Ajoke felt the crowd’s eyes on her. A set seemed to rest on every single scrap of her flesh, observing her from all angles, scanning every crook and cranny of her for the slightest imperfection.

It was a sensation she was well familiar with, albeit never from so many at once. And not for the same reasons. When she’d been scrutinised in such a way back at Bârëi, there had been more at stake than a few moons in the pocket of whoever was doing it.

Not that being surveyed like a slab of meat was made much better by the knowledge that it was for no more than some back-alley betting pool.

Alabaster was all smiles, as usual. Ajoke found herself wondering how the woman did it. She’d introduced both her and Fisher while beaming from ear to ear, and showed no sign of getting tired now. Was it just practice?

She pushed her curiosity to one side as Astra Tempora’s name was called out. That surprised her, and not for the better. The girl had been one of Powerful Women’s stronger members, Ajoke had hoped she’d have quit after being humiliated by Amelia.

There was a certain peculiarity to how she walked.

Less proud, less challenging to those watching. Her teeth had been clipped, but blunted fangs could still kill. And Ajoke was almost certain just from looking at her that Tempora wouldn’t hesitate to use hers.

She suddenly felt cold, her mind sending tendrils of ice snaking down into her gut as it worked. Ajoke hadn’t expected Tempora, and it had been quite some time since Menza’s injury. What if she had to fight them both at once?

The relief she felt when Alabaster called out a different name, one she barely even recognised, nearly melted her into a puddle.

Xeno Warper was a slight girl. Perhaps a hair short of five feet tall with light brown hair, darker brown eyes and a kind of girlish beauty that might let her pass as being a tenth younger than she was.

That youth clung to her like a sheen of sweat, now. Her gaze flickered from one direction to another, like a nervous rodent. She almost seemed to stumble with each step, and Ajoke realised it was the sheer hesitence in her gait.

If nothing else, it was good to have such a weak opponent.

Ajoke buried the embers of guilt that began to burn within her, quickly suffocating their budding flames with the ashen pits of her soul. Now was not the time for pity, now was the time for battle. If Warper wasn’t fit for it, she shouldn’t have entered.

“TODAY’S TASK USES THE SAME FORMAT AND RULES AS THE PREVIOUS BOUT BETWEEN TEAM FATE AND TEAM RA, BUT FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO AREN’T AWARE OF THE DETAILS, I’LL GO OVER THEM NOW!”

Called out the Princess, seeming to bludgeon half the crowd’s volume away with her voice alone.

Most of the crowd must surely have already known, and there was an undeniable level of restlessness amidst it as the Princess spoke, but they nonetheless remained quiet enough for her to finish. Ajoke couldn’t blame them, Alabaster seemed on edge for some reason. She thought it fair to avoid angering a woman capable of holding the focus of a million people with sheer force of personality alone.

The world began to dim, and Ajoke resisted the urge to close her eyes against the disorienting spasm of colour as it bled into the very back of her eyes.

When at last her surroundings faded back into coherence, muffled blurs replaced by sharp edges and spectral bleed by keenly defined shades, Ajoke was surrounded on all sides by green.

Dark moss and vines, emerald leaves and ferns. Brown bark and barely-visible grey hidden behind the growths covering the surface of stones. It was all so different to see up close than from the stands. So very vibrant.

She dragged herself out of the admiring stupor, taking off in a jog and focusing on the well of power sloshing around in her core. Within ten seconds, her physical enhancement would be activated.

It was fast for a mystic, doubly so for one of her age, and yet she felt the time stretch out like nylon. Every instant passed at a crawl, elongated by the knowledge that an attack could come at any moment.

Of Ajoke’s two abilities, physical enhancement had been the easiest for her to learn- taking a mere six months of agonising, gruelling effort. Not including the time required to master enough of Cutaris to even begin.

Her other ability was one she was far more proud of, also requiring Cutaris, with the addition of Utalis. Energy and matter. Energy and fuel. Fire magic.

She dreaded the day that she’d need to broaden her horizons, master yet more of the two spheres. She hadn’t even begun to learn Atirstam and Patais, the other spheres that she, as a tetramage, could potentially learn.

