The bloody, charred ferret slides down my cheek and snags on my coat, twitching–insensate and barely alive. I suddenly remember that it isn’t a Life practitioner minion, but another ascendant–one who chose their Quiggam card poorly.

I consider killing it now to ensure that I’m not last in the running–it’s too small to be a proper vitality battery, and if I kill it it’ll disappear. However, that doesn’t mean it’s useless.

My body is ruined–my legs are gone and half my face is melted off, with one eye incinerated to ash and the other scorched beyond use, not to mention the damage to my internal organs. But the more damage and Death, the stronger I become...and if there’s anything I have experience with, it’s keeping myself alive.

Let’s see if that skill translates to ferrets.

I run my hand over the ferret’s back as though caressing its spine. The flesh unknits itself, revealing the spinal cord before pulling away, connective tissues dying so that the skin zips apart without effort. The bones extract themselves, the flesh bending around them, some of it dying. What remains is the deboned ferret body, its vasculature largely intact, aside from the vessels that formerly connected directly to the bones. I kept the skull and neck vertebrae, leaving the head untouched.

Deboning is an unnecessarily complex use of my practice, but it’s an enjoyable challenge. Tens of ferret bones circle around my fingers, flaring with violet energy as I divide my attention between the standoffish bear and the intrepid Dark practitioner. Meanwhile, Death energy gushes within the ferret’s limp body as though trying to fill the empty spaces.

The ferret bones aren’t enough to make a whip, but when added to the bones stripped from my own legs, we’re starting to get somewhere.

But I’m not yet done–no time for half measures. I sever my arms and tail, then staunch the blood flow. I shatter my arm bones and add the shards to my whip. Meanwhile, I decompose the remaining tissue into a slush of decay, the energy falling about my shoulders like a cloak. I keep the poison-tipped tail whole–it’s already supple and whip-like–but affix it to the end of the weapon.

I grit my teeth as I feel the weight of another mental assault–but with only hearing, smell, and vital vision, it’s easier to tell what sensations are fake. The pain that radiates through my heart? Obviously imagined, but the Remorse practitioner isn’t an idiot–noting my ruined eyes, they don’t bother showing me illusions, instead filling my vision with strobing colors.

It takes all my concentration to break free of the mental hold, buying the bear time to approach. But decemantic constructs can act autonomously. Just as I sense the bear coming close enough to maul me, the whip strikes like a cobra.

My heart stutters as I glare at the glittering cloud of smoke where the illusory bear stood a moment ago. Regret and Remorse... It’s a potent combo I’m not sure that I’ve faced before. Neither affinity is physically combative, begging the question–how did this bear ascendant pass its ascendant trial? How did it survive that initial city-shattering strike? I know that most trial-givers aren’t crazy like Ari and dead-set on murder, but it is supposed to be difficult.

Better to retreat and kill someone else. Regret and Remorse isn’t worth the hassle.

The Dark practitioner–Marcus–follows me in pursuit as I fly closer to a contingent of five ascendants. Sensing my approach, they scatter, breaking off into two smaller groups.

But as Marcus pivots and flies away, I sense that there might be something I’m missing–but by the time I feel the heat and the cold, it’s too late to dodge. Against my previous opponents who lacked strong ranged attacks, my mundane vision wasn’t necessary–I had vital vision as a fall back that allowed me to track people’s movements and stay on the offensive.

But vital vision doesn’t illuminate other forms of energy, like elementalism.

A screaming, crackling whine and the smell of smoke are the only warnings before impact. Like before, I coat myself in strips of ascendant energy empowered Death, insulating myself. But the dread in my chest screams that it won’t be enough.

I deliver a final blow to the ferret, stopping its heart, just as a conflagration of fire and ice descends. I don’t even feel it, my nerve endings ruined minutes ago, but there’s a certain horror that accompanies watching your body die, the last vestiges of vital white graying and winking out.

I come to in the main auditorium and fly over to Maria, groaning. “Y’jeni, I wish that had gone better.”

She simply points to the small window leading into the stadium. Since the stadium isn’t actually a few feet away–its door is a spatial gateway–I can’t sense anything using my perception of vitality. I trudge over a few steps and peek through, curious–and not expecting to see that only two figures remain.

