Gem felt the stadium’s eyes strike her like a hammer. Falling the moment she stepped out into sight, leaving her very bones quaking beneath the skin.

A smile came easily in the face of it, stretching wide and true as she marvelled at the sheer weight of focus.

Watching me. All of them are watching me. Finally.

She saw Karma waiting ahead, standing in the centre of the arena and wearing silk so white it seemed to glow gold under the noon light. Gem made her way towards the woman, fighting back haste before it could turn her walk to an undignified scramble.

She stopped to stand before the Taik as straight and still as she could manage. Even her friend’s radiance seemed distant, at that moment.

All me. This is all me.

After what felt like an eternity, Karma looked up from Gem and addressed the crowds.

“Good afternoon.” She called out, the sound reaching all corners of the impossible structure as much from the power of her lungs as the magic that aided it.

Gem saw the crowds abate slightly, Karma continued in their quiet.

It took perhaps a dozen seconds before she’d finished introductions, fifty more to refresh the rules of the stage. In that time Gem could feel something swell. An ephemeral thing, without form or name. A congealment of emotion among the rows of seats.

When Karma finally moved on to calling the next of the three more contestants, Gem could practically taste their impatience. Feel it mirrored in herself.

“Now, hailing from the southern lands of Bârëi in the Dumare Princedom, allow me to introduce Ajoke Balogun!”

Cheers met the announcement, though sporadic and scattered. Gem turned to see the girl eliciting them as she stepped out to the arena.

Tall, though not by much, she had a slender and lithe build, with the dark Bârëian skin that made Karma’s seem pale. There was a confidence to her gait, a lift to her squared chin, that seemed to make brown eyes glow with an unseen fire.

Curly black hair had been drawn upwards in a complex knot, and Gem recognised the dark fabric covering the girl’s body.

It was the same that adorned her own. Tight as leather, flexible as silk and just a hair lighter than wool. Gem hoped she wore it better than Balogun.

Balogun. Where have I heard of that name?

She found it quickly, drinking in the excitement it sparked.

Ajoke Balogun, great prodigy of Bârëi. Daughter of Old Dumare. The only contestant in the Sieve, besides herself, to call an Immortal their parent.

Gem hid her grin, but wasn’t able to suppress the urge to stare. By the look she received in turn, her hunger was apparent at a glance.

“Looks like our first contestants recognise one another.” Karma called out, beaming. “I’d say today is the day we’ll find out which of them is truly more talented.”

Neither Gem nor Balogun looked at the Taik, both too ensnared by the other’s gaze to even consider breaking it. Stronger than her eagerness at a true challenge, Gem felt another thought boil within her at the girl’s magic.

This is it? She’s older than me by a year, and this is it?

Her disappointment was slight, next to the thrill of proving herself against one with such a reputation. Yet it still left Gem hollowed.

The thought was interrupted as Karma cried out once more.

Crow knocked on the door, biting back his nerves as he awaited an answer. It came blessedly fast, wood swinging back to reveal Rajah’s grinning face.

“Ah Crow.” He smiled. “I wasn’t sure whether you’d actually come.”

“You weren’t?”

“Of course not.” Answered the boy. “I assumed you’d back out, fearing a trap or some scheme to needle information from you. Wouldn’t have thought any less of you for doing so.”

It made Crow’s heart sink to hear. He’d spent the previous day driving all thought of Rajah’s offer from his mind, fearing that just considering it would make him buckle.

“Well, do you want to come in?” The boy asked.

Crow managed a smile.

“I’d love to.” He answered. Rajah stepped to one side, allowing him to pass.

He was greeted instantly by the sight of three others seated around the living room.

“Crow, meet the team. Team, meet the Crow.” Rajah said, stepping in behind him and gesturing to the others. Crow saw a scrying slate across each of their wrists, identical to his own.

“That’s not how you introduce people, moron.” Said the nearest of them. A girl, perhaps Rajah’s age and seated on a heavily stuffed armchair. She grinned crooked, but friendly.

After a moment, Crow realised with a start just how similar the girl’s smile was to that of Unity.

“I’m Timi.” She said, “Pleased to meet you.”

“Crow.” He answered.

His own smile grew thoughtlessly to match hers, conjured by the genuine warmth behind her eyes. That much differed from the artificial, for sure.

“This is Sia.” She added, nodding towards a boy sat on the sofa.

He was short, or else had most of his height in the legs, for the top of his head dipped a half hand below the boy seated beside him.

“Afternoon.” He nodded, seeming almost bored. Crow returned it.

“Aren’t you scared your make up will get muddled if you speak?” Rajah asked. Sia answered with his middle finger.

“Finally we have Genro.” Timi continued, gesturing to the last of them. The boy seated beside Sia. An exceptionally unexceptional individual. Somehow more disconcerting than any of his comrades for it.

“It’s nice to meet you.” He said.

Crow smiled, still polite.

