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The sound of the crowd’s cheering reaches a deafening crescendo as the last full-body hurl of your greatsword manages to just tear a Wanderer’s body clean in half, the force released by your small arms propelling you along with the arc of the blade. It leaves you titling off balance ever so slightly, before the thick blade lodging into the ground creates a makeshift support to push on to in front of you.
A small huff escapes as the toe of your worn boot stumbles at the last evaporating parts of your now-defeated foe, and it's only one small shuffle to lean a weary elbow against blood and metal. You take a second, almost foolishly, to let the adrenaline shoot through you to the floor like lightning as you acclimate to the thundering roar of people up in the spectators seats. You feel the heated metal from cool gradually under slick and bloodied skin as the wind begins to flow through the arena, stilling metaflux no longer brushing over your moving form like the blast of an opened oven, and open your eyes at the sound of familiarly calm footsteps padding heavily towards your resting form.
They resonate clearly in your ears over the spectators and commentators, a calming metronome that guides the skipping beats of your young heart to a steady rhythm, and you breathe in deep as you pivot to meet the gaze of your partner in the open ring. He’s got his usual confident swagger to him, clawed hand resting a single thumb in the pocket of his combat leathers before he spins on a heel to rest a matching elbow on the unoccupied cross-guard. The young boy puts on a goading smile as he tilts his head down to meet your gaze early, and the shadow left by his slightly out of breath form grants welcomed shade from the glaring sun. You offer a quick tilt of the lips in turn as you adjust to meet his taunting height, not willing to let him get too confident after today’s match for survival.
“You’re a Cheat.” You say, petulant like the child you are as if he had snatched a snack from your fingertips the moment you were about to bite down, and it elicits a smirk from him in return. You suppose that's exactly it.
“A Cheat?” He echoes back to you with a playful tilt to enunciated ‘t’, and you narrowly avoid the attempt he makes to pinch your scraped cheek with his claws by the swerve of your head before you shift to begin prying the supporting blade from the floor.
“Yes, a Cheat.” You repeat. The sound of that colossal wolf-like Wanderer roaring right into his pinned face earlier in the day must've messed up his ears you think, but you’re kind enough even exhausted to ever-so-nicely make it easy for him to comprehend. “Playing dumb is below you, Sylus.”
The comment comes out sharp as you get a decent grip on that far too large sword loaned to you by the arena’s organisers, longer than you are tall with the handle as thick as your bicep. Calloused hands find a familiar place on it, as you plant a heavy foot into the dry earth and pull upwards, but the weight of Sylus’ arm keeps it from fully leaving the ground. You throw him a look at his obvious attempt to annoy you for sport, and kick a tired foot at the spot just above a half-healed claw wound. The impact gets him to relent, albeit at the cost of him yanking the greatsword out oh-so-kindly for you, and twirling it over his shoulder as if it were a toothpick.
“Cheating would mean I’d have broken one of the many rules set by our…” He pauses in his haughty commentary, tapping the flat end of the blade of his ever-widening shoulder as he goes through this growth spurt of his, “oh-so-magnanimous hosts.” The descriptor leaves his lips with a sour tone and twitch of his eyebrow, and he doesn't need to signal for you as your body naturally follows him. His guiding walk draws the two of you through the gate at the edge of the arena, metal gate suspended once more with your verified victory. You trail like a shadow, feet in sync with his heavy steps, and even as the harsh sun of the arena gets quickly swallowed by the tunnels that lead to where the two of you are permitted to stay, the dark trail does nothing to obscure Sylus from you. The glint of your greatsword leaves sharp flicks of lingering light, unnecessary signals to his moving frame, but you feel him in front of you anyways. Like two grape vines winding up towards the sun, like the overlapping spools of a spider’s web, you feel the two of you in your being.
A small red beacon in the lowlight catches your attention, his head turned towards you lets you see the fond scarlet glow of his eye as you continue the gentle walk to rest and recuperate until the cycle of survival continues. He smiles at the eye contact, and you make a face at him, knowing he’s up to something.