Magic was effort, from birth to death. Unless you were Gemini Menza of course. Then you were an omnimage who could make weeks of progress with hours of effort, kick the shit out of older mystics even before entering your golden years and find pure acceptance from the world while having a whore for a mother.

A branch whipped Ajoke, sending a sting across her forehead to match the cut of guilt suddenly marring her thoughts. The Gemini was more talented than average, but so was she. There was no use complaining that she wasn’t the very best.

Not when she’d seen what being so powerful had earned the girl. It wasn’t always best to be exceptional.

Ajoke swore as she nearly ran into another tree, barely stopping and stumbling to move around it instead. She dropped her pace slightly, though didn’t dare to lose much speed.

Navigating the stage, which she imagined was much the same as it had been when she watched the last task, would be more about control than velocity. It was important to find Fisher first, vitally important. Ajoke wouldn’t be able to stand against anything as strong as that orc, nor could he. Together, though, there would be a chance.

The issue being that, even with magically augmented sight, the forest was impossibly dense. It must have been modeled after the thick woodlands of the Numi in the Nicorae Princedom, for Ajoke had never seen any undergrowth even half as thick anywhere else.

If Ajoke strained her eyes, her vision would reach perhaps six yards ahead. If she strained her ears, she would capture no sound but the snapping of twigs, the rustling of leaves and the displacing of branches as she hurried through the vegetation.

And yet to slow herself and expand the range of her hearing would be to take precious moments longer to search. Would she be more or less likely to run into the predator, if her speed and indiscretion fell parallel?

She wasn’t sure, so she simply maintained the pace she’d already set. Inaction seemed so much less dangerous than action, even when it likely wasn’t.

Time passed oddly in the midst of the task. Simultaneously slowed by the thrill of danger and quickened by the banality of her surroundings. She found her gaze beginning to slip, even as it scanned her surroundings.

Ajoke fought to keep her eyes from growing lazy, yet still they seemed to slacken.

Rather than picking out every detail she could from behind or amidst a bush, she’d catch herself merely glancing at it. Where she ought to have concentrated on any sign of disturbance in the undergrowth, she would leave her looks when they yielded no enemies.

Lines began to blur, colours began to melt into one another. Her surroundings seeme to become less and less distinct.

So indistinct, in fact, that she barely noticed the great, hulking silhouette hurrying straight for her- filling her ears with crunches and crackles as it demolished all plant life before it.

Her mind went blank, filled with images of team Ra’s mangled members where it should have held strategy. By the time she’d even thought to do the obvious- prepare her flame projection, and scorch the monster before it could force her to pit arm against arm- the thing burst through the wall of branches.

Ajoke had wasted priceless seconds with her panic, and the fire was not even halfway to her hands when Fisher landed before her. She was so surprised to see the enormous boy that she didn’t process his identity until she’d nearly finished releasing the magic.

Fortunately, she stemmed the flow of power before enveloping him in it.

“Hello boss.” The boy grinned, showing crooked teeth and the same care-free mirth that seemed to come so effortlessly to him.

“You almost scared me out of my skin!” Ajoke hissed, quieting her voice more on reflex than anything else.

“Sorry.” Fisher said, smile not lessening by a millimetre. Ajoke wanted to punch him, and hug him. Neither would have been appropriate or wise to do in her current circumstances, and so instead she began to start moving again.

He followed wordlessly.

***

Xeno wrestled with her mind tooth and claw.

Every noise the forest made seemed deliberately designed to send her into a panic, and each one came startlingly close to succeeding.

Leaves rustled as a gale blew through, providing a background just loud enough to make other sounds anxiety-inducingly difficult to notice. Wood cracked and popped seemingly of its own volition, projecting the ghost of a thousand footfalls all around her. Insects chirped assiduously, the sound grating on her every nerve.

She was surrounded by danger on all sides. A carpet of interference, leaving her senseless and helpless as a newborn. Masking the great predator she shared the forest with, adding surprise to its arsenal.

Inhaling, Xeno forcefully stilled the tides of her mind. There was nothing to gain from losing her composure, and everything to lose from failing to sharpen it.

She concentrated, edging forwards half a step at a time, and focused on taking in each tiny trace of a sound.

Fae were weak of body, and even magic struggled to overcome that disadvantage. All the same, Xeno had never been so thankful for it as she was in that moment. Without her enhanced hearing, she couldn’t imagine being able to make herself take even a single step.

