Ajoke felt twigs snap beneath her as she landed, leaves rustling. The casual destructions of light foliage giving way beneath a human’s weight was something she’d grown long used to hearing, but still they sent a stab of fear into her heart.

Her memories turned back to the alphoe’s path of devastation, its bloodhound mannerisms in thrashing and throwing itself through the stage, unhesitating and unrelenting, finding targets seemingly from the slightest noise at all.

For a long, terrible moment she merely stood still and listened. Certain she’d hear the crashing of vegetation turning to as the beast headed towards her.

There was only silence to embrace her ears. Haunting and chilling in its own right, yet a thousand times less terrible than any noise approximate to the rampaging monster.

Ajoke took off without another thought, already cursing herself for delaying. She kept a hand near her magic while moving, yet didn’t quite allow its touch.

The strength was more enticing than water in a desert. Still she resisted. Unable to trust that the wildness of Cutaris wouldn’t sabotage her quietitude, or even that the sheer power it brought wouldn’t fill the air with noise as she broke creepers and branches.

And still the thought persisted, burning in the back of her mind like a lodged musketball. It took all of Ajoke’s will to resist.

She thought back to the thousands of hours spent training as she moved, dredging up as much from her days in practice as she could find. Surprisingly little, but enough to double her aptitude.

Ajoke recalled how to step on leaves without eliciting a crunch, how to shift branches aside to sound like they were rustling from wind rather than flesh. A dozen imperceptible tricks she’d accrued for traversing woodlands came back to her as one, almost overwhelming as she tried to employ them simultaneously.

It was a comfort, but an empty one. Every step still caught the air in her throat as Ajoke listened.

There was no doubt in her mind that no other contestant would have practiced as she had, all were either commoners or pampered wards, but her nerves remained sharp. Her own training had yielded one terrible lesson more completely than any other.

A single stroke of bad luck could unturn a thousand hours of preparation. Ajoke could ensure she was quieter than her rivals, but that would do no good if chance placed her down right beside the predator.

She cursed her inattentiveness in watching the previous team. Cursed that she’d been too foolish to take note of where the contestants had all been dropped in. It might have clued her in if they were deliberately equidistant from the beast.

Should. Might. Would. Ajoke steeled her mind and turned away the intrusive regrets. Agonising over hypotheticals did nothing but distract her, there were far better things to turn her wits to.

Just as she was taking another heart-wrenching step, something rustled in the undergrowth ahead. She froze instantly, eying the space and bringing a hand to her magic. Realising too late she’d let go of it without thought.

For seconds Ajoke scrambled to grab the power inside her, eyes tight ahead. Hearing became an impossibility as panic took her, heartbeat swelling to drown all other sound and breaths growing heavy and booming as adrenaline forced her lungs to heave.

Finally her magic came, and Ajoke seized it readily. Fear and panic great enough that she barely even noticed the ecstasy of strength and solidity as it embraced her mind. She raised both hands, waited barely an instant before a shadow shifted behind the branches.

Instinct moved her before thought.

Cutaris heated to a boil, then loosed itself from her in a fraction of a second. Utalis joined the energy as a thousand globules of chemical death. They met, igniting with force enough to sting Ajoke’s own eyes as her power shot outwards.

The fire washed through the forest like a tidal wave, greenery falling to blackened silhouettes before it, not even giving the blanket of flame pause as it burned a path through the woodlands. In an instant it had scoured a great streak through the terrain, leaving only ash and cinders shaped into the plantlife's skeleton.

Embers fell as she stared ahead. Glowing bright while they burned, spiralling and dancing in an unfelt breeze on their path to the ground. A groan ahead snapped her eyes from them.

“Pit, boss. Is that you?”

Ajoke rushed forwards, feeling charred branches break against her as she made her way to the voice.

She soon found Fisher lying prone on his back and gazing up at her. Eyes made wide with shock.

“Is there anything in particular I did to deserve that?” The boy asked,, “You barely missed me!”.

Guilt immediately flooded Ajoke.

“I thought you were the alphoe.” She gasped.

“How?” The boy growled, standing with a grunt. The effortlessness of his motion, paired with the speed of his words, left Ajoke sure he was touching his own magic too. By the burns on the ground around him, he might have died otherwise.

“I saw movement and… panicked. I’m sorry.”

She paused, then froze. Realised the true extent of her error only then.

“We need to leave.” She whispered. Fisher understood instantly, and the pair of them were running a moment later.

Magic made their pace swift, branches whipping as they tore through the forest, wood breaking quick enough that Ajoke barely felt it impact her. She sprinted for only seconds before hearing her fears given sound far behind.

Crushing, crashing, snapping and grunting. The orchestral procession of an apex predator, growing louder with every step she took.

