Elsewhere

The world warped around Duke and he clenched his jaw tightly to keep from screaming. The portal room disappeared and then things went haywire.

***WARNING WARNING WARNING!

Dissonant spacial interaction detected. Your TELEPORTATION Ability has interacted with an unstable portal, further destabilizing your trajectory. System correction - partial success. Approximate destination secured +/- 10 meters. Good luck!

***

Duke emerged from the portal. He was completely disoriented but there were two things he knew for sure. First off, it was nighttime as he could see a few lights lighting up the streets around him. Secondly, he was able to see all of these streets because he was ten meters up in the air and falling quickly.

The ground came up to meet him at an alarming rate. Duke desperately tried to TELEPORT in some way to stop himself from slamming into the ground.

***

TELEPORTATION Ability temporarily unavailable. TELEPORT failed.

***

Duke rolled his eyes as he slammed into the ground, trying his best to roll with the impact. It was at that moment he definitively confirmed that he was not an acrobat. He landed hard on his left leg, and it collapsed under him with the awful crunch and snap of broken bone. He crumpled to the cobblestones, slamming his head on something for good measure. His vision swam but cleared sometime later.

As Duke instinctively struggled to his feet, his leg starting to heal from his REGENERATION and barely was able to support his weight, he was joined in the alley by a quartet of what he could only assume were common street thugs.

“Oh, look at what we have here. Some poor fellow has fallen down in our alley. Let’s help him up, right fellas?”

The others chuckled as they quickly surrounded the limping Duke. He quickly assessed the situation, his head on a swivel and knew that likely the only way out of here was to fight his way out. He stumbled, pivoting on his right foot and threw a punch at the closest thug as his left leg nearly collapsed again in the attempt to add drive to his punch. The punch weakly struck the man in the jaw. He didn’t seem impressed as Duke had no leverage behind the punch.

“Right, boys. Take him!”

You know how in movies, the thugs all take turns fighting the hero? That didn’t happen here. Two thugs came in from either side grabbing hold of Duke’s arms while a third kicked his good leg out from under him. The Thugs holding his arms kept Duke from falling down, but that courtesy was only to give the leader a better angle on his tremendous uppercut. Duke’s head rocked backwards and his vision went blurry. The thugs then dropped him, proceeding to kick him into unconsciousness.

As Duke faded out, he heard the leader apologize. “Right sorry about all this mister. I was just gonna take the pouch at your belt and leave you be, but you had to go and get all punchy with me. Next time, be smart. That is, if you live through this. Goodnight.” A final blow put Duke down completely.

Duke awoke an unknown amount of time later in an entirely different setting. He was inside, propped up against a cold stone wall. He could feel the stone leaching the warmth from his body which became more poignant once he realized that he was practically naked. All he was wearing was his boxers.

Duke looked around the room. The walls were made of stone blocks cut and fitted together so well that there was no mortar. There was a single window the size of his head at the top of one wall and the door was on the opposite side of the room. There was straw piled in a few areas of the floor but there were no furnishings. Duke knew he was in a cell of some sort and things were not looking great for him. It was then that the system decided to give him his “you went to sleep” update.

*** Congratulations! You continue to survive and provide some small entertainment. Your great street brawl was great to watch. You acquitted yourself oh so well. OK, so you got beaten easily and thoroughly. Aren’t you so glad you have REGENERATION? You put this Ability into overdrive as you came rather close to dying. Your REGENERATION Ability advances by 10 points to Initiate 26. I would not suggest pushing it this close to the limit again until you have at least gained another rank.

Oh, and what can we say about TELEPORTATION? This was a complete failure. You have messed up this Ability so badly, it's going to take a while to fix itself. It took some real special effort to ignore all those warnings and push yourself off the cliff anyway. Your Ability advanced through sheer stupidity, grit and determination does indeed count for something. TELEPORTATION increased by 2 points from Initiate 1 to Initiate 3. Good luck and try not to do this to yourself again.

Back to your grand street brawl. You got one shot in. You were unbalanced, dizzy, and ineffectual. But you at least tried. Here, have a point. Your Brawling is now Novice 6.

The Spell “Aura Concealment” has successfully been absorbed. You may now use it as an Ability at will for a normal cost.

