Nala closed her book and laid it carefully on the table. She blinked, then blinked again, then shifted in her chair to work her stiff muscles, then she looked at the stacks of books-to-be-read, dozens high and with an entire library behind them. Irrelevance was the problem, irrelevance and repetition. There might be just one nugget of useful information in an entire book, a single line buried deep within paragraph upon paragraph of the same fluff she'd read dozens of times before, but the only way to dig out that nugget was to read, and read, and read, and read...

With a low sigh, Nala looked down at her notes—the page her gaze fell upon was mostly about heroes and valkyries. None of the books had much at all to say about Mist's class, and she had yet to find anything that even remotely connected valkyries and heroes. Although Nala was beginning to build an understanding of the various classes and the ways they fit together, there seemed to be a valkyrie-shaped gap in the picture; the class simply didn't belong.

"Weapons," Nala murmured, staring at a page in her notebook, thoughts she'd jotted down while ploughing through a dry volume on piercing weapons. There had been references to several legendary spears, weapons with odd names like Grunger and WrongMint and GuyBulge, their notable qualities including a large bonus to critical chance—there was even one called ZanGuard that guaranteed critical hits. Combined with the valkyrie's sole advantage—the best critical multiplier of any fighter class—these spears would make them useful ... but it seemed that only these rare, high-tier weapons gave this advantage. Without such a spear to offset one of the valkyrie's numerous weaknesses—the lowest critical chance of any fighter class—finding a use for Mist was a wearying task.

Nala sat back in her chair and pushed her palms against her eyes, her thoughts on her team. Preliminary matches were risky, especially near the end of the pre-tournament period. The new 'defeats count as demerits' rule meant that all of the weaker teams had grown scared and dropped out, leaving only the strong still competing. Match-ups were random, and it was likely that they'd be put up against a team that was simply too strong to defeat, or placed in an arena that wouldn't work with any of her strategies.

But the tournament would be set, the brackets announced days before the matches took place, time enough to learn about the opposition, to study their strengths and weaknesses, to form strategies for the various potential arenas ... there was less chance involved, in the tournament. Less of a random element.

"Nala? Are you okay?"

Nala dropped her hands from her eyes, but she didn't open them.

"Summer's team won?" she asked. She could almost hear Mist's enthusiastic nod.

"They REALLY won, it was amazing! Those commentator guys were saying how James just stood there and took EVERYTHING, apparently pirates just get stronger the more they get hurt, plus Summer is a 'mintmedic', it's some kind of healer but if she gets attacked they get a really bad debuff, the one who attacked her I mean, what was it called ... Embargo I think, anyway it meant they can't use any items and can't get healed and get a big to-hit penalty, it was amazing! Anyway, she healed James and James attacked EVERYONE and Night was stealthing around like you can, except he can throw these things that give all of these nasty status effects, like Blind and Slow and Confuse, the other team was a mess and he just moved around too much for anyone to hit, they couldn't do anything! Then because of the rules and everything they got a PerfectVictory like us, except not the SwiftKill thing because they took too long. Um, then after the match I actually bumped into them, I was kind of ... well, anyway, they were really nice and Summer said to tell you that she hopes your research is going well and also that you should be reading about monsters, I guess because of the monster hunt—"

"That hasn't been announced."

"Um, but she seems pretty sure ... well anyway, are you going home soon? Because it's already getting dark, I'm definitely going home right now, even though it seems a bit safer now than it was before—oh! Oh, also, I ran into someone else at the arena, do you remember Elene? We met her on the first day, she's a Nimbian girl here doing research? Dark skin and purple eyes and pink hair? Rainbow clothes? Anyway, she's a really big fan of the games, she was really happy we're in them but REALLY mad that she missed our match, especially after she heard how amazing you were. She said we have to get into the tournament so she can listen to our next match, I thought that was nice to say. We have a supporter!"

"Hm."

"Um, did Amanda come back here? With Praetorian too, of course. I haven't seen them again today, I sent a message asking if they wanted to come to the arena with me but they didn't reply ... have you heard from them?"

"No."

"Oh. I hope they're not in trouble or something. Anyway ... I guess I'm going. I'll see you back here tomorrow though! Oh, we're only ten in the top twelve now but Elene said there's no way anyone can bump us off so that's good news, right? Whatever the test of worth is, we get to do it!"

"Mm."

"Okay, so ... good night. Don't stay up too late, sleep is important! And, um, don't worry about me, my room's not far from here and I've got these FeatherTokens in case anything happens ... I'm really glad I'm not such a burden on your guys now. I can go back to my room by myself, at least. I still feel kind of useless but I know you can find a place for me in your strategy, because you're amazing. So ... so I'll do my best! Um. Good night, Nala."

"Good night."

After Mist left, Nala leant forward to take the next book from her pile ... then stopped. Her notebook was still open to the page on spears and valkyries and the potential uses for Mist, and her eye had been caught by the note she'd scribbled in a corner:

mist - bait blockage distraction

Nala reached for her pencil. With slow care she added another word to the list:

sacrifice