Breck looked like she should clink when she joined me the next evening. The usual eating knife and sling attached to her belt had been joined by a stone hammer, a pouch with a dozen needles half visible and ready to be quickly drawn, and a lasso hooked onto her opposite hip. The only thing missing to complete her new look as a weapon chest was a spear. It wasn’t difficult to guess that the only reason it was missing was that she had run out of room on her belt and she wanted to keep her hands free.

I glanced over my shoulder at the long, gossamer pine needles hanging behind me but no large attack force came rushing out to ambush us. I let my eyebrows lift in question as I turned back to her.

Breck spared me a glance, didn’t acknowledge my silent question, and then turned as well to look back the way she had come. “Loclen’s not here yet?”

“She’s not late,” I pointed out. Evening was generally understood to start after the last meal of the day, but given that Breck hadn’t been more specific than that Loclen could technically arrive at any point in the next three hours and still be on time.

Breck made a noncommittal noise and crossed her arms. I hide a smile at the rare show of irritation; the impassive girl might as well have aspirations to be a stone for all the emotion she normally displayed. Though, between her outburst yesterday and now, perhaps that was changing.

I mulled over the thought as we waited. Out of all the girls in our cohort, Breck was the one who reminded me the most of Rawley. Not my mentor’s general patient and amused demeanor, Breck was too brittle for that, but she was like Rawley during the times my mentor had taken me hunting. Quiet and still and comfortable with the tedium, except that Breck embodied those things all the time. Like she was constantly on a hunt and was just waiting for the hare to stick its nose out too far. She had a huntress’s pride as well, where any loss must be met with instant effort to disperse the impact. Nor did it slip my notice that while we both tended to be loners, Breck’s air felt different from my own. She projected that she was simply capable enough to handle things on her own, while mine held the threat that I didn’t play well with others. I didn’t like the comparison, but I comforted myself with the fact that at least I didn’t look like I had tangled with frostbite and lost—if that was how she had lost her two fingers.

For a while, I debated letting the silence hang between us, it was easier and less dangerous than talking, but curiosity won out when Loclen continued to fail to show up. “How did you lose them?”

Breck flicked her gaze over to me before following my gesture down to my hand. Her mouth twisted slightly in a derisive frown. “My first screecher.”

I nodded like I understood, but something in my expression must have given away that I had never heard of a “screecher” before.

Her bored impatience seemed to thicken around her. “Think us, but squatter, uglier, a lot dumber, and with thick white fur and a red face and a protruding mouth. Then add a carnivorous diet and the ability to pour fog from their mouths when they aren’t screeching at each other over who gets to sit on the tallest rock.”

I hesitated. “These are…animals?”

She snorted and focused on the pathway. “Finest of Haggler’s Cliffs.”

Not sure whether to take her statement as sarcasm or truth, I didn’t push her further. Besides, I knew exactly one myth that was said to take place at Haggler’s Cliffs. From it I knew the cliffs lay northeast somewhere, there were hot springs rumored to restore health and grant invulnerability, and that one half of the party of six that went got swallowed by a large carnivorous plant and the rest got picked off by a shadowy assailant that stole their eyes and mimicked their friends’ voices. Needless to say, it sounded as disturbing as the Broken Spear Peaks and as dangerous as Flickermark, and if Breck had grown up there and only lost two fingers and gained some scars, then she had reason to walk around with such confidence as if the rest of the world bored her.

Loclen arrived a few minutes later looking cool and unrepentant at making us wait. Breck gave her a look that clearly judged her delay.

Loclen snapped, “It’s not my fault you both inhale your food rather than eat it.”

I scowled at her, she scowled back, and Breck acted like she hadn’t said anything. Then Breck led us into the claustrophobic needles. She didn’t tell us to meet her at the Strands until she had a chance to get close to each of us during training. I thought she’d take us to a path hidden off the platform, like the way to the library, but instead Breck stopped right in the thick of the hanging needles and pointed up. I followed her finger to a thick braid made of hundreds of needles that I had completely missed when I had searched through here before. My teeth gritted together. The annoying thing also ended above my head, so my fingers could barely brush the tied strands if I stood on my tiptoes. I wouldn’t be able to get to the arena without help.

Loclen and Breck could both reach it if they jumped, but Loclen didn’t have the arm strength to pull herself up without more leverage. Breck clearly thought we were both idiots, but not everyone had the tedious inclination to do push ups all day. Her, Nii, and Ulo could have the honor of competing in that boring activity everyday.

In the end, I had to climb on Breck’s shoulders before latching onto the needle braid. Part of me expected it to give out as soon as I stepped on it, but it held without any ominous feelings of sudden slack or sound of breaking strands. I climbed up enough to give them room to maneuver before Breck pulled herself up and hauled Loclen up after. Loclen looked more than a little put out about the rough treatment to her dress, but I just hoped she didn’t trip on it as we climbed.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I did my best to focus on getting proper hand and footholds on the slick needles as we climbed, rather than the slippery sensation of the shadowy needles enclosing us on all sides. We’d be at the arena soon and the last thing I needed was to slip into another memory dozens of feet in the air. It helped, though, that the sensation was similar to nothing in my childhood other than the comforting feeling of running fresh herbs through my fingers.