“And I don't recall breaking any of those rules” He continues, satisfied at having the entirety of your attention again, greedy to take up all of your senses when alone. “Unless you have a case against me, No.2?” The gentle challenge succeeds in reigniting the indignance he’s made himself so skilled in stoking within you like a fox that’s always biting at its friend’s tail.
You let out a click at him, and pick up the pace to join the side free of your claymore, and he slows just a tad to meet you in return. The change in formation leads the two of you to candlelit hallways, fresh air coming in from openings in the old brickwork to alleviate the floating arena’s hot climate. Turning to face the cosmic breeze has you looking up at Sylus once more, and you take a second to admire his maturing features against the speckled nebula that envelops the both of you here. Plumes of cosmic gas and dust leave pearlescent streaks of rich colour on his tanned skin, dancing on the bronze peaks of his sharpening cheekbones and scattering like fine specks of paint pigments. He’s losing some of that sweet puppy fat on his face, you realise, and decide it’s his increasing muscle over the endless march of time aging the both of you here. You can see the remnants of his rounder cheeks as you pass a low-hanging candelabra, the light hitting his face in just the right way to take the stress and exhaustion from his face.
Sylus, if he does notice the pause in conversation (which he does, he notices everything when it comes to you), doesn't make a comment of it. He lets the quiet moment sit as your bodies wander the halls on autopilot to provide returnal indulgence, he takes his time letting his eyes wander down your blood covered face, commits the softness of your young cheeks burn itself into his eyes and soul. He sees the way you pinch the inner corners of your eyes to focus on him, the cute draw of your eyebrows as you recall the him of months prior, and makes effort to relax his jaw to smooth down the growing edges of his face. A small pur resonates in his chest as he sees the cogs behind you young eyes relax, and he corrects his posture to gain just a few inches above you once more before you decide to pick up the flow of words.
“You keep stealing my points, just because I said you're still allowed to be my partner out there doesn't mean I said you can continue sabotaging me.” There's a puff to your cheeks as you reprimand him, recalling how he’s been making a habit of blocking blows meant for you and counter attacking enemies already on their last leg. Conveniently taking the kill, and conveniently taking the points you had worked hard to chip away at. You knock a fist at him, gently, and he nudges his bare arm back into you like a cat hedbutting a petting hand, before you pick up the pace to stomp ahead. “I had it out there today, perhaps you need to work on your ability to figure out which enemies are your own size.” The tease comes with you twirling around mid-pace, walking backwards in front of him with arms swinging like free ribbons with the momentum. And a hand coated in now dried blood raises to point fingers too calloused for a young kid your age at his fond expression. “Or face it, you need me to weaken all these guys for you.”
“Oh, perhaps there's some truth to that.” He adds unhelpfully, with a contemplative rumble to his voice, and you've never wished for any moment for his pubescent voice to crack than now. Whether he’s admitting to taking your kills on purpose or wanting to share as many encounters with you as possible, it'll take far too long to figure out, and you roll his eyes at his evasiveness as the corridors of the arena’s back halls lead to the armoury. The heavy iron door is closed as protocol dictates when the games go on, and you cross your arms as you move to the side of the hallway with a few dried flakes of blood sprinkling onto the cold stone.
He stares at you and your positioning, a tilt to his head like a curious lion, and the smooth shifting tosses his loose hair as he angles himself towards you like a comet caught in a planet’s gravitational field. He gets a shrug in response, and a charitable nod of your head towards the door, as you lean your back onto cold stone. There's a sound of disbelief from his throat as you quip back at him, “Since you have no regrets about stealing from me, the least you can do is work off your debt,” and he's already moving to open the big door for the two of you; swinging it open wide and adding a courtly bow as he makes way for you to move through it. As you pass through you take the opportunity to ruffle his head in thanks before he's straightened up to full height, removing your hand just as quickly as he bends to try and nip your fingers in response. His unreasonable growth spurt at least has the positive of creating more and more distance between you and his snappy mouth. He reminds you of those reptilian Wanderers left in the running waterways outside the grandiose architecture that cages the two of you here.
