Earlier when Jeseria went down the line, the proteges didn’t seem to take their scores too seriously. Alan chuckled and shook his head, while one ascendant who got a three simply shook his head and put up his arms with a tragic expression, eliciting a few snickers. But half took their scores in stride with cold expressions, like the victor, Ketu Bryant.

The proteges seem split between serious and lighthearted; I wonder what that says about their lives before they ascended.

They’ve probably all spent most of their lives in Eternity, Maria notes. So it’s not just their lives before that matter.

I suppose–but it’s the early years that put us on our trajectories. Being the best in the world and transcending everyone you ever knew or loved–I’d assume it would make people more arrogant, less willing to accept being second-best.

They were big fish in small ponds. It’s not a new concept, Ian. Small people react poorly to the realization that they are mediocre in a wider world, preferring to return to the simple days of dominating their banal puddles. She pauses for a moment. Upon entering Eternity, these ascendants have had decades to readjust their perspectives. I do wonder, however, if ascension eligibility is tied to mindset. Perhaps the door is open only to those who have achieved the peak but are driven to keep growing.

Our private conversation is broken as Jeseria scatters the rings, the wind flinging each toward our chests. I open my hands and catch it, the warm metal going so fast that it leaves a small welt of red on my palm.

Maria doesn’t receive one.

“Proteges–put on the rings, but don’t activate them yet.”

Suddenly the tunnels that led into the citadel disappear, slabs of rising earth consuming them with a thunk. A moment later the earth retreats, revealing simple doors with bars across them that serve as crude handles.

How is this a card game? I wonder, shooting Maria a questioning look. I look at Karanos, but his expression is stoic as always, giving no insight into his thoughts.

Jeseria claps her hands together. “The rings we’ve provided you are part of a set of fifty donated by Ascendant Lighthood over ten epochs ago, when he left to seek samsara.”

Epoch?

Years technically don’t exist here, even though we use them as a point of reference, Maria says. It’s easy to speak in years when you and the other proteges are relatively young, even if definitions of years aren’t necessarily the same.

There isn’t a planetary cycle, I point out, agreeing. There is no common measurement of a year–or even time. With dilated planes in the mix, the flow of time in Eternity is inconsistent. A year simply becomes a stand-in based on the period of time a year used to be before.

Moreover, Maria interjects, when you become as old as Cayeun Suncloud and Karanos...

Years lose their meaning, I finish.

Exactly. I do wonder how long an epoch represents.

“For this game of Quiggam, we’re playing battle royale style with three rounds. You will be scored based on your death to kill ratio, as well as the total time you spend in action.” She points toward the doors, tendrils of honey-colored hair bobbing by her ears. “Before each round, you’ll draw four cards from the master deck, select one of the options, and slot it in place on the front of the door. Passing through the door will automatically activate your rings. Once you’re in the pit, deactivating the ring will mean immediate disqualification from the round. Questions?”

I don’t really understand enough to even ask questions, I think to Maria. It seems like we’ll be transforming based on our cards, then forced to fight with everyone else.

What do these rings do, exactly? she asks. You and Karanos mentioned it before...

I’ve only seen such a ring once, when I was traveling to Nuremvark. I give her a quick rundown of the woman who could shift into a boreal vike.

“Who’s shuffling the cards?” Alan asks, raising an eyebrow.

Jeseria snorts and looks at the judges to her left. “Obviously none of them.” A deck of playing cards suddenly manifests before her, suspended in the air. They glint in the light as though coated in gold leaf. In an elaborate display, the cards dissociate and dance through the air like a choreographed school of fish before recombining, thoroughly shuffled.

“Everyone, line up according to your rank in the last round.”

Ketu moves first, walking over to the far left. I shuffle in that direction, unsure exactly where I fall.

You’re five people above Vik, Maria says. Weren’t you keeping track?

...Sure I was.

Maria shakes her head and escorts me to the right place in line. Turns out that of the twenty five ascendants, I’m actually 6th–I’m closer to the top five than I thought.

I think they must have inflated my score because I’m a beginner, I say.

Maybe, maybe not. You stayed alive for a long time, don’t forget–both of us needing to die proved a rather large advantage. Even though we were outright less powerful than most, the challenge wasn’t only about power.

And what of this one? Power and luck, perhaps? Are we even going to be able to use our abilities when shifted?

I don’t think I’ll be coming with you, Maria says, wiggling her fingers. I don’t have a ring. You’ll probably do worse in this round.

