“Get up!” Jor’Mari’s hands shake where he holds onto Lionel’s torn tunic. Anger is painted on his face, his vicious teeth dripping spittle as he yells down at the man lying limp on the ground. Jor’Mari shakes him again, the man’s tunic ripping just a little more. Past the anger, I can see fear in his eyes. “Get up you bastard!”

The shock of the collision still rings in my ears as I race toward the two men, the explosion of two great forces colliding with one another in the center of the field. The sight of Jor’Mari’s triumph souring as he stood over Lionel stains my mind. I am not the first to make it to him. One of Lionel’s teammates crashes into Jor’Mari’s side at full speed, sending him sprawling into the grass before he can recover.

“Get off of him,” the man yells, putting himself between Jor’Mari and the fallen Lionel.

I make it there, both teams converging around the fallen man. A nasty gash splits Lionel’s brow, and his half-lidded eyes stare into nothing. I would think that he was dead if it wasn’t for the shallow puffing of his chest. Before I can get closer, a woman from Lionel’s puts herself in my path, blocking my way.

“Do you have a healer?” I ask her, ignoring the anger on her face.

“No,” she says, looking down at her fallen comrade.

“You fucking killed him!” the man standing off with Jor’Mari yells, his face turning red.

“He’s not dead,” two of us say at the same time, but it is as if neither of the two men hear us.

Jor’Mari snatches the fallen Stoneball from the ground at his feet, squeezing it between his fingers so hard I can hear it whine. He stares at the red ball, his shoulder shaking as he gnashes his teeth. Finally, he turns back toward the center of the field, looking up at the Dispatch and at Arabella Willian who stands upon it. “Is this what you fucking wanted!?”

The Stoneball splits the air as Jor’Mari hurls it skyward. A metallic ping rolls through the pitch as the Stoneball collides with the dispatch, the heavy ball sending the black cube spiraling through the air. Arabella Willian stands on the air, looking down at us like some dispassionate goddess, her fingers drumming the staff she holds in her hands. I search her eyes for a hint of something, any emotion, but find them cold.

Jor’Mari begins to stalk away, stomping his way to the sidelines and back toward the archway that leads into our room. No one tries to stop him, all just watching the man’s back as he disappears.

Arabella’s alighting on the ground near us brings surprise; I don’t think that anyone noticed her move. “Move aside,” she says, casually pushing people back with her staff as she bends over Lionel. There is a tremor in his hands now as he lay on the ground.

Puffs of magical power, like smoke, pulse off of Arabella’s fingers. So close to her, I find myself enraptured by the way she uses her soul presence to manipulate the puffs of magic; the control she has over her soul presence is infinitely more fine than what I could do with my own fingers. Her soul presence seems to catch the puffs of magic, manipulating them into runes that float around her hand with precise folding and sculpting, the same way I have seen bakers work with dough back home. The runes, ten of them, float around Arabella’s hand, and when the final one is created and in place, they all catch the light simultaneously, the spell activating.

Blue light washes over Lionel and he begins to still, mist spouting from between his lips as he relaxes into a long breath. I feel the cold wash over me then, my own breath clouding the air; the same is true for the others around me. Arabella bends down, running a finger over the cut across the man’s forehead, a line of ice left behind, closing the wound.

“He will recover,” she pronounces, standing. In an illusion that hurts my eyes to witness, two identical copies of Arabella seem to step out of her body, a canvas stretched over a rectangular frame held between them. “That was a nasty hit; it will be a while before he can move.”

As if the huge man weighed nothing, the two clones of Arabella lift his body and set him onto the frame, carrying him off of the field and toward the sidelines. “With one member down, the game will continue with three players apiece on each team. Team Mari, come to a decision on who will be representing you.” With that, Arabella returns to the air, landing once more on top of the Dispatch.

A few minutes pass as our team tries to come to a decision on what to do. No one wants to even try and get Jor’Mari to come back to the game. With him out, our team is significantly weaker, but so is theirs without Lionel. Against my wishes, my team settles on me being the one to sit on the sidelines for a while, claiming my haggard and sweaty appearance as their reasoning. I can’t deny it, I have been playing as hard as I can for the last thirty minutes, finding some genuine enjoyment in the game. Despite pushing myself as hard as my body will go, a glance at my vital energies confirms that I still have well over half of my stamina remaining. That isn’t something I can tell my team though.

I eventually decide that I will go along with what they suggest. A part of me wants to continue playing, but I also want to see what all it is that Clarice and Jasper are capable of. I find a seat off to the side, settling in to watch the game continue without me. It is very much a different game without the two strongest players present on the field. Each of the three finds a lot of difficulty in driving the ball anywhere down the field before they are taken to the ground by their opponents. To my lack of surprise, Jess begins to emerge as a strong ball carrier, her finesse truly amazing.

“This is not how I wished for things to progress,” a voice says to my left.

I glance to the side, finding Arabella sitting in the seat near me, her eyes turned toward the match as well. Glancing to the Dispatch, I find her there as well, looking down at the game below with a look of boredom on her face.

“I have found disappointment abounds inside of this contest,” I say without looking at her.

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“You are angry with me,” she says.

“I am.”

“You have every right to be, I think. Events inside of the Passage have not gone as I thought they might. Despite what I told you before this contest began, there was a part of me that hoped the five of you might be able to come together as a strong team, able to watch each other’s backs and have a genuine companionship blossom.” She sighs, her mask of beautiful indifference breaking for a brief moment. “Would you believe me if I told you that?”