“Wait, what happened?” I press my hands to the wall. An enormous dragon of a different variety than Sah lunges forward, its serrated jaws snapping. Its scales are plates of bronze armor, its claws platinum scythes. All around it dances morphing blue energy, flickering and jolting as though unable to decide whether it’s a form of electricity or fire.

There’s no way I missed such a big dragon before.

Facing off against the dragon is a diminutive humanoid figure with the head of a wolf, the rest of its body obscured by hideous armor. I can barely even see the wolfman at this distance but the armor is a melted mess of metal, cloth, leather, and gray fur. I can only imagine the smell of cooked flesh.

The dragon looks relatively unscathed by comparison, but my intuition screams that it’s the one on the defensive.

The wolfman snarls, not that I can hear it from beyond the door, and a pillar of ice manifests around the dragon’s mouth like a muzzle. The dragon spits up molten yellow, but it can’t melt the ascendant empowered ice. Suddenly the dragon shrinks and escapes, dropping to the size of a large dog. Vitality condenses around it as white-green radiance and it dashes forward.

Neither practitioner is able to kill the other from a distance, their ascendant energy offering a frustrating defense. The dragon’s tail extends out, growing as though stretched, scoring a hit against the wolfman’s defensively-raised forearm. At the moment of physical contact, they both seize the opportunity to end the fight. As the wolfman staggers, the dragon thrashes and suddenly its entire body rips in half from the inside like a rotten house unable to support its own weight. The flesh knits back together, only for the organs to struggle out like a nest of writhing parasites, intent on self-destruction.

“Moon versus Life,” I murmur. The dragon was never uninjured–it healed the outward damage, while the wolfman used its power to affect the liquid in the dragon’s body in an attempt to rupture it from the inside. It reminds me of the strategy employed by O’osta Selejo, the man who killed Euryphel’s father by disembowelment.

The fight ends a moment later. The wolfman freezes and shatters the dragon’s head, ending its struggle, his eyes cold and unfathomable. The ring of flesh shift deactivates and the man groans, gritting his teeth, his skin tearing and bleeding as the shift tears fur from armor. Blood streaming into his eyes, Ketu Bryant raises a fist high for the ascendant audience.

—

“The victor of the first battle royale is Ketu Bryant, followed closely by Danessa Fleur. Return to the main stage to draw the cards for the second round. Leave the card you slotted in the door.”

I breathe in deeply to collect my thoughts, then walk back into the main room, lining up with the others. Jeseria tells us to throw our cards up in the air and she collects them, adding them to the deck. Like before, Jeseria spreads out the cards and goes down the line, letting ascendants draw. Ketu and Danessa get first and second pick.

I return to Maria with four new cards in hand and I spread them out, taking stock of the options.

A bright green snake with long fangs and a rattler on its tail. A winged white sabertooth-fanged tiger with large, menacing claws. I saw this option last round. A frost dragon, like Sah. A squirrel with a fluffy tail and sharp claws and teeth.

Like before, we take the length of each card’s description into account. We first eliminate the snake and squirrel, then consider the tiger and dragon.

This time I’m trying for a non-humanoid form. Unfortunately, I have no way of determining which card will grant me my wish. The rat card from before had a long description and its shifting effect was less obvious, suggesting that a card with a short description might be more self-explanatory. The tiger and dragon both have descriptions of only a few words.

“I don’t know what the tiger can do, but you’re familiar with Sah,” Maria says. “That’s my vote.”

I nod and select the dragon card, slotting it into the door. “Can’t do much worse than last time.”

“I still don’t understand how Ketu and Danessa killed almost everyone toward the end,” Maria remarks. “I saw Ketu grabbing onto Danessa as she flew up into the sky, away from the stadium...but never would have thought that when they descended, their divebomb would be so destructive.”

I sigh. “It’s because their energy is more potent than everyone else’s. I don’t know about Danessa specifically, but Ketu’s is almost as dense as red energy. His ice combusted with the dragon’s fire to cut through everyone’s defenses. Moreover, if they tried that attack at the beginning, when everyone was fresh, it wouldn’t have had the same kill rate.”

