Jonathan and Eliza stood there, waiting for almost ten minutes. Eventually, a guard came striding down the hall, and approached the barrier. With bated breath, Jonathan watched. Then the guard simply strode through, the barrier rippling as she passed. A faint elemental resonance, almost too weak to pick out, shone from a small piece of metal poking out of a pocket on her uniform. Jonathan experimentally pressed a hand to the wall just before she went all the way through, but it was still impervious. It looked like he would need to have the token, or badge, or key, or whatever it was that the guard had possessed, on his person to go through. Or perhaps, even worse, the wall was keyed to specific people, even with the tokens. He wasn’t fooling around in the infernal equivalent of amateur hour anymore. The people of Bloodspill had been at war for their entire history. They were bound to be pretty damn good at it.
Jonathan briefly considered giving up on subtlety, summoning as much Void energy as he could, and breaking through the barrier. Then he could storm through the keep, and find Arkanon. Then reality hit him, and he realized that he wouldn’t be able to escape. With the sort of magical engineering employed by the people of this city, Jonathan was sure that there was some manner of scrying device, or arcane lens that could spot him even through his Void cloak. The only reason he and Eliza had been able to get into the prison was because nobody was looking specifically for them. Had Jonathan been a known quantity, he was sure that entering wouldn’t have been as easy.
“Damn it…” he whispered. “I’m not sure what to do here.”
“Well,” Eliza began, “it looks like we have two options. Force our way in, and likely die in the process, or try to steal from a guard, and likely die in the process.”
Jonathan stared at her, before sighing. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
Eliza chuckled. “Yeah… You’ve been glaring at that shield like it took your firstborn child. I think you’re overthinking it. Our lives in the Hells have always been dangerous. You’re not a man to hide away and overanalyze things. Make a choice, and stick with it.”
“You’re right. I’m not used to having to choose between two very different options. It’s always been a question of killing first, and thinking later. Most of the time, that works.”
“Not here, though. You need to make up your mind. I can’t do it for you.”
Jonathan nodded once. Then he started back down the hallway, heading towards the guard barracks. Eliza followed him, smiling to herself. Sometimes, Jonathan was very predictable. She had known him for long enough to know that.
A few more guards came by, but unfortunately for Jonathan’s plans, they came in groups. Even if he could steal from one of them without rousing their attention, the others would most likely notice him. He wanted a stationary target, one that wouldn’t be in the right frame of mind to detect his thievery. That would be a task easier said than done. Everyone in this section of the prison had been hired for their abilities as guards, not for their ability to be oblivious.
The nearest room with a single occupant was one of the office spaces. A male orc sat behind a desk, scratching away at a piece of paper with a quill. Given that he was Tier 8, he was writing entire pages in seconds. Jonathan would have thought that the man would run out of things to write, but he just kept going. As he drew closer, he realized what was really going on. The actual work the orc was doing, a sheet with what looked like a list of prisoners, their Tiers, and their cell numbers, was already finished. Next to it was a far larger pile of paper, which, at Jonathan’s cursory glance, was a very steamy romance novel in the making. His eyebrows shot up as he read the scene that the orc was currently writing. It involved a dragon, two adventurers, and a sentient cactus. By the looks of things, the cactus was coming out the worse for the experience. Eliza choked back a laugh as she in turn saw what the orc was writing. He glanced up, sensing something amiss. Both Jonathan and Eliza fell silent, not moving a muscle.
“Hello?” the guard called out, reaching out and flipping the papers over. “Is anyone there?” Upon not hearing anything further, the orc shrugged, gave one more suspicious look at the room, and picked up the paper, continuing to flesh out the sordid scene. Jonathan reached out carefully, and plucked the metal token from the guard’s pocket. Normally he could have done such a thing in a fraction of a second that would have made a speeding bullet seem slow, but here, he took his time, making sure that nothing aroused the already wary orc’s attention. Not that he needed any more arousing, given by the content of his... book. While a Tier 8 could write faster than a dozen printers, that didn’t mean what they wrote was worth reading.
By the time Jonathan was back at the wall, he and Eliza were ready to go through. They had wasted enough time already. Jonathan had assumed that the tokens worked based on bodily contact, similar to his Tartarus token. As such, he held it out, Eliza grabbing the other end. Then they strode forward. The shield rippled as they passed through, but posed no other resistance. Less than a second later, they were in the holding area.
