easy.

She aimed and let the arrow loose. It flew true, striking the beast in the heart, or so she had thought. The arrow bounced harmlessly off the wall behind it, the noise causing it to stir.

It awoke with a terrible roar, which shook the dust from the ceiling above.

It was time for Firion to execute their "plan." He put down his lantern and ran towards the creature, guandao leading the charge. When he got close enough to strike at it, he found that his weapon passed through it harmlessly, throwing him off balance. He stumbled forward.

At the same time, the creature pulled back its fist and sent it flying in Firion's direction, who barely had time to brace himself before the fist connected. He was sent cartwheeling backward, directly into his lantern, destroying it and extinguishing its light.

"Firion!" Warp cried.

Warp had nocked another arrow during the exchange and was prepared to fire it, but she could no longer see where to aim now that the light had gone out. She was left helpless in the dark.

She knew that the dark was the losgann's domain. Without the light of that lantern, she was an easy target. Without light, she wouldn't be able to see where she was going enough to recover Firion's body, whom she thought must surely be dead after the magnitude of the blow he took, or even to retreat to save herself.

She expected the losgann to attack her in the dark, to feel death wrap itself around her awareness at any moment, only that moment never came. She screwed up her eyes, trying to make out anything in the dark, and to her surprise, her eyes adjusted somewhat. She could see a sort of black outline moving slowly towards her against the purple glow of the runes that speckled every surface around her.

Suddenly a thought came to her.

Without light, there is no shadow. The whispers she had heard earlier. Were they trying to help her?

It would seem that light had affected the losgann's strength. With the light of the lantern, the creature was fast and strong—the more substantial the light, the stronger the shadows. Without the light, its pace had been reduced to a crawl. If Warp could tell where she was going, picking up Firion and fleeing from the creature would be an easy feat now.

She had an option, albeit a dangerous one.

She pulled back the drawstring of her bow and infused her arrow with magic.

"Star Arrow!" She shouted as she let the arrow fly loose in the creature's direction.

The arrow wasn't meant for a killing blow; it had another effect. After passing through the monster harmlessly, the arrow struck the ground. Where it hit, sparks of light burst outwards from it, temporarily bathing the room in white light. During that moment, she could see the losgann. It rushed towards her, and then when the light went out, it slowed again. She fired another star arrow, this time taking in her surroundings, taking note of where Firion lay on his back. The losgann got a lot closer this time, nearly within striking distance. So when the light went out, she moved as best as she could in the dark towards Firion. She began a tense sort of dance with the creature; anytime she needed light, she would fire a star arrow and use the information she gained from the momentary illumination to move through the room in the dark. It almost caught her on more than one occasion, but eventually, she prevailed.

Finally, she made it to Firion. She bent over to check on him and was relieved to see he was alive.

To her horror, it was at that moment that a new issue arose. From the exit of the room came a new source of light.

"Warp? Firion? Are you out there?" It was Samarai's voice. She walked into the room carrying a bright lantern.

"Sam, the light! No!" Warp shouted at her, but it was too late. The losgann was on the offensive again. It rushed towards Warp, who barely had time to dodge out of the way before its fist flew past where she was just standing. The thing managed to kick Firion as it was charging by, sending him flying again. It tried to turn to face her again but took the turn too rapidly for its mass, stumbling over its own feet. While it was recovering from its short trip to the ground, Warp began to hear an awful sound; the hideous beating of its heart had returned.

THUM, THUM, THUM.

Mist began to billow forth from the hole in its chest as it got back upright.

THUM, THUM, THUM.

Her mind began to devour itself again.

She had one desperate option left. It was the worst one yet, but maybe, just maybe.

She nocked one last arrow and channeled as much of her magic into it as she could with her last moment of clarity.

"Supernova shot!" She let the arrow loose. It struck the ground at the losgann's feet, and when it hit, the room filled with a light brighter than any before, and the losgann exploded into dust.

Warp collapsed into a heap.

8 - The Light

Warp awoke later in a bed in a brightly lit room. A warm breeze carrying the scent of wildflowers drifted in through an open window above her head. Asleep in another bed on the other side of the room was Firion. A woman in white priest's robes was busy bustling about the room.

