There was no time Gem looked more beautiful, Crow decided, than when she smiled. And he’d yet to see her smile so widely as she did while handing him the black fabric bundled so carefully in her hands.

He studied the material, finding the sight vaguely familiar as he drank it in, though not enough to spark any flashes of memory. Turning back to the faces of his assembled team, he asked the obvious.

“What is this?”

It was Deka who answered, seeming no less satisfied than Gem herself.

“Do you remember the relic Gem purchased for her first task? The first one of the second stage?”

Realisation hit him like a discus.

“That’s what this is?”

“It is.” Deka confirmed. “Sort of. We made a few adjustments, needed to make it fit you. Considered buying a new suit for you with our own credits, since we can’t put them to the Eclipse’s Nectar, but realised that it might be best to save them for treating your wounds.”

Excitement burned in Crow like a fledgeling star as he unfolded the fabric, holding it up against his own chest and finding it rolling down to almost his ankles. He grinned.

“And it’s armoured.” He said, certain already but desparate to confirm all the same. Astra answered with a nod.

“It is. For the most part. Anything that looks like the armoured fabric Gemini wore is armour, anything that doesn’t isn’t. Difficult to work out, I know.”

Crow barely noticed her jibe, still turning the suit over in his hands.

“Thank you.” He breathed. “Thank you all, really.”

“Don’t thank us all.” Astra answered dismissively. “The Gemini provided the material itself. Deka and Eden stitched it up together with hours of their own time. I did nothing at all. We all deserve different degrees of gratitude, I think.”

Crow turned to Unity, noticing the boy avoiding his gaze as he stared at him.

“You helped?” He asked. “Why?”

Still Unity kept his eyes to himself, planting them unwaveringly at his own feet, not so much as glancing at Crow. He seemed smaller, somehow. Crow might have read embarrassment in his mannerisms, were he anyone else.

“For the same reason I tried so hard to talk you out of this moronic idea.” The artificial shrugged. “I don’t want you to fucking die. Now are you going to make sure that fits, or would you prefer to keep waxing lyrical about how warm and fuzzy inside you feel to receive it?”

Crow grinned.

***

The crowd was a distant thing where Chaths and Ajoke stood, barely a yard apart in the corridor. It seemed to him enough distance to circle the world.

Chosen for practicality alone, the Írìsi’s garb was more severe even than normal.

Streamlined and form-fitting leathers, light and tight, giving away nothing of the build beneath and doubtless moving like a second skin. She wore a blade at her belt, one Chaths hadn’t seen before, and bore a tremble in her hands that betrayed the adrenal bleed beneath.

More than anything else, it was her hooded eyes that struck him. He’d rarely seen that focus in anyone, never in her. To witness it after knowing Ajoke for so long was as fascinating as it was unnerving.

“How are you feeling?” He asked, stupidly. Ajoke was kind enough not to say anything.

“Like I’m about to fight another mystic with my own life on the line.” She breathed, not meeting his eye. Chaths recognised her tone, saw the dismissal clear as day. Disregarded it as he stepped in to place a hand on her.

“That’s a shocker, I must say. But how are you actually feeling? This isn’t a fight to enter with a clouded head.”

Ajoke didn’t meet his eye. Ever one to avoid getting personal when she could.

“I’ll not be held back by anything, don’t worry.”

Her confidence evaporated the worry plaguing Chaths. Lasting only until she spoke again. “ I have something to ask of you.”

“What is it?”

She paused, then the pause turned to hesitation, finally bleeding into stammering, unsteady speech. The question he’d feared from her most of all. Ajoke tested every conviction Chaths had as she begged for his forfeiture.

He felt his mind seize up at the request. It was impossible to deny. Both he and Ajoke knew she was no match for him in battle, that any fight between them would end with him as the victor.

And it was impossible to accept. He’d made his promise already to Rajah, the only promise his mentor had ever asked of him after a life of giving. But Ajoke was his friend- his lover. How could he sentence her to death?

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Chaths thought, mind aching with the exertion as he tried to compromise with himself. It must have taken too long, for Ajoke turned away before he could find an answer.

He watched her leave, still trying to think of his response. Still terrified to either make a promise or refuse to. He’d yet to find one when she left the tunnel.

***

It seemed like an age, somehow, since the last task. As Crow moved through the tunnel, now familiar as his own hands, he found himself certain something had changed.

The last stage. He reminded himself, footsteps seeming sharper than ever as they rebound around him. The second to last task. It’ll all be over after this. I’ll have succeeded, or failed No wonder it feels different.

A chill ran down his spine at the thought, piercing the armoured fabric like winter through a blanket. Crow felt his hands curl to fists as he walked.

He had no weapons to tighten a grip on, save his own knuckles. They’d served him well enough already, and the benefits of proper medicinal relics might well prove greater than any blade.

