“Yes,” Mike said as he stared at the new question on Haliard’s Identify screen.

  “Yes what?” Haliard asked before snatching his hand back and cursing. Mike had a new tab pop-up but was concerned enough for his friend that he ignored it.

  “What happened?”

  “The damnable tingle was bad enough that it hurt,” Haliard answered, shaking his hand. “And my fingers are numb.”

  “Sorry, I added you to my Party.”

  “What is a…” Haliard trailed off as he stared into space. His eyes started to flick, moving about. “Huh.”

  “Yeah.” Mike studied the new tab that had appeared on his screen. It was topped by Haliard’s name and had the same resources displayed that Mike had on his own. There was no damage indicator like Mike’s green body on this display. Instead, it was red bar alongside the green stamina and blue mana. He focused on the name plate, and it brought up Haliard’s Identify window like he had just seen with new information.

  Haliard Morgenstern

  Party Member 1/1

  Human/??

  Class: ??/?? Level: ??/??

  Health: ??/?? Stamina: ??/?? Mana: ??/??

  Status: Fatigued

  “Did you know that you are poisoned?” Haliard asked.

  “What?” Mike’s gut twisted as he spoke, reminding him of the consequences of his desire for power. “I’m not surprised. Can you see that?”

  “I can. The screen says… Hold on, it is asking me if I want to share it? How do I do that?”

  “Say ‘Yes.’ Or think it too, sometimes that works.”

  As he finished his sentence, Mike had a brand-new screen show up. The first thing he noticed is that it was a different color. The windows Mike had seen thus far had all had a slate gray background to them he found oddly comforting. The white text on it was easy to read. This new one from Haliard was forest green, with golden text that almost glowed.

  Michael Wilson

  Human

  Class: Mage Level: 2

  Health: 8/10 Stamina: 8/11 Mana: 14/14

  Status: Fatigued

  Finally, quantifiable data that I can actually use! Mike thought to himself. “I don’t see anything about being poisoned on here,” he said out loud.

  “The part at the bottom. Status. You are Fatigued and Poisoned.” Haliard gave a snort. “Saying those opened new information displays.”

  “I like calling them windows.”

  “Windows, then.” Haliard paused. “I can share the Fatigued one but not the Poisoned.”

  “Of course,” Mike said with a snort. A green window describing Fatigued popped up. “If I could know I was Poisoned, it wouldn’t work too well.”

  Fatigued:

  First Tier: Actions that drain Stamina drain additional Stamina.

  Duration: Until fully rested.

  “Can you read what the Poisoned is telling you?”

  “Poisoned. First Tier. Health regeneration is halted. Duration…” Haliard paused here as he winced. “Looks like you have three more hours to go.”

  Mike groaned at that, and the shifting of his stomach once again forced him to retreat to the toilet. He examined the Party window to see if there was any more information available, but there was nothing. Mike checked his Stats page, verifying that it was Charisma that increased his Party limit, but there were no hints on how to get more information.

  More things I need to level up to know.

  “This is strangely intimate,” Haliard said.

  “Especially since I am currently—”

  “Don’t mention that part!” Haliard sighed as Mike forced out a bitter laugh. “No, I mean the fact that you can see all my information laid out like that.”

  “I can’t. Something is preventing me from learning that about you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can see that my Class is Mage and my Level is two, right?” Mike finished up and came back around. Haliard was sitting on the floor with his legs splaying out in front of him. Mike sat on the bed, facing him. The cramped quarters were adding to the awkwardness.

  Haliard nodded. “What does mine say about me?”

  “Just a bunch of question marks. Your information is hidden from me.”

  “Hmm.” The two men lapsed into silence. Mike started to fall asleep before Haliard snapped him back awake by sleeping again.

  “It is more than the information on the screen. I’m getting a… sense of you. Like I picked up that you were nodding off.”

  “And just had to snap me out of it.”

  Haliard grinned and shrugged. “We do need to talk about this. I also get the sense that I can trust you.”

