The monster had already taken off into another run, sprinting no slower than before and crushing the forest ahead of it with just as much brutality. Looking ahead confirmed Crow’s suspicions; Timi was in its path. Another contestant.

The girl clearly heard it coming, for she took off in a run of her own. It earned her perhaps a second, then the creature was upon her.

Timi fought better than Sia, or perhaps merely harder. Twisting and writhing in the beast’s grasp, raking its eyes with her nails and landing a blow against its face that might have cracked a human skull. The grey monstrosity ignored her feeble defence, casting her down and burying her just as it had her teammate.

It paused once she’d vanished too, looking up and smelling the air. Tilting its head and moving its ears, shifting empty eyes to wash over the space all around it.

Tracking, Crow knew. With every sense at its disposal. Seeking fresh prey just moments after breaking its latest catch. He shouldn’t have been surprised, it was a predator.

But to see such human gestulations made by a creature so obviously not still left him perturbed. Almost so much so that he didn’t notice when it found its next target, grunting with something close to excitement and taking off in another thunderous charge.

“An alphoe.” Astra whispered, no less transfixed than Crow beside him. Her face was haunted, eyes pulled wide as if the sight before them was too great to fit through their lids. She’d paled within the minute spent watching the creature, and seeing her nerves so unabashedly displayed left Crow shuddering alongside her.

He recognised the name, and looking back into the arena he recognised the creature it belonged to. Alphoes. The towering savages of Gol, responsible for crushing entire armies underfoot and waging a decade of war against the Taikan Empire just a century prior. So bloody a conflict as to become famous even in Unix.

The alphoe ripped through the foliage, and Crow’s stomach sank as he realised its path intersected with Amelia. Far ahead the girl stiffened, sensing or hearing the approach.

She turned to the rampage, curling her hands into fists and planting her feet as it came. It was on her just an instant after that.

Knuckles like boulders crunched into her temple, sending the girl spinning head over heels to smack against a tree. The wood buckled beneath her momentum, leaving her to fall and roll further- stopping only when the alphoe was on her again.

Its fingers closed around an ankle, muscles tightening beneath skin. Then Amelia was swung over its head, crashing hard against the dirt.

The beast used her like a flail, bringing her limp form down hard against the earth time and time again. Each impact filling the air with an eruption of dirt and pulped wood.

She didn’t move to counter the onslaught. Couldn’t, Crow wagered. Kept still and dazed by the sheer ferocity brought against her.

Just as the alphoe raised the girl to bring her down upon a stone, movement blurred behind it. Tenzo struck like a viper, his heel crunching hard against the creature’s wrist and forcing guillotine fingers to spring open. It roared, turned on him with a flailing backhand that almost caught the boy even with his nimble dodge.

In an instant Amelia was forgotten, falling and spinning as the alphoe turned on her teammate. Crow couldn’t look away from its assault, even as he saw blows begin to land.

The boy’s guard was well made, his defence nearly so good as any Crow could manage. And it was useless.

Power let the alphoe break through with every swing. Driving the boy backwards amid, heel-ground furrows in the earthen floor. Sending thickets to snap and shatter against his back as he slid. Leaving every counter more sluggish than the one before it. The boy reached for his salvation, digits hooking towards the control crystal, but his enemy’s attack kept him from even drawing near.

It struck Crow as unfair when the shrouded mystic broke down for good, his arms falling slack and body folding as a great fist buried itself in his gut.

There’d been no intellect behind the attack. No cunning tricks or carefully measured strategem. Just a prowess too great for strategy and skill to overcome.

He couldn’t bear to watch as the alphoe raised a fist to bring down one last time. Yet still he couldn’t bring himself to look away.

The hammer-blow halted halfway down, freezing at the sound of a deep, booming voice from five paces behind. Loud, strong, like sandpaper against his ears.

Amelia stood tall, body red and glistening where weeping gashes leaked. Torn clothing revealed skin yellowed by bruising. Only her eyes remained unchanged, a black so unbroken that Crow mightn’t have noticed had they been crushed.

“I’m not done with you yet.” She spat, still smiling as she always did.

There was nothing reassuring about the expression. Leisurely, perhaps. As casual as ever. But tainted by the touch of something else.

