The arena was as he remembered it. Hundreds of workers had spent their entire adult lives creating it. Every stone had been put in carefully. The structure supported thousands. It had been finished long before his birth.

  The money went only to the elites who kept men and women in cages for their amusement.

  It was a monument to the few, dressed up as something for the many.

  Yes, people could fight their way to the top and earn their freedom but that was never a guarantee. It had always felt inevitable that this had to exist in society, but it was not how the academy treated it.

  They saw it as controlling the populace. When he heard that, his blood had boiled. It wasn't right. He wasn’t happy about that. There wasn't much he could do about it, but he wasn't happy about it either way.

  "Pardon me gentleman. I seem to be here on official business."

  He caught the slip up immediately.

  "You seem to be? Who are you?" A wiry man with a spear and decorative full plate armor looked at him sideways. "You're not on the list."

  He didn't even refer to a list. He wasn't holding anything in his hands. Neither was his partner.

  Ludere didn't think that pointing that out would do anything though. It was like the man wanted him.

  Cire whispered in his ear. "Try the rental boy angle."

  "That's a great idea," the Oracle said.

  Maybe that would be enough to push someone else over, but he wasn't going to give up so easily.

  "I'm sure that both of you guys are unaware, but I am Regnicus. My friends right next to me… One is the Oracle of the Fiddler, and the other one is the daughter of Senator Celisar. I think that we should have no issue going in there and looking at what happened. After all I was there for the incursion."

  The two men looked at him as if he had three heads and was offering them meat on a stick. Ludere hated using his honorary rank for anything but if this helped him get in front of the situation, he would do it.

  "We've had a lot of weird people trying to offer us strange things to get in here without a good reason. No one has pretended to be the Regnicus."

  "That's probably because nobody wants to be him," Cire said. "He has an overbearing girlfriend who can sue the future and several friends that are the scions of those high up in government. Those are the exact people you don't want to piss off."

  The two legionnaires looked at him and then the two women and then back to him. Something passed between them and they both shrugged. They were going through the calculation of how much trouble they would get in versus how much trouble they could get in later. Invariably, they did not want to get the eye of anybody, but it was looking increasingly like that was not an option.

  "I think that your paperwork seems to be in order so why don't you guys both make your way through and tell the guys in front of us that you're in possession of some freshly baked bread."

  "Thank you, legionnaire."

  The two men parted, letting them pass. Inside, the familiar pathways were empty. He had to stop himself from going through his usual route. It was easy to forget that he was there for a reason and not to go back to work not having anybody else around was a good way to show himself that no this wasn't a normal day at work.

  There would not be any more normal days of work for the rest of his life. Normal was a concept that had been thrown out with the bath water a long time ago. Now all he had was brand new days of intrigues that he couldn't even make heads or tails of.

  "I still think that you could have gone with the rental boy tactic and got out faster. Sure, you would have had to have relations with one of them but I'm sure we could wait for that."

  "Don't be so quick to pass off my boyfriend for some sort of pet project. He's not just a pet, he's also a project and if he's going to be renting himself out, I want to make some money from this," the Oracle said.

  "Don't you... I thought you didn't have use for money?"

  "Just because I can eat for free everywhere doesn't mean that I want to not have something fancy for myself. Mama needs a new dress."

  Ludere shot her a glance.

  "Noted."

  As they passed into the arena, the Oracle shuddered a little bit and held on to him even tighter. Her arm around his feel like she was trying to reassure herself.

  They finally were in the seating where they could easily see the center of the arena without having to look too far. It was encouraging to him that they cleaned up so much and that the arena itself was not covered in blood, bodies or gore. He'd had too many nightmares about what the demons had done in the visions, and he was glad to be done with that part of his life.

  If he never saw a demon again, it would be too soon. It just didn't seem like that was going to be the case.

  The expansive Arena was an oval shape where every single person sitting down could see the grounds in the center.

  In the center of the grounds, a large circle had been dug more than ten feet deep, giving the impression that a cylinder of dirt had been removed. Underneath that, he could see the faint lines of what had to be a will construct of some sort. He'd never seen such a construct, but from what he could glean at least at that distance, someone had spent a lot of time setting it up.

  "You never mentioned anything about this. This looks like a teleportation anchor. Those are only theoretical. How did this get put in the arena?"