The Spell “Lasting Disguise” has successfully been absorbed. You may now use it as an Ability at will for a significant cost.

You survived a fight that should have at least crippled you. Have an experience point. Had you actually done something effective, you might have gotten a few more. But, hey, you lost. Badly. Pathetic. So, have your experience point and like it. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter to us.

Last time we told you to continue to be smart and entertaining. Well, at least you got the entertaining part down. Marginally.

***

Duke clutched his aching head as the system messages poured through his consciousness. He was getting less and less amused by the attitude the messages were displaying but he figured there was nothing he could do about it. The thing that alarmed him immediately was that the spells Baslin had cast upon him had been absorbed. He immediately tried to activate the Abilities that the spells had become on himself.

*** You have activated AURA CONCEALMENT for the first time. Your aura is now masked from casual observation and probing for the next six hours.

You have activated TONGUES. You can now speak most languages for the next hour.

You do not have enough mana to activate LASTING DISGUISE. Ability Failed.

***

Duke scrambled to his feet as he read the last entry. Well, shit. This just keeps getting better. At least I’m all healed up again. Yeah REGENERATION! If TELEPORTATION worked, I could get out of here right quick. Fucking system shit. Guess I’ll have to figure it out the old-fashioned way. Or just wait until my Ability is fixed.

His thoughts were interrupted by the door opening. Before he could do more than turn to face it, a huge figure in spiked black leather armor strode into the room followed by a scrawny man in colorful, expensive robes.

“Well, that’s surprising - you shouldn’t be awake yet. Ergo, restrain him!”

The mass of muscle strode confidently in Duke’s direction and moved to grab him. Duke was having none of it. He attacked this Ergo with everything he had.

Duke landed two solid punches in quick succession to Ergo’s jaw. Ergo smiled and grunted. “My turn, human.”

Ergo struck Duke twice in the torso. Duke collapsed, certain he had felt his ribs break. Ergo easily dragged him to his feet and locked Duke’s arms behind his back. As he held the man, he whispered with hot breath on Duke’s neck. “Come back when you are stronger, and I’ll give you another chance.”

The scrawny man smiled at seeing Duke’s state. “Yes, that is better. Oh, and still conscious. Ergo, you are indeed masterful at what you do. I am ever so grateful to have professionals such as yourself on call.” He adjusted his gaze to look at Duke. “Do you have any idea how difficult it would be to do my job without such competent people to work with? No, I suppose you don’t. Now, who are you and what business do you have in our fair city?”

Duke wheezed in a breath, trying to come up with a clever answer but he was in so much pain – he could feel his ribs starting to re-arrange themselves. “Visitor.” He gasped.

“Oh, a visitor, you say. What inn are you staying at? Did you perhaps stumble out without getting dressed?”

Duke quickly thought of any inns that he had heard of, realizing that he did not know the name of a single inn in the city. He began to speak but was cut off by the scrawny man.

“Don’t bother trying to come up with a convincing lie. I can tell when someone is lying to me. If not, I wouldn’t be a very good Magistrate, now would I?” He paused for the briefest moment to ready his quill. What is your name?

Duke croaked out a strangled response as Ergo continued to pull back harder on his arms causing Duke’s ribs to shift out of place again, “Duke.”

“Duke? You’re a Duke? Oh no, we are going to have to…wait a moment. The temporary panic fled the man’s eyes as his TRUTH of the MATTER Class Ability kicked in. You’re not a Duke. It’s simply a name you go by. Well, in that case, this is much easier and my proceedings are complete. I hereby convict you of vagrancy and sentence you to one year of service to the city within the arena. Good day. Ergo will escort you to your new home for the next year.”

With that, Ergo lifted Duke completely off the ground by his arms. Duke shuddered with pain but clamped his jaw shut, not wanting to let either of them hear him cry out. Ergo carried him through the door and down another dark stone corridor, never letting Duke’s feet touch the floor. At one point, Duke tried kicking his way out of Ergo’s grasp but that was quickly stopped when Ergo pulled his shoulders out of joint.

