Ice forms around me like a coffin. On instinct, I send heat radiating from the dragon’s skin, but the ice remains unaffected, even when I add ascendant energy.

Ketu is way too powerful, I grumble, quashing panic at the stallion’s imperious approach. He’s on me in less than a second. His hoof touches the ice gently, establishing the barest connection, but it’s all Ketu needs to take his attack to the next level. I feel the ice stabbing down through my scales like millions of needles. They can’t break my reinforced hide, the combination of my ascendant energy and the scales’ natural resistance keeping the needles at bay, but it’s only a matter of time.

But touching the ice is a double-edged sword. I may not be making physical contact with the stallion, but he’s close enough that I can retaliate. Shattering the ice with my practice isn’t an option–I can’t even break the ice encasing my body.

If I were Ketu, I’d be focusing my ascendant energy around my vital organs, like my brain and heart. But even though Ketu’s energy is strong, it isn’t unlimited. If he’s using it to trap me as well as to stabilize icy armor around his large body, he might not be defending his internals as well.

I let the rest of the world fall away, ignoring the dragon’s claustrophobia and Ketu’s cold, triumphant stare. I recall the words that Karanos always touts when rebuking me and Maria for being sloppy in our control. Condense the energy down to the smallest possible point and you’ll be able to cut through anything.

It’s easier said than done. But in this moment, my desire to kill Ketu causes something to click into place. Instead of condensing energy down to a pinpoint on the tip of my finger, I create a bead of energy within Ketu’s head. For a moment, it doesn’t do anything, and Ketu doesn’t even seem to notice.

The energy explodes and Ketu’s head erupts like a watermelon. As his ascendant energy fades, the ice sloughs off me. I breathe fire in victory, bathing the horse in a funereal inferno before he disappears, resurrecting beyond the stadium.

That’s two kills–one better than last time. But even if I can’t kill anyone else this round, I already feel like I’ve won.

—

I finish third place in the second round, with Ketu placing in the bottom four, upsetting the standings. Maria congratulates me and we choose the card for the next and final round. Against the odds, the winged white tiger card shows up in my hand a third time.

“If that card weren’t inanimate, I’d say the two of you have fate,” Maria jokes.

I hold up the tiger card and shrug. “At this point, I can’t say I’m not curious.” I slot the tiger into the door and wait for the next round.

When I shift this time, my spine stretches and my limbs elongate, gaining pounds of muscle. Striped fur sprouts across my skin, itchy and thick. My jaw juts out, teeth sharpening to points, with two large fangs extending over my lips and down my chin. Two massive wings unfurl from my back, big enough to be capable of flight. They’re far bigger than the illustrated wings on the card suggested, stretching out for at least fifteen feet on each side.

I’m like a hulking, winged white tiger variant of the wolfman. My ears twitch and swivel, disorientingly sensitive, and I don’t know how to process the scents entering my feline nostrils. Sah’s vision was excellent, but his hearing and sense of smell are far inferior to the tiger’s.

After the last round, I’m familiar enough with Bryant’s vital signature that I can pick him out after he’s shifted, but I’d be able to identify him without my practice. Bryant looks almost like a seraph, black wings wrapping around him protectively.

His eyes bore into my own.

Oh shit.

“Last round,” Jeseria announces. “On my mark!”

The tension is palpable. Not just Ketu Bryant, but everyone present is focused on making a good final showing. This is our last chance to increase our standings for the second stage of the pageant.

“Good luck!” A small bang caused by an implosion of Jeseria’s wind elementalism sounds out and she leaps up and away.

The exact second the explosion goes off, I sense Bryant’s practice at work, his vitality surging. A suit of skintight crystalline armor coats his entire body, including the wings. Is he not intending to fly? A visor of ice obscures his eyes as ice expands out around him over the floor, leaving the immediate area mirror-like and slick.

He takes a step toward me but a fire elementalist woman laughs, a lotus of green fire spinning out and melting the ice, threatening to incinerate Ketu.

