Vayra approached the door. As she pulled it open, her hand hovered over the hilt of her pistol.

The door creaked open, revealing a guard in blue jade armor. He wore a cloak and carried a glaive.

At first, he bowed, then said, “Pardon the intrusion, but your presences have been requested by Altrous, God of the Sun. In order to project your appearances properly during the main matches, he will need to create a temporary Arcara model of you. Please do not deny him your time, or you will be disqualified from the tournament.”

“This late in the evening?” Vayra asked.

“There are hundreds of contestants to work through,” the guard said. He took a step, then motioned down the hallway. “Follow me, if you please.”

He was just a mortal, though being a guard, he would be a competent fighter. Vayra didn’t doubt that they could defeat him after his armour absorbed a hit or two, but the real power of the guards came from their numbers. They could easily diffuse a situation if they had numbers.

If there was only one, they must not have seen much of a threat, nor were they planning on harming her or Glade at the moment.

Vayra glanced at Glade and Nathariel. Glade shrugged, and Nathariel said, “Something feels off, but the guard is right—Altrous will need a model of you if he’s going to project an image of you during the main fights. We can’t delay.”

“Will you be there?” Vayra asked.

“I’ll be right behind,” Nathariel said.

They stepped out of the room and followed the man down the hallway. When they reached a set of stairs, they descended through the structure of the arena and wound around its outside, dipping through offices or taking walkways across once-hollow caverns that were now filled with ramshackle housing and peddlers trying to sell the contestants goods.

When they were halfway around the arena and had nearly descended all the way to ground-level, another guard approached them. He wore scuffed and scratched armour, and a single epaulet to denote a higher rank. “I’ll take them from here,” he said.

Immediately, Vayra narrowed her eyes. A commanding officer taking charge of average contestants?

But the other guard just bowed and stepped away wordlessly. He wouldn’t argue with a superior. Vayra tried to scan the new guard’s spirit, but either he was a powerful God-heir putting up a perfect veil, or he was still a mortal.

They followed him for another minute. Whenever they passed a torch or a lantern, Vayra examined his armour. He’d done the buckles loosely, and the back plate of the armour had scuffs and chips on the edges.

Phasoné? Vayra thought. Notice anything off? She couldn’t speak aloud, or the guard might hear.

‘Make a bright flash,’ Phasoné replied, speaking inside Vayra’s head. ‘I’ll see if I notice anything in the slits between his armour.’

If Vayra made the flash, she’d be focussing on the technique, and probably a bit blinded by it. But with the help of Phasoné’s undivided concentration, she might pick out something that someone else wouldn’t notice.

Vayra used a Starlight Palm. The white light flashed through the air and glimmered off the guard’s armour, illuminating the entire hallway in pale white light. It didn’t hit anything, but the light was bright enough to sear her eyes and leave a few azure stains. When her vision cleared, the hallway had also dimmed.

Everyone stopped and stared at her.

“Just…Arcara malfunction,” she said. “Still jittery from the morning’s fight.”

The guard shook his head with disdain and kept walking.

So, Phasoné? Vayra thought. Anything?

‘He’s wearing a black coat underneath. It’s shimmering with Moulded water-aspect Arcara.’ The Goddess paused. ‘Likely someone associated with Karmion.’

Vayra scrunched her eyebrows. He wouldn’t attack us so brazenly, not before the tournament is over.

‘It could be someone in the service of his children. They do not share the same restrictions as he does, and they might be acting without permission.’

She swallowed nervously. They both landed on the same thought: Larra.

The guard turned abruptly toward the edge of the arena and led them to an outside door. Vayra stopped, and so did Glade and Nathariel.

Glade crossed his arms and said, “It cannot be outside the tournament walls. They would not make us leave, and I still sense Altrous behind us.”

‘He’s probably not a real guard,’ Phasoné said.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Agreed, Vayra shot back mentally.

“We’re just circling around to avoid the crowds,” the guard tried, but not one of them moved.

The guard’s eyes flicked back and forth between Vayra, Glade, and Nathariel—visible only as dim flickers beneath the eye slit of his helmet. They widened, and he inhaled sharply. His head twitched, then he threw down his glaive and reached for a leather pouch at his hip.

Nathariel blasted a beam of fire out the palm of his hand, Glade drew his sword, and Vayra Moulded her scythe. The beam of fire blasted into the fake guard’s chestplate and dispersed, leaving cracks and burns on the armour. One more hit and it’d shatter.

The guard snatched up his pouch and threw it. It struck Nathariel in the chest, and on contact, it exploded into a puff of plain white crystal—almost like salt, but with enormous crystals. It enveloped Nathariel’s chest and pinned him to the wall behind them.

Vayra slashed at the guard, confident she could break his armour, but he was already sprinting away. Her scythe whistled through the empty air. He charged out into the night. A path led through the forest, but it wasn’t a major road—just a trail for workers and maintenance.