Still, he regretted not arming himself beforehand. Almost considered running back to pick something up from the reliquary at the last moment.

But there were no more last moments for him to spend. Crow had chosen to fight unarmed, and he would live with the consequences.

Growing each moment, he soon found the crowd’s noise overtaking all else. Loud and expansive enough to drive even thought from him.

It worsened his fears, deepened his regrets, gnawed at his resolve like a starved hound. But failed to stay his stride.

The fears had reached their peak by the time he stepped out into the light, having climaxed so thoroughly that not even the greeting roars of the spectators could worsen them any further.

Lavastro Kaiosyni stood where she always had, a single constant among the shaken world around.

Waiting patiently while he neared, seeming impassive before the crowd’s energy and entirely neutral to Crow’s own approach. He stopped as far from her as ever, taking some small satisfaction in needing no direction.

She gave her speech, and he amazed himself by drifting in focus as the words rang out. They seemed so hollow to Crow, so empty. So meaningless before the weight of his task.

Ajoke Balogun’s name was called soon after, and Crow’s concentration sharpened once more as he looked ahead to the tunnel opposite his own. The Írìsi walked with much the same confidence she ever had, apparently undiminished by her request for his forfeiture. Somehow that comforted Crow. It made her far easier to pit his full power against.

He didn’t miss the knife at her side, even as Kaiosyni’s voice caught his ear again by drawing closed the curtain of her speech.

“Now then, with the rules fresh in everyone’s mind, let’s not waste anymore time. Contestants, get ready. The task begins now!”

Crow ‘s guts tightened with such a convulsive tension that he feared they might squeeze his breakfast out over the sandstone.

The translocative distortions almost comforted him, despite the aggravations of bending light and grinding wind. Crow’s breath caught in his throat while he waited for the sensory torrent to end, eyes pinched tight, fists curled as if about the neck of Galad’s kidnapper.

He threw himself into action the moment it ended.

Running before he even regained feeling in his legs, Crow nearly fell a half dozen times within moments. He pressed on heedless, whipping his head around and drinking in the sights around him. Studying his stage, learning what he could as quickly as was possible, desperate for any advantage he might find in the knowledge and all too aware that attack could come without warning.

The greenery drowned his eyes. Clean and unbroken, pristine in a way he’d not seen even during the summers of Selsis. Grass grew in all directions from Crow, reaching up past his knees and whistling as it swayed beneath a breeze. It seemed to go on without end.

Crow stopped his sprint as he swept an eye further outwards, soaking in the sight of hills rolling and plains bustling. The land was bumpy as any he’d seen, its knolls stretching furlongs high with slopes just as carpeted in emerald as the terrain around them.

Only the occasional tree broke the colour, brown trunks sticking out like splinters.

The view was spectacular in a way Crow had yet to see in the Sieve. It carried none of the grandiosity he’d witnessed in other stages, no ancient ruins or towering, fallen cities.

Still it awed him. A natural beauty he’d not expected, stunning his mind even as it turned mournfully towards thoughts of home. Crow was almost left inactive by the display.

Almost.

He threw himself down without a moment’s hesitation, feeling the bladed shoots of grass scratch and prick his flesh as he fell. By the time he hit the yielding earth, he’d reached his magic and drawn it to the surface.

Utalis was water in a desert of fear, but still he felt the emotion remain fierce inside him. Thinking was like peering through a nighttime fog. He forced himself sharp for the task.

Balogun had surely entered the stage as confused as him, there was a good chance the girl had failed to see Crow. A very good chance. But not good enough to leave his mind at ease.

If she had seen him, the worst case scenario, then Crow doubted very much the Írìsi would have let him know. Doubtless she’d seize the advantage of surprise, approach slow. Quiet.

That the girl could be nearing from behind even as he thought sent hairs standing rigid on Crow’s neck, but he remained where he lay. If Crow stood, he’d become a thousand times more obvious. Balogun would notice him even if she hadn’t already.

He racked his brains, panic slowing thought, urging him to run. It took a dozen agonised heartbeats of consideration to shape his thoughts in more productive ways.

Moving would shift the grass, making a clear indicator of his location, yet even buried by the blades, he could feel the wind scything them. Sending them swaying rhytmhically where they grew. It would take a keener eye than any Crow had seen to notice movement as slight as that, even if Balogun were mere yards from him.

The thought rattled around in his mind as he waited, howling wind pacing around him while his nerves grew frayed once more. Audible, clear, but not where he needed it. Not around him.

Each moment Crow felt sure Balogun would find him, that she’d announce her presence with a flash of light and wall of fire. Instead he was left in silence.

Seconds ticked by, world slowed around him by the touch of magic. Grass agonisingly limacine in his quickened sight. It occurred to him he’d need to control himself, with all his preternatural quickness, to avoid making the shifting blades obvious.

Then he felt the wind on his back, reaching him finally. He wasted no time seizing the opportunity.