text: Not only were there eight giant statues of stone marching their way down to the sunbaked, arena floor, but also dozens of guards in fancy gold and white armor, taking up positions along the arena's outer walls, weapons drawn.
  
  There's no escaping. . . . He had to fight. But against a king, a god of a man that could command such massive statues? Impossible.
  
  We can escape, Daddy! Octoralis projected.
  
  How! Every path had guards, and even without the guards, the thousands of people here wouldn't just watch him climb to freedom, they'd attack. He stood among an army of rabid dogs in every direction.
  
  The Celestial Royal stepped over the edge of his raised platform. He plummeted to the sands, his metallic fabrics flowing above him, revealing a set of perfectly white armor, armor that no doubt had health, unlike Dhane's.
  
  Everything was moving too fast, like he stood on the palm of fate, fingers closing, moments away from crushing him.
  
  Shit, shit, shit! He had to think. There had to be a way out of this, right? Some genius strategy, some ploy. He'd even handily accept a bit of deus ex machina—Mother of Shadows? Sisters of Death? Anyone?
  
  The first of the giant stone statues jumped from the arena stands. It crashed down against the sand, leaving a dent. A . . . dent.
  
  He could go down! All there was between him and freedom was a thick slab of stone. And, well, probably the Master of Arena and Challenger Sarah . . . and all of her guards, not to mention thick, steal bolted doors. Fuck!
  
  Daddy! Octoralis projected. Language.
  
  Other stone statues crashed down into the arena. The ground shook and people cheered a wall of noise. The Celestial Royal walked at a casual pace, drawing out the performance for utmost appeal.
  
  Dhane was going to die. . ..
  
  There wasn't anything he could do to stop it. He rolled his dice, he played the game, and now he'd lose. If only he had more time to play, more time to gain strength. It was just so utterly unfair.
  
  He let out a breath, feeling the last strands of hope slip from him. If he couldn't survive . . . if he couldn't live in this exciting, fantastical heaven . . . if this was the last mark he'd make on the world. . ..
  
  He had a responsibility, a job, a weight of hundreds of little green friends who were all fighting for their own survival. If he couldn't survive . . . maybe, just maybe, he could help them.
  
  It was in that tiny moment—a moment between the thudding footfalls of giant stone statues, sprinting with chiseled swords out, angled down toward the evil King of Shadows—a spark of an idea took hold.
  
  Octoralis! He mentally shouted her name, calling her to materialize into the physical world, then jumped just as a blade of tan stone crashed through where he was standing, spraying sand and scraping the stone beneath.
  
  Dhane landed on the giant's forearm and focused on a single summoning spell. 30 mana drained from his 110, morphing into a warmth that shot down his arm and streamed out into reality: eight legs and a body disguised to look like sand. With only a mental flick of a notion, it seemed to understand and skittered away.
  
  Octoralis, from rivulets of entwining smoke, materialized behind another statue. She sprang forward, catching the statue and tearing it down.
  
  The thousands of witnesses, gazing upon the battle of kings, collectively gasped. There was no hiding the truth anymore. The King of Shadows was real and who knew what that meant for them.
  
  A third warrior of stone rammed into the statue Dhane was on. He jumped and flipped with casual ease, landing on the back of the assaulting statue, riding it to the ground just as four other massive stone entities moved in from all sides, weapons swinging.
  
  Dhane triggered Exploding Spider and his sandy little friend, standing way off in the middle of nowhere, blew apart.
  
  Magical waves of force rippled through the air and a pillar of sand shot upward. For a fraction of a second, there existed, out from the giant colliding bodies of stone, a flicker of a shadow.
  
  It wasn't something Dhane could see, not with his bone mask equipped, though he felt it, and that was all it took for Shadow Shift to lock on. After a single second, standing vulnerable to stone weapons, whistling through the air, everything changed.
  
  The world dissolved to an emptiness, filled with only the rushing of smoke, hot and acrid. Then in a burst, he appeared forty feet away from the giant statues, just in time to see them crash into each other, cracking and crumbling into a heap of once again, lifeless stone.
  
  The audience cheered. . .? Some seemed confused, as if not knowing what to do, but the arena was about competition and entertainment, and they were most certainly entertained.
  
  One stone statue remained. It cut through the air, snapping Octoralis's hind leg in half, and slicing a long gap across her side. -114 in bold red, bled out into the air, carried along by a psychic scream of pain, leaving her with 66/180 health.
  
  No! Dhane started toward her, summoning his Cobalin sword.
  
  Stop, Daddy! Octoralis projected. She knew what he had to do. Of course she did. She knew his thoughts, knew that this was death, no matter what. But they could do something.
  
  Veritus Scyla had given them the answer in her ego-filled speech. The cemeteries could be destroyed. Without a cemetery of Shadow, there would be nothing to keep the Cobalins here. Death would be their release, but then . . . he'd be trapped. . ..
  
  Dhane might have the slimmest of chances of succeeding, though there was nothing else. No escaping, no winning an impossible fight, no surviving . . . but they could save the Cobalins. And maybe that was everything he was meant to do all along, brought to this world as a sacrifice, a pawn, fighting for the greater good.
  
  Dhane deposited his bone mask. The people wanted to hate an evil king of monsters, however, he was just a human like them. He'd let them see his face, his dual affinities and dual divinities. There was no point in hiding it anymore, not if today was to be his last. Perhaps this would change their opinion about the Cobalins, to know that they weren't just neutral monsters, but people.
  
