He crouched beside the cage and glanced inside, the cold bars pressing against his shoulder as he leaned in close, the faint metallic tang of rust and old sweat hanging in the air.
Pity flared for a single, treacherous heartbeat as he saw the child huddled against the bars, knees drawn tight to his chest, his small frame trembling with each shallow breath.
The pity came sharp and unwelcome. He immediately silenced it, shoving the useless emotion down deep where it couldn't interfere.
Voices approached—familiar, rough, laced with the same lazy cruelty he'd heard earlier. The same man who'd locked the children up before, boots thudding heavily over packed dirt.
Something cooler surfaced then—clinical, dangerous, and enough to push everything else aside.
Not anger or mercy.
Pure curiosity.
He looked back at the child in the cage, eyes steady.
"Pst."
The boy looked up, eyes widening as he registered a different figure this time, the flicker of torchlight catching the sudden spark of hope mixed with fresh fear.
"You wanna get out of here, kid," Arion whispered, low and steady, "together with the others?"
The boy's mouth opened on instinct, a gasp ready to spill out, but Arion raised a finger to his lips, the motion slow and deliberate.
The child froze, then mirrored the motion, clamping a small hand over his own mouth as he nodded, small and frantic, chest rising faster now.
"Good. When I give you this signal," Arion continued, lifting his thumb, "you get that big guy's attention—the guard who put you in here. Understand?"
The boy stared at the gesture, and something sharper flickered behind the fear—a tiny spark of defiance. He nodded again, harder this time, determination tightening his small jaw.
Arion slipped back into the darkness, fingers closing around the dead bandit's collar as he dragged the body with him, boots soundless over dirt, the dead weight scraping faintly against loose stones before both vanished between stacked crates and sagging sacks.
The shadows finally swallowed them whole.
…
Then, the signal came.
"Mister! Help—there's a monster here!" the boy screamed, voice cracking with raw terror that sounded far too real.
The camp's noise swallowed most of it—laughter, clanking metal, distant shouting—but enough carried to cut through.
"Gah! You annoying brat!" the brutish guard snapped as he hauled himself upright, irritation thick in his voice followed by the heavy thud of his boots.
He stomped closer as the boy screamed again, the sound piercing. "Help! Quick—it's right here!"
The man scowled, scanning the shadows, seeing nothing but crates and flickering firelight dancing across canvas.
"You little shit. I'm gonna beat the—"
Hands seized the backs of his knees in a vice grip, fingers digging deep into the meat of muscle and tendon.
"Coagulate Lock."
The spell snapped into place with a silent pulse of Vitalis, Luminary guided through tissue and vascular pathways like invisible needles.
The bandit spun, axes manifesting themselves in his hands in a flare of earthen green light, their blades carving deep grooves into the dirt behind him with a harsh scrape.
Before him stood a man in white robes, silver hair stark in the low light, dark glistening eyes unblinking and calm. A staff rested across his shoulder with lazy effort.
"Well now," the bandit grinned, rolling his shoulders as he rested the axes against them, muscles flexing under scarred skin. "What've we got here? A boy playin' hero?"
Arion didn't answer. He simply watched, head tilted slightly, studying every twitch of muscle and flicker of confusion.
He waited.
Step.
The bandit watched Arion take one step back, then another, boots shifting their weight with slow, deliberate purpose.
"And where do you think you're goin'?" The bandit said as he took a step forward, axes rising. "I'm gonna enjoy tearin' you—"
Then he saw it—the grin that stretched eerily, uncanny, something that did not suit the man in front of him at all.
The bandit's leg buckled mid-stride, knee folding inward as if the joint had turned to water. Then the other followed, muscles seizing in sudden betrayal.
Shock twisted his face as his weight betrayed him, axes clanging loudly against the ground as he collapsed forward, barely catching himself on one elbow, breath coming in ragged bursts.
Footsteps thundered from the shadows.
Arion was on him instantly.
One axe swung—heavy, clumsy, whistling through the air—but Arion deflected it cleanly, the staff snapping across the haft with a sharp crack as Recall came around in a brutal arc, smashing into the man's face with bone-jarring force. The impact sent teeth clicking and blood spraying in a fine mist.
Again.
Then again.
Each strike accompanied a sudden grip of his hand punctuated by another whispered spell, the staff rising and falling, wood meeting any resistance with wet thuds that echoed off the crates.
His arms shook. Slowed. Then failed entirely, dropping limp to his sides as the spell took full hold.
"Bastard! What did you do to me—"
Arion's hand clamped around his jaw, fingers pressing hard enough to bruise the skin.
"Coagulate Lock."
The words died in his throat, voice cutting off mid-snarl. Speech vanished. Muscles refused command.
He lay there, eyes wide and bulging, lungs working in shallow, frantic pulls—trapped inside a body that no longer obeyed him.
It was a sheer gamble.
Arion had theorised that Coagulate Lock could influence blood flow directly—but whether another person's Vitalis would resist, override, or nullify the effect had remained untested.
Each cast of Coagulate Lock sent Luminary threading through the limb, working through tissue and vascular pathways as it forced the blood flow to thicken and stall. The flow thickened, sluggish, then stopped; the body tried to obey the brain, but the signal died before reaching the extremities.
