Gem cursed as she flew, acrid words left far behind her by the shrieking winds. As high as she was, as fast as she was, the air still raked cold against her flesh. Even without physical enhancement, she barely felt it.

Rage gave warmth to Gem’s body, burning like a fire and circulating through it along her veins. She was almost grateful for the sensation.

The far end of the map. Far fucking end. Of all the places, all the hot-spots of opposition, they dump me in the stage’s armpit and give everyone else the chance to shine instead.

She tried to extinguish the flames of emotion, seeming only to breathe more life into them.

A thousand feet below, buildings and terrain shifted along like threads in a mill. Green fields, blue lakes and grim rocklands were wiped textureless and undiscernable by distance, rendered no more than coloured patches beneath her eye. Distinguished only by tint.

It was a sight to drop ice into the mental turmoil within, smoothing her temper and replacing fury with a more familiar, comforting sensation.

No other contestant could see what she did, Gem knew. Certainly none whose study of magic had yielded fruit in other areas.

True flight was fiendishly difficult, something even she had failed to master. To counter gravity so perfectly as to navigate the air with any precision was an achievement yet years in her future. She’d not wanted to wait that long.

Gem’s solution had been one of her own making. Clumsy and functional. She didn’t fly, certainly couldn’t move precisely. Merely turned Patais to bending gravity, then threw Cutaris-born energies behind her for additional propulsion. Falling, not flying, but falling in a direction of her choice.

It was close enough to impress, and impressive enough that Gem felt a small thrill whenever she revealed the talent in public.

With or without enemies to best, she was demonstrating her excellence to the world simply through how she traversed it. A smile crept across her face, then disappeared as the cold gale stung exposed teeth.

Gem tried to remember the size of the stage, finding the exact figure elusive. Leagues wide, she thought. Or perhaps square leagues in area. Whichever it was, she knew her journey would be no more than minutes.

From her height, she could already see the destination. A black spire protruding proud and straight, so great in scale as to be clearly visible in spite of the distance.

Crow stared up at the doorway before him, finding the prospect of continuing a frightful one.

Dark wood made the surface's bulk, rimmed with grey metal that seemed melted rather than riveted into place. Looking closely, he could see a crease where two sections met across the median line- double doors closed together. Towering two dozen feet high, they cut a fierce sight.

Realising he’d stood still and static for ten heartbeats, Crow forced himself to step forth. He pressed a hand to the door, pushing to make his way past and finding himself surprised at the great resistance its weight provided.

The wood made no noise as it shifted, defying Crow’s expectation of creaking joints and scattering dust before revealing the way onwards.

Light spilled into the building, banishing darkness from all but the corners. Crow took in the sight of grim stone and swirling debris for just a few moments before pressing forth. Time deemed more important than caution.

His footsteps echoed, sound announcing Crow’s presence as it disappeared into the spire’s bowels. More unnerving, almost, than the great doors swinging shut behind him.

Crow’s physical enhancement offered no boon to his sensory prowess, and there were few times in his life he’d regretted that fact half so much as he did when the curtains of shadow closed around him.

The darkness seemed to have substance, slowing his every step as though he were taking them through water rather than air. He felt shivers run down his spine, frantic worries sparking and dying in his thoughts like flashes of gunpowder meeting a flame.

It was impossible to tell how long he spent blind to the world, but by the time his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom his fear was enough to leave him close to tears with relief.

Even with widened pupils and a focused gaze, little caught his eye. Crow might have lost his courage and fled, were it not for the touch of his precognition.

Neramis and Manamis gave him steadiness, yet even that paled next to the surety that he’d be warned of any attacks.

Unless they’re too fast for me to react to. He thought, finding ice and fear as a reward. He moved on, battling his own cowardice with every step.

Just as it all seemed on the brink of being too much- the creeping silence, the obfuscating shadows, the thundering of his own heart- Crow saw a distant sight to give him hope. Light.