“What’s the deal with the guards here?” Eliza asked as soon as they were through. “First there was that guy with the golem in a brothel, and then the orc trying to write this world’s version of... well I don’t actually know what. It defies belief.”
“Don’t remind me,” Jonathan said, shuddering. “That might have been the worst thing I’ve seen in the Hells, and I’ve seen a lot.”
With that unsettling conversation out of the way, Jonathan started walking down the hallway, taking a look at the prisoners confined to their cells on either side. Anyone above Tier 2 didn’t need any food, water, or sleep to survive. As such, the cells here were packed as full as they would go. Some had almost a hundred prisoners sharing a room that couldn’t have been bigger than fifteen feet wide and long. They couldn’t even sit down, having to stand or lean on one another. Shit... Jonathan thought. I wouldn’t want to get arrested in this city. As horrifying as the conditions were, Jonathan couldn’t do anything. He was here for one person, and as far as he knew, all those locked away in this place deserved what they got. In fact, it was probably likely. Some of the people in the cells looked like trouble, covered in gang tattoos, and sporting strangely modified appearances, ranging from slitted noses to forked tongues. Overall, it was quite disconcerting. Most were between Tier 6 and 7, but there were a few Tier 8s.
Jonathan panned out his elemental senses, searching for the energy signature of Arkanon and his unique brand of Fire elementalism. Jonathan had fought alongside the Uthraki for over a year at this point, and knew him well enough to pick him out of a crowd just by that metric alone. It took a few minutes, as he continued down the hall, but eventually, Jonathan found something. It was muted, constricted by some external force, but still recognizable as Arkanon.
“There he is,” Jonathan muttered.
“Did you find Arkanon?” Eliza asked. “I can’t sense anything.”
Jonathan nodded, and pointed down the hall. “About uh... fifty cells, I think? Assuming they’re regularly spaced. I doubt they would have put Arkanon in general pop. He probably has his own cell. Something’s suppressing him in any case. That’s probably why.”
“All of my senses feel muffled in here. Like they’re a stage beneath their normal level,” Eliza observed. “Maybe you don’t have that problem because you’re already at a higher level of advancement.”
Jonathan paused, and tried to use his senses to their fullest extent. “Now that I think about it, I do notice something strange. I normally suppress my senses anyway, as they become a bit distracting otherwise. My maximum output does seem a lot lower than normal.”
“What do you think could be causing that effect?” Eliza asked. “I’ve never seen, or heard of anything like that. Sure, there’s power dampening arrays, but not many directly go after the senses.”
“Maybe it has something to do with this being a prison? Either a torture method, or a way to make escape harder. If you can’t hear the guards coming around the corner, then you can’t run very well.”
At that very moment, Jonathan heard footsteps coming up the hallway. He and Eliza pressed themselves against the wall, trying to minimize the risk of contact. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but in that case, dealing with the guard would cause unnecessary problems.
The woman, a half-elf by the looks of it, came by, whistling a jaunty tune. She swung her sword around by the hilt, flashy patterns of steel whipping through the air. Jonathan could feel the wind from it. Even though she was just messing around, she was still a powerful warrior. Had she wanted it, those gusts of wind could easily become baldes, capable of cutting through solid stone.
Then the guard passed by, and Jonathan continued towards Arkanon’s cell.
By the time he reached it, another guard had passed by. That one had come dangerously close to finding Jonathan, but that was due more to the man’s size than anything else. Some sort of man-hippo hybrid, the guard was grotesquely obese, and literally wider than he was tall. He had almost filled the entire corridor. Jonathan had been forced to do a running leap over the guard’s head, with Eliza barely making it, the hippo man stretching at the moment she had leaped.
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The cell door looked different than the others that came before. Whereas those doors were made out of metal bars, with a view of their occupants, this door was made of solid metal, banded with thick strips of crystal. Glyphs lined the crystal bands, glowing with a faint light. The closer Jonathan went, the more his senses diminished, forced down to a level closer to mortal than he found comfortable.
Most of the force of the glyphs was focused inwards, presumably keeping Arkanon suppressed.
“Keep watch,” Jonathan told Eliza, as he summoned the Void to his hand. “This might take a bit.”
Jonathan worked away at the door with a blade of purple fire, making little progress. The door was worked through with veins of elemental power, Order and Earth combining to form one of the sturdiest defences Jonathan had ever encountered. His Void knife barely cut the metal, but it was quick enough that he kept at it rather than trying something more dramatic.
