We walk as a team onto the floor of the arena, and the crowd goes wild.

“How thoroughly one forgets.” Zidanya’s murmur passes through the enchantments of the earplugs without any problem, where the crowd feels like its noise is physically buffeting me. I can hear them, despite the earplugs, because their howling is vibrating through my jaw and skull to my tympanic membrane. “Even as a season turns, even as a civilization rises and falls, I had thought to remember. Foolishness.”

“Wait, you used to compete here? Why’d you stop? I know you wanted out.”

“They don’t let the Architects t’fight.” Khalal’s low voice replies to my own, showing that ze can hear me despite zir position behind me and the fact that I’m keeping my gaze forwards. “Can’t leave, see.”

“I could get used to this, if it were me they were cheering.” Amber’s voice is husky. “Pity, that.”

“Even so.”

Sara puts all the pithiness of a five-minute rant into two words, which is exactly like her, and Amber grunts in acknowledgement of the hit. “Mm.” She gives it a beat for comedic timing and, probably, actually thinking it through. “I suppose so long as they cheer for us, I do not require them to cheer for me. And many of them are.”

“Every sed but one.”

“Not entirely unexpected. In pursuit of a fifth, one does not go wrong choosing sed.”

The words fade into the background, reassuring and comforting though the banter is, as we walk towards the center of the field. It’s about two hundred seconds at a slow walk to get to the circle of stark, smooth stone that we’re obviously heading to, twenty meters away from the corresponding stone circle across from it. Our five opponents are doing the same, spines straight and grins gleaming on four of them; the fifth sways and sashays as her tails pass through each other in a syncopated dance that accompanies the movements of her body and the pattern of her steps.

She’s careful to stay on the path, all the same. There’s water to each side of us, a narrow band of it, and after that it’s a wild profusion of tiny ecologies often no more than ten meters across. Broken earth gives way to forest or swamp, a stark peak that rises two hundred meters in a sheer cliff stands next to a bubbling pit of mud, and a spiraling profusion of bushes looks as though it’ll shred anything that touches it as it winds its way across most of the pitch.

And around all of that is the stadium itself, filled to the brim with crowds.

I tear my eyes away from the stands. It’s so much more personal than it was when we entered, when I was still thinking of everyone here as being fake in some way and thinking of the entire scenario as just a challenge to be shattered. These are people, hundreds of thousands of people with more watching remotely, people for whom I’m a story and a myth.

I look at our opponents, instead.

There’s music going on, which I can tell because there are drummers on platforms high up in the air. I can’t hear them, but I can tell that the sed, my opponent, dancing her way across the field, is playing with the beat. One of her feet hits the ground on every one-in-six beat in time with the largest of the drums, at least, but otherwise she’s more freeform; she works her hips, takes to the air in short hops and long leaps, and uses her tails to emphasize every motion and draw the eye this way and that way.

It’s gorgeous, and it’s mesmerizing, and it’s a distraction from the evaluation I’d intended to be making. But it’s not like I don’t already know whom I’m facing; Raoul as the hulking front-liner, Varad with his hurling of demonic fire, Easy with her arrows, and Peacebringer with their…

[Baneful Grasp]...

… my feet stop on smooth stone, and the sound of the announcer talking washes past my consciousness. He’s hyping up the match, and we’ve got plenty of time before things start, so there’s nothing I particularly have to pay attention to. No, who I should be paying attention to is obviously my opponents. Raoul necessitates us scattering, or would if—well. Varad is a huge threat, but so much of his capability is negatived if we—ah. My mind flitters, skipping over the conclusions, letting myself fill with trust in my teammates, in their judgment, in their ability to do their jobs without my micromanaging.

Stolen novel; please report.

There’s no reason not to summon up a few orbs. The thought is a little jarring, because I’m—well, it’s fair enough. It’s true.