Ketu shrugs the woman off, utterly unaffected as he stomps forward, new ice carrying him forward. He holds his wings out like scythes, their razor-thin edges glistening with blue energy. Ascendants dodge out of the way, happy to grant the monster passage. After all, if Ketu wants to attack someone else, why stop him?

Since it’s obvious that his destination is me, nearby ascendants dart out of the way, engaging in combat with other escapees on the other side of the stadium, far away from an enraged, volatile Ketu Bryant.

All except for an ascendant who’s transformed into a large tortoise–one I recognize from the first batch of cards I drew. The tortoise is larger than a hovergloss tram, its craggy shell extraordinarily thick–the creature's tough anatomy and strong vitality fill me with excitement.

I careen toward the tortoise–there’s no time to try anything else, not at the insane speed Ketu is going, so fast that he’s almost a blur on the ice. The only reason I’m able to react is that he started on the opposite side of the arena.

The tortoise attempts to crawl away. It isn’t technically slow, clocking in at the speed of a small dog, but that’s like molasses compared to the breakneck velocities most ascendants fight at.

“You’re going to get me killed!” The tortoise mentally screams, cutting through my mental defenses.

Help me kill Bryant, I reply. Who are you, anyway?

“Red Griffith,” he replies.

Uh...

“The bear from round one?”

Right. The annoying Remorse practitioner who played with my senses, then disappeared right before Ketu and the dragon lady killed me.

“I died too, you know,” Red points out. “And I dare you to call Danessa ‘dragon lady’ to her face.”

Our mental conversation happens in a moment, but there still isn’t enough time to come to an agreement before Bryant arrives as a calamity of ice and electric ascendant energy. He tries to skate around the tortoise, but I puppet my body up and around.

“Use your wings!” Red exclaims. “You’re squandering the potential of that body by just–” He cuts off as Bryant’s ice spears into his throat. The tortoise’s throat is huge, to be fair–the ice blades are unable to score a clean decapitation.

My nerves are still numb from when I shifted, intentionally dulled, preventing me from moving my wings and claws without my practice. I know Red means well, but I’m tired of people telling me to change how I fight. He’s right that I should be using my wings, but if I give into the tiger’s instincts and fly, my unfamiliarity with the limbs will render me flat-footed. Bryant must have realized the same thing, which is why he turned his wings into ice-encrusted weapons.

I did admittedly let the frost dragon’s motor instincts take over last round in the void, but only because I was already familiar with frost dragons, having watched and sensed Sah moving around for months.

Bryant’s ice extends around the tortoise like an orb of death, contracting and pressing me painfully against the shell.

Aren’t you fighting him with your practice? I ask, straining to keep the ice from crushing me.

“He’s a lot better at defending his mind than you.”

That comment grinds my gears–I can fight off even Suncloud when I’m fully focused. The problem is consistency, as Crystal repeatedly rebukes me. If mustering a mental defense requires dropping everything else and leaving myself a sitting duck, it’s useless.

“He’s also a lot better at fighting than you are in general.”

Maybe that kind of taunting would bring out a rage-induced rampage in someone else and allow them to overpower Bryant’s ice, but it just puts a cold, roiling pit of anger in my stomach.

Bryant hops on top of the ice and peers down. His expression as he looks at me?

Dismissive.

I may not be able to move, but there’s a giant, vitality-filled tortoise next to me, one who has been intentionally trying to enrage me. My eyes flare with violet light as the shell cracks and splinters, creating a small amount of room for me to squeeze into...but the damned wings are stuck.

Acting decisively, I cut them off and seal the stumps, Ketu’s ice forcing the shell back into position, but now with me sheltered inside a small hollow. I have to curl up on myself to fit, the tiger’s anthropomorphic body sweating between the tortoise’s flesh, blood bathing my fur white and flooding my sense of smell, the thump of the tortoise’s blood through its vessels ringing in my ears.