“Well, that’s the introductions finished with.” Rajah said abruptly, moving towards the sofa. “Can we start watching the task now? I think we might’ve missed the beginning.”

“Oh stop worrying.” Timi sighed. “We have plenty of time.”

With a wave of her hand, the scrying slate flickered to life. Crow stared at it, finding awe creeping into his thoughts once again at the sight.

His amazement distracted him enough to take a seat unprompted. Enough even that it took several moments for him to register the sight of Gem stood beside Karma Alabaster.

Enough that it was seconds longer still before he noticed the stares bearing down on him from all sides.

“You chose the Gemini to open the first task with?” Rajah asked.

Crow felt heat touch his cheeks, blood pooling against the skin to leave it burning like iron fresh from a forge.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“Yes.” He answered, forcing himself to remain silent rather than babbling on instinct.

A grin split Rajah’s lips, mirrored by the rest of his team.

“Smart choice.” He said, sitting back. “But not as smart as you probably think.”

Crow saw another mystic enter the stadium from the corner of his eye, though kept his focus on the Jyptian.

“What do you mean?” He asked, suddenly worried.

“Well, it was predictable.” The boy answered, mischief twisting his grin and leaving a glint in his eye. “That’s all I’ll say for now. Just keep watching the task.”

Crow could think of nothing that would draw answers from the boy, and so he did just that. Feeling his nerves fray every moment he spent studying the stone.

“The mysterious boy known only as Tenzo!” Called Karma, gesturing to one of the remaining tunnels. As if conjured by her hand, a stalking figure leaked from the darkness, adorned from head to toe in robes so black it seemed the shadows clung to him as he left them.

He slithered, rather than walked. An empty contempt for the very ground carrying him forth, back straight and arms held stiff by his sides as he moved. Gem felt a stab of worry as she glanced at him, quickly tightening her eyes.

The world twisted, then became dull and shapeless as the physical gave way to the magical. All shifted to colours of an impossible spectrum, and she studied those around Tenzo with scrutiny.

It put her at ease to see the pastel cloud about him. A depth of magic more than only one cut above most, yet too weak to be a serious threat for her own.

She relaxed her vision. Somehow, seeing the boy as walking shadow once more, it was hard to let his weakness put her at ease.

Tenzo said nothing as he came to stop beside Karma, simply looked from Gem to Balogun. She swore something passed between them. A nod, the tilting of a head. Whatever it was vanished too quickly to be identified with certainty, and before Gem could think on it a moment longer her friend spoke again.

“And now, our final contestant. Belonging to the same team as the luminous Rajah, please welcome Simona Saigargha!”

Gem felt a creeping cold against her neck as she turned to see the last of her enemies, realising why in an instant.

The girl was pale. Paler than a Jaean, paler than any human Gem had met even in her own family. Flesh as white as a corpse, smooth as marble and bloodless in its sheen.

She wore red as if to compensate for the emptiness of her veins, fabric forming a tailcoat that looked taken straight from a Jaean gentleman, buttoned tight about a slender waist and billowing in her wake as she moved.

Her gait held a wrongness to it that was obvious even at a glance, made with more grace than any human had to spare, but it wasn’t until she drew near enough for her face to be recognisable that Gem finally realised the source of her discontent.

Desaturated lips were scarcely parted, but Gem didn’t miss the jutting tips of bladed canines poking from them. Nor the bloody crimson irises that seemed alight with excitement.

The girl, the dakaran, walked to the centre with a dexterity that might have shown practice in any other. Her smile didn’t falter as she came to a stop before Gem. Rather, it widened.

“Now, as this is the first task of this format, please allow me to go over a few guidelines before it begins.” Karma roared, needing to strain even her mighty vocal cords to pierce the crowd’s rumbling.

Few more things needed covering. There was no time limit, and a mere handful of conditions through which one could accrue additional points. The Taik was done in under a minute.

Gem felt the familiar prickling of Itamis against her skin. Found her breath catching as excitement threatened to drive it from her in a hysterical giggle.

She mastered as much of herself as possible, paying attention even as her vision dimmed.

There was no need to have bothered, for only a moment later she felt herself plucked from the world and hurled through the currents beneath its surface. Emerging once more amid a mass of grey and black.

Gem instantly identified the ruined city, ash raining and swirling around her like a blizzard. It took only a moment longer for her eyes to pierce the blackened mist of debris, peering past to the sight of desiccated buildings and skeletal ruins.

Houses, or what had once been such, were no more than piles of rotted splinters. Sturdier structures stood with their bones still intact, steel and stone frameworks having barely weathered whatever devastation proved too great for timber.

It made them no more habitable. They’d survived whatever calamity had fallen upon the area as shells. Iron was twisted and rusted. Mortar cracked and scorched black. A wind carried ash through the ruined shells with no more impediment than the empty streets along which they were built.

After perhaps a half minute, Gem’s eyes adjusted. The curtain of debris seeming to thin, parting to reveal yet more of the area around her.