A deep sigh leaves your frame as you migrate out of your bubble to the sterile weaponry room, and you hobble in towards the benches as your eyes wander. Claymores like yours, thin swords, axes, and shields are all of mediocre quality- only those at the top of the rankings in this floating rock get weapons of any meaningful craftsmanship, some sort of investment for the shows that bring in the real punters. And you lick the lips at the memory of a greatsword you saw getting swung around a few weeks prior. Red like rubies and made from some lightweight metal, it would get you leagues further than the thing that Sylus has twirled off of his shoulder to rest in the display pegs on the wall lit by sunlight. You see him, even with his added inches, struggle to set the blade just right, and admire the soft ruby-dark tendrils that wrap around the tips of the cross guard to gently lower it in place. He’s been getting better at that, you think, less volatile screeches of energy that lash out sounding like high-pitched bird song compared to this near-silent hissing of smoke.
The energy tendrils disappear gently. As the cross guard sits secure on its mount and the pupils of his carmine eyes retract into slits, he turns to one of the streaks of light that filter through the wall. A sharp hand raises to shield his sensitive eyes from the cool-toned light of the vast nebula, painting his delicate irises a gentle shade of garnet. It's hardly a second before his gaze snaps to you, and he's walking over to where you've sat yourself with a level of energy you're surprised hasn't been robbed from him after the trials thrown at the two of you today. A hip props against the side of the table your back rests against, and he's scanning you over in that silent way he always does, alert like a hawk in the air.
“Does it hurt?” He asks simply, tone flat and distant like a lake in the distance, as he continues to glance down at the rips gained in the scuffles. First is the scrape by the ankle, shallow and wide, then a cut made by a razor-edged limb on the leg, and a few more dancing along your exposed arm and face until the final one that sits on the centre of your forehead. Encased by blood-matted hair that parts for it like a framed canvas, you see the way Sylus’ eyes linger there just a bit before huffing to himself in exacerbation. Always acting like it's you who forces him to hover like a mother hen. Before a response is even formulated, leather trousers creak slightly at the movement of his legs bending to kneel and his hand gripping the bench. It's funny how he asks, when he knows intimately each strike that befalled your small form- each strike he failed to intercept, but your impulsive and childish focus on your second placing today makes you dance around the answer you know he wants.
“Not as much as the pain of my swiped victory.” You whisper to the older boy, words gently dancing through the short distance between you, and you blow a little puff of air at his stray wisps of white hair below your eye level. They twinkle, the parts unstained by blood, like gentle wind chimes in winter and it takes almost everything in you to not fiddle with the ones that drape long enough to his eyelids. “Fifteen whole points, you stole. You fiend.”
He flicks his gaze back up to meet yours, warm and protective in the shadow of that infinite nebula, a guiding star amongst endless clouds; and you breathe in gratitude that your joint performance of the day was the last of the local cycle, the other children still alive here leave Sylus stern and alert like a snake hiding in the underbrush. A faint twitch of his right eye marks the beginning of a meandering hum, taking the inside of his mouth between teeth and rattling his head slightly before he swallows and opens bloodstained lips to speak.
“If it makes you feel any better, I meant to pinch 16-”
“So you admit you were cheat-”
“I admit,” He says low and humorous as he interrupts you, “That you managed to herd one back to your name.” Gaze floating back to your wounds, he stands and waltzes quickly to the other end of the room where the utility cabinets sit where he pulls the doors without much care, and returns swiftly with some basic box of supplies and kneels once more. You vaguely recognise the materials, gauzes and patches and various fluids. It’s mainly the apathetic medical staff in the arena that deal with the young gladiators, and you never like looking at them fix you like some chipped puppet for the next day’s show. You can tell from the way Sylus fails to hide the disgust that crinkles his nose like a wad of paper in the hands of a frustrated writer that it's a cleaning solution made from Willow Bark, and you huff at him for his childish stubbornness to administer it himself. A large clawed hand takes a stick with a large cotton swab at the end, pillowy like a cloud, and dips it in the milky white liquid stored in some thin glass vial. He has to brace himself for a moment, eyes shut at the intensity of the smell, and blinks his eyes open before using some energy tendrils to seal the pesky thing shut and place it far away from him.