  Octoralis's side glowed with the silvery-white of her soul. She hobbled away from the statue, leading it from Dhane. He could feel her pain, searing at the back of his mind. But along with that pain was a surge of encouragement, to go, go, go!
  
  Dhane turned and sprinted. There had to be a door or gate back down beneath the Hall of Guilds. No one would expect him to escape there, to seek the below labyrinth and become trapped.
  
  A wave of distorted vibrations launched across the sands from behind. He rolled to the side and a blue, curved sliver of light shot past him a hundred feet to the arena's wall, slicing a thick line through the stone.
  
  The Celestial Royal stood at the edge of his collapsed statues. He had a sword out and it flowed like water in a thin blade resembling a katana. With a flick of his wrist, the blade swished in an arc, and another sliver of light flashed across the sands.
  
  Dhane rolled again, but the ground squished from underfoot and he slid, crashing to a pool of water that raised up, out from the sand. The edge of the blue light, sliced across his leg, igniting a fiery explosion of pain.
  
  He screamed, gripping the cut, mentally counting to three before the torturous pain would subside. His health . . . 18/85? The damn Royal could poke Dhane and he'd probably die.
  
  Shit!
  
  The Celestial Royal flicked his blade over and over, sending an array of bright blue lines to shimmer through the air at different angles. He was a tempest, each attack pulling a current of wind.
  
  Dhane rolled twice, water splashing into his armor. He summoned 1x Scrap Leather from his inventory. It formed immediately, and he threw it, then triggered Shadow Shift at the resulting blur of a shadow. The world changed to a void of rushing smoke, then he stood, fifteen feet from the wet sands that were covered in deep grooves.
  
  "Fight!" the Celestial Royal commanded. The screens displayed the young man, his brows pulled together, sword pointing out toward Dhane. "Are you a coward, King of Shadows? Where, in all of the heavens, are you trying to go? I am right here."
  
  Dhane heaved a breath—his Stamina was down to 72/135, health ticking up to 20/85. He summoned an Exploding Spider, then sent it sprinting across the sand.
  
  The Celestial Royal smiled and shook his head slowly. All it took was a simple flick of his sword and the spider was gone, a burst of pearlescent mana left to fizzle in the air.
  
  Then, from behind the Royal, Octoralis sprang forth and wrapped her legs around him, projecting I give spider hugs! Her attack, combined with backstab, dealt 180 damage, all in white.
  
  Damn. . . . Just how much health did his armor have?
  
  A blue line sliced through Octoralis, carving her in half. A fiery pain burned deep within Dhane, filled with sadness and encouragement, the echo of her last words almost too soft to make out: Goodbye, Daddy. Her form broke apart into wisps of smoke, and then nothing.
  
  She was gone. . ..
  
  The audience cheered, sending spells to burst in the air, standing, hollering. It all washed over him in a wave of silence, his chest heavy, empty. Whether or not his plan worked, he would never see her again.
  
  She died so they could succeed in this crazy plan. She died to give him a chance. He wouldn't waste it!
  
  There had to be a door, a way out of the arena proper without using a gate. And . . . there! One simple door, forever far across the arena from him.
  
  He sprinted for it, running faster than he had ever run in his entire life, propelled by the passive bonuses of his two classes. It was a single goal, a lifeline, a beginning to a strategy that would make his life here in this world mean something.
  
  There were no slicing blue lines chasing after him, no vibrations warning of an imminent attack. It wasn't until halfway to the door, that the ground started to rumble again. More statues? No . . . the door crumbled. Not just the door, every door, every gate, every exit.
  
  Dhane stopped. People were chanting, "Coward, coward, coward!" Did they not know that death here would be the end for him? There was no coming back, no Return. And yet they treated it like everything else in this world, a world without consequences.
  
  A sparkling ball of light, a camera, hovered just out of reach, displaying him frantically searching for another way.
  
  Then he found it: the only solution to this maddeningly chaotic puzzle of mounting impossibilities. The solution, stared back at him, wide-eyed, understanding percolating, fear and uncertainty written across her face.
  
  The solution was Aditi, sitting at the front row just thirty feet away, at the top of a ten-foot wall.
  
  He gave it no other thought. She was the answer, and she knew it. He charged, only jumping to the side to dodge another slice of blue energy.
  
  Gravity shifted and he dashed up the wall. People ran, screaming about not wanting to lose their souls. Some adventurers stayed, drawing forth weapons that glowed in all the different colors of elements and magical effects.
  
  "Do it," Dhane said to Aditi. "You know I'm not the evil one here, you saw evil when the priests of Light killed me."
  
  "But, like, it didn't work last time."
  
  "I didn't want it to. I denied the construct divinity."
  
  She wrinkled her forehead, as if she had never experienced death by a PK member, or never had someone request to die and then choose not to.
  
  A flabby young man jumped from his seat. He had pale skin and light brown hair. He fumbled with his phone, trying to withdraw a weapon. "What are doing!" he yelled at Aditi, who had summoned her needle-like dagger.
  
  Dhane grabbed the guy, then twisted in response to a faint, telltale vibration, gliding through the air toward his back. A blue line of death, sliced into the young man. His face was a mask of shock before his body fell over the wall.
  
  Aditi plunged her dagger into Dhane's chest. The symbols glowed with her pearlescent mana. The blade itself became transparent, and a warm, swirling sensation filled his body, asking the only question Dhane cared to answer, a question of whether or not he accepted the temporary divinity for immediate Return.
  
  He accepted it, demanded it, and then death took him. The world turned cold. All the colors slipped away, replaced with gray. From his very soul, a skull formed in smoke and screamed as it shot skyward.