  “After I freed you from magical slavery,” Mike said with a snort.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Thank you for that, by the way. I’ll let you know stuff about me. Not the Class and Level stuff, that seems to be part of your kit. I’ve never thought of myself having a class, but if I did, it would almost certainly be…”

  He trailed off. Mike knew from conversations with the other gladiators a bit about Haliard, but not much. It had only been a day; there had been so much to learn that he hadn’t had a chance to get important questions.

  “Survivor. It’s what I do. I… survive.” Haliard had his hands in front of him, gazing at them as he thought about what to say. Mike leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he studied the other man.

  He wasn’t tall, wasn’t overly muscular. The older man’s thick hair and beard had more gray than the black that shone through. What Mike kept coming back to was the total absence of scars. All the other gladiators had them.

  At least the flesh and blood ones, I don’t know how Sum would scar.

  “How long have you been a gladiator?” Mike didn’t want the openness between them to fade.

  “Eighty years? Something like that. I was captured by Master Eric’s father in a border raid.”

  “You must have been so young,” Mike said, surprised. The color of Haliard’s hair hinted to him being older, but his smooth skin, muscularity, and the way he moved during training today made Mike think he had to be much younger.

  “Haha.” There was bitterness in Haliard’s voice. “The only reason they caught me was because I was sloppy drunk. They caught me mourning my wife.” He paused here. “Who had died of old age.”

  A few seconds of silence as Mike digested that. There was something in him that knew Haliard was telling the truth. Is that the vague sense the Party gives Haliard?

  “How old are you?” he asked gently. Haliard continued to study his hands in silence.

  “I don’t know. Not anymore. Millennia, at the minimum.” Mike thought he might be joking, but there was a bone-deep weariness in his tone that wasn’t just because of his lack of sleep. Mike could see it in his eyes now, the exhaustion he carried beneath the jovial attitude. The psychological weight of all that time was enough to convince Mike that Haliard was ancient. “I try to count them every once in a while, but I always lose count eventually.”

  “You can’t die?”

  “No,” Haliard answered with a harsh laugh. “I… survive. I’ve even lost count of the number of times I’ve been wed. All those people, I had to watch them age and die. Or worse…”

  Mike didn’t want to think of what that worse could be. Slide wasn’t a place of peace and ease, not that he had seen so far. The things that Haliard had seen…

  “No children, at least. Whatever I am has spared me having to watch my own flesh and blood die.”

  “That’s… good.” Mike didn’t know how to comfort his friend, not with this. The enormity of what Haliard was telling him was beyond what Mike could comprehend. In his exhausted and poisoned state, he couldn’t imagine how to respond.

  “None of the others know, not really. They know I am old, but not how old.”

  “I’ll keep your secrets. You can trust me.”

  “I know I can.” Haliard smiled at this. A tired smile, but a real one. “Now I can feel it. Come on.” At this, he rose. Mike could almost see him push away the weight of those years. “We need to get to sleep.”

  “Right, we have training in the morning.”

  “Yes, we do. And now that I owe you big time, I’m going to put in my best effort.”

  Mike lay back in bed with a groan, pulling a laugh out of Haliard. Some of the tension in the room had been dissolved, but Mike had new things to mull over.

  His greatest ally in this new world had become a massive mystery. Even though he knew he could trust Haliard, Mike still had to worry. Not just about the man, but what they would do when they were free from here. Would Mike become another of the unnumbered companions that had fallen as the man continued on? Could he do that to his friend? Or was it better to keep his distance, so that inevitability didn’t hurt as much?

  At some point during his musing, Mike fell asleep. Between the thoughts stirring in his mind and the slow poison in his guts, he slept poorly. He was glad to find that his stomach was much better. He was more delighted to find out that he had gotten the poison resistance he had wished for at some point while he slept.

  Minor Poison Resistance

  Your ability to nullify poisons and toxins are increased a small amount.

  “That is going to be a fun one to level up,” Mike muttered to himself as he performed his morning ablutions.

  “Did you discover a new thing?” Haliard asked as he came back into the room. His hair was slick from a shower, and he was slightly muffled as he toweled it off. “I can see that you’re not poisoned anymore. Or fatigued.”