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Ludere shrugged. "I know as much as you know. The only thing I remember is that they appeared in a gate that was above there."

  “This work is so intricate. This…” Cire pulled out a scroll and began copying down the pattern. “It’s like a patchwork maze. How could they even set this up?”

  “Somehow this got placed underneath the arena and no one knew about this construct? I doubt it.”

  Cire looked up from her work, pausing her movement. “What’s the alternative? They built the whole arena around this? That’s… ridiculous. There’s no way that this much coordination happened around this.”

  They paused while she finished it. If anything the possibility that this had been created earlier than the arena and been hidden or later had some very stark implications. His mind turned over the possibilities that demons had snuck in and set up this will construct intentionally. It was either that or some huge conspiracy had been activated that had somehow let this happen nearly overnight.

  Incredible! Things were powerful with willpower combined with magic and human ingenuity but this? This begged the question as to how big this conspiracy could be.

  "No matter what we see here, there's only one thing that military is going to be able to say. There's only one thing they can say. The demons had to have planted this here. There's no other thing that would be palatable to the public," he said.

  "Do you think there's some other way that this could go?" The Oracle said. "I have to be honest I can't really see anything in here. Fate is giving me a whole lot of nothing. Just stepping into the arena was blinding."

  "You really can't see anything? I thought you just wanted to hold onto my arm. Allow me to be more of a gentleman. This is entirely uncalled for."

  Cire smirked. "Whoa. Ludere acting like a courtesan? Where have I heard this one before."

  Ludere would let that one wash over him. One didn't insult a Senators daughter directly.

  "If you need a look at my standard rental agreement, that can be arranged. I have many services for such a discerning customer."

  Cire was already pale. He could say that he was rocking her confidence then she grinned. The momentary slip of her mask was amusing to him. She tried so hard to appear proper but she was just as willing to do the things needed to get the mission done as he was. She just had that extra amount of baggage that came with having a father with a position that could afford her certain things.

  They sat there for several minutes while she sketched out the patterns on the construct. Ludere hadn't spent his time studying will construct but now he was going to do as much as he could to understand them. Everything was coming together.

  "If you would be so kind as you control your rental boy, Oracle I could get this all done. In fact. I think that we might have an issue."

  "I got you here behind what has to be a military blockade of people coming in and out. Now you're telling me that we've got an issue? Please, oh, scion of the empire, Will you enlighten us as to what is going on."

  The worst part about dealing with prefereti was that you had to deal with whatever they were trying to affect a change on. Ludere already knew that she ate a game in mind where he was going to go work for her father. He was going to be some sort of man on the inside. Her role had been the confidence woman, making sure that he stuck around. That if he hadn't already brought in a girlfriend that marriage would have been on the table.

  Even though he liked Cire, he wasn't going to leave his first love for nothing. Not without her telling him to make a lot of money off such a deal at least.

  "They've dug in. It's clear that this is not just a single flat square with a will contact on it. There's something else at work here. I can see that they've dug down a little bit and it looks like this might be the top of a cube."

  Ludere flashed back to their lessons from earlier that day. If you squinted it could look exactly like his idea of a the maze construct. He could picture it going down as far as it was wide and that would make sense. As an artifact it had to be from before the cataclysm. There was no other explanation. That throughout his old idea that this had been put in there before the arena.

  "I don't know how old this arena is. I think that this might be just like the maze cube if that's true."

  "I really wish I could see what you guys are talking about." The Oracle waved her hands out in front of her. "Nothing."

  "That's really unfortunate. Earlier today, our grammarian took us through this exercise with a will construct that I've never seen before. We fought each other in this miniature maze diagram thing that was three-dimensional."

  Cire continued scribbling. "Tell her I beat you more than half of the time."

  "Now you see you can control either one person that's trying to go through the maze or four antagonists that are trying to stop your advancement across the maze."

  "You can control four things at once with a will construct?" The Oracle held a hand to her mouth.

  "Not at once, but after a while it becomes a little more intuitive. To really get into it you have to uhh... See the results."

  The Oracle nodded. She was wearing her normal blindfold, underneath her curly dark hair. Ludere hated that she wore the blindfold out. It always picked her out from a crowd.

  He kept explaining the construct as they waited for Cire to finish.