Staring at the ring, I shrug. No matter. I didn’t come here to win, but to learn and hopefully glean some insight about the dagger that will help us defeat Achemiss. Since first seeing a ring of flesh shift back in Vracoola’s Domain, I’ve been itching to study one. As I stand in line, I feel anticipation and curiosity rising in my chest.

Jeseria descends before Ketu and holds out the deck of cards in a row, giving the protege the pick of the lot. I can’t imagine there’s a strategy for finding better cards, but maybe a Beginning practitioner could find a hint.

Ketu stares impassively at the line of cards and nabs four of them, drawing the cards closest to him. He doesn’t look at them. Jeseria doesn’t close the gap, leaving the cards in their original formation.

When it’s my turn, the line of cards has several gaps.

You’re the one with fate sight, I say. Which ones should I pick?

You know it doesn’t work like that, Maria replies dryly,

Here goes nothing. I pick one card from the left and right edges, and then two from the center. When everyone has their four cards, Jeseria rejoins the judges several feet above the ground.

“Contestants, please approach a door and slot your cards. You have sixty seconds.”

The door directly across from me is just like all the others, a slab of dusty clay. Standing in front of it, I see a card-shaped indent with a circular white disk pressed into it, an array etched across its surface.

I hold up the cards and review my options. There’s text on them, but it’s illegible. I think there are numbers in the corner but they’re not in the hashscript I’ve grown familiar with, so I can’t read those, either. At least there are pictures.

I make a mental list of the options:

A winged white tiger with savage looking claws and sabertooth fangs. A rodent that looks like a rat, except its tail ends in a stinger that drips a green ichor. Perhaps it’s poisonous. Some kind of brown-green turtle that looks like it belongs in a mundane pet shop. A fluffy ostrich bird that is so poofy, its beak is barely visible. Even its legs are covered in poofy feathers that only recede at the ankles, revealing wicked talons.

I feel like the tiger is an obvious choice, I remark.

Maria scans the cards, her eyes narrowing in concentration. There’s a key component we’re missing here: scale. The tiger might be the size of a house cat, while the tortoise might be the size of a house.

I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose.

Look at the captions, she says.

They’re incomprehensible.

But look at their length.

I frown and give them a second look. The turtle–excuse me, tortoise–card has the shortest caption, followed by the ostrich. The rodent has the longest caption of all. I wouldn’t be surprised if the extra text were describing the properties of the rat’s poisonous tail.

“Fifteen seconds left,” Jeseria says.

I hover my hand between the tiger and the rat. I get the sense you think I should choose the rat.

We’re dealing with cryptic, esoteric ascendants, Maria says. The obvious choice strikes me as the wrong answer.

In other words, the tiger is a red herring. I pinch the rat card and press it up against the impression in the door. Golden light glows gently around the card’s edges.

“That’s time.” The doors suddenly shunt downward, revealing an arena with concrete floors and limited seating–just three rows of seats that wrap around. But the arena is big enough that three rows of seats still sit thousands. Before I can take a step forward, a blast of wind hurdles me through the doorway. I tumble in a somersault, catching a last glimpse of Maria waving before the entrance fills with a slab of earth.

Searing agony radiates down my spine, like the ring is electrocuting each vertebrae. I remember what that boreal vike shifter said–that the ring was only feasible because she couldn’t feel pain.

I momentarily sever the nerve connection in my spinal cord, inviting numbness, and inspect the changes happening to my body. After the initial moment of pain, the transformation occurs in the blink of an eye–but it isn’t a complete change. I don’t become a rat, like I saw on the card. Instead...

A large tail extends out behind me, powerful and tactile. I sense the musculature and manipulate the appendage. If I had to rely on the part of the brain responsible for motor control to move the limb, I’d probably be at a disadvantage until I got used to using the auxiliary limb, but controlling it with my practice is nothing new.

I decide to keep my spinal cord disconnected and rely only on my practice to move and sense. Why not?

I sense the other practitioners changing form, all equally spaced around the arena. The doors must have been outfitted with arrays to send us to a different location, like the doorways in the citadel. Interestingly, not everyone is like me, only partially-transformed. Some have shifted entirely into animals, while others appear almost unchanged.

Some unlucky protege has shifted into a small ferret, of all things, while another has become a hulking panther whose fur has reflected properties that render it partially invisible to my eyes–not that it fools my vital vision.

