Vayra, Glade, and Nathariel returned to their quarters long enough to patch themselves up. Vayra’s flesh and blood shoulder stung, and she bound it from the outside, but there wasn’t much she could do to stop the internal damage except to cycle Arcara to it and let her enhanced body handle the repairs.

Glade wrapped a few bandages around his body, and they both patched up any minor cuts and scrapes they’d earned in the earlier fight. Nathariel sat in the corner, watching intently but not commenting.

“Are we going to have to deal with more weapons like that in the future?” Vayra asked.

“Unless the other fighters of the tournament have them equipped?” Nathariel shrugged. “Perhaps, though unless they catch us by surprise again, those weapons will be less effective than normal, aye?”

Vayra’ tilted her head.

“Dodge them, duck away, disperse them with a Starlight Palm, among others,” he said. “It shouldn’t be your biggest concern.”

“Larra’s blood manipulation is what concerns me,” Glade muttered. “Even with our Warding, we are working with a frigate while she has a man-of-war.”

“Then it is imperative that you push for advancement,” said Nathariel. “Expand your mana pools and your control, your Arcara purity, and your techniques will improve.”

Once they had finished patching themselves, they walked back out through the hallways of the arena. By now, it was midnight, as best Vayra could tell by the shifting of the moon’s crust and the position of the larger orange gas giant in the sky.

They found a cluster of guards around the gate, and explained to them the situation. She and Glade, like a few others, were supposed to have a meeting with Altrous and his people, but Larra had disrupted that. By now, the guards must have heard the commotion—or at least heard about it.

When they explained, two guards broke off from the cluster and walked with them through the arena, leading them around a radial hallway. It was near the top of the structure, with open pillars to the side granting a view of the rest of the structure below.

Campers and viewers still huddled in little ramshackle villages along the expanse of the audience stands, campfires burning and people mingling and dancing. They had staked out prime spots, and they weren’t giving them up now.

The guards, and Vayra, Glade, and Nathariel approached a god’s viewing tower. It was entirely white limestone, pearl, and gold. There were no ridges or misshapen gables—just a single spire up into the night, smooth edges collapsing together as they approached a peak. Inlays of golden swirls wrapped all the way up the spire, making it gleam in the starlight and planetlight.

The radial hallway led into the tower’s flank, and the guards opened a door, allowing them inside. Two sun-Path God-heirs stood inside the door, wearing beige robes and carrying spears with golden tips. Their hair was yellow-blonde, like it had been bleached in the sun for years.

From there, it wasn’t far to a larger vestibule, where Moulded Arcara lamps lined the edges, emitting golden sunlight down into a hall. The room was large enough to fit a galleon across and tall enough to accommodate its masts. A set of chairs had been arranged in the center, almost like pews, and each one had a lamp of Moulded Arcara right next to it.

Two more sun-Path god-heirs greeted them on the way in. “If you desire it, please ensure that your appearance is proper,” one heir, a Third Lieutenant, said. “This is how you will be projected during each of your fights.”

Vayra swallowed, then ran a finger through her hair. She was still grimy from the fight and hadn’t had a chance to clean up—save for wiping blood spatters off her face.

But there wasn’t much she could do, now.

‘Now, hey, don’t put it like that,’ Phasoné said. ‘You’re doing more than just representing yourself. You’re representing Velaydia and me, too. We can’t have you looking like a tattered street beggar.’

“I mean…” Vayra whispered. “It’d kinda be accurate.”

“You have five minutes before the projections are made,” said the God-heir. He turned away and marched to the edge of the room, where another group of them stood.

The God-heirs clustered around a tall, lean man with a beige and gold robe over one shoulder. He wore a single epaulet of Moulded sunlight Arcara, and his long blonde hair floated freely behind him like it was made of mist.

Vayra didn’t get any especially strong buzzes in her neck or feel a pressure on her core, but it was hard to tell. There were so many extraordinarily powerful people here, and she hadn’t had the experience to differentiate between them and the general buzz.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

But if she had to guess, that was Altrous, God of the Sun. He just carried himself like…a god. Like there was no one in the room who could even touch him.

‘Yes, it is,’ Phasoné said hurriedly. ‘Now pull yourself into the corespace and let me clean you up.’

“Yes, ma’am,” Vayra muttered. She took a seat near the edge of the room, cross-legged, and folded her hands in her lap.

Nathariel and Glade followed her, but there wasn’t much they could do. Nathariel fixed Glade’s coat and hair and brushed off his hat.

At least Glade had someone to make sure he cleaned up, too.

Vayra shut her eyes and drew herself into the corespace. Phasoné was waiting for her with a pail of water from the pond at the edge of the corespace, and another detached strip of her dress—which she held as a rag. A very, very expensive rag. Adair perched on her shoulder, mewling and nattering to himself.