Her path through the stage was akin to the growth of a stalactite, not least due to her freezing every ten heartbeats at a greater noise than she was used to.

Nonetheless Xeno made progress, by her first minute- or at least, the first minute as her perception reckoned it- her shaky steps had swallowed three score yards. She was nearing her fourth when the flash of movement caught her eye.

The chilling, sudden fear made a statue of her, and Xeno continued moving for only so long as she needed to crouch down, tuck her arms in and lower her head as far into a bush as she could.

Leaves tickled her nose, needle-like twigs clawed at her skin, and Xeno almost felt the urge to adjust herself. That desire perished the moment she caught a better look at what had frightened her so.

An orc bullied through the forest floor, rendering its uneven terrain a level carpet of crushed and pulverised vegetation under the great hammers of its feet. The creature was bigger than the one from yesterday, or merely seemed bigger by her not watching from the safety of the stands.

Xeno’s breath caught in her throat as the creature began sniffing at the air, nostrils flaring and grating like a hog’s. She stared, transfixed, for seconds, then with dawning horror saw it begin to make its way towards her.

It was at most five paces away now, and she doubted her hiding place would withstand any closer gaze than that. Maddeningly, her thoughts turned to the sight of the thing, all the details she could pick up that were lost to her yesterday.

The orc smelled like waste, sweat and blood. The scent of an animal, yet somehow far stronger, and tainted by another note she couldn’t quite identify. Its musculature was enormous, far bigger than she’d taken it for yesterday- and more, it was extraordinarily dense.

Seeming to shift under the creature’s skin at the slightest motion.

A rough, grating scrape came from the monster’s throat each time it breathed in and out- phlegm, or merely a consequence of its anatomy. Xeno couldn’t tell.

Four paces now, and the orc’s sniffing was growing more erratic. No, not erratic. Intense, but controlled. Like a bloodhound, searching for something specific.

She banished all observations about it from her head, focusing only on the one thing that might save her. Magic. With every scrap of her mind, every gram of her will, she coaxed the arcane forces held within her to come free- to serve their mistress, destroy her foes.

And yet the power came not as a flood, but a trickle. Barely half again as much as she’d had in the second stage, perhaps a hair more than she’d been using already.

Her thoughts were scattered, in disarray. Every slight touch they gave to her magic served only to make it flee, like a wild animal being stroked by an unknowing child. For the first time, Xeno became aware of her breathing.

She was inhaling and exhaling rapidly- worse, heavily. The sound of her breath was strong in her ears, how much weaker would it be to the orc’s? Not enough, she’d wager.

The creature came within three paces, so close Xeno could smell the blood and decay on its breath. So close that it might well be able to hear her uncontrolled wheezing.

Steeling herself, Xeno quieted her lungs. She inhaled slowly and steadily, counting silently to four as she did so and letting the breath finish no sooner or later than the count, then she began counting once more and repeated it with her exhalation.

It took only a few moments for the trick to work, and a strange sort of calm fell across Xeno. Or rather, a clarity.

She knew that the orc, of poor eyesight though the creatures were, would not fail to see her from as close as two paces away. She knew that it would likely smell her soon, even in spite of her eating nothing but bread and water to limit her scent.

And she knew that, regardless of her newly-focused thoughts, her magic still ran from her attempts to wield it like an animal from fire.

Thoughts are like energy. Father had said. They cannot be created, only transformed.

Xeno tried to transform her thoughts, and yet it was all she could do to keep herself from panicking and giving her position away. She had no option, no choice, but to stare helplessly as the lumbering brute went to take the step that would kill her.

And then something rang through the trees. A noise, faint but undeniably there. It took Xeno a second to identify the sound of Astra’s voice, muffled by forestry and distance as it was. Even then, she didn’t fully process it, her mind slown by amazement that Astra would do something so foolish.

She realised why a moment later, when the orc turned to stare in the direction the girl’s voice had come from and, without even a glance back in Xeno’s direction, took off towards it.

The orc disappeared into the undergrowth, and Xeno was left alone. She exhaled, squeezing her lungs free of air as though they were waterskins, and she a woman dying of thirst.

