Despite her slight frame, Gluttony cast a dark shadow across the entire battlefield. Everyone in the region felt her presence even if they weren’t looking up to her—and most were looking up.

Sinners were the stuff of legends. Nightmares come to life. They rarely made an appearance with less than ten thousand casualties. Nobody could ever tell if those casualties would be monster or human, let alone which side would end up dead. The most consistent metholodogy amongst the Seven Sinners was a complete lack of one. They emerged like natural disasters, rarely explained themselves, and vanished into the ether after.

And now there was one looking over less than a hundred people, of which there wasn’t a single strategic-class magician. It was entirely possible that there was one of those on the Cascadian side, but Syl doubted it. Nobody wasted strategics on something like this, even if they were planning something deeper.

The first steps from both sides were hesitant and wary, checking both the enemy and the Sinner high above. There was always the threat of sudden unchecked hostilities from either side, of course, but that seemed to shrink in the face of someone powerful enough to act as a localized flux black hole.

A message flicked over Syl’s FCD as Uriel stepped forward to meet the leader of the other one.

Mj. Uriel: Voice comms are down. We can try to re-establish, but it looks like Gluttony went specifically after comms. Intranet access is also gone. FCD to FCD is still up, but that’s about it.

A flurry of messages from others came back soon after, questioning what was going on. There was some fear that Gluttony had done this just to devour them all, but that was a silly concern. If she wanted to do that, she would have just done it to start with. It wasn’t like any of the Reserve would be able to stop it. It was also one that they couldn’t particularly prepare for anyway. Their most conservative evacuation plan would only start triggering in an hour when Uriel missed check-in.

Neither Bianca nor Syl bothered to send messages through. The main channel was getting a bit clogged, anyway.

“She isolated us,” Bianca said. “Why?”

Syl signed back, unable to speak now that his FCD was little more than fresh blood for his veins. Good question.

“I would imagine she is not doing this as a service for Cascadia,” Bianca continued. “If she wanted to, she could stomp her way through the countryside in days.”

That was also very true. While most countries had paragons, bio-engineered Tower and Gate monsters, and nuclear bombs as deterrents against other countries from full-on pushing in, Sinners didn’t care about what a country could bring to bear. They lived for themselves and themselves only.

Has to be something else, Syl signed. Think she knows?

“That is not information we are currently capable of knowing,” Bianca said. “I believe it is not something worth worrying about. If she wants the people here dead, they will be.”

Not you, Syl signed. He didn’t finish the sentence, but Bianca got the message loud and clear.

“I would prefer for that scenario not to come to pass,” she said, answering both herself and Syl’s unspoken implication at once. “If all goes well, it will not.”

Doubtful.

“I do not disagree.”

Up ahead, Uriel found herself flanked by Waylan and James, which Syl found interesting. The circuit competitor seemed to have a different flavor of anti-Auria sentiment when compared to the other two, enough that he suspected they belonged to two separate factions entirely, but they seemed to be perfectly fine now.

Better the devil you know, he thought. Those were the two most powerful duelists that she had access to that she regularly worked with. Drew was here too and arguably better than one of them, but he wasn’t even supposed to be here and was horrendously unreliable, especially given how closely entrenched he was into the Aurian system. Though all the prismatics leveraged their family connections, Drew was the only one that Syl would consider to be a proper Aurian—the kind of unthinking warrior mage that the programs were supposed to churn out.

Speaking of which, that master-class Reserve mage was one of the few who had recovered quickly from the shock of seeing a Sinner. His attention was now focused on Syl. Far removed from the arrogant magician who’d thought to use a point-blank spell at ten meters in a serious duel the first time Syl had met him, Drew was now an arrogant magician who was at least somewhat aware of what he was up against. The spells he was projecting now were significantly better thought-out.

Even Syl had to admire the subtlety that Drew used. He had the makings of a great magician and a phenomenal assassin in him if he could just curb his ego and stop listening to what Auria told him and… well, actually, he could think of quite a few things.

Of course, that wasn’t enough to actually successfully probe Syl. This wasn’t his first outing, and he wasn’t just going to give up valuable information about his body or magic for free.

He slowly turned to one side, making eye contact with Drew, and shook his head slightly.

Drew Violet quickly found something else to do, doing his best to hide his surprise.

Mj. Uriel: Initial meeting complete. We’re going to do seven games today. Two three-on-three capture the flags, four duels with varying numbers, one twelve-on-twelve Tower delve.

That was quickly met with actual vitriol from the Aurian side, mostly from the people who were on the national circuit.

Syl had to bite back disgust at their complaints. He understood not wanting to fight for the Aurian kingdom, but they were also acting as if back-to-back arena fights that they could rest between was a problem on the scale of the end of the world.

These people knew nothing of war.

