Chase buckled the collar of his overly flashy ivory armor, leaning against the stone brick wall of the small locker room.
Beyond the walls around him as well as the gates that would soon lift... Bringing forth another battle, Chase could hear the faint roars beyond the thick walls that deafened them.
He exhaled, steeling his nerves as he awaited Equan's arrival which was starting to get later and later, making Chase worry that he would have to solo this battle.
However, as he found himself worrying about Equan's arrival, he started to feel angered by a strange nuisance that he had only just now noticed.
There was an eerie and repetitive knocking coming from the floor below, and it was just quiet enough as to where you could only hear it when you didn't want to hear it, and only not hear it when you were actually trying to hear it.
It was as if someone was gently tapping on some sort of hollow metal pipe.
Chase had been trying to focus and prepare for the battle when he had first heard it, and it only took a couple of minutes for it to truly get annoying.
Finally, Chase snapped.
He began to violently stomp on the floor with his teeth gritted.
But the knocking only continued, in fact it was as if Chase was going crazy, or at least thought that he was, because the knocking got louder.
So, he did something a little creative as he took a deep breath.
He began to focus his soul sense into his his ears, which surprisingly he had not already thought of, or at least to that which he remembered.
But it made itself fruitful, as he began to hear even the ants and termites that crawled within the old coliseum.
'Listen...' He said internally, closing his eyes and focusing on the points below the floor which he originally figured was just sediment rock and dirt...
However, it was hollow... Vastly hollow... There was a very large room below the coliseum, which that alone already felt eerie enough...
But...
When he truly began to hear the sound coming from below...
A strange dread began to take over...
Knock Knock-
Knock...
Slam Slam Slam...
Knock Knock-
Knock...
Then it stopped...
And the very same sequence of knocking followed right after it.
Chase lowered his body, placing a hand against the cold stone floor with several blood stains.
He began to feel the vibrations...
'Numbers?' Chase thought at first, before opening his eyes and realizing that Equan had walked into the room and was staring at him as if he had gone crazy.
"The hell are you doing?" Equan asked with a little bit of bewilderment in his eyes as he lazily unslung his bow from his shoulders.
"Nothing... Just... Thought I heard something." Chase dismissed everything that had happened in the last five or so minutes and stood up.
He summoned the onyx mask back to his face and inhaled from the glowing head holes within the mask.
"You ready?" Chase asked Equan, who had deep bags resting underneath his lightning blue eyes.
"Mhm..." He nodded, as the two of them stood before the stone gate with their masks equipped and their weapons at the ready.
"Another day..." Chase said, excitement beginning to form on the tip of his tongue.
"No..." Equan said, gripping his bow even tighter.
"What?" Chase asked, a little annoyed that Equan didn't seem to be a in his normal humorous mood.
Equan's knuckles suddenly shifted white against his bow, and his brushed his raggedly long black hair back.
"I hope to the gods that I get a female opponent that has the attractiveness of a goddess..." He growled, as if actually angry that they had only fought dudes up until now.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Chase asked, his eyes wide behind his mask.
"Gods forbid a man get a little motion..." Equan muttered, rolling his shoulders as the gate began to quake.
"Let's kill these bastards..." He continued, pulling a spectral arrow from his quiver.
"I think that's against our morale standards..." Chase rolled his eyes behind his mask, and began to summon Apocalypse as the crowd erupted...