Even with the orc’s absence, she took long seconds in the sudden silence to make herself stand. It wasn’t easy. There was a part of her that wanted nothing more than to remain tucked away in the shrubbery forever, to cling to safety like a child to its mother.

Xeno pushed that part of her down and began walking, then paused and turned her walk to a jog.

The orc was sprinting full speed, and it was sprinting towards Astra. That made it loud. Xeno had no reason to fear making a little noise by jogging, in fact if she’d known there would be another orc from the beginning, she’d never have moved so slowly in the first place.

Greens and browns melded together as she moved, her physical prowess- so inferior by mystic standards- still serving to carry her faster than a sprinting man, even as she merely jogged.

Trees and branches leapt into her path, ambushing her from behind one another and making obstacles of themselves.

With satisfaction she noted that every fourth impediment sailed harmlessly over her head, or grazed her in place of snagged. With irritation, she noted that her slight size letting her avoid a mere quarter of them was far from enough to balance the multitude of disadvantages it had brought.

Xeno had been moving through the forest for two hundred heartbeats when she began to doubt herself. She’d seen no sign of either the orc or Astra, and the stage, and she had a hard time imagining they were so far ahead that she wouldn’t have run into them already.

Unless, of course, Astra had heard the orc coming and hidden before it could reach her. The beast would have charged past, and she could have kept her eyes peeled for Xeno, whom her shout had surely been intended to attract.

No, Astra couldn’t have hidden the way Xeno did. Not with blonde hair and a half-foot larger frame. That meant that, for her and the orc not to have halted one another’s movement with their battle, she must still be fleeing from the creature.

Picking up her pace, Xeno silently kicked herself for not realising sooner and losing entire furlongs.

The forest clawed at her more viciously than ever as her pace increased, and it was all Xeno could do to keep even her small body from being knocked to the ground by an unseen tendril of vegetation- something that would be both embarrassing and potentially disastrous.

So great was her speed that Xeno barely caught the glimpse of grey and blue that may well have saved her life.

The orc was roaring in anger, its arm sunk to the elbow in a circular blue rim of light that seemed to have closed around the joint. Xeno quickly recognised the technique as Astra’s gateway, applied in much the same method the girl had used to temporarily pin Amelia during their bout.

It hadn’t held the black-eyed girl for more than one or two dozen heartbeats, and the orc seemed to be prying itself free faster even than her.

Xeno couldn’t see Astra anywhere, but she buried the panic that threatened to worm its way up her throat. The orc hadn’t spotted her, it was far too consumed by rage, and the knowledge of that urged her to duck back into the cover of the foliage.

She knew that if she did so, she’d not be able to bring herself back into the fight at all. And so, turning her mind to the magic crackling away in her body, she forced it to the pores of her skin, letting it harden and thicken, and giving it shape through her will.

Thoughts are like energy. Thoughts are like energy.

Xeno’s thoughts certainly were. She poured her will into the construct, fashioning a shaftment-wide sphere with thought just as much as magic. Her refusal to flee became its rigidity, her refusal to lose became its strength.

Her refusal to fail became the kinetic force which propelled it.

The blue orb ripped free of her grasp, hurling her hands back with the force of its exit and cutting a vacuous path through the air as it screeched for the orc. Xeno felt a grin sprout on her as the projectile landed, born from knowing just how devastating an attack she’d made.

It was solid, all the way through, and just a shade weaker than iron. It weighed as much as a man’s arm and struck with the speed of a crossbow bolt.

And it barely even rocked the orc’s head as it struck.

The sphere didn’t split, but it broke. Deformed and marred by scores of fractures, it almost looked like crushed glass as it fell at the monster’s feet. Xeno stared dumbly at the beast, refusing to acknowledge what she had just very clearly seen.

Stunned for a moment by the impact, the orc began to stare around with a mix of surprise and confusion. It quickly spotted Xeno, beady eyes narrowing and malformed maw fissuring. Something closed around her wrist as the creature threw itself back into pulling free of the gate, and she turned to see Astra staring at her wide-eyed.

“Run!” The girl barked, pulling Xeno so hard that she felt her arm might be torn from its socket.

They took off in a full sprint, and Xeno delayed only a fraction of a second to glance over her shoulder. The sight of the orc, arm now completely free from the gate up to the wrist and above, chilled her blood, and lit a fire under her feet.