He dabs the disinfectant onto your skin with a delicacy similar to how you've seen the wives of those rich putters powder their sweating faces under the sun between dodging for your life, and you do everything you can to keep still for your one and only friend as he leans in closer to make sure no dot of skin is left unattended to. No need to keep him here with his nose burning longer than necessary. Nummed to the pain, the cotton feels like a petal kissing your skin and you have another small chuckle to yourself. You’ve offered to return the service before, before you stuck your hand out to seal the deal of partnering up in this game, and it earned you the show of his EVOL healing him instantly. Preferring to risk running his energy supply too low instead of having that smell stick to his skin for god knows how long.
You look down again to his dutiful check-up on you, and find that you’ve already got his once free hand in your hold during your brief reminiscing, a small increase in grip strength when the cotton bud presses on a raw cut, and you just manage to catch the smile on his cracked lips from the way an uneven nail of yours digs into his dry skin. You see the little white crescent left from the friction, and get to work on angling your fingertip to imprint a smiley face with a few more presses before speaking up once more.
“You don't have to do this for me, you know .” You say with no spark to it, the second closed-crescent now stamped onto his wrist by the first. “I can do it.”
“I know.” Sylus responds calmly, moving to dab the antiseptic to the arm that's not using him like a pin cushion. “But you’re tired.”
“And you're not?”
There's no formulated response, a small ‘hmph’ at most, and the window of transparency that closes as quick as it opens with him makes you nudge your foot back at that same cut in his leg again. You don't even hit it in truth, the toe of your shoe hitting half a calf away, but he retaliates as normal by pressing the swab just a tad more into the mark on your shoulder. It's some sort of net zero, and you drop it.
“I don't get it then.” You say at the end of a deep sigh outwards, twisting your wrist to begin stamping in the wide smile on his skin, “You steal my points so easily, me being tired should be what you want.”
“It’s not fun if it’s too easy.” Sylus returns as he works to saturate the cotton with willow bark salve with the only remaining spots to dab being on your face. “Plus, I keep up with you, don't I? The total points between us stays the same.”
It clicks then, as far as he’s concerned, there's no difference to the name above the tally. Like the Wanderer’s that position you between their allies, Sylus herds them in return to the seat of most efficiency. It brings you back to another duo out in the ring a few cycles back. Some poor shrimp of a boy bullied into joining someone else once the paired fights commences, feeble in body but strong in the arcane, he was brought in to cover the weak spots of the knucklehead that dragged him along. Wanderer’s too lithe for his slow swings melted like ice under the sun, and the two of them managed to just collect enough points to pass preliminaries. The next fight proved different, whilst the team had hit the 300 mark, the knucklehead’s 75 had earned him aggro far too relentless to be coincidence. You saw him fall victim to vicious slices from dancing enemies, and the lone survivor robbed of enough backup to finish the fight. Your eyebrows pinch, part in concentration, part in the overwhelming stench of the salve right by your nose, as you think back to the blurry leaderboard suspended after your fight. 165-135.
It would've been a flat 150-150 without his “herding”, still stealing if anyone were to ask. But you only remember ten times he used himself as a shield. There's five times you don’t recall, and the rush of the moment fogs any attempt at figuring out when they occurred. It only took one unguarded moment when that last-stand caster fell at the 115 mark in their second match together, and there's a small hum of appreciation when you realise the rook Sylus has moved on your behalf.
“Okay. Maybe not a Cheat. A…..” You stumble as you mull the word over, eyes darting up to rack your brain for an alternative, something one of those too opulent spectators have babbled on with in their endless chittering. “Borrower…” It doesn't come out confident, the notes wobble and end with a questioning tilt, and you regret letting his thieving behaviour off the hook as he smirks whilst gently brushing a strand of hair back to leave a small cut bare. You won't be able to snatch that softer title back now that you've said it, so you give him a firm press into the final part of your art piece on his wrist with it.