When she saw Warp was awake, the woman stopped what she was doing and left the room without a word. She returned a moment later with Samarai in tow.

"You really scared us!" Samarai said the moment she saw Warp. "How are you feeling? Is your head alright?"

"Is Firion okay?" Warp asked, a hint of alarm in her voice.

"Settle down; he's okay. He has some broken bones that will take a while to heal fully, but the arena's priests are some of the best. He'll be back to hosting in no time.

"Back to my concerns about you," Samarai said, "how are you feeling?"

"Physically, I feel fine. Otherwise, it's like I'm dreaming," Warp said, "like I can't believe I got out of that place."

Samarai chuckled and placed a warm, reassuring hand on Warp's arm.

"As soon as that thing exploded into dust, me and a couple of other hosts carried you and Firion out. That supernova shot you pulled off was really something; that monster didn't stand a chance!"

"Did the losgann stop you from coming to get us sooner?" Warp asked.

"That was a losgann? It didn't look like any losgann I've ever seen. When we first entered the room, we tried to fight it, but everything we tried passed right through it, so we were waiting in that tunnel for you guys to show up. Thankfully, it was too large to fit in there, so we were safe from it. So how did you know your supernova shot would be strong enough to kill it?"

"Well…" Warp started, "That place is lousy with ghosts. I think those symbols all over the walls trap them there. Anyways, one of them whispered something to me that helped me realize how I might be able to defeat the losgann."

"What was that?" Samarai asked.

"It said 'without light, there is no shadow,' and when we fought it, I noticed that our light was making it stronger, so I assumed it was a creature made of shadow. There are no shadows in the dark, but that place was never one hundred percent dark, thanks to the glowing of those symbols. The last thought I had before using my supernova shot was, 'there are no shadows when everything is light,' so I took a risk that was either going to make the losgann very strong or very gone. I got lucky, and it paid off."

"I'll say!" Samarai responded. "That was reckless thinking."

"It worked, though," at some point, while Warp was talking, Firion had come to and sat up in bed. "I'm in a lot of pain, but I'm alive here because of it."

"Firion!" Warp threw off her covers and was surprised to find that her clothes had been changed to a clean white slip while she slept. She jumped out of bed and ran over to Firion's side, bending over to squeeze him in a hug. "Don't ever worry me like that again!"

Firion laughed, then gasped, coughed, and grimaced in pain, holding his sides. "I didn't do it on purpose!" He managed to squeak out.

"I have a question, though," Warp said, when she finished squeezing the life out of Firion, "why did the mist affect me the way it did and no one else?"

"I think I can answer that," the priestess in white spoke up for the first time. Everyone's eyes turned towards her. "It was the depression, I believe. Your willpower and fortitude are severely weakened, so when the influence of the mist touched you, you listened to it. It's probably not a very satisfying answer, but one that I think makes sense. You were affected by the mist because your internal strength was already in use elsewhere. People, even Aislings, can only be stretched so far."

Warp nodded. It wasn't a great answer, but it was probably the best answer she would get.

9 - The End

Firion took quite some time to recover from his physical injuries, but when he was fit to do so, he resumed his host duties. It wasn't long before he was forced off the team for inactivity. He found he had passions elsewhere and that the arena wasn't a great fit for him. He heard whispers of a troupe of performers starting up in Suomi, and the thought of it intrigued him more than anything else.

After recovering, Warp resumed her hosting duties as well, albeit at a lightened load. She still had her problems with depression, but she felt more substantial for her experience in what they were now calling the 'arena catacombs.' She was recovering from her depression, though her battle with it would be an extended one. However, she knew the key to defeating it was in the small steps, and she had already taken quite a few.

With the arena's renovation, the staircase to the catacombs was sealed permanently. It was thought that disturbing the dead wasn't the best of ideas, so rather than treating the place like a mystery to be solved, they treated it with the respect that they felt a mass gravesite deserved.

And with that, it was ensured that the ghosts of the catacombs would never be disturbed again.

The End