The little human girl in the frilliest pink dress ever stitched, skipped into the dining room. A big polished wood table dominated the space, atop which sat a black cat.

  Oscar the cat sat beside a leather-bound book with a broken latch, tail calmly waving. The girl scrambled into the oversized chair at the head of the table, knees tucked under her, and leaned close to the cat like they were conspirators in a very serious criminal enterprise.

  “Ready for storytime, Oscar?” she whispered.

  Oscar’s eyes narrowed with practiced authority. “I’ve been waiting on eager paws all day. Make it good.”

  He hopped onto her head with the casual entitlement of royalty and peered down as she pried open the diary, the latch snapping softly.

  The girl cleared her throat in the exaggerated way adults did before speeches.

  She began to read.

  “Hey diary, it’s me again. It’s 1050-001-UC, so you know what that means. Coalition Carnage is here and it’s my turn to—”

  Oscar yawned, loudly.

  The girl’s cheeks puffed. “Oscar.”

  “Skip.” His tail flicked. “Skip to the part where someone gets thrown into a wall. Preferably a smug someone.”

  She skimmed, humming a catchy little tune, finger dragging down the page. Her eyes brightened.

  “Hmmm… ah! Here we go.” She tapped the ink with reverence. “They teleport me to the Garden…”

  Oscar’s ears lifted. “Oh yes.”

  And the room tilted, not physically, not exactly, more like the words were a blanket that was engulfing them.

  PAST

  The Dawn arrived already airborne.

  It was her home planet’s chosen geodome, an enormous dome of curated jungle where the air felt too warm and the green felt too awake. The Dawn’s smile could’ve fooled a stranger into thinking she approved.

  She whispered a short divinatory phrase, barely a breath, and rose higher, surveying the canopy like it was going to leap up and swallow her. In some areas, it could. Dense foliage knitted itself into a false floor. Vines hung like cords waiting for a neck.

  Under one massive tree lay a dead tortoise. Its spiked shell had been overrun with vines that threaded through every gap in body as if the jungle had taken offense at the concept of “empty.”

  The Dawn’s smile held, her altitude increased, then the sky tore.

  A hundred-foot eel of purple energy slid out of nothingness and moved through the air like it belonged there. Violet lightning crackled along its outline. Its jaw opened wide and a steady, building white light swelled inside.

  Roxy floated nearby in her holoform, bouncing with the enthusiasm of a commentator who’d never had to pay for property damage.

  “What is this?!” Roxy hooped. “A monstrous energy eel has appeared from nowhere! Is this the work of rare Soul Style Papuru magic?!”

  The eel fired a beam of white-hot light that screamed at The Dawn, about to pass judgment. She snapped her fingers through a practiced set of signs and conjured a gray brick wall midair. The beam hit it with the kind of force that made the air itself flinch.

  The wall held just long enough. She whispered a teleport and blinked fifty feet behind the eel. It turned with ugly, wriggling grace and pursued.

  The Dawn began the arm movements for her next spell and felt something cold and thin push out of her chest.

  The tip of a blue blade protruded through her ribs like a rude punctuation mark. Behind her, Morihilus smirked.

  Roxy gasped theatrically. “A sneak attack by Superstar Morihilus has struck home! Superstar The Dawn may have taken her last breath!”

  Morihilus leaned toward her ear, voice slick with triumph. “So amateurish.”

  The Dawn turned her head and looked at him.

  She didn’t seem the least bit fazed by being impaled, which was either impressive or deeply inconvenient for him.

  “Agreed,” she said.

  Then she disappeared. Morihilus blinked, just once, and The Dawn reappeared behind him, heel already driving into the back of his head.

  Contact was made and his burgundy-skinned body burst into water on impact, raining down over the jungle.

  The purple eel closed in, mouth widening again.

  The Dawn dove toward the canopy, because even she didn’t like how eager that beam looked.

  As she dropped, she saw movement among the trees, something fast, someone using Quickening, and already knew where the eel would fire. She whispered, left hand extended toward the eel, right hand throwing signs with urgent precision.

  A red-bordered square portal opened in front of the oncoming beam, a second among the trees.

