Crow groaned as he was shaken, head throbbing. He barely heard his sister’s stern demands, did his best to bury them with blankets and grunts while he turned over.

It was a foolish response. One that years of being woken on Astra’s schedule should have taught Crow better than to attempt. Shock froze him as he was dragged from the comfortable mattress to land beside it in a heap.

“I’m up!” Crow cried, just moments before he felt the glass of cold water fall upon his face. He swore, thrashed around reflexively at the surprise of it before lying still and miserable once more.

Astra looked down on him studiously, no doubt examining the effectiveness of her work.

“One day you’re going to find it in your heart to wake me up nicely.” He spat, forcing himself to sit in spite of his head’s worsening ache.

“Perhaps I will.” Astra answered. “If you one day actually get out of bed when I try that, rather than staying put until more drastic measures are taken.”

She was gone before he could retort, leaving Crow to wallow in his misery, and regret even hearing alcohol existed. It took him fifteen minutes to be out of his room and dressed, the fire behind his eyes leaving him slow. His team were all up by the time he was, even Unity.

“He gets to sleep in longer than me.” The artificial groaned, sat miserably across an armchair and not even bothering to look up as Crow entered. “Why does he get to sleep in longer than me?”

“He didn’t.” Astra answered, cold as she ever was to him. “Nobody woke you up.”

The boy raised his head, turning to peer at her through bleary eyes.

“Excuse me, I am trying to have a private conversation with my brain damage. Could you please wait your turn?”

Mention of brains sent a painful spike through Crow’s. He took a seat in silence, pinching his eyes tight and trying to ignore the creeping needles behind them.

It took minutes for the entirety of his mind to wake up, doing so in a long and uncomfortable slog.

The sensation of thought oozing surely back into his head was a peculiar one, yet even that was overshadowed by the task looming ahead.

“It’s at noon, yes?” He asked Astra. She nodded, not meeting his eye as she laid out a plate of eggs before herself. Crow dimly wondered where she’d gotten them.

Noon. By his reckoning that left just a few hours before he’d watch another team compete. Before he’d watch Amelia compete.

“Astra, you fought Amelia in the last task didn’t you. How would you rate her power?”

She gave Crow no answer, simply shovelling food into her mouth and keeping her eyes far from his in silence. Crow wasn’t a big enough fool to miss her hint.

They left their rooms an hour after that, all fed and woken as much as they were likely to be. Crow still felt the ghost of a headache tormenting him, but even that had been dulled by time.

Few distractions remained to cloud his mind, save trepidation.

The stadium proved as great an agitant as ever, noise being the last thing in the world he’d have welcomed. It was a small mercy that the place was somewhat quieter, until Crow realised why.

“I swear they put us in the loudest seats every time.” Unity growled, hand pressed to one of his own temples. “It’s like this place is fucking shaped to direct all the noise up here. If I didn’t know so much about the organisers’ competence, I’d suspect it was part of a conspiracy to irritate me.”

Crow was glad for the crack. Unity, he thought, had opened back up a shade since they’d gone out drinking. It was almost worth his present torment.

While the rest of the crowds filled in, there was little else to hear but the artificial’s complaining. Little to listen to, but so much more to see.

Crow watched the masses from above, scrutinising them for any changes since the last task. The waves of bodies had thinned, he thought, since last he’d saw them. Diminished not in volume, but almost undeniably in density.

Even at full occupation, the seating areas within his sight were more spacious than they’d been. He guessed each could hold an extra man for every three seated already.

“Pit, could they walk any slower?” Unity grumbled.

Crow wanted to remind the boy how much he’d dragged behind them on the staircase, but Unity had drunk even more than he had. He’d no desire to start a fight over nothing.

Ten minutes later the movement below had all but stopped. Trudging footfalls gone from all ears.

It barely made the crowds more motionless, and Crow was certain they were no quieter seated than they’d been on the march. But it was still an indicator that they’d soon be met with the task’s beginning.