  “Yup, sometime last night I managed to fight the poison off enough that I gained a Skill from resisting it.”

  “You didn’t really resist it, did you? You more… survived it.” Haliard gave a rueful laugh. “Come on, let’s get breakfast and get to training.”

  The morning meal was much the same as yesterday, but Sum did not join them. Haliard explained that the Bluringtons gave them the day off after a bout.

  “It is pretty nice of them,” Aaron admitted. “Lots of the other families throw you back into it.”

  “What does he even do in there?”

  “We don’t know,” Karl said with a shrug. “None of our business, really.”

  “He’ll be out later on to eat sunlight.” Haliard rose as he spoke. “And we should already be training by then.”

  There was none of the melancholy Mike had seen in his friend last night. He presented joy and excitement. Their groans were answered with enthusiastic calls to better themselves as Haliard cleaned up his breakfast.

  Outside, Haliard led them through a warm-up jog and stretches before starting more intense calisthenics. Mike thought either the new-found bond between them or the rough night he had would have bought him some sympathetic easing of the exercise, but there was none. Haliard pushed him just as hard as the other gladiators.

  Mike was mollified somewhat by the fact that Haliard threw himself into the exercises harder than the others. He ran two laps for every one the other men ran, since he kept running to each of them to offer encouragement and pointers.

  Mike staggered through the motions at first but soon found the drive to push himself. During a session of high-knees, Mike’s Stamina bar finally emptied. He fell sideways, the bizarre tingling and stretching across his body making him lose control. As soon as he landed, Haliard was beside him with a cup of cool water.

  “I saw your bar was close to empty,” he whispered as he leaned in close to Mike. “Good work pushing yourself.”

  “Thanks,” Mike managed to gasp out around sips of water. He checked out the Party interface where Haliard’s stamina hadn’t dropped by a tenth yet. “Same to you.”

  Haliard smiled at the sarcasm and offered Mike his hand. “Come on, a change is a good as a rest. At least keep walking while you catch your breath.”

  Mike walked in a circle while the rest of the men continued to exercise. He was surprised that none of them shot him looks or resentment as he took a few minutes of ease before joining back in. Once they were running again, he asked Aaron about it.

  “It is obvious to us that you are really pushing yourself,” he answered. He shrugged while running beside Mike. “That is all we ask from each other. That we all do our best.”

  “Got to get better,” Mike managed to pant out. “Just to get through the day.”

  “Exactly.”

  “If you can talk, you can run faster,” Haliard said as he passed the two men. Both shot each other a commiserating look and sped up.

  The first three hours of the morning passed with them changing exercises, with the men dropping out as they needed a rest. Mike didn’t get another upgrade to his Stamina, as it was unable to fill back to its maximum. He did already feel gains over where he was just the day before, though.

  They then settled into a series of stretches that reminded Mike of yoga. He had taken a few classes during his occasional drives to self-improvement, but the positions were unfamiliar to him. Haliard would pop up to correct the occasional mistake and fix a position, then drop down next to whoever he had been helping.

  Sum came out while they were relaxing this way. The floating crystal didn’t seem to react to the cheers and whistles of the gladiators congratulating him on his victory, but he did come over to watch them train.

  “It was a foregone conclusion. You fleshy lifeforms are no match for my might.” The colors of the sun refracted through Sum as he stopped, painting him all the colors of a sunset.

  “That was a plant, they don’t have flesh,” Aaron pointed out.

  “It all cuts the same.” Sum’s comment was met with light-hearted groans.

  Lunch came after the stretching, with a repeat of the meal from the day before. Aaron asked Mike to bring Bandit out during the meal, which all the other men quickly agreed with. When Mike brought up the spell window, there were two changes.

  The first was the upgrade, which he had forgotten about with the stress of last night. He flicked back and forth between the two, noting the second big difference.

  There were actual, quantifiable mana values assigned to the spells. Mike was eager to check out the rest of the spells he had available, but first he had to choose what to do with Conjure Ally.