  The eel’s blast vanished through one and erupted out of the other, detonating in the canopy.

  The explosion swallowed nearly an acre of jungle, violet light devoured the green. The air filled with burning sap and the last screams of startled animals.

  The Dawn drew a triangle in the air, ceremonial discipline meeting battlefield necessity, and red light streamed from her fingers as she muttered the incantation.

  The eel’s voice rolled out, pompous and pleased. “You can’t dispel Papuru magic as you can ordinary magic. You must be more creative.”

  The conjurer’s arrogance came through the eel’s mouth, earning more contempt from her. The eel lunged to swallow her and teleported above it, arms outstretched. Two brick walls in a heartbeat, one above, one below, sandwiching the eel’s head. Stone, meet energy eel.

  The eel’s head crumpled into ash and scattered on the wind as if it had never been more than a bad idea. The Dawn felt power building on the jungle floor, five hundred feet from the scorched radius. She teleported.

  Morihilus stood there, whole again, water-slick and smug, hands shaping a miniature Papuru eel that was growing by the second.

  He smiled. “I have you now.”

  She kicked him between the legs.

  Morihilus’s fish eyes bulged, the eel winked out.

  The Dawn’s right cross aimed for his temple, but drew his rapier at the last second, blade flashing up.

  Her attempted teleport fizzled, meaning a mage trap. He lunged, fish-head rapier darting for her heart. She spun to his outside right and drove an elbow into his head.

  His Aura Cloak took it, impact shivering through her arm like she’d elbowed a tree. Lucky for her, “tree” was a category her training had long since learned to break.

  Morihilus kicked for her ribs. She blocked, rolled with the strike and pain flared anyway. Blocking a Klugh enhanced by Soul Style was like trying to stop a speeding transport with your shin.

  She somersaulted away, landing light but limping, dirt giving under her foot. She called her healing winds, but nothing happened. Mage trap confirmed.

  Morihilus didn’t chase, just raised his weapon, sending a purple beam her way. Without warning, a tiny glob of a pearl-white, beadlike substance appeared in front of her. It swallowed the beam like a starving thing, then vanished.

  Morihilus’s smile vanished right along with it. “How is that possible? You are within my mage trap.”

  The Dawn’s smile, on the other hand, sharpened. “If you win, I’ll tell you.”

  “Don’t play games with me,” Morihilus snapped. “Your brand of magic is incomparable to mine.”

  He spread his arms like a king greeting subjects.

  Copies of him began forming out of jungle moisture, water clones assembling themselves without movement or visible effort. Twelve in total. Perched on branches, balanced on dead trees, surrounding her in a circle of smug.

  Morihilus pointed and the clones swarmed. Her arms moved fluidly, parrying every thrust she could see. The gray sand, thin as dust, yet hard as steel, stopped the ones she couldn’t.

  She struck back; elbows and knees and forearms, her Eight Paths. The clones weren’t durable, either; each good hit dissolved them into clear water.

  A dozen bodies became puddles in seconds.

  Roxy nearly vibrated into particles. “Unbelievably, Superstar The Dawn stood her ground and, badassedly, took out Superstar Morihilus’s water clones! She is indeed a master battle artist!”

  Morihilus stared, awe threatening to crack his arrogance. “Your battle art is exquisite, my lady. Eight Paths, correct? And with a Talent of five million, you are the one to beat in this competition.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  The Dawn didn’t take a bow, but the urge was there. "Plenty have tried,” she said. “Much better than this.”

  Morihilus’s smile returned. “I’ve only just started. And with the exception of your mystery sand, you can’t use the vast array of spells and curses you’re hiding.”

  “Don’t need it to handle a fish man with no Talent for magic so he had to borrow fake magic from a piece of coal.”

  Morihilus’s nostrils flared. “Papuru magic is real. Simple. Potent. And it works just fine in mage traps. Like so.”

  Energy fish materialized around him, swimming through air as if on invisible currents. Sharks, among other man-eater types, purple, glassy-eyed things with teeth like saws. More and more until the jungle felt like it was underwater.

  One Papuru beast, a buldolphin native to Aphlis, opened its jaws and fired a beam.

