Fire explodes in my chest. Molten, hellish. My lungs spasm, trying to scream. A whistling croak rips from my throat. My body bends like a bow, my heels and head pressed to the earth.

  Relief. Nothingness. The sky returns to view, peaceful as ever.

  And the rhythm stutters back into being.

  Fuck.

  That elf lady shot me in the heart. Through the heart. I was absolutely dead, but Psychic Telos brought me back. My soul energy reads 5/191. Most of my soul for another chance at life.

  A roar rips my attention back to the present, a roar of rage and pain. Threenut’s stick is a blur, then a shining blur. He pounds the unfortunate elf woman into the ground, silver blood splattering everything. The woman’s partner lifts his strange device, pointing it at Threenut’s uncaring back.

  My heart lurches, painfully, still healing. I lift a hand. Too late. Way too—

  A filament of web, nearly invisible, snaps out to adhere to the weapon. With a sharp jerk, Zara pulls the elf’s aim away an instant before a bright line of energy carves into the ground. With a squeaking battlecry, a short, agile figure clad in plated silver armor charges in and slams his mace, narrow and wicked, into the elf’s hip. The Aethid goes down with a cry of agony. I lift a hand impotently, some part of me crying out in protest as Burl brings his weapon down on the man’s skull. The mace crunches a neat hole into the elf’s forehead, and he flops to the ground, his eyes vacant.

  Congratulations! You've absorbed soul energy! Spend it to evolve yourself!

  The notification rips through me, the words a condemnation. Each letter, each syllable, settles down into the pit of my stomach until I feel full. So full I might be sick. My stomach heaves, though it has long since been emptied of anything but acid and bile.

  ‘You’ve absorbed soul energy!’

  Absorbed. Taken. Not the energy of an animal or a monster, but the energy of another thinking being. A pair of them. It would be easy to justify their deaths, through the circumstances of the tournament or how they were trying to kill me or how they aren’t even human. But the warmth I feel swirling in my chest feels thick and heavy and sweet and stolen. And there is so much.

  “I told you that taking from other Competitors would offer you faster development.”

  I don’t fucking want it, Kora. I don’t ever want this feeling again.

  “Then you will die, and your loved ones will die, and your species will die, because your enemies will not feel the same. Perhaps this will also teach you to stop trying to befriend everything and everyone. You’ve gotten lucky so far, but by right you should be dead a dozen times over.”

  I don’t want to hear it.

  “It’s time you grow up, Competitor.”

  Fuck you.

  I push her to the back of my mind and lever myself up, the muscles of my stomach still twitching. The others stand over the corpses of the Aethids, one mostly intact, the other a pulverized ruin. The sight makes me want to heave again, but I hold it in, barely.

  “Jesus, Threenut,” I croak, soul energy still trickling away to heal my abused vocal chords. “Did you have to do… that?”

  “Twig!”

  Threenut is suddenly at my feet, a single trembling hand pressed to my knee. His green eyes are wide with shock, turning quickly to happiness. I lean down and ruffle his little leaves, and he thrums low in his chest.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Methought your stem hewn, twig,” he says shakily. “How do ye live?”

  “Indeed,” Zara rasps, every one of her eyes fixed on me. “Was the form you took illusory? There is no stretch of the Weave that would encompass your surviving such a blow.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” I say, feeling suddenly embarrassed.

  “Yes, it was.” One of Zara’s limbs lifts to gently indicate my chest. “How does your carapace remain unblemished after I saw it burned through?”

  I glance down at my chest and take in a sharp breath. My graduation dress, once nice and relatively modest, was already in tatters. But now, square over my heart, a perfect circle of skin peeks out, encompassing nearly my entire chest. The edges of the fabric are burned and blackened, like something fiery and terrible burned it away. A breeze tickles my back, and I shiver, realizing that the beam’s exit hole must lie on the other side, just as large.

  She didn’t just shoot me, she vaporized my entire fucking chest. Folding my arms, I hold the tattered remnants of my dress together.