She almost wished it hadn’t. For the sight nearly made her stomach empty across the shattered cobbles under her feet.

Focus, Gem. Focus!

She held her breathing steady, regulating it through will and concentration, all while reaching deep for the part of herself that had awaited touch for hours.

Gem’s magic flooded her, agitating body and calming mind. Under half her potency found use, but it was enough to bind Cutaris and Utalis into her flesh and hasten her thought.

The magic- its power, its steel, its wildness- assured her. Gem wasn’t a girl, trapped and surrounded by foes. She was what others in the stage would avoid even seeing if they wanted to win.

Her hands closed tight, and the right suddenly found resistance between its palm. Gem glanced down to find a blade in her grip, straight and simple, yet humming with magic. She recognised it instantly as the tool of her victory.

All of the enemies sharing her stage would have their own, and even she’d not missed Karma’s explanation of their function. Fifteen slashes were all she’d need, five for each target.

She began her hunt with a fire redoubled.

“Pit, that didn’t take her long.” Sia gasped.

Crow didn’t bother hiding his smirk at the sight of Gem moving through the ashy rain, her foes still flailing and hesitating with every step.

“Of course it didn’t.” Rajah said, still grinning. “She’s the Gemini. A girl like that doesn’t have anything to fear from the opponents she’s facing now. And, I’ll bet she knows it.”

He looked too confident for Crow’s liking, doubly so in the wake of such a remark. There was no time to dwell on it, other contestants moved across the slate.

“Oh here we go.” Timi grinned, leaning forwards in her seat. “Looks like everyone’s started to get over the shock. Nasty stage on the organiser’s part, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Crow asked, feeling foolish as all others caught her meaning.

Timi didn’t wear any mockery as she eyed him.

“Do you not recognise it?” She asked. “It’s Balisphore. The city that was… you know.”

Crow did know. He turned back to the screen, seeing the stage with new eyes.

The ash seemed to change before him. No longer just sterile charcoal disintegrated by the turbulent howls of a tortured atmosphere. Now something more. Something twisted.

Every shattered building was a grave in his sight. The sacrosanct mark of a tragedy. Each particulate of swirling, airborne debris seemed the captured scream of a lost life. Souls trapped to be carried along eternally.

The very wind itself, so clear in how it touched the world, felt as though it seeped into his heart. A Deity’s mocking laugh.

As Gem made her way through the corpseland, Crow caught himself close to humming. The Butcher Uncollared. A song he’d grown up hearing in every corner of Selsis.

It had never seemed more wretched, haunting and sickening than it did at that very moment.

Gem hadn’t walked for so much as a minute before tightening her eyes and looking with magic rather than light. In an instant she’d felt as though a weight had been taken from her shoulders.

She still saw the world’s broadest strokes. Ground, buildings, walls; all registered as great patches of dull light.

The ash was not nearly so large or visible, rendered flecks across her sight as she peered ahead. Gem felt a stab of excitement at the realization.

Even her most useless of abilities, it seemed, was an edge. Of course it was. What creatures in all the world could wield magic like a Menza?

And what Menza in all of history could do so like her?

Something caught in the corner of her vision, pausing Gem midstep and whipping her head around to stare at the sight dead-centre. She held still for moments, unsure of what she’d seen. Certainty filled her slowly.

It had been a mystic, beyond doubt. Like a blazing bonfire against the world’s dull backdrop.

She broke into a sprint, ripping through the air and feeling clumps of ash break against her face as she hurtled past them at a horse’s pace. The glimpse had been from a hundred feet, yet she reached it in seconds. Slowing with ground heels and turning down an ally.

Gem covered the only exit, and the walls around it were of stone a half-foot thick and six fathoms high. She grinned knowing her foe was cornered.

Crow stared as Gem trapped the black skinned girl, finding himself unable to even glance anywhere but the slate, yet knowing without looking that all others in the room were just as transfixed.

Gem’s run fell to a walk the moment she caught sight of the foe, leisurely pace betraying her confidence.

The Sieve’s observational magics were phenomenal, for Crow could make out the very movement of both girl’s lips as they exchanged words. If not the sounds that accompanied them.

“What’s she doing?” Asked Sia, nervous.

“She’s proving me right.” Astra snapped, staring at the slate and feeling her fists tighten so hard as to leave nails piercing palms.

“Calm down.” Deka tried, but the girl’s voice was too empty to have convinced even herself.

“Her enemy pinned with her back to a wall, weaker than her by far, and she’s talking with her. The fucking idiot!”

“It’s no real issue.” The luminar continued, more confident. “Gem…”

She trailed off, clearly seeing just what Astra did.

Two more figures entering the alley. One a black-wreathed boy, the other a crimson-eyed girl. Both nearing the Gemini’s back with an unmistakable purpose.

“Idiot.” Astra whispered, seeing the Gemini whirl to face her new enemies, turning her back to the first.

Minutes into the task, without even a single attack thrown by any of its contestants, and she’d already gotten herself surrounded.