Fisher tore ahead of her, long legs and greater physicality proving no small difference. He paused only when a roar let out from behind them, digging his heels deep into the ground and halting himself as he turned. Ajoke couldn’t bring herself to look back as the boy charged, only heard him meet the enemy with a titanous crunch.

The air itself shook.

She stumbled, righted herself. Fell outright as something great and heavy clipped her in flight. Ajoke rolled, scrambling to her feet with a terrified haste and whirling on the alphoe just in time to see it charging at her.

She raised both hands with flames leaping between fingers, unleashing another blast of fire. Relishing, if nothing else, the presence of such a perfect target.

The blaze unfurled like wings as it struck the creature dead-centre, turning air sharp with light and boiling the atmosphere dry. She strained her eyes to stare at the conflagration, felt hope sprout for a moment as the monster’s assault slowed, then stopped entirely.

Seconds passed, and she sustained the inferno even as her magic began to burn from within. Vessel straining to sustain the continued output, flesh threatening to blister as the heat touched it even from afar.

Still she forced herself to continue, knowing that to let up for a moment would spell defeat. Still the alphoe began to move again, heedless of her torturous act of will.

It appeared as a shadow in the fire. Outline impossibly dark against the glare, visage impossibly broad. The beast moved one step at a time, slow and sure. Delayed by the magic, yet not stopped. Closing in on her with a dreadful certainty.

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Panic blossomed as she stared, growing as the distance shrank one great stride at a time. She thought like never before, mind whirring, yet fruitless.

While sustaining her magic, she would need to remain still. Focusing on movement would interrupt the fire, removing the alphoe’s only impediment. Already she’d strained her magic to its limit, increasing the heat and power anymore was beyond her. Yet she could think of no alternative to give herself the room necessary to break free of the deadlock and run.

Panic and dread turned to utter horror as Ajoke realised she hadn’t a single option but to continue delaying. It closed in far quicker than she could bear.

Then a strong voice rang out from behind her.

“Let me know when you can’t keep the magic up anymore, boss. Then run. I’ll buy you as long as I can.”

“Fisher?” She asked, then cursed as her fire abated by a hair in the distraction. Ajoke redoubled the will pushing it outwards. Felt it strengthen once more.

The alphoe closed in by another pace, now barely two from her. Sweat beaded on her brow as her teeth gritted in exertion. Eyes stinging more than ever at the eclipseum ahead.

“Are you at your limits boss?” Fisher asked.

“I can sustain it for a few more seconds.” She hissed, finding even speech a test. “Get ready.”

A few seconds seemed generous to Ajoke, yet giving her word left no choice but to manage. Fisher was already moving as her arms began to shake, his strides having reached a sprint once the flames abated.

Ajoke turned without seeing him crash into the alphoe. Merely heard its surprised roar from behind.

***

Deka felt the sound more than she heard it. Wild, animalistic and raw as blade against bone. It seemed to be made from every nightmare she’d ever had, running through her like a northern wind and leaving her body weak. Mind emtpy.

She did her best to ignore both sensations.

It’s just a noise. She told herself, repeating the phrase as she made her way along the forest floor. Just a sound made by an animal, and what seems like a pained one. If I let myself despair at hearing something like this, I’ve no hope at all of contending with the creature that made it.

Deka found no solace in the mantra. Her logic was a blade of lead, her fear a barricade of steel. Wrapped tight around her innards, stifling and strangling.

Worse than air, it denied her magic.

She could feel the energies coiling within her, like nesting rats. All heat and power, pent up with the need for use and driven half mad by captivity. Urging her to action, and likewise fleeing from her touch.

It was tantalising beyond agony.

Burying her fury, Deka continued. Closing in on the source of the sound, or as near as she could guess, and taking note for the first time of just how sluggish her progress was.

It took only a second of thought for her to deem speed a small sacrifice for silence. Whatever had drawn such a sound from the alphoe, Deka imagined it was too powerful for the beast to overcome quickly.

There was an uncertainty in the guess that needled her, but she pushed it down to join so many others. Deka would have time to sift through her emotions later.

For the first time she could remember, she was glad for her minutiae of a body. Light enough to make little sound even at a run, small enough to barely be grazed by branches that would’ve snagged most others.

She fell into her flight like a cool ocean, killing the heat of panic as she sank deeper.

I won’t lose. She told herself, words hollow in her mind. Not in this. Not when I fought so hard just to get the chance to compete.

Deka almost missed the change ahead of her, so deep in thought was she. Green turning to grey, to black. The air growing dry and acrid, tranquil silence broken by the sounds of muscular exertion and visceral mechanics grinding in contest. It barely halted her in time to dive hidden into a bush and watch as the Unixian giant who’d entered with Balogun stumbled back.