  “One of my Boons keeps me whole, so long as I have power left to spend,” I say, not meeting their eyes. “But it hurts. And it drains me.”

  “A mighty Boon indeed,” Zara says with an edge of annoyance. Or jealousy. “What did you do to earn it?”

  “Survive something that should have killed me.” I stare into her eye cluster steadily. “Multiple times.”

  “Twig, we must find ye covering,” Threenut says, eyeing my exposed body warily. Hip, thigh, stomach, entire chest, entire back. Even knowing they’re aliens doesn’t help me feeling suddenly self-conscious. I might as well be running around naked at this point. Why can’t the game give me some damn clothes? “Unless ye donnae care.”

  “Nah, softskins definitely care,” Burl says, his normal roughspun clothing back in place. Where did the armor and weapon go? “Saw some of ‘em wasting some serious resources on covering up, back at Haven.”

  “This will serve,” Zara says. I glance her way and nearly vomit again. She’s in the process of pulling the dead Aethid’s jumpsuit from his body, one thin arm already exposed, the other soon to follow. “It would have been ideal if the Otachai had not made such a mess of the other, as hers would have been a better fit. But, with a little alteration, I think this will serve.”

  “I don’t want it,” I say, taking a half step back. “I don’t want to wear some dead guy’s clothes.”

  “Are you sure?” Zara says, finishing tugging the suit off his legs. He flops about, silver blood leaking from between his vacantly staring eyes. “It may have defensive properties.”

  Almost against my will, I focus on the suit long enough for my Identification to activate.

  Identification! Techsuit of Re Revelstar, Aethid Metalshaper (Uncommon Artifact, Equipment)

  Re Revelstar was a promising student of the particularly secretive and particularly nasty Sect of Steel. Known for their attempts to graft mechanical ‘augmentations’ to unwilling test subjects, the Sect of Steel was considered sordid and uncouth, even among the more extreme elements of the broader Metalshaper community. This suit reflects the nature of their work and experimentation, offering moderate protection from explosions, shrapnel, electricity, and fire.

  “Oh, man. I guess it is magical or crafted or whatever.” I frown at how long it is, how broad the chest is. “But there’s no way it would even fit me.”

  “That is not an issue.” Zara rolls up the suit tightly and tucks it under her arm. “I will alter it for you tonight, but, for now, we should move on before the sounds of this disturbance are investigated.”

  The day passes quickly. We encounter, of all things, a minor toughness Challenge involving jumping over a swinging vine like children playing double dutch in the schoolyard. Even for my questionable agility, the task is less struggle and more play. Its rewards, unfortunately, match its difficulty, offering each of us a token to claim ‘minor supplies and conveniences’ at the Haven. Whatever the hell that means. Luckily, we don’t come across any other Competitors. I don’t think I can handle more violence today.

  As the lilac light begins to darken towards violet, we come across a broader clearing that evokes the combat Challenge from before. The others seem to recognize it, too, and we come to a staggered halt at its edge. The memories of yesterday are still fresh, the terror slicking the back of my throat, the way it felt for my blood and organs to freeze, the desperate beat of my heart hammering in my chest.

  Threenut glances between me and the clearing, his face concerned. Zara is motionless and expressionless as always. As far as I know, she didn’t enter the last arena herself. Burl, though, is shaking like a kitten left in the snow. His snout wags back and forth, his long tongue flicking about its edges in an unconscious nervous gesture. I get it; he almost died yesterday, and would have but for Zara’s intervention. And ours.

  I checked him with Identify earlier today. The fight with the Aethids did him well. He jumped straight from level 3 to level 8, though the mystery of the parenthetical 12 remains. Zara climbed all the way to 10. Threenut boasts a respectable 14. I remain 16; I have soul energy enough to evolve one of my Rare Skills, though I’m holding onto it. Partly because I think Kora has a point that evolving one of my Legendary Skills or Boons may well be the key to long term survival, and partly because my mind still shies away from where I got it in the first place.

  Though, looking at the fucking size of this arena, I might need to spend it sooner rather than later.