I pause for a moment, feeling heat rise up in my chest at the idea of being friends or companions with those two that tried to kill me. “No,” I say, eventually. “I honestly cannot believe you would ever think that I could get along with someone like them. Coriander and Kendon tried to kill me, me and Jor’Mari.”

“Kendon is more innocent in this than you realize,” she says.

I look at her, staring at her for a long moment. She looks so different than I remembered thinking back on her, more like an actual woman than some powerful being I could never touch. Despite her mask of indifference, there is emotion in her eyes, a small hint at hurt.

“I know,” I say, turning my attention back to the field where the teams try and drive the ball down the field, neither really finding all that much success. Our team is up three to two: if this keeps up for another half hour we will win by default.

“You do?”

“She has some way to manipulate him,” I say. “He was acting so strangely when I encountered them, that it put me on edge. Something moved from her to him when she told him things, some kind of distortion in the air like magic without color. Jor’Mari mentioned something about her having a necklace that she shouldn’t, and that they tried to kill him when he noticed. He refused to tell me what it does, but I think I understand. The way that Kendon acted when we fought outside the tower, like a ghost of a man, no passion or ideas in him, seems confirm what I suspected. That necklace is some kind of artifact, one that allows her to manipulate him.” The look on Arabella’s face confirms for me that I am right. “You knew.”

“Artifacts are inherently powerful by their definition,” she says with a sigh. “There would be no purpose of bonding them to an individual otherwise. Some carry unsavory powers with them. With a judicious mind, they can be used in a responsible manner, contributing good into the world.”

“And you thought a girl like her could do something good?”

“I had hoped,” Arabella says.

“I doubt it,” I say, unable to stop my irritation from bleeding into my voice.

We spend a long few moments without speaking, me looking out at the field while Arabella watches me. Galea floats at my side, the spirit keeping me apprised of what she does.

“I see that I have lost all of your trust,” Arabella says.

“Yes.”

The woman looks taken aback by my bluntness. Her eyes dart, trying to come up with something to say. “I had hoped to help all of you, in a way that I was once helped. I thought that if I could bring the five of you together, you might be able to push each other forward. Perhaps Kendon and Jor’Mari would finally be able to swallow their guilt. Maybe Coriander might see the shortcomings of her perspective, see how her mind has been bent and shaped by her father, finally break out of the mental prison she has built for herself. In growing alongside new friends, maybe Macille would step out of his brother’s shadow and find that he has something real to offer the world. I wanted to see you discover your power, to realize that great potential that hides within you. I think that I tried to author growth for all of you, but I am finding that I am as poor of a writer as I am a teacher.”

“You are trying to make me feel sorry for her now?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “No, Coriander has done things that I cannot forgive, things that she expressly promised to me that she would not do. I have no further concern for her, and I will not protect her from the consequences of her actions. I see that the potential I saw in her is buried so deep that the juice will not be worth the squeeze. I will not stop you from confronting her; if you need to use her as a steppingstone for your ascension then so be it. The guild will not look so favorably on your attempt to take revenge, however. They were quite serious when they said that they would allow no further acts of unprovoked violence.”

“I feel plenty provoked,” I spit.

“Even so.”

It takes me a long moment before I can bring myself to look at the woman. I can see plainly that she wants me to trust her again, that she is wounded by how I look at her now, but I can’t be certain if that emotion is real or a fabrication. “I wish that I could trust you.”

“What would you have from me?” she asks.

“How about the truth? Before you picked me up out of the squalor of my backwoods, I knew almost nothing of the world. I am grateful for what you gave to me, the essentia that I have now are so precious to me, but you did not try to get rid of my ignorance. You gave me a few books, sure, but did you tell me anything about what was really going on? Almost everyone in this contest knew something of it before arriving, but I didn’t. Almost everyone in this contest had some grounding on how to succeed, but I had to figure that out on my own. Everyone here even understood how exactly it is that those that control my people back home do so. You could have at least told me that couldn’t you? Was it too much to tell me about how I have been kept ignorant my entire life? You knew these things, but you refused to say. How could I ever trust you?”

I cheer breaks out on the field as the opposing team manages to score a point. They celebrate as Clarice helps Jasper off of the ground, pulling the grass-stained man to his feet. With the score tied, the teams make their way back toward the starting lines, waiting for the Dispatch to hurl another ball down to the field.

The black cube whines in the air as it spins end over end. A streak of yellow falls from the sky, crashing down into the middle of the field. The same woman from Lionel’s team appears in front of the ball in a flash, starting her sprint forward. Without slowing a step, Jess runs past her, the lizardkin’s nimble fingers plucking the ball out of the woman’s hands like a pear from a tree.

“The truth is,” Arabella begins as we watch the team fight over the yellow ball, “I did know about your brother before having you sign that contract.”

I pull my eyes away from the match, staring at Arabella. “You did?”

“I did. I came to Westgrove to find his brother. I thought that I could repay him for what he did for me a long time ago, give his brother the things that he had to scrape and struggle for. When I reached Westgrove, however, I found Corinth’s brother to be further along than I expected, but I see now that was a failing of me. Of course, Corinth’s brother would progress at a breakneck pace. I was pleased to find that he had a sister as well; he hadn’t mentioned that to me when we met. I can see the same strength that burns inside of you that burned in him. I hope that one day I can make you see that too.”

“Tell me,” I say, the match forgotten. “When did you meet him?”

Arabella smiles like she is remembering a fond memory. “It was a good while ago now. We met in Grim. What I remember most from that day was the rain…”