Then again, he reflected, that wasn’t so bad. Countries built by people who only knew war ended up running themselves like Auria.

They’d practiced a number of configurations for the possible circuit games that Cascadia would offer, though there was now a wildcard in the form of Drew Violet. The three-on-threes would all be taken by the actual national circuit competitors, most of whom had been training for these exactly. As more details came from Uriel, cutting through the sea of complaints, it became clear that the three-on-threes were specific circuit events that could be more easily performed non-lethally. The duels weren’t, but that was fine—most of the non-circuit competitors were much better at handling themselves in duels than they were in competition settings with other goals.

From the look of the Cascadians, the same was probably true for them.

Syl wasn’t planning on participating on anything except the duels and the large-group Tower climbs anyway, so he settled back and reduced his passive spells to a bare minimum as the three-person squads assembled to take their turns.

Hurry up and wait, he signed to Bianca.

She laughed. “I’ve heard that one before.”

On both sides, the majority of the magicians present were tactical-class or higher. Though they weren’t exactly an army, they were still all the results of decades of research and years of training. Pitted against any armed force from before flux integration, they would have wiped the floor with them. Though most of them didn’t look much more than bored, everyone here was a killing machine—and that wasn’t even taking into account the walking nuclear weapon above them.

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They waited. They watched.

#

Lia Jeksen’s grip on her sword hadn’t relaxed in at least a good forty-five minutes.

“Relax, Lia,” James said, resting a hand on her shoulder.

She flinched, instincts nearly sending her hurtling the blade at him. “Easy for you to say. I’m the lowest rank magician here by a long shot.”

“You’re not the worst fighter,” he said. “You’ve wiped the floor with me before.”

“You weren’t using master-class spells,” Lia snapped. “These people will be.”

“The first duelist isn’t going to be their strongest magician. You know how these things work.”

“Of course I do. That’s why I’m first.”

If she somehow held her FCD any tighter, she was pretty sure she was going to crack the handle.

“I won’t lie to you,” James said. “But I do know that your chances against the opposing magician are pretty good. You just need to get out of your own head. Remember—we’re ahead. If you have to, you can just quit out.”

They had pulled ahead, in fairness. Though Lia hadn’t been terribly familiar with the circuit before this, she’d gotten a crash course over the last month and had been able to identify most of what the three-man teams had been doing. The first team Auria’s side had sent had been significantly more competent than the other team had been at the capture-the-flag style event they’d been doing, earning them a clean victory.

The second one had been much closer. They were just wrapping up now, but each side had already had one person go down unconscious, with the other two not faring much better. According to Uriel, they were going to call it a draw if nobody else went down in the next couple of minutes.

Please be a draw, she thought. If it wasn’t, and she was up next, then whether or not she won would actually matter for their overall results. To be fair, it mattered anyway, but Lia wouldn’t feel bad walking away if she knew she wasn’t actively dragging them down.

The sun had faded behind gathering clouds, grey fog gradually returning to the area surrounding the Tower in the wake of Gluttony’s entrance. That, Lia reflected, was a pretty accurate representation of how she was feeling now. She’d been ready to do this from the start, and she still was, but reality was closing in. Her senses and combat intuition was pretty good, and it was telling her that when she was facing off against an array of magicians like this as well as one of the most powerful magicians to ever exist, her best course of action was to run.

Slow down, she told herself. Breathe.

This wasn’t the first time she’d operated in a high-stress environment. She knew how to handle herself.

Centering herself involved a quick breathing ritual that she’d practiced so many times it was practically ingrained into her lungs. Her grip relaxed, and though this was no true calm, she could at least push off the physical effects that being anxious brought down upon her.

Lia focused on herself and only that. The sword, her casting device, was an extension of her body and could only be considered as such.

Like this, she could fight. Even when a misstep from the Aurian trio resulted in one of them failing to counter a tactical-class spell that set the air around them on fire, even when the second game was ruled conclusively in favor of Cascadia, she did not flinch. Lia was here to carry out a single task, and she would not let herself get in her way.

“Next,” Gluttony said, her voice still audible at a normal volume no matter where they were.

She sounded bored, which was terrifying enough to shake Lia’s fresh composure. If there was anything you didn’t want a Sinner to be, it was—she’d probably say angry, but bored was a close second.

“There’s nothing you can do about it,” she whispered to herself. “Control what you can control. Accept the rest.”

Mj. Uriel: Lia Jeksen, first-year class 2. A-class duelist. Are you ready?

Lia walked towards the arena.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she muttered. Lia wasn’t sure if Uriel heard her as she passed, but the acknowledgement was received either way.

The arenas this time around were the most basic ones—standardized, featureless cover that would resist anything short of a master-class spell and about forty meters on each side to work with.