It took about twenty minutes for Ergo to bring Duke to his new home…a cage-like cell. Ergo dropped Duke on the stone floor for long enough to unlock and open the cell door. He then kicked Duke into the cell with a grin. “You have some troll blood in you, Duke? Don’t think I didn’t see you healing up while I was holding you. You’ll need it in the arena. Who knows, maybe you’ll live long enough to challenge me some day. Good luck. You can’t fight for shit, but at least you had the spirit to try. You’ll need that too.”

Ergo left Duke there in the pile of wet, lumpy straw that he had landed on. He rolled over and took stock of his new situation. He was in a cell which he surmised was a holding cell before he was put into the arena. He had no clothes, no weapons, no offensive Abilities, and seemed to be a lot weaker than the prison guards. Again, he was screwed.

It only took a few minutes for his REGENERATION to heal him up despite all of the broken bones and punctured organs he had been suffering from. I’m not entirely sure just how hurt I was back there but I’m guessing that I would have been in the ICU had I been back home. Maybe I can find some way to use that to my advantage in the arena.

Duke got up and wiped off the straw that was sticking to him. It was time to do something. He wasn’t sure what, but sitting here was not the answer. He took a tour of his cell. It was about four meters on a side so much larger than what he knew of as a regular prison cell. The cell had no walls, but instead, it was floor to ceiling steel bars. The bars, he discovered, went into holes in the floor and appeared to similarly go into holes in the ceiling. He didn’t know how far they went but he expected they were far enough to prevent someone much stronger than him from ripping them out.

The door was also made of steel bars and had a locking mechanism that Duke did not recognize. The best he could describe was that it appeared to weld itself shut in some manner. Whatever the case, he didn’t think he was getting out of the cell without someone opening it up for him or his TELEPORTATION. Since his TELEPORTATION was on the fritz, he figured he was stuck there for now.

He looked out past his cell to see that there were countless other cells just like his, all separated by a bit more than three meters between them. He figured that was wide enough that someone could walk between cells and not worry about being grabbed by someone in a cell. It seemed a clever design to him, but he wasn’t a prison designer by any stretch of the imagination. He was a pilot and nothing in his training, nothing in his life had prepared him for this world.

The day stretched on with nothing else happening so Duke entertained himself by exercising. After each rotation of pushups, crunches, pullups using the door of the cage, and running from side to side he would try to use his TELEPORT Ability. It failed every time, but he needed it to get out of this prison and that was his primary goal right now. He was, however, able to refresh his AURA CONCEALMENT and TONGUES Abilities regularly. LASTING DISGUISE was still out of reach.

After a while, a creature pushing a cart came down the row of cages and stopped in front of his cell. The creature was short, not quite a meter and a half tall. It had green skin that seemed to be covered in irregular bumps of some kind and glistened with moisture. Its eyes were far apart and set in the top of its head and its mouth was wide, as wide as its entire flattened head. In short, it looked like a humanoid toad.

The creature gestured with a short metal rod at Duke. “Step away from the door.”

Duke, being fed up with the situation moved very slowly, taking his time. This did not amuse the toad-creature. A bolt of sparking blue energy arced out of the rod, striking Duke in the chest.

*** You have been struck by magical lightning and have been stunned for five seconds ***

Duke collapsed to the floor twitching and the creature opened the door to the cell with the same magical device. A few seconds later, he zapped Duke again, and again, and again. The creature proceeded to drop off a wooden bowl filled with some lumpy, creamy white substance and a heel of bread. It zapped Duke a few more times before chuckling as it left and resealed the door.

***The spell “Lightning” has been absorbed. You may now use it as an Ability. ***

Holy shit that sucked. Totally worth it! Hurt like hell, but I finally have an offensive ability.

Duke spent the next several hours practicing the ability. Each casting seemed to cost him about 6 mana so he could cast it 10 times before needing to recover his mana. While recovering his mana, he exercised. Eventually, he attempted to eat the food that was brought to him.

He dipped the bread in the bowl and took a tentative taste. He nearly dropped the bowl in shock. It was absolutely delicious! He did not understand why this prison food that looked so awful tasted so good, but he ate it with abandon. When he was done licking the bowl clean, he realized that there was nothing supplied to drink but also that he was not thirsty at all.

Duke continued his routine until the light finally faded and he lay down on the straw to sleep.