It beckoned to him from the gloom like a diamond among coal. Dim and feeble even in the darkness that surrounded it, yet more radiant to his eyes than a thousand suns. He hurried to answer the call, feet slipping and sliding on the moist stone below.

Crow reached the light in moments, soon seeing from where the glow came.

A wall lay before him, reaching from the corridor’s floor to its ceiling. As wide as the hall that housed it, and made of cracked, dying stone across every inch. One glance would have told Crow it was a dead end, were it not for the single crack he saw near its centre.

The crack from which his precious illumination spilled. A single stream, thin and fragile, yet filling his eyes all the same. Like a thing of magic.

Is this it? Am I at the end?

Crow felt himself casting a glance over his shoulder, suddenly aware he’d backed himself to a corner. Cautious of a trap. The corridor yielded no more detail to his eye than it had before, and Crow turned back to the damaged wall with nothing but a disquieting shiver.

No. It can’t be over, surely. This is another test. It must be…

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He almost cursed himself aloud, stumbling on the obvious with his usual tardiness.

He rolled his shoulders, easing away their tension and adjusting his footing before releasing his precognition- eager to extend his stamina in the first stage’s wake.

Crow punched with every scrap of magical and physical strength he could muster, locking his body and pressing its entire weight behind the blow. The stone gave only so far as the falling of chipped fragments and spitting of dust.

Ignoring the ache of his fist, Crow struck again. Twice, thrice. Ten times he battered the stone, gritting his teeth at the sensation of rock turning aside his arm. Hand-sized chunks fell from it before long, spurring him on.

A dozen blows, then a dozen more. Crow had lost count of how many times he’d struck the stone when the cracks finally ran deep enough to spill free more light.

He redoubled his efforts, continuing to erode the rock one punch at a time.

Fractures spread, chips fell, dust began to drift from the score of widening gaps as though the obstacle were exhaling. Crow felt minutes slip by as he fell into a mindless rhythm. He hardly even noticed at first when his hand broke through the wall, meeting cool air on the other side.

He peered through the gap, finding his eye blocked by swirling debris. Crow struck at its outsides to widen the space.

It didn’t take long before he’d knocked and scraped away enough to add two hands’ width in all directions.

Eying the opening, he found himself given pause.

Cutaris writhed in his veins, a foaming ocean storm within the deathly calm of his surroundings. There was strength in the wildness, yet a great weakness too. The thought of finding tight walls about him made Crow sick.

He started forwards, forcing the convulsive shivers to stop as his nerves made their disquiet known.

The gap scraped him on all sides as he dragged himself through, snagging fabric and grinding jagged stone against his skin. Were it not for the magic toughening him, it would surely have drawn blood.

Crow landed in a heap, scrambling up and taking in the sights around him- aware of just how perfect an opportunity his entrance had presented for any attack.

None came, but he didn’t let himself relax. He swept a gaze across his surroundings, taking in as much as he could.

Stone made the bulk of what he saw, as with the hall, yet rather than dull and wet, it was dry and carefully chiselled. The curved walls, ceiling and floor all bore patterns, great sigils with no meaning Crow could grasp.

Torches burned in sconces, numerous enough to banish all shadow from the room and render it a sterile mirror of the hallway’s darkness. Air clear in spite of their smoke. Tentatively, he stepped further into the cylindrical chamber.

Something was wrong with it, Crow knew. An oddity subtle enough that it couldn’t be seen, only felt. It rekindled the adrenal fire of battle in his gut. A voice from nowhere nearly wrenched the heart from his chest with shock.

“I was wondering what that scraping was, thought a rat must have nested in the Alliance’s pretty little stage. Seems I was wrong, it’s only just arrived here.”

Crow turned, then turned again. He stared in all directions, scrutinising every corner of the chamber as he desperately searched for the speaker. It was a futile effort, the rounded walls seemed to cast every word at him from all sides at once.