The ascendants don’t hesitate before jumping into the fray, empowering their shifted bodies with their affinities and ascendant energy. The diminutive ferret shoots off like a rocket, latching onto a partially-shifted ascendant–Vik–and nearly tearing her throat out with needle-like fangs. Vik swats the little monster away and the ferret goes flying, its maw dripping blood.

Two ascendants come my way, having entered into some kind of impromptu truce. One has legs and feet like an ostrich with the upper body of a man. I recognize him as the Dark practitioner who attacked Maria in the previous challenge–a man named Marcus. The other is unrecognizable–a fully-shifted bear of large proportions. Though I can’t recognize who they are visually, I can sense the vitality within them and make a guess at their affinities.

Regret and Remorse. Lovely–a muscular bear that can see into the future and attack people with its mind.

I open with an ascendant energy empowered Death attack, trying to hamstring them. The frailness of the ostrich legs works in my favor and Marcus buckles, glaring down at his transformed limbs as he ducks forward into a roll, propelling himself off the ground with his arms in a feat of gymnastic athleticism. Twisting in a corkscrew through the air, darkness coated by blue sparks surround him.

The bear shrugs off my attack and lopes forward. A sense of vertigo comes over me as it jumps, the ground blurring and shaking up and down. The image is seared into my retinas–closing my eyes doesn’t change anything, confirming that this is the work of a Remorse practitioner.

Ascendant energy pools around my head, but the image doesn’t dispel, and the corkscrewing Dark practitioner is just about to impale me. I send myself over to the left to evade, but the bear surges forward with blue-coated paws, swiping toward my chest.

My tail whips around and impales the bear on its left haunch, eliciting a growl. I channeled my practice through the appendage, so necrosis joins whatever poison is on the blade in dealing damage.

Marcus tucks his legs into his body–which is possible because he’s half bird, though physiologically bizarre to look at–and rolls forward into his forearms again, pushing off the ground toward me. He’s closer this time–too close for me to dodge while avoiding the claws of the charging bear.

Ascendant energy enhanced bear claws, or ascendant energy enhanced Dark? The choice is obvious. I barely manage to dodge Marcus through the vertigo-induced disorientation, but the bear clobbers me, shattering my ribs. The ascendant energy I use to reinforce them is completely ineffectual.

But if the bear expects me to be incapacitated, it’s mistaken–I feel no pain, only nausea. Besides, half my body being crushed is child’s play when I can repair the damage with my affinity and use the demise of my own cells as energy.

Marcus keeps coming at me, relentlessly dodging my attempts to impale him, while the bear sits down, its hind legs unable to support its weight. If it were just one leg, it would be able to keep going, but the poison and necrosis has spread to the other limb. That doesn’t mean the bear is useless–it still has its Remorse affinity.

As I move my body out of Marcus’ way for the tenth time, my tail goes toward the bear’s throat. The animal dodges out of the way and twists so that the bloody-mawed ferret from earlier zooms just over its head and into me, screeching and tearing into my left eye.

I curse and sever the nerves around my eye to deaden the pain, then use the close proximity to grip the ferret with both hands. The creature ensconces itself in a thick coating of blue energy, denser than I expect–probably because it has a small surface area. Flames erupt around its body, charring my skin and drying the vitreous fluid dripping down my cheek.

This thing needs to die–and fast. Black tendrils of Death energy cover my face, ascendant energy turning them into insulation against the flames, but it won’t last more than a moment. I choke the ferret’s throat, my energy prickling past its defenses and seeping into its limbs. It thrashes and the inferno rises. I can barely think as it tries to burrow into my skull, threatening to tear into my frontal cortex with its claws...but with a crack, it falls limp, and the fire dies.

Holy fuck!

Then the bear sucker punches me, having snuck up without me even realizing. How?

Just as I realize the bear’s attack is only in my head, I sense the cells in my lower body all dying, turning dark. My legs fall to the ground, cleanly severed from my body. At least it doesn’t affect my ability to move–I’m suspending myself in the air with my practice.

My body is an absolute mess, but that doesn’t mean I’m out of the running–and I still have my poison tail. I sense the bear starting to retreat as I draw Death energy from my separated legs, turning them into a battery and stripping bone from flesh. I send the bones after the Dark practitioner, who barely scrapes out of the way. He turns incorporeal to let the attack pass through his body.

I keep my attention split between the bear, the Dark practitioner, and the rest of the arena, where the other practitioners are embroiled in conflict. Just over half are still standing.

But I still haven’t killed anyone, I realize, frustrated. If I die now, I’ll be in the bottom for sure.

It’s time to up my game.