This was where Lia excelled. It was one of a scant few places where her expertise in dueling outweighed an opponent’s affinity for magic. She’d trained on setups like this since childhood, and she was not going to start losing now.

Her FCD buzzed one final time before she stepped in.

Mj. Uriel: Your opponent is a tactical-class duelist. Uses spears instead of a sword. No other information past that.

Lia didn’t send back a thank you, too focused on entering a battle mindset. She hoped she would be able to acknowledge the information by winning.

A small, round speaker rose out of the ground between Lia and her opponent, who stood in ready positions, FCDs and weapons a moment from flashing out with violence.

“The duel will end when one party is incapacitated, cannot adequately continue to cast, or acknowledges defeat,” a pre-recorded voice spoke from the speaker.

Uriel’s voice came next. “Duelist Nathan Sanders. Do you accept the terms of the duel as previously stated?”

“In nomine virtutis,” Lia’s opponent said gruffly. He didn’t sound much older than her. “I accept.”

A male voice Lia didn’t recognize emerged from the speaker next. “Duelist Lia Jeksen. Do you accept the terms of the duel?”

Deep breath.

“In fide et sapientia,” Lia replied. “I also accept.”

The speaker counted them down, and the duel began in a flash. The opponent seemed to want to make use of the terrain, reaching down and immediately churning the earth beneath him, sending a wave of unstable ground towards her.

Lia evaded, familiar with this kind of fighting style already. Even if he was a tactical-class magician, it was no exaggeration to say that she had been training for this moment her entire life. She’d practically been raised by the Order of the Lost, the extra-governmental group who’d acquired access to Tower artifacts and training regimens that the Aurian kingdom would never think of using.

Drawing on years of practice, she bounded over and between every spell Sanders used. With a spell passively lightening her sword, she could make incredible use of the momentum it offered to simply hurtle herself around obstacles as well as use it to block spells. She fired off a few of her own, but those were more probing attacks to keep Sanders from being able to properly set up than they were actual attempts at knocking him down.

Lia was using significantly less flux than her opponent was, which he recognized after a couple of minutes. He switched to using his spear as well, hurtling it forward with one spell and calling it back with another. Lia was nowhere near as good as that other first-year was at telling what enchantments a given weapon had, but the way that spear buzzed through the air told her that she did not want to get hit by it.

I thought that this was supposed to be non-lethal.

She shook the thought away and continued dashing from one piece of cover to another, waiting and watching for a gap in her opponent’s pattern.

There. Every now and again, he overcommitted to attacking and didn’t reestablish his defensive perimeter quickly enough. It wasn’t something any normal duelist would have seen, and most duelists likely wouldn’t have punished him for.

Lia was no normal duelist.

She had no faith in Auria, knowing what they had done and what they had hidden, but this was still her homeland. Her brother, her family, everyone she cared about—they were all part of this kingdom, and she was going to protect them if it took everything she had. Whether or not Auria itself wanted a part in that was immaterial to her.

So when she saw a risky opportunity, she took it.

Lia pirouetted through an overcommit—a combination of a tactical-class earth manipulation spell, one to throw the spear, and a third one to find where she was.

“Right here, asshole,” she hissed.

One of many reasons why Lia had ended up in class three was her lack of major spells. All three spells she used in response to his three were B-class or lower—one to lighten the FCD in her hands, one to augment her movements, and a third to increase the density of specifically the point of contact she would be using.

They were practical spells. Combat spells. They were low-impact, which meant she could put all of her focus into this one blow.

Non-lethal, she remembered. Killing an opponent would almost certainly result in more aggression, and even if nobody wanted this to become a war, it was entirely possible if things got out of hand.

Still, this man had been trying to kill her. There was no way a spear that sharp and that powerful wouldn’t have simply ended Lia’s life, even taking into account the medics standing by.

She turned the blade onto its flat side at the last second, striking Sanders’ head with the force of a wrecking ball instead of an executioner’s blade.

The impact knocked him to the ground, unconscious in a single strike.

“That was easier than I expected,” she said to nobody, adrenaline suddenly sloughing off her in waves.

Lia laughed nervously. She’d won. She’d won. Maybe it wouldn’t matter in the long run, but this one time, she’d done it right. Finally. In some small way, she was making a difference.

She took a step towards the outside of the arena, then stopped in her tracks. A drop of water landed on the back of her neck. Then another.

The now-bloodied sword buzzed with a notification as Lia looked up.

Mj. Uriel: It’s not over yet! Turn around!

Lia’s stomach churned, then dropped as she realized what was happening, more water hitting her hair, the sword, the ground, pitter-pattering with rapidly increasing intensity. She’d been warned about this. Told to run in this eventuality.

She turned back to confirm that the enemy Cascadian had stayed down just in time for his spear to catch her in the throat.

It’s raining, she thought distantly. It’s fucking raining.

What a stupid last thought.