  The Dawn flipped past the blast radius. Another beam came at her and the pearl-white sand globbed into existence again and again, swallowed death in one bite.

  She rolled, grabbed a stick, and hurled it like a javelin. Morihilus caught it with ease.

  “Resorting to sharp sticks?” he said, amused. “How primitive.”

  From the tip of the wood, a thin vine wriggled to life, water-starved, half-dead, waiting. It struck like a snake and latched onto his cheek.

  He recoiled, tossing the stick, but the vine hung from his face, growing, his skin paling around it, like it was drinking him.

  Roxy’s voice climbed in delight. “Uh oh. Superstar Morihilus has made contact with a water-starved jalvandoh vine! The slightest moisture brings them back to life!”

  The ground around Morihilus began to writhe.

  “And at last check,” Roxy continued, “Klugh coat themselves with moisture so they can breathe on land. That means Superstar Morihilus has a new fan base ready to drain him dry!”

  Morihilus slashed vines away with his rapierfish, cursing in his language, arrogance replaced by fury.

  The Dawn, meanwhile, listened. Not with her ears, but the Locket, its faint hum on her chest.

  The mage trap’s anchor, a cloth-sided cylinder, ancient writing wrapped tight, half-buried near scorched earth.

  She darted between blasts, baited a Papuru fish into firing at another, then snatched the cylinder and ripped the cloth off. She smashed the metal core against a tree.

  She thrust a hand forward and muttered, voice clipped, ceremonial cadence pressed into speed.

  Ice-blue air erupted outward; several purple sea beasts froze solid in midair, before shattering into glittering fragments.

  She poured more Talent into the chill than necessary on purpose. Because the vines she’d awakened were now noticing her. Cold slowed them, but the hunger is persistent.

  She rose into the air, followed by Morihilus.

  Above the canopy, they hovered, facing each other with the sky turned heliotrope behind them.

  Morihilus’s lip curled. “Dreadful world you have here.”

  “You’re only visiting,” The Dawn said. “Try living here.”

  “No thanks.” He lunged.

  Roxy squealed. “The battle is taken back to the skies! Who has the advantage, Human of land or Klugh of sea?!”

  The Dawn teleported to create distance. Morihilus’s Quickening snapped him back into stabbing range almost instantly, forcing her to teleport again. He chased her, as she wanted, and didn't teleport when he assumed she would

  Instead she side-stepped, and her strikes became a storm; right straight, left cross, elbows and knees that hit like hammers.

  Morihilus blocked some, but many landed. Colorful bruises bloomed on burgundy skin, and his fury erupted.

  Giant purple crab claws burst from his frame, papuru constructs reaching for where she should be. But The Dawn was now dozens of feet ahead, arms folded, laughing like she’d just watched someone trip over their own ego.

  “Crab claws?!” she called. “That’s what you came up with? No flair at all. Either Papuru magic is lame or you are.”

  His smile again, regal mask sliding back into place.

  “The white sand,” he said softly. “Incredible strength. Speed. You are a mage of high order. I have not faced one as skilled since that fool, The Truth, a decade previous.”

  “I’m better,” The Dawn said.

  “That remains to be seen,” Morihilus replied, and pointed upward.

  Bright pinpoints of light appeared above them, fifty feet or higher, like stars that had decided to get a closer look at the action.

  “I call this,” he said, voice savoring it, “Purple Rain. As for flair…”

  The beams fell.

  Speed-of-light violet blasts hammered the jungle below, obliterating twenty meters at a time into ash. No human could react that fast.

  But The Dawn didn’t have react. In the heart of the raining destruction, she held an umbrella made of the pearl-white sand, beads fused into a shielded curve, shimmering with defiant calm.

  She smiled and waved.

  Morihilus’s eyes widened. “I must know what that is. I need a closer—”

  A tentacle of sand whipped up from the canopy and wrapped around both his legs. He was yanked downward so fast his rapierfish spun out of his hand, end-over-end. The rain stopped and The Dawn teleported.

  Morihilus was rising to his feet, vines beginning to react to his return.