I shut it all out. Ketu, you’re out to kill me, but you’ve made a mistake. You’ve underestimated the power of a decemancer when encased in a vessel of flesh.

“Can you at least pretend you’ll keep me alive?” Red says.

“You die and all my power evaporates,” I retort. “Believe me, I have a vested interest in your survival.”

I sense Ketu’s burgeoning rage as his ice fails to penetrate the tortoise’s body. The creature is too slow to muster any kind of physical offense, but its body is a tank. Even so, if I don’t do anything, the reptile’s demise is inevitable–its hide is covered in icy lacerations and it’s bleeding out onto the floor.

Suddenly, Ketu directs all of his attention inward into the tortoise, trying to tear apart its tissues from the inside using his elementalism. I fight back, controlling the dying tissues and wrestling away control. If it were just my ascendant energy backing my defensive attempt, Ketu would win out–I can feel it. But Red naturally reinforces his body with his energy, providing a small boost to my own efforts–and giving me the slight edge I need to maintain a stalemate.

At this point, I’m surprised the tortoise hasn’t passed out from the pain.

“You can control your mind by closing off your nervous system,” Red says. “If I wish, I can control mine more...directly. Now, can you please either find a way to kill him or get out of my shell?”

Pieces of the broken off shell whir like saw blades, but like the frost dragon’s flames, they can’t cut through the ice, even with my Death and ascendant energy strengthening them. Annoying as it is to admit, Ketu’s glacial barrier is nearly impenetrable. He might not be able to kill us inside, but if we can’t escape the ice, he’s invincible.

On a whim, I try the attack from before that killed him, summoning a small bead of energy inside his head. Ketu’s eyes widen and his energy flares within, snuffing the bead out before I can do anything.

As I suspected, he wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice.

Ketu looks off to the side where the other ascendants are brawling, his eyes dark with anger, like he wishes he could be with them rather than suffering through this botched assassination attempt.

Suddenly he leaps away, apparently acting on that impulse, deserting me and Red.

The ice shatters under my tortoise-shell blades and Red shakes his tortoise head, clacking his mouth. He takes a step and stumbles on his own iced blood, falling on his knees.

“Out of my shell,” Red says. “Now.”

I protest. We could–

“Out, or I’m going to screw with your mind.”

A strong vertigo comes over me, the world spinning. A threat.

I debate killing the tortoise and securing my first kill, but think better of it. Red helped me, even if he was a prick about it. The point of the pageant isn’t to win, but to network and put on a good show.

I force the broken shell up and slide out, landing in a crouch. My discarded wings lay on the ground, beautiful white plumage dyed a dirty crimson. My shoulders twitch with phantom pain at the sight.

Suddenly my body freezes. I blink in confusion. With my last moment of consciousness, I sense a spike of ice lodged in my body, piercing down from the tip of my skull, between my furry ears, down to my navel.

Everything goes black...and I find myself back with Maria.

I stare at her in disbelief. “How did I die?”

She crosses her arms. “You walked right over to Bryant and let him stab you through the head.”

“I did not.”

Her expression is grave. “What do you think happened?”

“I left Red’s body because he threatened me. I was just about to rejoin the main brawl, and then...” I frown. “Red set me up, didn’t he?”

Maria sighs. “If you mean the tortoise, then yes, I think he must have. Remorse practitioner?”

I nod and punch the wall. “Y’jeni–he must have struck an agreement with Bryant. And he made it so I died in such a humiliating way–covered in blood and literally offering myself over for execution. And I didn’t even get the chance to kill anyone!”

Maria rubs my shoulders. “Ian, it’s just a pageant. You’d best let it go.”

“I guess this was his revenge for last time,” I continue, unable to let the matter rest. “He acts impassive and unmovable, but turns out he holds grudges.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

I frown. “Well, for now, nothing. I’m out of the round. But the pageant isn’t over. He’s strong, but–”

“But?”

I smile at her. “Next round, I don’t think I’ll be alone.”