The alphoe appeared barely a breath later. Just as tall as the last, just as muscular. Its skin still marked like a battlefield, grey as death and threaded by veins and thew from below. Every movement sent its fibrous mass to shift and bulge beneath the paper-thin epidermis, as if the meat itself were angry.

It carried an impossible physicality; speed and power combined seamlessly as only a true hunter could. Deka stared transfixed as one dinner-plate hand closed into a fist denser and larger than a cannonball, then slammed into the Unixian with force enough to hurl him back into a tree.

The wood groaned as he straightened on unsteady feet, then the alphoe was upon him once more.

A fist caught the creature across its jaw, turning its head and giving it pause enough for another blow to sink into the flesh of its belly. The alphoe answered with its own strike, snapping the Unixian’s own head back to rebound from the oak and sending him down amid falling splinters.

He hadn’t dropped even a foot before the alphoe struck again, then again. Driving the boy into the dirt, snapping roots and sending the trunk beside them swaying as if fearful of the carnage.

Deka felt the breath catch as she watched, found herself urged to help. The brutality unfolding before her transcended competition. Each crushing blow falling upon the Unixian giant with a fury that almost hurt her just to watch.

Still she remained hidden and quiet. Greater than her horror and outrage at the destruction taking place was the fear it instilled.

Her only solace came in the speed with which the battle ended. A handful more blows squeezed the boy’s fight from him, and he lay unmoving and slack as the creature sent him spinning off to one side with a brutal back-hand. Magic draining a moment before he landed.

Whether he was removed from the task or not, Deka didn’t have a clear enough view to know. She was sure only that the boy would not get up soon.

It almost stopped the heart in her chest to realise that there was no more distraction to hold the alphoe’s attention. The monstrosity drew in air, eyes erratic, nostrils widening. Hunt already resumed.

Deka fought the urge to run, made herself think instead.

Thoughts are energy. She repeated. They cannot be destroyed, only changed.

Never before had she been faced with such urgency to change her own.

Cinders and embers still hissed on the ground around her, and Deka found comfort in the reminder of where they stood. It seemed the world for fathoms around had been scorched a suffocating, choking black. Toxic and sterile, burned acrid and reeking.

No creature alive could smell her through such a scent, regardless of how she sweated. That left one of its senses useless.

Every breath Deka let out was loud in her ears, enough to leave her sure each would alert the alphoe. It was reason that held her nerves unfrayed, logic that calmed her enough to keep quiet. Yet still the beast began to grow tense, cocking its head and shifting ears one way and another.

Deka fought to silence herself, fought harder to remain still. Every instinct she had screamed for her to flee, mental cries growing stronger still as the alphoe took a step towards her hiding place.

Yet she didn’t.

The creature was faster than her by far, and a half dozen paces away at most. If she began to move, it would be upon her before she stood.

But its senses were sharper than blades, its mind deeper than any animal’s. If she remained still, it would be scarcely slower.

Then an idea began to form, displacing fear with a clinical haste.

Pressing her palms flat against the ground, Deka released luminox from them. She felt it bleed through her skin, ready to be rendered rigid and unyielding at a touch of will. Held it fluid instead, pushing it along the forest floor to creep outwards from her like mold.

It ran beneath the ash-marred terrain as veins might under skin. Cobalt luster hidden, slithering imperceptibly at her direction.

Deka concentrated hard as she could manage, in spite of the alphoe. Feeling the tendrils’ fragility instinctively, knowing she’d likely get only a single chance. Slowly, surely, they reached their target.

The beast took another step as her magic ran over twigs, leaves and charcoal. Smothering the debris as slowly and surely as a spider. Deka felt a pressure against her mind as she urged the magic to tighten, distance and the unpracticed application robbing her constructs of all their force as she pulled it stranglingly firm about the forest refuse.

It almost made Deka laugh, the difficulty she found in breaking ruined twigs. But her gambit proved a wise one.

Flame had weakened the wood beyond any natural fragility, and it snapped with a dull cough as mind proved stronger than distance. Honed ears catching the sound in an instant, the alphoe spun. Roaring and charging in the direction it came from.

Behind itself, and far from Deka.

She made herself move as close to that same speed as she could manage, pulling herself up from the floor and scrambling back through rustling thickets and bladed twigs.

Keeping a mental image of the alphoe in her mind’s eye, Deka worked through the creature’s likely path as she ran.

It would move towards the sound, assuming it was made by another creature. Follow for some time before growing suspicious. Deka had no clue how long, nor how far she’d be when its own thunderstorm sprint stopped masking the sound of her retreat. The thought of being heard was no thought at all, so she allowed herself barely ten seconds to flee from the monster.

When Deka flattened herself down again, she knew it had been a poor decision. The alphoe was almost gone from her ears, its woodland rampage a distant buzz. Roar signalling it had found a new target.

The danger had passed, but its absence only made her aware that she’d cast away a chance for victory along with it.