Vayra took a step to follow him, but Glade held out a hand. “It is probably a trap.”

“We already sprung the trap,” she said. “And we sprung it early. We need to know who’s doing this and what they were trying to do to us!”

“Go!” Nathariel said. He bashed a crystal away with his fist, but there were plenty more where that came from. “I’ll be right behind you—once I get out of this!”

Vayra nodded, and she and Glade charged into the woods, racing after the fake guard. She formed her seer-core. It was nighttime now, and the stars shone down through the cracks in the Shattered Moon’s shell.

She held her hand out in front of her, illuminating the forest as best she could. The fake guard was only a shadow in the distance ahead of them.

‘Astral Shroud?’ Phasoné suggested.

But if they took the guard down, he wouldn’t give them any information. They needed to follow him, wherever he was running off to.

‘Then get rid of the bright light! He won’t lead us anywhere if he knows we’re following him!’

Vayra cut off her connection to the seer-core then threw the orb of bright light off into the forest, making it look like she and Glade had veered to the side. When it dispersed, she only had the natural starlight to navigate by, but that was enough. If she concentrated, her Captain-stage eyesight still let her see the guard up ahead.

The guard took a bend in the path, curving away from the arena and past a set of huts. He took another sharp turn to the left, then approached an old white marble ruin surrounded by bushes and shrubs. It was a patinated circle inlaid into the ground, with a pair of rotting wooden doors. He heaved one door open, then tugged it shut behind him. It sealed with a thud just before Vayra and Glade arrived.

“We’re going in?” Vayra whispered.

“We have backup coming.” Glade glanced back at the arena. “Soon.”

“That could be all day,” she muttered. She didn’t know what kind of weapon the crystal pouch was, and she didn’t know how long it would contain an Admiral. She shut her eyes and tried extending her rudimentary spiritual senses.

A multitude of presences waited underground beyond the ruins, but that was about all she could tell. They were pretty deep.

‘Unless you advance to Commodore on the spot, we’re not going to get a better glimpse than that,’ Phasoné said. ‘At least, not from here.’

“What if there are other people who they tried to lure out?” Vayra whispered. “People who didn’t have Phasoné to see through the lie?”

“If it is some shady mass-capture program,” Glade said, “then why target us?”

“Trying to take out all the competitors who might not align with them if they got the Godly Authority of Talock?” she suggested. “Dunno, but if there are people down there, they might be in trouble.”

Glade nodded. “And we should help.”

Besides, if they didn’t, they’d just be letting someone try again—and they might try again better next time.

They both pulled open one of the doors to the hatch and slid down into the darkness below. Vayra’s boots crunched down on a layer of dried leaves and twigs. She landed in a crouch, then stood up straight and glanced around.

The hallway was a dark corridor, some ancient ruin repurposed, with crumbling pillars lining the walls and vines hanging from the ceiling. It smelled of rot, mould, and blood.

They ran to the end of the hallway, where a staircase dipped deeper into the ground. A pipe ran along the wall, and an old pulley system draped down the center of the staircase. It was probably an old maintenance system from long ago, when the arena was first built.

Glade led the way down the stairs, holding his sword in front of him. Vayra followed, cycling her Arcara and preparing to launch a technique. She cycled hard and fast, with a combat-oriented pattern. The swordwyrm floated behind them, guarding their rear.

As they neared the bottom of the stairway, hushed voices leaked out of the gloom. She strained her ears, trying to pick up on what they were saying, but they were speaking too fast and still too far away.

At the bottom of the stairway, they arrived in a hallway. On one side, bare mud and roots formed the wall, and on the other side was a set of pillars. A cavernous atrium filled the space beyond.

Vayra crept as close as she dared to pillars and peered between them. The atrium was a simple box of marble, probably once intended for storing building material, but now, a set of wooden tables lined the ground.

Men in black coats scurried between them, holding surgeons’ equipment. They only exerted the spiritual pressure of mortals, but they each wore a sash of Moulded water-Arcara, marking them as servants of one of Karmion’s children.

Not good, but they could deal with that.

The problems lay at each end of the hall. God-heir guards—anywhere from Quartermaster to Second Lieutenant—stood in the wings. Some wore the armour of the planet guards (stolen, most likely), but others wore dark coats and tricorn hats with plumes of water. A few carried muskets, and the others held straight sabers at their hips.

‘Vayra, look at the tables,’ Phasoné instructed.

A person lay on each table. They wore a variety of garments, and they were all sorts of races—God-heirs from all across the galaxy.

All of them were captains—all contestants in the tournament—and none of them looked like they were here on their own will. They squirmed and struggled, but clumps of the salt-like crystal they’d used against Nathariel bound their arms and legs down.

Vayra ducked out of sight, then pressed her back against the hallway’s far wall. “They did get others.”

Glade tightened his grip on his sword. “Are we going down?”

“I don’t think we can afford to wait. If we do nothing? They die. We stand a chance to find some friends and earn some favours.”