--- Kat ---

Lily popped her head up out of the tunnel right as another explosion rang out. It wasn’t too close, but now they were up on the surface the sound was much harder on her ears. Kat reformed and pulled Lily up into her arms as she looked around. Kat was currently crouched down to be harder to spot, but the arena didn’t exactly make things hard to see what was going on even at a distance.

The whole place looked like it was trying to trigger PTSD in old soldier’s minds. The arena was blasted down to dirt with large craters everywhere. Only the fact that the elevation was extremely inconsistent, and perhaps indicative of a history of explosions, prevented Kat from seeing the entire battlefield.

What was notable, was that inside most of the craters you could see some sort of monster inside of it. The one closest to Kat seemed to be a vaguely humanoid elemental figure. It was mostly black with ash covering them, and notable lines of red that showed up more prominently when the creature breathed. Though ’vaguely humanoid’ really was the best way to put it.

Despite looking somewhat like a person curled up on themselves they didn’t have any visible legs, instead their lower halves were closer to semi-solidified magma then anything else, with their ’arms’ also being part of their torso. Kat wasn’t sure if the arms could be separated, but considering the more amorphous construction of the monster’s body, she was assuming that they could be detached at will and turned into something closer to arms.

Now the question was... where did they want to go? There wasn’t really anywhere good to hide, and sure the craters had some cover but it seemed like each and every one of them had a little explosion elemental in the middle of them. It meant you had to kill it to use the spot as a place to hide... but simply removing the elemental would alert everyone to the fact that you were there and...

Kat glanced at the centre of the crater they were currently sitting in. It, notably, didn’t have an explosion elemental. *Now... is there really an elemental in each of these? Or is this a great big target for whoever comes looking? Also... I suspect those things don’t actually die when they explode, though maybe I’m hasty thinking of them as explosion elementals?*

[Realistically though what else could they be? And why else would they be in the centre of the craters? It seems pretty self evident that they explode and create more of them]

*Yeah I suppose. Just feels wrong to assume.* Of course, that was when another explosion went off in the distance, roughly in the same spot Kat could see a crater, and there was currently a big ash cloud spewing out of it. Kat sighed, even as she ignored the impact of the elemental’s explosion. *Alright fine. I guess they’re explosion elementals. What do we do now though? Like do we fly around? The sky is pretty empty but I don’t know how likely it is the other contestant will be looking up.*

[It’s not like staying on the ground is exactly SAFE though now is it? There isn’t really any cover and there’s no way to sneak up on anyone.]

*Right but there’s SOME cover. I feel like I’d rather have some rocks to stop an arrow then literally nothing.*

[Says you of all people. Still... while I don’t disagree in principle, in practice I’m pretty sure we could fly high enough to react to any long distance attacks couldn’t we?]

*I dunno can we? How high the ceiling on this arena or are we just in some random part of the world? If we can fly as high as we like it should be fine... but it’s not like I can see a barrier above us.*

[Um... hmm...] Lily tried to stretch her spatial sense upwards but failed to find any obvious blockages. Sadly though, she could see and hear a lot further then she could sense distortions in space. [Yeah no idea. At least a hundred metres up.]

*Which really isn’t that far when it comes to people with magic.*

[I suppose not. Why are you so worried though?]

Kat paused. *Actually wait that’s a good question. I want to say I’m worried about you but if I’m being honest we’re both fairly safe. There’s some concern needed just in case we run into someone with particularly strong gear... but even then we should be fine. Plus, I can turn into water for a bit. Though... might still want to avoid the elementals. The question is how do we find the person we’re looking for?*

[Probably flight.]

*Sure, unless they’re underground, but you’re right we’ve been worrying about this too much. I let the fact that you were going to be in a tiny amount of danger override the fact that we’re quite strong and currently have no reason to worry about whoever we’re facing off against. They’re another contestant and if things look dicey I should be able to just blast them with demonic fire. Thyme will be able to save them.*

[Good.]

Kat took to the sky, Lily in her arms. As she rose up, it was clear to see that in the distance more explosions were going off. Now that she could watch the whole process, it was easy to see which ones were going to explode next. The elementals all started to breathe faster, with their glowing lines becoming more and more prominent during the process. Their bodies would start to inflate as well, mostly their ’chest’ expanding to more than triple the size it used to be before the detonation.

When they exploded, it looked like they were torn apart for a moment. Fire and ash spewing from the spot they ’were’ except, once the smoke cleared the elementals were back in place, curled up and... they didn’t really have any faces but if anything they felt more content after exploding. Which was a weird thing to pick up from an elemental that lacked a mouth, or whatever these things actually were. Kat also had no idea how they managed to survive the explosions so easily nor why they felt the need to explode so frequently.

It would be one thing if it was just a random one-off monster that seemed to have picked up the habit as some sort of bizarre mutation, but instead it seemed like they really were a species. It might even have been less weird if they were just puppets Thyme was moving around but it seemed like they were real creatures and Kat had no idea how they’d react in a fight. Well other than exploding that is.

The scorched arena spread out for a long way, and now that Kat had climbed up she could see that it did end, and was mostly circular in shape... but it was hard to tell what else was outside of it. Thyme seemed to have come up with an ’illusion’ that she couldn’t see through. It was only truly present in the lower areas of the maybe barrier, as up above it simply allowed you to see the sky. But was that really the sky above them? Or more creations. Kat wouldn’t put it past Thyme to make a bunch of pocket dimensions for these fights after all.

It also didn’t help finding the other person trapped here. The craters were different sizes sure, but now that she was higher up Kat could also see that not all of them had an elemental inside, and some even had multiple. Kat wasn’t sure if it would stay that way, perhaps one exploding would kill the second or send it flying, but she hadn’t seen any of them do that yet so they weren’t immediately hostile to each other. Frankly, Kat wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

There was also a few buildings Kat could see. None of them were intact, and while they might SEEM like a good place to start it wasn’t as though Kat and Lily had originally been in one of them above ground, if they even counted as that. Most of them were in craters with a good portion of them blown away, showing only jagged edges and some broken insides. There was very limited movement that Kat or Lily could pick out... and it seemed like for now whoever they were fighting was managing to hide rather well. It was annoying to realise, and Kat wasn’t sure what to do about it.

*What were the rules about things taking too long?*

[I don’t remember... but why don’t you?]

*Finding the memory is going to be a massive pain in the ass that’s why. I don’t know if I can take the time to properly look for it either because I don’t want to zone out while we’re in an active combat zone. For the moment, I’m sort of hoping that something can force our enemy to the surface but I’m not sure anything will...*