He preens at your understanding, you see it through the gleam of his ruby eyes, and you think how lucky it is that your partner is the one acting so content at your relenting- any other kid here wouldn't have been brave enough to challenge your judgment in the first place. The smell of the willow bark is tempered by Sylus’ closeness, one knee of his now resting on the bench you sit on and his warm breaths hitting the top of your bloodstained hair. Blood permeates the two of you, both in dire need of the small baths to wash it off, but his notes of smoke and roasted berries come to the front regardless. It’s sweet and comforting, like the faint wafts of those tart treats the audience snack on whilst you just barely escape oblivion from the edge of the blade. Sylus is sweeter, better though, free from the gauche saturation of citrine glazes that stick to fingers and dry brittle. He gifts the smell of ripe berries on the branch and vines warmed by sunlight and cosmic heat. The tilt of your head upwards is to allow him easy access to that final scar right in the middle of your forehead, rather than indulgence you echo in your head.
The arm marked by your little masterpiece comes up to plant its large scaled hand on the side of your face, ear cupped between the crook of his thumb and pointer-claw, warmth permeating the skin he touches. It lulls you into stillness, no sound but the synced breathes. You breathe in, Sylus breathes out. And he cleans that thin cut on your forehead like a conservator does a priceless painting. His eyes remain on the cut, eyebrows pinched in boy-ish concentration, and the reflection of light against your skin and hair paint new hues into his carmine irises, tinting them like thin paint wash. The swab finishes its final strokes, each little wound numbed for the night even if the baths wash the majority off, and you flick your eyes down before Sylus finishes. He doesn’t linger after that, granting you your space, and you see him rapidly heal himself as you pick up the swab to put it away. As if you were silly enough to use the one covered in your blood right onto his scrapes. The little box gets put away quickly, an EVOL opens the cabinet doors on your behalf, and as you stand with hands braced on knees for extra support you see your partner already leaning on the side of the open door.
The self-healing has eliminated that slight uneven gait he’s had since the final blow was dealt in the arena, and you let out a little breath at it. Sylus stops inspecting his bloody claws at the sound, and starts moving towards the baths, confident in your following. The hallways here sit along the outermost walls of the suspended rock that the colosseum calls home. Sharp ornate rock spires and intricate buildings sit amongst gauche statues of beasts felled at some point in time. They look like they've been meticulously carved from the land itself, every inch of air a result of mining at a rock much larger than the final result, and you feel a pang of sympathy at the land, a pang of empathy at the way the arena chips away at you.
You slow your walk along the railings, always taking time to stare from the edge of this cage. Hands gripping stone, you push yourself up against it to peer down. It pushes a little huff at the effort, muscles still tired from relentless enemies, but the salve mellows the worst of it as you point your head downwards. The streams of putters and spectators far below, moving like a school of fish amongst sea anemones, rich dyed clothes matching the far reaches of cosmic dust above them. And you're stunted by just how close, but far, freedom is.
The obvious answer is winning the colosseum’s obscene tournament, letting the Wanderer’s whittle down the participants until small enough to pit them against each other. But that's tens of local cycles, tens of opportunities for slip ups, tens of opportunities for failure. The most immediate option is a break for it, balt over the railing right now down multiple floors and break your legs in the process, before some form of security comes to collect you and patch you up back in the resting rooms. To fight crawling. Or they’ll let the roaming Wanderer’s get to you first down there. They're both frustrating answers, and it makes indignation and rage bubble within you. Knuckles turning white in the parts not encased in blood, you let out a huff and turn with a push back to your partner, who waits watching by the doors to the baths. Sylus says nothing, but the glow in his right eye validates your frustrations, shows you how you both simmer in refusal to submit.