  “If you think that’s enough—”

  She didn’t let him finish, she let him walk the Eight Paths. Right straight. Left cross. Back elbow to the temple. Left elbow to the sternum.

  Double knees to the chin. She landed in a crouch, swept his feet, and as his head hit the ground, she spun like a dancer and drove her heel down onto the bridge of his flat fish nose.

  The jungle went still like she had cast the Silence! curse. Roxy shattered that illusion, her ten count boisterous. Morihilus never moved.

  ---

  The Dawn’s omniband hauled her consciousness back to the ramp of her streamjet at her request. Precaution allowed her to sense what her eyes hadn’t seen yet.

  Five Talents inside, two familiar, in the main hold, plus the pilot and attendant in the cockpit.

  The fifth burned bright, just as bright as her Syncs. Just as bright as her five million. She balled her fist, ready to storm in.

  Then stopped. Her eyes closed. Breath in. Breath out. Her posture softened, no longer as aggressive. She walked up the ramp, calmly.

  Inside the main cabin, her two Syncs stood holding hands, terror welded to their faces. A man sat in one of the gaudy orange chairs like he’d paid for the ship and the air and the right to judge everyone in his range of vision.

  Her diary rested on a side booth, she could see the inked words still fading into existence, documenting her current actions without anyone touching it.

  The Dawn wondered, briefly, what it was writing now. The man rose. Xenzalin, Wiseman of the Talis, moved slowly at first, bald head bowed in thought. Then his eyes focused on her with intent.

  “The mage trap had no effect,” he said. “Did you try to channel magic through it at the time?”

  The Dawn reached into her battle garb and drew out the Traveller’s Locket. It was a blood-red oval on a cheap bronze chain, with an inscription like a ‘T’.

  “Didn’t think of it,” she said. “Would you like it back now? I’m sure there are more loyal subjects who’d gladly hold onto your creepy jewelry.”

  Xenzalin’s face didn’t change. "No,” he said. “And you will utilize it more often.”

  “I don’t need this to win.”

  “Seriously?” Xenzalin’s tone hard. “You would be dead if not for this Locket. And these ridiculous self-imposed restrictions—”

  “Hasn’t stopped me yet.”

  “It nearly did today.” He stepped closer. “Limiting yourself to low Talent cost spells will lead to your defeat.”

  The Dawn reflected his look back at him. “Look. I don’t even want to be here. If you want to learn how the Locket works, then give it to somebody who wants to be your test subject."

  Xenzalin’s gaze flicked past her to the Syncs, a small squeak escaped one of them.

  “This is not up for debate,” he said. “Use the Locket… or the blind eye I have for your friends’ activities will become more watchful.”

  The Dawn stared at him, anger pressing up behind her ribs. “You said if I competed, they would come to no harm.”

  “No,” Xenzalin replied smoothly. “I said if you make the Finals.”

  "Aren’t you afraid of the consequences?”

  “No,” Xenzalin said, like he’d never met consequences he couldn’t rewrite. “You’re strong-willed. Strong enough to keep your senses. Besides, the Locket affords you a million Talent. Utilize that.”

  The Dawn’s hand flexed. “Fine,” she said, voice tight. “I’ll use it for that, at least. Leave my people alone.”

  “That’s not enough. You need to understand.” He lifted one finger like a lecturer. “We have possessed the Traveller’s Locket since the beginning of our species. Since my lifetime, It has done little more than choose crops of potential Supremes… until you.”

  The Dawn’s skin crawled.

  “You awoke it more fully,” Xenzalin continued. “That’s why it named you The Dawn.”

  Her mouth twisted. “Maybe it should’ve stayed asleep. It’s creepy as hell.”

  “Don’t be blasphemous.”

  “Would you just go away now?”

  “Not until you understand—”

  “I get it, okay? I’ll use the damn—”

  “Not that,” he cut in, voice suddenly cold. “Wendnatoh took The X for one of his experiments.”

  The Dawn moved before thought caught up, elbow aimed at Xenzalin’s jaw. He side-stepped with no visible effort and used her momentum to spin her back toward her Syncs like she was a child being redirected away from something dangerous.

  One Sync, Fawn, caught her.