“You were already half dead,” Maria conceded. “Have you thought of strategies to deal with the other ascendants this time?”

I shrug. “It’s hard because I don’t have my void storage, so no soul gems or bones to start me off. Knocking someone unconscious and using them as a vitality battery is a decent strategy, but it’s easier said than done. I could barely even do it to a practitioner who transformed into a ferret. In the last round you were one of my biggest advantages, but since you can’t come along, I’m at a disadvantage.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Giving up already?”

I smile. “Not a chance. I’ll think of something.”

I approach the door, rubbing at the ring. The door opens and a gust of wind shunts me through like before, depositing me in the stadium. This time I’m ready, having already dulled my sense of pain. I watch myself as though disembodied, mind spinning as my body shifts and contorts.

I grin in excitement as the shift completes. I’m a full-fledged frost dragon like Sah, my body naturally resistant to heat and cold, with fire naturally building in my chest. Even with self-induced numbness in my limbs, the power and size of the body isn’t lost on me, a sense of wonder stirring in my chest. I can smell the smoke of my own fire, taste the lick of lava as it swells in my throat, relishing the alien sensation.

Definitely need to get one of these rings, I tell myself.

I take in the rest of the competition with my enhanced draconic senses as well as my vital vision. This time, I’m not just going after anyone. I wasn’t telling Maria the full truth earlier–I did have a plan, but its viability relied upon whether I actually shifted into a frost dragon. I still don’t know if the plan will work, but if it does, there’s only one person I’m going after.

Ketu Bryant, the water elementalist.

As Jeseria announces the start of the fight, I puppet my legs forward to scratch at the sky, my claws covered in dense blue energy.

Please work.

Before, in the citadel, the sky was nearly impenetrable. But we aren’t in the citadel anymore.

The sky buckles beneath my talons and I slip in, like a fish sliding into water. Whenever I enter the void as a human, the suffocating darkness threatens to kill me. Without Karanos’ artifact to help me breathe, I’d die in a minute. But the frost dragon body is at home–its instincts take over, my nose closing up, thick, clear eyelids shuttering beady eyes. The abyssal cold is oddly comfortable.

Heat radiates along my wings and body, propelling me forward, my body sidewinding like a serpent’s. With a slash of my claws, I open the void just a sliver and surveil the stadium where everyone is embroiled in combat. Where non-ascendants might kill each other in a matter of seconds, we’re made of sturdier stuff, ascendant energy making us annoyingly durable and resistant to one another’s practice.

Wait for it...

As an Ascendant makes their stand just in front of my slit of a portal, I punch an arm through, concentrating both Death and ascendant energy into a single talon. It spears straight through my target’s skull and they begin to convulse before flopping forward and dying.

A lance of searing Light illuminates my arm as I pull it back, cooking internal flesh despite the dragon’s resistance, but leaving the outer scale layer intact. I heal the damage as I lurk in wait for my next victim, trying to pick out Ketu. I don’t recognize him among the anthropomorphic number, so he must be disguised as an animal. The only way to find him is by tracking down the most powerful practitioner wielding ice, Ketu’s signature.

Suddenly the void opens up next to me, a ten-foot wolverine slicing the sky with its claws and scoring me with an attack across my chest that threatens to sever my aorta, ascendant energy arcing in my chest like lightning.

I retaliate with a flare of fire to the wolverine’s snarling face, then fly away as the rift in the veil repairs itself.

At a distance, I look on in astonishment as the veil blisters in at least ten different places. Blood spills into the void, bobbing and freezing.

Seems I’m not the only one planning to use the void as a weapon, but I am the only frost dragon.

A stallion wreathed in an inferno of blue energy and armored in solid ice suddenly cuts through, his long face encased in a bridle of clear ice that scintillates in the glow of the surging energy.

My stomach drops as I remember that you don’t have to be a frost dragon to be at home in the void.

But there’s a bright side to this intrusion: I’m ninety-nine percent certain the stallion is Ketu Bryant. He’s delivered himself to me. But as he charges forward into the darkness, his eyes flaring cobalt blue, I reconsider my choice to target the powerful ascendant.

Without the element of surprised, I’m probably screwed–but I’m not going down without a fight.