The needle braid took us up to a hole naturally sculpted through the bottom of a platform.

Unnaturally, the hole had hand and footholds pressed into the wood. As I climbed up the side a familiar voice that I couldn’t place spoke.

“You’re more of a thrill seeker than I initially took you for.”

Then healer’s beads clinked and I twisted as memory came rushing back until I was looking up into Ressia’s smiling face. The healer was leaning on the lip of the wall I was climbing looking pleasantly surprised and…like a choice bit of fortune had just fallen in her lap.

She leaned back and yelled over to someone as I slipped over the edge and onto the platform, “Morgan! Come look who I found!”

Ressia gestured me over to her and I obeyed as I took in the commotion around me. Whisper women were everywhere. The tunnel I had climbed up sat off to the side near the middle of the platform I was on and a raised four foot wall around the hole kept anyone from accidentally plummeting through the needles below. The area around me seemed to be a gathering place of sorts with a handful of groups chatting and sipping from cups. The origin of the cups was a mat on the other side of the platform. A Sprout sat there doling out a golden liquid into palm sized cups from a large pot with snow packed around it. She also looked pleased at the little favors piling up by her side: a knife no bigger than my thumb, sling stones, food, and a new pouch all held places of honor.

Ressia followed my gaze. “Mil makes the best nectar. The other girls try when it’s their turn to take the post, but it’s never quite the same.” Then, as Breck climbed over the edge, “Joining us this time?”

Breck shrugged and didn’t look at her, already focused on finding a red marked whisper woman, Sprout, or Sapling to challenge. When she made to stride off Ressia reached out and snagged her arm. “Ah, ah, ah, paint first.”

Breck stared at her. “Let go.”

Ressia’s placid stance didn’t budge. “Paint first. Then you won’t be kicked out.” She started to turn to the bowl balanced on the lip of the tunnel by her side when her gaze caught on a man making his way toward us from where he had been painting marks on the faces of the women who arrived at the platform. “Morgan, look! It’s the Flickermark girl.”

I saw the words forming on the tall man’s lips before he spoke but was helpless to stop them. “The one who can’t die?”

I felt Breck still beside me, shock radiating off her, and Loclen stumbled as she lowered herself to the platform. I refused to acknowledge either of them. Instead, I glared at the lanky, ponytailed man who had causally revealed my blessing without my consent. He wore a plain wool tunic and pants similar to Ressia’s dress and the same geometric markings covered his hands.

Ressia grinned at him. “The same. Aren’t you glad we were on duty tonight?”

I switched my deepening scowl over to her.

“You always like arena duty.” Morgan rose his eyebrows at Ressia as he took in my dark look. “She’s just as prickly as you mentioned, too.”

Ressia chuckled. “Her friend isn’t here to mellow—”

“Paint?” My voice was biting cold as I cut in before the pair could reveal any more of my private history.

Ressia gave me an uncomfortable knowing look, but she followed my cue. “Oh, right. A dab of brown on your forehead and you’ll be allowed to enjoy the arena’s offerings with everyone else—except for the nectar. That’s for Sprouts and up unless you do something particularly noteworthy. And everyone has the choice to turn you down, no matter what color they wear.”

Breck huffed out an annoyed breath. Apparently, her nor Loclen were going to jump into the discrepancy of what I claimed my blessing was and what the healers said right away, but it didn’t take a genius to know it was bound to come up later. For now, though, I was content to leave them to their silence. That meant more time for me to come up with plans for how to respond.

Ressia dabbed the paint from her bowl onto our heads after her cousin excused himself to go paint a couple new whisper women who had appeared from the shadow next to the path leading to the arena. Then Ressia filled us in on the different color meanings and the areas of the arena.

A red line down the nose meant a willingness to spar in the rings to such an extent that the bearer couldn’t turn down challenges from anyone but seedlings. Light yellow was for those who were there merely to spectate while forest green meant a desire to participate in games of wits and chance. Lastly, deep orange meant that the wearer was open to challenges of mind or brawn, but that they could also turn down anyone who challenged them. Yellow and orange were the most common colors picked, but red and green were sprinkled throughout the crowd.

The arena, such as it was, was split into multiple different small to medium sized platforms and connected by branching paths. The platforms were all on different levels so that those on the viewing platforms could look down on the contest below and the physical contests were closer to where the healers manned the entrance, in case anything went too far. A large rope net also hung below the bowl shaped arenas where the physical contests took place, ready to catch anyone thrown out of their fighting area. The closer I looked the more I realized that it wasn’t just whisper women and older seedlings who made up the crowd, either. A handful of healers with the same marks as Ressia and her cousin walked and conversed easily with the whisper women without anyone so much as batting an eye at the discrepancy.

Healers. Acting as if they were nearly equal to whisper women.

I stared.

My mind stuttered through half a dozen different reasons for how what I was seeing could possible and all of them felt more like fantasy than probability.

And Ressia leaned over my shoulder with that faintly amused, gentle smile curling her lips, “Curious?”