The door had no lock, an annoying design feature. It had no weak points, with the wall around it undergirded with similar quantities of elemental power. A few scratches remained in the wall from when Jonathan had tried to break through.
Minutes passed without much progress. Jonathan managed to carve a small chunk, about the size of his forearm, out of the door. A sliver of the room within was visible, but it was too dark for him to see anything.
“Damn it!” he whispered angrily. “Why is this prison so secure? Most of the people in here aren’t even that powerful.”
Jonathan kept working, but he was starting to get more than a little annoyed with the amount of resistance he was encountering. By all rights, Arkanon shouldn’t have been that much of a threat to the guards as a whole. Jonathan thought that he might have had a chance against one on his own, but against an entire prison? Not likely.
Despite this, the door remained sturdy and nearly unyielding before Jonathan’s best efforts. Eventually, he was able to work a finger in.
“Arkanon?” he called out softly through the hole. There was no response. “Arkanon!” Jonathan repeated, a bit more loudly.
“Jonathan?” A scratchy voice replied from within the cell. “Is that you? How did you find me?”
“Worry about that later,” Jonathan replied. “We need to get you out of here first.”
Arkanon went silent again, leaving Jonathan to work. About five minutes later, he was able to place his entire hand into the cell. The glyphwork on the door had the unfortunate effect of effectively isolating Jonathan’s hand from the rest of his body, not just suppressing his sense of touch, but bringing it to a level he was sure was below even the human baseline. He felt numb, like his hand had been swallowed up and the pain simply hadn’t caught up to him yet.
Another guard came stomping down the hall. So engrossed in his work was he that Jonathan almost didn’t react. Only Eliza’s urgent tap on his shoulder alerted him to the man’s presence. Both flattened against the wall once more, Jonathan extending a place of Void energy over the cell door. As he looked at it, he swore. It was very out of place. The purple light didn’t blend in with the dark metal door, and his other Void forms wouldn’t be any better.
Then something moved across Jonathan’s back, and a thin disk of metal, just the right size for the job, clamped into place over the hole. Kharon’s hilt vibrated as the scythe alerted Jonathan to its actions. He silently nodded in thanks, not sure if the weapon could see it from behind him.
The guard paused, sniffing at the air. His pig-like snout, a relic of his orcish heritage, snuffled loudly. He turned towards the door, squinting. The man remained like that for almost a minute, before shaking his head, and continuing on his way.
Jonathan let out a deep breath, and continued his work. Kharon withdrew, but didn’t say anything. The weapon, for the most part, was still processing its upgrade to Tier 8, and could only use the most basic of functions on a somewhat instinctual, rather than conscious, level.
About five minutes later, Jonathan was able to poke his head through. He could just about make out a shape sitting in the gloom, but not much more than that. Arkanon looked half dead, barely moving. A faint groan escaped his mouth every now and again.
Jonathan kept working, pitting his Void powers against the stubbornly durable door. It took what felt like hours, but finally, a large crack spread down the side of the door. Jonathan thrust his hand into it, and started to pull, extending the Void energy with it. The door creaked, and started to bend, melting at the contact points. The metal screeched against the wall as it moved in a way it had not been made to.
Jonathan worked as quickly as he could, mindful of guards approaching. Luckily, none came by the time he had the door fully open.
Arkanon remained still, not moving even an inch. Even though he was chained down by thick, dark metal links, Jonathan would have expected a shift in posture at least. He sighed, and stepped into the cell.
Immediately, Jonathan stumbled. His strength waned, dropping until it was less than half its normal level. The effects of the suppression glyphs were diminished significantly, but they were still very strong. Jonathan realized a moment later than they were draining power from him, using his own magical strength to restrain his physical might. It was an ingenious little display, but one that ultimately did little to stop him. He was more than twice as strong as an average person of his level, by quite a bit. He still had strength to spare.
The chains binding Arkanon were attached to other chains on the floor and wall by magically sealed padlocks, each with their own glyphs covering them. Jonathan reached down for one, and picked it up. It was astoundingly heavy, but that weight came more from the immediate loss of power that touching it brought. It was only around a thousand pounds in actuality, something that should have felt like a feather to Jonathan.
Instead, it was like a lead weight in the hand of a mortal, dragging him down. Jonathan clenched his fist, bringing stamina, mana and elemental energy to it. In a tiny explosion of multicolored fire, the padlock burst apart. The chain crumbled away with it.
Jonathan quickly broke the other chains, and Arkanon stumbled to his feet, shaking slightly.