Capillary constriction starved nerves of oxygen. Muscular conductivity collapsed. A burning misfire rippled outward before numbness claimed everything, spreading like ink in water.
Arion crouched lower, fascinated, eyes tracing the subtle tremors still fighting beneath the skin.
Induced Ischemic Stasis.
Vascular Conduction Arrest.
"Magnificent… a sufficient test. The real question is whether it holds at full success, or if Vitalis density skews the result." Arion muttered to himself, unable to hold back from examining the results of his risky experiment.
It held cleanly on a man like this. Whether it would hold on someone stronger was another matter.
The once-mighty bandit now lay helpless, able only to stare into Arion's eyes while listening to rambling phrases he had never heard before.
Dread seized him so hard his pupils shrank to pinpricks.
We can't waste an opportunity like this…
"Now," Arion said softly, tilting his head like a scholar examining a specimen, "shall we begin the next experiment… lab rat?"
Dread gripped him as the bandit tried to scream, but only muffled wet moans escaped, as if he'd forgotten how to speak, throat working uselessly against invisible restraints.
…
The bandit lay trapped in his own body.
Arion loomed over him like the waking shape of a nightmare.
At that point, he likely wished Arion were only a hallucination.
He stared straight into his eyes, as if trying to look past them and into whatever still trembled behind them.
"I could make it quick," he mused, then cocked his neck. "But it's never quick for them, is it?"
He paused, eyes narrowed, calculating.
"Entropy may be patient," he continued, his voice cooling into clinical detachment, "but I am not."
His hand stretched forth, palm hovering just above the chest.
"Let's see which kills faster—heat or frost."
His palm planted itself onto his test subject's chest with firm pressure. Muffled moans tried to force their way out, but to Arion they were only background noise now.
"Scald Burst."
Heat pushed into the chest cavity in a sudden surge, Luminary Essence mixing with blood—super-heating every liquid near the heart in a controlled blaze that made veins bulge and pulse visibly beneath the skin. The bandit's torso tightened, internal pressure building as fluids boiled and expanded.
Then another spell was cast.
"Frost Snap."
Ice bloomed as frost fizzled outward, spreading over the skin of the chest and torso in crystalline sheets that crackled and spread like frost on glass.
The expanding heat trapped beneath reacted instantly, tissue violently detonated with micro-explosions that rippled outward in sharp, wet pops.
Steam had nowhere to go. It bled through pores, searing and hissing in thin white jets, then froze on contact—a cycle of explosion and stillness repeating in miniature across the entire chest.
The bandit's body convulsed, limbs twitching against the paralysis as the dual elements warred inside him, muscles jerking in helpless spasms beneath the frozen shell.
Each heartbeat triggered a new detonation—flesh popped beneath the ice like tiny mines going off under glass, the surface cracking in spiderweb fractures that leaked pink-tinged steam.
Muffled moans tore through the subject's cracking throat, wet and broken with pain.
The smell grew dense—a mixture of burned tallow and cold iron, sharp and acrid. The frost shimmered cyan against the fire's red pulse.
He looked back at the child in the cage, eyes steady.
The colours danced across Arion's face as he tracked every reaction, every tremor, every micro-tear in tissue.
In his old world, this never could have happened. Here, nothing stopped him.
The man burned alive beneath his own frozen shell—a candle of blue fire sealed inside a sculpted corpse of ice.
Pain and paralysis reinforced one another with brutal efficiency.
Then, Arion had enough. Releasing the Coagulate Lock with a flick of intent, the body started to collapse in a hiss of steam and frost, muscles unlocking in a final, violent shudder.
THUNK–TSSKRK!
The shell imploded, spraying shards and steam in a violent burst that pattered across the dirt. The remains hissed on the frozen ground—flesh, frost, and smoke blending into one indistinguishable slurry that steamed gently in the night air.
Silence retook its place, broken only by the faint whisper of frost rising from the ruin as the last wisps of heat faded.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
He stood and brushed frost from his hands, the crystalline flakes scattering like tiny diamonds across the dirt.
He kept his back to the cage—the children shielded by crates and shadow, unable to witness his experiment.
He turned back, crouched, and met the boy's eyes through the bars. The child's breathing hitched, eyes wide, small shoulders trembling as he pressed himself against the far side.
Arion smiled faintly, almost gentle, and raised the iron key between two fingers, the metal glinting in the low light.
"Let's get you out, kid."
Arion opened the cage with a soft creak of hinges. The boy hesitated first, small hands gripping the bars one last time, then finally stumbled forward on shaky legs.
Arion gave him a pat on the head and a nod, the touch light and steady, trying to ease some of the fear in him.
"The others…" The boy whispered, voice hoarse from screaming.
Arion smiled and went over to unlock the rest of the cages one by one, the keys clicking smoothly in each lock, metal doors swinging open with soft groans.
After they were all freed, he did a head count, eyes scanning each small face in turn.
Six children stood in front of him. They looked between six and ten years old, thin and wide-eyed, some clutching rags around their shoulders against the chill.
He stood there, his hand on his chin, mind already turning over the next steps.
He crouched lower as more voices drifted toward them, rough laughter and heavy footsteps drawing closer through the camp.
And there were more than one.
This might be harder than I thought…