He’s already opened the door by the time you cross the last of the open air walkway, gentle boy that he is, and turns to close and lock the door after both of you are left in. It's a bit of a mess, the baths, and whilst being the last fighters of the day means peace and quiet in the armory- it also means the baths have been properly used before you can even step in. The dwindling numbers of you left after preliminaries means that at the very least, four of the tubs keep their lids on and remain untouched, and Sylus pads along after you to the big one around a ceramic walled corner. There's no shame in bathing together between you, having been by each other's sides before you could crawl, having the same soul that waxes and wanes within the fabric of your beings; and there's only the drips of wet towels hanging that hit the stone floor as you both clinically strip, settling in a comfortable vulnerability and intimacy alone. He offers a hand to balance you as you get into the still warm water, and after settling on a raised part below the surface, you offer the same as he steps in. You see the brunt of his scars here, healed, but slightly visible when the light hits them just right, and you press a gentle palm to his shoulder to get him to turn around. A tilt of his eyebrows finds you as you busy your other hand with collecting the soap and scrub, before he relents and kneels under water, his upper half bared in the air.
You get to work slowly, gently, with the soap lathered scrub moving in small circles on the top of his shoulders, and watch as the pale bubbles slowly trickle down young muscle. There's a slight shiver to his skin as you complete a swipe upwards, like a cat’s body recoiling after you pet its fur, and you start humming an old tune as you sink into a comfortable rhythm. The song coming from your lips moves the water around you, rippling gently towards Sylus now relaxed form. You can't see what he's doing, back fully towards you as the blood gradually gets wiped off and dyes the water red-orange tone, but the slight angle to his head makes you think he's sitting with lidded eyes. Allowing the soothing melody to float through him whilst keeping up as much alertness despite the security of these spaces.You spot a notably stubborn fleck of dried blood and use a nail just over the tip of your finger to scratch it off. It falls off with a tiny ‘plonk’ noise, in time with the end of a melody, before settling into obscurity.
Moments pass as you continue those little hums as you work, noticing halfway through washing Sylus’ skin that he's raised an arm to rest against the rim of the tub, clawed fingers tapping just off beat to your voice. He almost catches your beat by the time you've gotten to his hair, in which a quick double tap to his shoulder signals for him to turn around so you can get your hands into his hair properly. His taller form sloshes the water slightly, and you draw your knees closer to you to make room for his swivel, before he sits cross legged in front of you. It’s just the right height for you to work through all the strands, unfortunately clipped shorter with your prolonged stay here, not wanting to give any clawed creatures something to grab onto. As a finger gets behind his ear to wash the short strands, soap sitting on the top of his skin, you feel him begin to purr before you hear it. The rumbling sinks into your hand and moves through the water by his chest with each scritch to his scalp and nape, and the petulant snap of his eyes open as you stop gives birth to a smirk on your lips.
“Sorry,” You drag out with a tone of amusement, “Thieves don't get extra for free.” And the faux-glare from his beautifully sharp eyes almost have you give in, endlessly fond of your partner.
“I thought I was a borrower, is this not established?”
“You're a borrower when I say so, and also a cheat and a thief when I say so. Pretty simple I think.”
He’s halfway to moving your hand back to his head, as he lets out a deep ‘hmph’ at your rescindment of what he believes is a hard earned reward for his work before it cracks into this high pitch, and freezes with your wrist suspended by his hand. The calm breaks instantly, like a glass shattering on the floor, and Sylus’ hands fly to cover your mouth before your whole-body laughter breaks into the air of the baths. It's delightful and vindictive, the joy at his pubescent finally cracking in the moment. It unfurls in your chest like a night-blooming cereus, bursting with life, and spreads to the rest of your body like light filtering in through the clouds. Gentle hands release from your mouth, greedy ears deciding to hear every second of your joyous laughter echo in the humid baths, and you fall forward in elation. Bodies knock together as you sink to the lowest underwater platform, head slotting in perfectly to the space between his neck and shoulder.