“How are you feeling?” Jonathan asked, concerned for his normally well-composed friend. For him to be visibly unsteady was a bad sign.
“Not that well,” Arkanon replied. “Those damn chains sucked away my mana and elemental powers. I’m completely tapped out.”
As if to punctuate this, he stumbled forward, nearly hitting Jonathan. He only caught himself at the last moment. “It’s coming back to me. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”
“Jonathan?” Eliza called out. He froze. If she was risking detection, that meant that they were already in trouble.
“Yes?”
“You need to get out of there! There’s a whole group of guards coming down the hall! They all have weapons.”
Even if they weren’t coming for Jonathan and his group, they would definitely spot the door, hanging off its nonexistent hinges. Jonathan raced out, standing by Eliza. “Shit.” He turned to Arkanon, still groggy. “You need to go somewhere safer. You aren’t in any position to fight.”
He held out one hand, trying to summon the realm portal that led back to his personal domain. Nothing happened. Jonathan cursed the foresight of the people who had made this prison. It was warded to the gills, and seemingly against almost every type of power.
“No,” Arkanon said, his voice stronger. “I can fight.”
“We might not have to,” Jonathan replied, motioning for Arkanon to move into the Void cloak’s range. “If we can sneak past them-” Jonathan was cut off as a ripple of white light streaked down the hallway, removing his cloaking ability.
“Stay where you are!” one of the guards barked. Jonathan recognized him. It was the orc who fancied himself to be a romance novelist.
“Didn’t Adran say that to the cactus on page 450?” Eliza called back. The orc went paler than a ghost.
Before he could respond, another guard shoved him out of the way, leveling a crossbow at Jonathan that he pulled out of a belt buckle. He pulled the trigger, and the bolt shot out, expanding in an instant to the size of a ballista bolt. It hurtled down the hall, cracking straight through the sound barrier. As the bolt fired, the fighter tossed the crossbow to the side, drawing an ax.
Jonathan punched, using his Master Rank Weapon Domain to manifest a spectral fist before his own. The crossbow bolt shattered on it, the shards flying by him. He took a step, and the stone beneath him cracked. Stamina poured down his legs like tidal waves, granting him an immense strength boost. His fist shot out, already moving before he reached his target.
The guard, a stout dwarven man, looking even stouter with his greatshield and ax, set his feet. A sheen of yellow energy covered him, and rock started to grow, connecting him to the ground. Then Jonathan’s fist hit home. The guard stumbled. He did not fly back, his bones breaking, and his armor bent. He stumbled. Jonathan realized that he was still weaker than normal, and that these guards were more powerful than he had expected.
The dwarf swung, a cleaver of obsidian forming in front of his weapon. Jonathan met it with Kharon, drawing the scythe from his back. The weapon was still oddly shaped from being used to cover the hole in the door, but Jonathan willed it back into its normal shape.
He drew upon his weapon mastery, sourced from the scythe itself. He had a Master Rank Scythe Mastery skill, at least in terms of finesse. He lacked the Domain or stat bonus that would normally come from such a thing, but it allowed him to use Kharon with a level of skill that few his level possessed. Sure, there were some Tier 7s with Master Rank Skills, and ones far beyond that, like the Great Farmer, but it was not the norm, and certainly not for a man who had only had the System for a bit over a year.
He hooked his scythe around the back of the greatshield, and pulled with all of his might. The dwarf fell forward, and Jonathan reached out to Kharon, extending a spike from the top of the haft. It punctured the guard’s torso, piercing his heart. Jonathan ripped Kharon free, leaping backwards as another guard attacked, her sword sweeping through where he had just stood.
“Try to get past them,” he ordered Eliza and Arkanon. “Get out before reinforcements can arrive. I’ll stall.”
They nodded in unison. Jonathan slammed his palm down on the ground in front of the guards, using almost a hundred thousand points of stamina. A huge wave of the Void followed it, and the ground split apart. The stone of the prison was not as well reinforced as the walls of Arkanon’s cell, and it shattered like glass.
The Void exploded out, tearing through the prison walls. The guards flew backwards and to the side, leaving a path for Arkanon and Eliza to go through. Eliza wrapped both in a mantle of wind, and raced forwards, dragging the still weakened Arkanon along.
One of the guards tried to stop them, but Jonathan flashed forward, using his stamina to get there in time. He channeled more power into Greater Smite, and blasted the guard into the wall so hard that he tore straight through it. Jonathan smiled. The suppression effect of Arkanon’s cell was gone.