He leaned forwards in his seat absently. Eager to see it as clear as he could, and closer to the surprise by a yard when the organiser who’d approached him on Rora Kasta’s behalf stepped out into the centre of the arena.

Tall, lithe and unpierceably at ease with himself even surrounded by a million peering eyes, the man seemed to fill the stadium with his presence. He wore dark brown attire, less flamboyant than was normal- or at least stereotypical- of a Jyptian.

His hair was lighter than Alabaster’s, though still dark enough to be black. Eyes less luminous and altogether colder in their gaze, blue irises making for a disconcerting stare through the magnified sight of the Sieve. Like locking gazes with winter itself.

Crow allowed himself a moment of amazement that he’d ever taken the man so lightly, even not knowing his identity.

“Good afternoon, Udrebam.” Boomed the mystic.

His call, like everything else, seemed different than Alabaster’s. Less warm and friendly, less open and enticing. It was all duty, all grim severity. Capturing attention as well as hers ever had, if not enthusiasm.

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“It is my pleasure to welcome you to the latest task of this years’ Sieve…”

Crow found it no less transfixing to hear his speech delivered, if only for the novelty of how much it differed from Alabaster’s. He found himself scrutinising the man as he listened, measuring him against his predecessor and taking mental notes of where one failed and the other succeeded.

Unsurprisingly, Alabaster won him out more often than not. It made Crow wonder why she wasn’t still presenting. When asked, Astra could name no shifts in duty half as public among the Sieve’s organisers before.

A result of the attack then. It seemed Alabaster was doing more than simply smiling for a crowd. The knowledge coloured Crow’s memories of her, dredging forth more than simply her speeches.

Recalling the way her burning eyes had locked on him in a fury, he suddenly felt a tinge of sympathy for whoever would be forced to deal with the woman on more serious matters.

“Now, it is time for our contestants to step forth.”

The change of topic snapped Crow’s focus back fully onto the arena.

“Entering first are those from team Rajah. Please welcome Timi Serwhit and Sia Runthor.”

Crow recognised the names first, then the faces as he saw Rajah’s teammates stride in. Both of them appeared racked with nerves as they walked, shrivelled and shrunk like dried fruit beneath the glare of the stadium. It made him wonder whether he’d ever mirrored their posture.

Almost certainly, he decided. Crow’s nerves had always been exposed by a crowd.

The dull blonde of Timi’s hair was darker than Crow remembered, stiffer too. Sweat had soaked the strands through, and he felt a sudden flash of pity for the girl. A look at Sia revealed no flesh so sodden as that, but nor did Crow see the perpetual boredom that had left his face so still when last they’d met. Fear broke the mask, revealing itself through the licking of lips and shuffling of feet.

Realising he’d never heard of either competing at all left Crow flooded with sympathy. A fight this late in the Sieve was far from the best time to have one's first, it would surely double any nerves brought on by the competition alone.

He glanced toward Deka at that, then hurriedly looked away.

“And competing against them, from Team Tenzo, is Tenzo himself and Amelia.”

All eyes were on the pair as they entered.

Tenzo moved just as he had in the task before last, seeming to glide rather than walk. Giving no sign of any fear at all, suppressed or otherwise. Dark fabric trailed in his wake, seeming at odds with the sun’s glare and wafting behind him like smoke in a breeze.

Crow knew the garb was impractical as things got for any battle, yet somehow the young mystic seemed above such worries.

Perhaps he was simply overconfident.

Amelia levelled with the boy as she walked, and Crow soon forgot Tenzo even existed.

The girl was taller than him, with hair as dark as his wreathing fabrics and jaggedly muscled shoulders bared open by a sleeveless top.

There was an easy grace to her every step, reminding him of a wolf’s gait more than a human’s. Movements made with power enough to make her weight inconsequential, stride effortless.

Like a predator surrounded by prey.

Never before had the coal-blackness of her eyes unsettled Crow as they did then, framed by the same easy smile they always were. Unwavering in the face of battle. Crow might have believed her a warfaren savage, had he not known the girl.

It was a relief when the two teams stopped ten paces from each other, turning to the organiser as they waited to begin.