I smile at the sed across the field. She’s found her stopping point as well, but she still sways and skips in place, tails spinning and dancing almost as though disconnected from her body. She smiles back at me, mouth moving, and to my surprise I can hear her, like a whisper crawling up my spine. I can’t make out the words, but her tone is friendly and warm, intimate and attentive and coaxing all at once, and something relaxes inside me.

Focusing on her lips helps. It helps with both the relaxing and with understanding her words, as the tails’ motion flows, unceasing, in my peripheral vision and in the background of her, but I’m not understanding any of her words even as the world slips away from me. There’s a dizziness flowing through my body, like I’m going to teeter over and topple, like the whispered barely-audible sounds of her voice are either about to push me over or are the only thing keeping me upright instead of falling.

I can see her, all of her, see how her slender form’s muscles bunch and release, see the intensity in her eyes and the soft invitation of her lips. I can see her tails as they spin, a pattern made of patterns that only I can understand and which encodes a universe, a dance whose rhythm echoes the pounding of my heartbeat and the slow steadiness of my breath.

I can see her as she would be above me, straddling my hips. I can feel her presence as it would be behind me, where her fingers would trail so lightly from my shoulders down to my waist. I can see her as she would be above me again, were I on the ground before her, gazing up at her; and as she would be before me, if I had my fingertips on her hips and couldn’t move them. This is how it would feel to not be able to move away from her or nearer, and there’s only her, the vision of her, the sight and thought of her close enough to touch, close enough that I can finally hear her whispering in my ear.

Stay, she whispers. You’ve come so far, and deserve to rest. Let yourself rest.

You could all stay, and it traces the gentlest, lightest fire down every nerve of my body, like a promissory kiss.

We would take such care of you. We, because I would stay, to stay with you, take care of you.

Her touch, feather-light, is intoxicating. I can’t move, am perfectly content not to move, as she steps behind me, running her fingers along my jaw and brushing my collarbone. Open for me, she whispers, and instinctively I understand, tilting my head away from her to bare my throat to her.

My reward is her fingers tracing a warm, tingling line around, languorous and slow. It fills my senses, distracts me from the feeling of my mana dipping again. I shift my head to grant her access as she circles around me, still whispering words that don’t register as words, just soft susurrations of praise and affirmation.

So open, so vulnerable. This is who you should be, she whispers over those tones, over those elemental notes that resonate between us. Is this not better?

It is better. Everything about this is better, to simply relax and listen and accept what she says, what she does. It’s better to yearn for her touch to return as her fingers leave my neck, and to feel an almost electric shock of joy as they, moments later, return so tenderly to my jaw, tracing a slow crescent up to my cheek and then down to my lips.

My lips which, because of the relaxation and wonderment and joy, are parted in pleasure; and the whispers redouble, revolving around me. They’re a chord that fills my body from my toes to my scalp, they’re fey winds that blow around my hair and tug at my braids. I’m never more beautiful, they tell me, than when the tension bleeds out of my stance and I am so open and pliable, as pliable as the softness of my lips that deform under her finger. She runs it along the outside of my lips, a drifting touch that explores first the bottom lip and then the upper before gently slipping inside to crook and brush along the gums in front of my upper teeth.

Hale, she whispers, hearty, strong, and lovely. And young, so young, and innocent. The finger slips between my teeth, brushing my palette gently, resting against my tongue. Suckle, she whispers, and I do, tongue running slowly along the length of her finger, as the winds tug at my wrists, starting to pull them, unresisting, behind me.

You can have me, she whispers, and I can have you. All of you, as mine. Doesn’t it sound nice to be someone’s? No worrying about what to do or what decisions to make. Just the joys, and all you need to do… is kneel.

I smile. I am smiling, have been smiling, and maybe that’s why there’s so much joy, so much wonder and adoration and contentment to go along with the quiet hunger in my voice when I answer.

“Thank you very much,” I say out loud. “This was very nice.”

A moment later, every Mote and orb I’ve made since we walked onto the pitch fires in the split-second before the horn blows.