Iraltiphos watched the creature’s reaction with a grin. The longer the awkward silence dragged on, the wider his grin became. By the time the creature responded with his own bit of sarcasm, he began laughing so hard that it was at first silent. Ever since his death sentence, he had given up on caring and if he caused enough trouble to meet his end sooner, it would have been a victory for him. With his collar and restraints, the creature could have easily killed him if he wanted to, but instead he played along. Iralitphos understood now that they needed to both be alive at the end of the battles, or they would both lose. He could tell his partner wanted to get right down to business, and he didn’t know how else to react but to laugh. There truly is a way out of here, he thought. I could have been paired with any one of the dimwits here, but I got the dragon that can speak sarcasm and bullshit.

“Sorry, I uh…,” he began, his laughter subsiding. “A trick. Like, you breathe fire right? Is that what the tube is for? To prevent you from doing that?” he asked, glancing at the wall the tube was coming from. “You see, I punch things,” he said, clanging the chains restricting his hands. “So hard, in fact, that I’m not even allowed to move freely anymore.”

He cleared his throat and looked around the cell awkwardly. He felt like he was waking up from a long dream and still needed to adjust to reality. Maybe there was a catch. Maybe even after they won, they’d be killed like the rest of them. “Fighting is my life,” he said, as though responding to his own hypothetical. “Part of why I’m here is because some lunatic tried to take that away from me, but that’s neither here nor there. How does this crap work? How many do we have to fight and when do we start? How do we know they will fulfill their promise to let us go? What if you get killed in a battle that I won by myself?”

He wasn’t new to relying on others to some degree to get things done, but he knew nothing about this one. Despite the collar, he could still determine how strong he was and wasn’t disappointed, but he valued skill just as much. “My name is Iraltiphos, by the way. I know, unpronounceable. Most just call me Iral anyway.”