  The Dawn nodded once, gratitude flashing, then vanished under the returning heat in her eyes.

  “Ladies,” she said, voice brisk, almost cheerful in the wrong way, “help me take this pasty bastard down and we’ll skip the rest of this stupid competition.”

  Pawn’s voice trembled. “What can we do against him? His Talent—”

  Fawn’s eyes hardened. “Is the same as you and I. And we don’t have her drawbacks. We can take him. What’s the plan?”

  The Dawn relayed it mentally, then turned back to Xenzalin, his hands folded behind his back. “Don’t do this. I am much stronger and more intelligent than you could ever be.”

  The Dawn approached with measured steps, refusing to overcommit. “Record this."

  She struck, careful not to be grabbed. Xenzalin evaded each strike with ease, body flowing like liquid in the form of a man. Fawn came from behind, he reached for her, his hand passing through the illusion.

  The Dawn used that heartbeat to whip a strike into his shin. He blocked with his leg and kicked her away with it, sending her across the cabin.

  Pawn was supposed to attack, but she stood in stone terror. Fawn struck again, this time with a hastily formed portal into deep space. All heat left the cabin, replaced with the deepest cold The Dawn ever experienced.

  Xenzalin resisted the cold pull with a smooth, minimal shift of stance and with a flick his hand, the portal shattered into a thousand glittering shards.

  Shards that became strings that shot toward the women. Some wrapped around Fawn’s hands, some stitched her mouth shut.

  Strings flew for her only to be intercepted by globs of pearl-white sand, appearing like loyal ghosts.

  Xenzalin’s eyes brightened. “Did it respond to your thoughts… or act on its own?”

  The Dawn answered by ripping everything not bolted down into telekinetic motion; chairs, trays, loose panels, turning the cabin into a storm of furniture.

  Her diary sat undisturbed, enchanted long ago, unimpressed by the chaos.

  Xenzalin dodged the telekinetic missiles with impossible grace, bending at angles that looked illegal. He rebounded off the steel bulkhead and kicked for The Dawn’s head.

  She rolled, then snapped the pearl-white sand into half a dozen coils that wrapped him, tight and fast. She closed the distance in two strides, fist aimed at his nose.

  Her hand passed through him. For half a second she thought she’d been fooled. Then his hand emerged from the sand and seized her wrist. Not an illusion.

  He was suddenly free, spinning her into a console wall. The monitor cracked and died, an image of the next geodome selection flickering out. Fawn, still stitched, tried an axe kick from above.

  Xenzalin performed a standing backflip, her heel missing his head by millimeters. His boot struck her abdomen and momentum took over.

  Fawn hit the floor hard, Xenzalin standing on her. Blood and vomit pushed through the stitching at her mouth and nose.

  The Dawn hurled a stone wall at Xenzalin’s face. It passed through, denting the bulkhead beyond. He retaliated with a gesture, an invisible force slamming into The Dawn and launched her into the opposite wall with sickening speed.

  She pushed to her knees, mouth bloodied, breathing hard.

  Xenzalin regarded her like a failed experiment.

  “I have had enough of this,” he said calmly. “Your friends can join The X. Wendnatoh?”

  A ripple of space brought a simmering gray-haired visage into view.

  The Dawn’s voice broke before she could stop it.

  “Wait. Please.”

  Xenzalin’s eyes flicked to her.

  The Dawn swallowed. “I will do as you ask,” she said, each word scraped raw. “All of it. Okay? Just don’t give them to… to him.”

  The image vanished.

  Xenzalin’s anger softened into a polite smile.

  “Why, thank you,” he said, then vanished in magenta smoke.

  Silence rushed in behind him. The Dawn knelt where she’d landed, eyes fixed on the plush carpet. She spit blood on it in contempt. The cabin door slides open and the pilot stuck his head in cautiously, while Pawn crept closer.

  “I’m sorry,” Pawn whispered. “I just… I couldn’t do anything. I was so scared.”

  “It’s okay,” she said softly.“You wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. He’s a Wiseman.”

  Pawn rushed to Fawn, now unstitched, struggling to breathe. The Dawn stood, the Traveller’s Locket swayed against her chest and walked to her Syncs.