It seemed a challenge for the alphoe, and mystic and monster both charged one another.

Crow barely followed their battle, even slowed down by the Sieve’s magics. Amelia fought with a wildness to match her grin, throwing one unrelenting attack after another- as varied as they were devastating. They fell upon the alphoe endlessly, but the creature simply soaked them like dirt drinking rain.

Amelia fell back from its answers. Bestial and uncalculated, nearing contact with speed and haste alone. She ducked, backstepped, even stumbled at times. Twisting from and around each blow, body seeming to contort as it evaded them.

It was as if her foe were trying to fell the wind.

Every attempt the alphoe made to drag or strike the girl was thwarted, then punished as her limbs lashed the creature’s body one way and another.

Blood trickled from tusk-split lips, orsine nose lying flat and crushed as even the natural grey of its skin failed to hide blood pooling beneath.

Crow’s awe was too great to bear. As much for the creature’s resilience as the girl’s transcendent skill.

“She’s using Itamis.” Astra said, speaking at a strangled whisper. “Lengthening and shortening the space between herself and targets to let her dodge faster or build up momentum from smaller distances. She used the same trick against me. It makes her a demon in close combat.”

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There was a grudging respect threaded through her words. It vanished beneath a carpet of bitterness as Astra spoke again.

“Of course it would do her no good here, if she didn’t possess the raw potency to fight the monster regardless.”

Knowing what to look for only made Amelia more incredible to behold. Each impossible motion, Crow realised, was born from flawless measurement and perfect calculation of her own positioning. Executed unimpeachebly and more than earning its devastating effectiveness.

And yet so too did he realise that the technique was far from enough.

A blow caught Amelia for every ten she landed, but one in ten seemed enough to make the girl cede ground.

Her face was tightened in frustration as she struck the alphoe, sending flecks of spittle and ichor spraying from its body as her arms and legs rebound against it. They proved no greater a test than the foliage had.

The alphoe chased her backwards one yard at a time, vines and creepers tearing as they ensnared her blind retreat. Guarded blows sending her back just as they had Tenzo. Each moment left her closer to defeat than the last.

She fled to a cluster of trees growing intimately close, satisfaction bleeding in to cover pain and fury as the alphoe’s swinging strikes began to catch on the oaken bodies. Amelia twisted around them as it struggled to tear through, taking cover behind the growths and striking from all directions while it flailed.

A dozen blows fell unguarded before the beast grew frustrated, forcing one of the trees aside with a frenzy. Amelia stared as the alphoe lunged, barelling her over and pinning her beneath its weight.

Jagged teeth sank deep into her shoulder while her arms were forced down, and black eyes widened with the convulsions of agony. A scream erupted from Amelia while the creature chewed, then it dragged its head back and tore with it a mouthful of bloody, steaming flesh.

The alphoe’s face twisted into some mocking facsimile of a human grin, small eyes glowing with delight at the girl’s pain. Crow found himself hating the creature in a way he had few others, leaning forwards in his seat, mouth turning acidic with sick.

Amelia drew his focus back as the space between them warped, neck straining and head moving inches forwards as magic shrank the space remaining.

Her own teeth bit deep into grey skin, breaking it in a moment and then grinding deeper. Needle-sharp and predator-thick, they made short work slicing a path inwards. The alphoe snorted, releasing one of the girl’s wrists and raising a fist to bring down hard upon her.

The moment her hand was free, Amelia sat back and plunged it deep into the cavity she’d made.

Her fingers buried themselves to the second knuckle, proving a greater attack than the bite itself as the alphoe roared in pain and leaned back. The movement freed Amelia’s torso entirely, and with a shove she tore her legs out from beneath the beast.

It moved to ensnare her again, finding only a wicked elbow as reward. The girl was paces away by the time it finished reeling.

For a few moments, both combatants remained still. Panting heavily, lungs drawing in the breath of a hundred men as they stood and stared. The alphoe’s face was alight with hate, or as close to the emotion as its primitive mind could come. Eyes shrivelled by the lids around them and burning hot enough to kill on their own.

But it was Amelia who struck true fear into Crow’s heart.