Vayra swallowed nervously, then said, “If you dump corespace fake water on my head, do you think I’m gonna get clean? It’s not real.”

“But the idea of it is,” Phasoné said. “Your core is tied to your existence, and just like how you can alter your clothes within, not to mention drag items in and out, you can control the Arcara within—for that’s all this water is, truly—to affect yourself.”

“So—”

Before Vayra could finish, Phasoné splashed her with the pail of water. Vayra sputtered and wiped her face, but the water rolled off with ease, not even leaving her hair wet. But it whisked away the dust and grime. She couldn’t imagine how it looked outside the corespace—did she just suddenly get clean, or did her hair sop down over her face for a second as if a bucket of invisible water washed over her?

“There,” Phasoné said. “A little better.”

She walked around behind Vayra, and Adair hopped off her shoulder. He pounced over to Vayra and nestled on her shoulder.

“Now,” Phasoné commented, “You can’t just leave your hair like that.”

“Sure I can,” said Vayra raising a hand to help catch Adair.

“It’s getting long.”

“I’ll cut it when we get back to the contestant’s quarters.” Truly, it was starting to get a little unwieldy, now reaching halfway down her back. But it didn’t really matter in a fight; her scythe just cut through it, so if it got caught, it wouldn’t matter.

Phasoné sighed. “Or I could braid it for you. You could take care of yourself, for once. There’s no shame in taking a bit of pride in your appearance.”

Vayra opened her mouth for a second, then shut it again. “Alright, alright. Braid away, Glitter Princess.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

And then the tugging began.

It wasn’t horrible—Phasoné was just making a single braid down Vayra’s back, like a dense orange ponytail—but it was more than she’d ever had anyone pull on her hair, and it felt like ants were crawling all over her scalp.

Vayra shuddered, but kept herself from complaining. She couldn’t just will away the feeling, and it wasn’t all bad. When Phasoné combed her fingers through the long orange strands, the detangling had a pleasant pop to it, even if it did make her scalp feel funny. She leaned back against Phasoné’s arms and tried to focus on the good.

But…

Nope. Too awkward.

She’d get used to the feeling, just not now. She needed to take her mind off it. She held Adair and helped him crawl down into her lap, then scratched him between the ears. As she pet him, she searched for the Arcara channels that ran closest to the surface of his skin.

But, being a cat, he had fur. And they’d pumped him so full of elixir—by necessity, mostly, to keep him alive on Harvest Sanctuary—that Arcara and spiritual energy crackled in his fur like lightning.

When Phasoné reached a knot and had to pull a little harder than normal, Vayra winced, then activated her spiritual sight to keep her mind off the tug in her hair. Adair’s Arcara circulated through a rudimentary channel system. A few of them spike up into hairs along his back, like spines on a lizard’s back.

Without spiritual sight, he’d have looked like a normal cat, but now? He had a glowing blue mohawk. She supposed the same must have gone for Larra’s wolf. Its channels probably spiked up along its back, just like Adair, and through physical contact, she took on his abilities.

Cats like having their hair touched, didn’t they?

Vayra shut her eyes and let Adair’s Arcara flow back up to her, filling her veins. Along with it came a different energy, a different will. Adair’s Arcara was pure—it had no aspect bend—but it wasn’t a human’s Arcara.

It infused her with a different will, not overwhelming or controlling, just…complimentary.

She inhaled, and as the Essence whirled through her own channels, aspects of Adair’s will seeped out into her muscles. They twitched faster, feline instincts embedded and etched into her flesh.

It was like a cloud lifted from her mind. Everything moved slightly slower, and she could choose to react to it whenever she wanted. A mote of stray Arcara floated through the air of the corespace, following her cycling patterns, but she lifted her hand up and swatted it, like a kitten chasing after a butterfly.

She hit it instantly, hardly thinking about her reaction time and speed.

“Woah…” she breathed.

But it only lasted for seconds before she lost her connection with Adair. As Phasoné’s fingers passed through her hair, the itch in her scalp turned to a pleasant touch, and then it was done altogether. She ran a hand down the back of her head, feeling the neat braid Phasoné had made. “Thanks, Phas,” she said. It still dipped down halfway down her back, but at least the hair was slightly more contained.

Phasoné tied it off with a thinner strip of double-exposure window-into-space fabric, then said, “You’re welcome. Now get out there, and get a projection made of yourself, alright? You’ll do good.”

She patted Vayra on the shoulder.

“Where do you find the confidence…?” Vayra whispered.

“Practice?” Phasoné shrugged. She leaned closer and brushed one of Vayra’s bangs to the side. “I promise, you’ll do fine. Maybe just smile for them?”

“I hope that isn’t necessary…”