Sylus continues to grumble at your joy, thankful for the embrace blocking his reddened face and ears from your view as you shake with laughter before he clears his traitorous throat and twists you around by the arms. One hand eventually takes up the task of hovering under your chin to guard from any stray droplets that risk flying into your laughing face before you settle to a calm giggle. He watches your head turn back to him, smile wide and eyes full of light before casting an exasperated smile back to you. Not before a small flick to the nose, he places one large clawed hand right on the top of your head, twisting you like a screw top to a bottle so he can begin washing your hair in return. You try to bite his fingers in response, but it’s too small a window of opportunity to clamp even the obsidian tip of a claw before you find the ceramic tiles of the wall all you can see.
The room’s steamed up ever-so-slight in your indulgent bathing sessions, and luckily the arena’s staff don’t care to herd you harshly as long as you stay within the permitted faculties, so you decide to stay until it fogs up more. Tendrils of steam swirl in your vision as Sylus slowly works out the knots of bloodied hair and tangles of grime with sweet smelling soap, pulling gently from the ends and lifting a palmful of water to wash over you. It feels nice, nice enough to forget the rocky expanse outside these walls, and you purr in response to a claw scratching at the front of your scalp. Time feels infinite and instantaneous by the time your partner cups that final flow of water over your head, the warm stream falls over your face like a gentle waterfall; but the slight twinge of the salve’s numbing effect wearing off snap you back to the moment, and you hear Sylus make a small noise of complaint with the shake of your head, not terribly dissimilar to that of a wet dog.
He gets out before you this time, patting at his face where the stray droplets landed on his lax features, before he opens up the lid to the second tub besides the blood-tinted one you begin clambering out of. It’s a cold bath, the other one, meant for quick rinsing and rapid cleaning, and you're thankful for the way the chilly waters will keep you alert on the walk back to the bunks. The danger sits out in the arena, and whilst none of the other kids care for mindless goading, you've been picking up on your partner’s dislike for leaving vulnerable spots out when there could be prying eyes. Neither of you talk in these cold waters, not like they create a chatty atmosphere, but it settles the two of you into a near-robotic efficiency in the final cleansing of the body before towels tap to dry and placeholder clothes are swiftly donned.
You turn your head to him as you finish tying the cloth belt looped to your shirt, and see him languidly roll his neck with a sigh. Noting that the tiredness he danced around is starting to manifest, you take the lead out the baths and catch his hand in yours, smiling at the way he instantly entwines his larger fingers with yours. Steps quickly fall into sync once more, and as you begin to hear the small fragments of noise. Thuds of the guards weapons, hushed noises of Wanderers kept below, and the chitter of the other young gladiators gently tickle your ear; and you don't need to look back to know Sylus has retreated to that impassive visage. Stern lipped and harsh gaze keeping watch over the top of your head like a dragon protecting its hoard.
There's a mean look cast your way the moment you turn the corner to the lackluster corridor that all the gladiators lodge from. Guards covered head to toe in a material you haven't had the time to learn about, every feature obscured and removed from your weary eyes. Does the barrier absolve them, you wish to ask, does the encasement between them grant immunity to the games they enable you to play– to survive? No matter the answer, you know it would only aid in frustrating you further. If sympathy were enough to rid you of this fight to live, the sickly cries from the audience would have stopped it in its entirety years ago. So you slow before the door that signals the small room you share with Sylus, and wait for that masked guard to unlatch the heavy iron lock in front of you.
It clangs heavy, metal clashing with the force of the guard’s armoured hand, and it swings open without care, Sylus’ hand still in yours pulling you back to avoid the scrape of blunt wood and metal against your nose. He casts one heavy stare at the figure that makes even his growing frame look small, before a free arm acts as barrier once more whilst he ushers you in, elbow acting as a last defense against any possible door slammed into you.
The small window in your shared room lets in a small square of the nebula illuminate your bare-basic room, blues and purple tints featuring along the square’s edge onto the floor. And It’s only after the oppressive door slams shut that Sylus lets his gaze return to you. He watches silently as you lift your gaze to the window, and rubs a thumb gently as he sees you get lost in the endless expanse of survival awaiting you. A talon slides safely against your knuckle as he promises victory and freedom to the echoes of your shared soul, and feels it release tension as you squeeze his hand in return. He will ensure you make it out of here, he feels you know it to be true.