Sorafin spoke quickly to remind them of the task’s rules, and Crow was pressed to hear them listed. The man had a far worse sense for pacing than Alabaster, seeming to expect every syllable to be clear in every mind. Taking no extra time for the slowest among his million listeners.

The rules were clear in Crow’s head by the end in any case. Two teams, dropped down into a stage especially chosen for the density of its obstacles and limitations of visibility. Sharing it with a magical creature of enormous power and danger. Those first to deprive it of the crystal it held would be the winners.

It was a simple challenge. Until one considered that there was no indication of where the predator would be in relevance to either team, or where they would be in relevance to one another. Or that the location of the crystal in the predator’s possession was, likewise, obscured.

Moments of thought revealed a half dozen more potential complications, bringing a wince to Crow’s face as he thought of contending with them himself.

Explanation finished, Sorafin took a step back and turned from one team to the other. Asking quickly and sharply whether they were ready to begin. Three responses in the affirmative later, and he gestured outwards.

Crow felt the magic as it coiled, like a cannon blast in his ears. It was dense as any he’d encountered before, diffused across the arena’s floor and raising fathoms higher into the air. Thick as mud, light as air, hot as a desert wind.

He stared as its influence took root, mind denying what his eyes unshakingly insisted.

Green sprouted from the sandstone floor of the arena, first in thin shoots as wide as fingernails, then larger, broader stems basing saplings or shrubberies. The brown of roots and bark soon joined it, extending further upwards by far and growing too wide for a man’s arms to encircle. The formations began knitting together, limbs snaking around one another like overlapping fingers and casting the entire arena into shadow.

In moments, where once there had been a flat and barren stone floor, Crow saw a forest sitting in the stadium. Surrounded by sloping seats like a great bowl and reaching outwards as far in every direction as the walls would allow.

Further, even. Crow gasped as he realised the growth, impossibly, stretched across a greater area than the arena in which it sat.

The irrationality of it didn’t have chance to fully register in his thoughts before movement caught his eye. He peered through the foliage, seeing it turn transparent wherever his eyes fell, and soon found the source. Sia stood alone, turning his head frantically as he shifted through the trees at a jog.

Crow turned his eye, scouring the woods for other contestants and finding himself drawn to them almost on instinct. Timi moved with barely less fear than Sia, Tenzo shuffling slowly as his trailing cloaks snagged twigs and branches with every step.

Only Amelia showed no distress or inconvenience. Smile still in place as if her surroundings were entirely inconsequential.

It struck Crow as dangerously carefree, for he soon saw the predator starring the show. The creature ran quickly enough to leave itself blurred in his vision, crossing the forest floor in great bounds and leaving a trail of pulverised vegetation in the wake of its muscle-bloated form.

He followed the path of destruction with a bottomless worry, then shifted his eyes ahead to try and see where the beast was heading. Concern turned to a grim certainty as he saw how perfectly its path intersected with Sia.

The boy was barely able to react when it erupted from the undergrowth.

Nine feet from top to bottom and wider at the shoulders than he was tall, Crow finally had sight enough to take in the creature’s full form. Its flesh was grey, skin scarred tough, body standing upon two hind legs like a human’s. Jagged fangs and tusks split its face into what almost seemed a grin, and its small dark eyes glinted in the light like onyxes.

His eyes fell upon its forehead, sloped and thick like a helmet. Embedded with a thin, emerald strip of crystal no more than half the length of Crow’s finger and humming with a subtle magic.

Crow would have bet his life it was the control gem, secret to victory. On the creature indeed.

One blow spun the boy around as it met his shoulder, parting eyes and mouth with a scream so violent it burned Crow’s ears when it reached them. Sia hadn’t even fallen before a second fist came down upon him, this time striking his back and driving him hard into the dirt. Grime was cast into the air at the impact, and the boy disappeared beneath it for a moment.

When the sight cleared, Crow saw he was gone. Translocated to safety. No longer taking the monster’s attention from the others.

Fallen from two blows.