“Oh look at you go. Not a particularly steadfast one, are we boy? Tell me, did you face nothing worse than a sourceless voice to get here?”

For a moment Crow thought he was shaking with terror, realising instead his slate had begun to prod his thoughts, almost buzzing. The knowledge of approaching help was of little comfort.

Comfort? I need comforting now? Whatever the pit’s speaking has a point, I have faced worse than it to get here.

“Tell me.” He called back, feeling wrathful defiance displace fear. “Why do you hide yourself away to taunt me? Have you faced nothing worse than a fifteen year-old boy?”

Laughter met his words, high and mocking. It touched him like a whisper against the back of his neck, urging him to spin and search yet more.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to goad if I were you, little rat. You already made the mistake of coming to challenge me. There’s no need to hasten your demise.”

Demise. Could I die here? Surely not.

“You’re wrong.” He snapped back. “I’m here to win. Whoever you are, whatever you are, you’re standing in my way. Hurry up and get out from wherever you’re hiding, because the more of my time you waste with talk, the harder I’ll find it to crush you fast enough to leave this stage with the reward.”

Crow found strength in his own words, turning his thoughts past the stage, past even the Sieve. He thought of Galad, thought of what he’d entered Udrebam to do, feeling fear driven from him by the certainty of his purpose.

More laughter, leaching the steel from Crow and sending a great trembling through him- this time undoubtedly real. Thrice as strong as that of his slate.

“Such words can be woven in times like this by two kinds of men. The truly brave and the truly stupid.”

“Care to find out which I am?” Crow snarled.

“Oh, you misunderstand me boy. You’re neither, for you are no man at all. Stupidity is to be expected in one so young as you.”

“Talk is cheap.”

Crow barely heard the low, whistling chuckle over the sound of his own heart.

“On that, at least, we can agree. Very well boy. Prepare yourself.”

Suddenly aware of what he’d done, Crow stumbled back to press himself against a wall as he tempered his nerves to meet whatever attack would come. Touching magic and weaving it to his precognition.

Seeing a thin, viscous cloud of green gas begin to seep into the room from all walls left him equal parts wary and uncertain.

He stared it, stilled by caution as he watched the gas shift. Billowing clouds began to convene on the room’s centre, and Crow’s eyes followed them every inch.

Like water drops joining on a washboard, the gas was drawn together. In moments it formed a single mass in the heart of the chamber, and in only moments more gravity seemed to take hold and drag it downwards.

It seeped through the stone as though it were cloth, disappearing from sight before Crow’s very eyes and leaving the chamber bare once more.

The floor cracked a second later, shifting and sprouting hair-thin fissures running arm-lengths across its face. Another sudden shift, the grinding of rock against rock, and the damage worsened.

Crow heard the third impact for what it was- a blow delivered from within the ground. By the sixth, he’d steeled himself for what was coming.

Stone split entirely on the seventh impact, and before the air had even cleared of debris his enemy lurched through it.

Of a man’s size and shape, it was clearly humanoid. Yet any more similarities Crow might have found were fragile indeed.

There was no flesh to pick up dust from the air, no eyes to be stung. No lungs to be choked as the creature rounded on him amid the coiling detritus. Crow saw only bones; thin and gnarled like branches, yellowed by age and grinding against one another with every move.

It was, he realised, a human skeleton. Like a diagram straight from a book.

Hollow sockets turned to him, empty and lifeless save for the arcane glow of green gas billowing within. Even eyeless, its gaze felt hard against him. Crow felt panic swell as it doubled, tripled and multiplied further with the emergence of yet more undead.

“Are you quite sure you don’t want to wait before we begin, boy?” Rang the voice. A dozen skeletal jaws shifted and moved in time with it, giving the illusion of speech even without the lips or tongues that made words possible. Their aged jaws clattered and creaked.

He tightened his hands into fists, readying himself.

“Stop toying with me.”