The girl was drenched in blood from head to toe, bruised and battered, scraped raw and ragged by the enemy’s onslaught. She seemed not to notice her injuries, even the gaping hole in her shoulder. Any pain she felt was buried beneath a grin as wide and unrestrained as it was monstrous. Ear to ear, eye to eye, and bearing each one of her wolf-sharp teeth.

A short gasp from Astra drew his eye, and Crow saw his sister was pale as the grave as she watched. Eyes wet and shaking, face drained of the strength he’d spent a childhood around. Somehow it terrified him more than anything else, and he turned solemnly back to the conflict.

Amelia had changed in the instant since. No longer slumping where she stood, no longer still as a statue.

Her body quivered, back straighter, limbs laced with a newfound energy. Her grin was wide as before, wider even, and her eyes seemed to bulge as they locked on the alphoe.

Then he saw the veins.

They flowed across her like arterial rivers, thick and pronounced against flesh and climbing outward to cover every inch of the girl’s body. Skin was pulled tight around them as iron-dense muscles convulsed about their movement, and in moments Amelia had been covered entirely from head to toe. A vascular nightmare.

She moved like death, the space between her and the alphoe vanishing in a single bound as her arm lashed out almost faster than Crow could follow. Knuckles struck the monster’s cheek dully, driving its head back with a greater force than any blow the girl had loosed thus far. It hadn’t even finished stumbling before her attack continued.

Body, head, neck, collar, legs. She struck everywhere an opening appeared, seeming to dance as each part of her twisted and lashed . Amelia fought no more fluidly than before, her assault no more measured, but still she drove the beast feet where she’d previously settled for inches.

There was no trick to what Crow saw, he knew. No strategy or technique responsible for the blood falling like rain or teeth snapping like twigs. It was nothing but power.

The ultimate currency of battle.

A cannonball fist struck home in the girl’s side, lifting her from the ground and tossing her high and far. She landed on her feet as the alphoe charged, then met it halfway with a downward elbow like unto a guillotine. Again, the beast staggered, and again Amelia waited not even an instant before pressing her advantage.

The alphoe covered itself instinctively, but it made no difference. Amelia simply struck wherever the guard wasn’t.

Bruises swelled on grey skin, joints inflamed as they were tasked by measured blows. An eye burst and ran down a bloated cheek as her thumb drilled deep into it.

Moment by moment, the monster’s strength failed. Roles reversed. Every blow it landed was ignored, either doing no damage or simply causing no pain- Crow couldn’t tell. He could see only that the beast was ruined by the endless assault befalling it.

The creature’s legs gave, and then Amelia was stood over it. Her heels came down in place of fists, driving the monster’s head deep into the dirt and splitting hard roots as they blocked its path.

Again and again Amelia stomped, long past the point where the alphoe’s struggles stopped. Crow stared at the girl’s face, the unrepentant glee it displayed. Felt bile creep toward his lips as he saw the brutality from which she drew it.

It felt a minute’s length before, at last, the girl stopped. Veins retracting across her body, flesh lying still and clear again.

The forest was silent as her rage subsided, a sudden peace coming to flow across Amelia’s features. In moments her wild, frenzied grin had disappeared, taking all the cruelty and malice with it. She turned, placid and peaceful once more. Smiling as sweetly as ever.

After taking only three steps from the newly made corpse, Amelia paused. She turned back to the felled alphoe, returned to its side and looked down upon what was left of it.

Crow followed her gaze, felt his sickness redouble as it came to rest upon the ruinous mess she’d made of the creature’s head. Thrice wider than it had been, one tenth so thick, spread outwards and inwards as a flattened carpet of pulverised brains and splintered bone.

He wondered for a moment if the girl was admiring her own handiwork, then his stomach twisted at the sight of her hand disappearing into the visceral mess.

Moments later it reemerged, stained crimson and grey. Lumpy where the gore still clung to her, and trailing strands of fluid connecting it back to the corpse. Her fingers were outstretched, closed delicately around something that became clear to Crow only when she shook away the refuse.

The control crystal he’d seen embedded in the alphoe’s forehead. The very object Tenzo had fought so desperately to seize, entirely slipped from Crow’s mind in the face of the brutality his eyes had been awash with.

Clutched tight in Amelia’s grasp. As if anything more might have been needed to cement the girl’s victory.