The arena

Chapter five

 I got back to Molly's room and immediately collapsed into a chair and began thinking about what happened. The thought of someone working with another outside the arena was a little nerve wracking but then I realized that it almost certainly didn't affect me so I had nothing to worry about. Sure someone getting kidnapped is certainly a bad thing but it didn't matter. People were killed often enough here that it wouldn't even matter, in fact, it might be a better fate for them. I scanned the room and didn't see Molly. I called out and suddenly two arms shot out from behind me and hugged me. I didn't even struggle but just sighed. I knew who it was anyway. "Aw" said the voice behind me "you're no fun" and I looked back at Molly to see her with her usual how-dare-you-not-fall-victim-to-my-jokes face. She let go and walked over to the bed commanding me to follow. She sat down and made me sit down across from her, my back to her. She then proceeded to lie my head down on her lap and started fondly stroking my hair while looking towards nothing. Me not having a choice was forced to stare at her face. She seemed to be thinking about something, now that I thought about it she seemed to be acting a little different since last time. Sure in the past she had always messed around with me but this seemed to be different somehow, almost like she was being more protective of me. But why? Why would she be concerned about me for any reason at all? I could take care of myself. However, despite this, something seemed wrong somehow. Like I was in danger or something like that. Out of the blue, Molly spoke, "There is a tournament coming up". This piqued my interest. I liked the idea of a tournament. She continued, "Any one may join and if someone were to beat the leader of a faction, they themselves would become the leader". I started getting excited, my musings from earlier abruptly forgotten. Had she done that on purpose? I then started wondering why she told me this.

I had started to come up with possible reasons when abruptly a voice yelled from outside in the arena, "I challenge Molly Vollen to a fight for control of the arena!" The voice was very loud and it sounded like that of an old man, somewhere maybe in his fifties or forties. Molly walked over to the window and muttered something under her breath. I looked at her strangely and, sighing, she explained the situation.

"I made a rule that anyone can challenge me for the right to control this arena. The only one who has done it is the one you hear outside. Now I have to go deal with him again". She sounded very frustrated and I winced at the thought of what might happen to the man outside. I may not know what all Molly could do, but I knew that this other man wasn't going to have a pleasant time judging from her voice alone. She teleported out of the room and as soon as she did I walked to the window to watch. She stood there facing the man. He had silver hair and wore a mage's robe. He had white pants and was a tall 6 foot 7. Judging by his thin physique he most likely is heavily magic based. Molly started toward him and he immediately summoned a meteor and hurled it at Molly. I watched in fascination as Molly, out of nowhere, summons an ice pillar to destroy the meteor. Then from the pillar another smaller pillar appears and hits the other man in the head. Knocking him out. I got back to where I was just in time as Molly, looking tired, teleported back into the room. She sat on the bed, and collapsed into the headrest. I sat up and rested my back on the headrest also. It felt good to relax. To take a load off. Molly rested her head on my shoulder. Yawning, she got comfortable, and fell asleep. I could not sleep, so I did my usual hobby of playing with fire. I thought about how there were weapons in the training room and how that one person Jason and I followed had multiple though he obviously had some sort of power. So with that in mind I thought about throwing knives and decided I would try to make some out of fire. I have never made projectiles out of my night fire but I guess this would be a good a time as any. I had made a rough shape of one when I noticed Molly was no longer sleeping, but rather watching me, staring at my hand as I tried over and over to get it right. "Try imagining the shape in your hand, how it is going to look and feel". I tried this and to my surprise it worked.

"Thanks," I said. Not sure how she knew how to help but accepting the help all the same. I made it again and again and eventually I had gotten it down enough that I would be satisfied. I put out the flame and looked at Molly. She was asleep again. Her breathing; rythmic. Her face; calm and relaxed. Not a care in the world. She was also gripping my arm. I smiled to myself, at least that hadn't changed. I found myself pondering the implications of her touchy behavior. Some of them I liked, some of them I didn't. I eventually got bored and started thinking about a different subject. Like what I was going to call this newfound ability to make throwing knives. I thought of many names, like fire stab and flame knife. I ultimately settled on calling them "throwing nights''. It was a good name and I found myself liking the name more and more. It fit well with the concept of the ability. After that I got bored enough to fall asleep. I rested my head back against the headrest and fell asleep.

I had a weird dream that night. Most of my dreams in the past consisted of what had happened that day. But this one was different. In this one I was not dreaming about the day. I was dreaming about what seemed to be a memory. I was in a small room, a bed in one quarter, and on the wall behind it there were a bunch of pictures of what seemed to be people that I knew. Other than that there wasn't much else except for a small desk in the other corner of the room. It had a drawer on the front and on top of it was a picture of me and some other girl holding up playing cards at each other like some sort of card duel. Then someone came in. It was a man who for some reason looked vaguely familiar. He came in and sat on the chair at the desk turning to face me. "Hey" he said, sounding familiar too. "You ready for your fight?" he asked and I got the impression that this me also loved fighting. I nodded. "Good. because if things go well then this one will be an actual challenge".

"They never are" I said forlornly, "they never are" and at that moment, it clicked, the other man was Lazarus. The man who had wanted someone from the arena. He shrugged and as soon as that happened, my vision started to blur. And with tired reluctance, I woke up from my memory.