The hallway is filled with unmarked doors of some unidentifiable wood. It is empty, featureless, just an endless corridor of identical openings. Alone for the first time in what feels like years, I feel vaguely like I’ve been transported into a dreamscape where I’ll walk forever without finding the way out.

  But, in less than a minute, one of the doors feels right. I recognize it like I would the door of my childhood home. Glancing warily left and right at the still-empty hallway, I reach for the knob. It opens at my slightest touch, revealing a modest room complete with a single bed, a wooden chair, and a small screen embedded directly in the wall. I step inside, closing the door softly behind me. The moment it clicks closed, a feeling floods my soul like a drug: safety.

  It feels like a trap.

  “Why? You are actually safe here.”

  No, I’m not. This is an illusion. I’m fighting for my life, Kora. For the life of my entire species. If I let myself sit here and feel secure, I’ll be sitting here while the rest of my people die.

  “I… that is… wisdom, Competitor. Yet still you should take this moment to relax. You have been unable to for far too long. Take advantage of this space to truly rest, as your mind and body so desperately need.”

  My heart protests, but my eyelids don’t listen. Staggering over to the bed, I ease myself onto a softness that felt a moment ago like a distant, and impossible to reach, memory.

  Wake me. Six hours.

  “As you wish, Competitor.”

  Maybe eight.

  ***

  When Kora mentally shakes me awake, I feel like I have to swim up from the depths of an ocean filled with sheets and softness before I can finally open my eyes. To say I feel refreshed would be an understatement on the scale of saying the sun’s a candle on a toddler’s birthday cake.

  Wow.

  My eyes settle on a door I didn’t notice through my exhaustion. I force myself to my feet to see where it leads.

  Ah. Straight to fucking heaven.

  It’s a bathroom, complete with a sink and a toilet and mirror almost like a nice hotel. It’s definitely an upgrade from shitting in the woods (if I still needed to shit, which I don’t. Wait, why is this thing even here?), but I only have eyes for the small cubicle shower in the corner. I intentionally avoid looking in the mirror as I stumble past. My clothes are off and warm water is running over my body before I become aware of reality again. If the nap made me feel refreshed, the steaming hot shower makes me feel alive and very, very human.

  There’s even a receptacle in the wall that magically cleans my dress and partially-shredded underwear in seconds. My bra disappeared with the laser the homicidal elf shot through my chest, but, luckily, I’m not endowed enough in that department to be seriously hampered.

  I leave the clothes at the foot of the bed and climb back between the sheets, luxuriating in the soft maybe-alien cotton against my skin.

  “You’ve been wound so tightly for so long you forgot the tension existed.”

  Right. And I’d like to keep on forgetting it for as long as I can. How long do I have?

  “I woke you at the correct time. You have a little under two hours until the appointed meeting time.”

  A while, then. Not plenty, but enough not to jump right out of bed. I doze, my soul resting easy for the first time in God knows how long. I know that it’s a temporary lull, and part of my brain can’t fully relax. But that’s fine. I’ve got worlds to save and people to fight. Soon. Five more minutes, maybe.

  “There is something you wish to do, even if you aren’t admitting it to yourself.”

  Ugh. Kora, hush.

  “If you’re sure…”

  Yeah, yeah. Fine. I’m moving.

  My body doesn’t respond to my half-assed attempts to get it back out of bed.

  Any moment now, body. Up we go.

  “Competitor…”

  Give me a damn minute, Kora. I promise I’ll be up soon. Ish.

  Blessed silence fills the room and my soul, though the voice of my anxiety grows the longer I’m idle. Unable, as yet, to muster the will to move from the warm, comfortable sheets, I let my mind wander to the spirit sharing the emptiness of my mind.

  What were you like in life, Kora? Were you always a warrior?

  “No. Before my name was called to the Tournament, I was a healer. In Earth parlance, you’d name me a nurse.”

  A nurse? Really?

  “Yes. For the smallest of my kind.”

  A pediatric nurse. Seriously. You?

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Have you known me to lie?

  Sorry, I’m not doubting you. I’m just trying to imagine it. What did your species look like? What were they called?

  “I was one of the Vulnir, Competitor. We were not built so differently from you, though our people were not so weak, nor our skin so soft, nor our minds so slow, nor our—”

  Kora.

  “We had two arms and two legs and walked upright. If we reach the stage where Ascended may seek an audience with you, I may be able to show you something of what I was.”

  It’s strange. Somehow, even knowing it wasn’t likely, I’ve always thought of you as human.

  “It is a common problem among all sentient species. When we must imagine, we imagine what we know, even contrary to all evidence.”

  Did you… were you… hm. Do you know what marriage is?

  “I had a partner, yes. He was kind. Too kind for trials such as these.”

  Was he chosen?

  “I do not know. If he was, I imagine he did not pass the first Proving. He didn’t have it in him to slay another living thing, not even to save himself.”

  What was his name?

  “I knew him as Orvi.”

  Part of me senses that this discussion, while not unpleasant, is leading Kora towards a place she doesn’t want to go. The wound must be old, older even than my mind can imagine, but it remains a wound, not a scar. It bleeds still. Better to channel our thoughts elsewhere.

  What was your Mentor like?

  “You are stalling, Competitor. You know what you want to be doing.”

  I truly am curious.

  “I know. It doesn’t make my words less true.”

  Sighing, I force myself out of the bed and to my feet.

  The screen in the room turns out to be an interactive interface, if a bit simple. It has a section for my own notes, along with a miniature replica of the final board that showed the overall species populations remaining. At the top, the number now reads ‘36,212.’ I wince. Nearly two thousand living beings died while I was sleeping. At that rate, we won’t be in this lilac hellhole much longer.

  “It will slow as the weak are culled. The final deaths will all be seasoned Competitors.”

  Joy.

  “Stalling.”

  The door opens easily at my touch, the long, empty hallway beckoning. My heart knows which way to go: deeper, past the long row of doors. Before I’ve walked more than a minute, a cheery glow almost like an Earth sunrise paints the unadorned hallways golden. My feet hasten, drawn forward by a welcome sound.

  Voices. Human voices.

  I pause at the threshold to a room, an impossible room made out of humanity’s fantasy. The swaying branches of willow trees dance in a breeze I can’t feel from outside the room. The sun, Earth’s sun, truly does rise to my right, warming my cheek. A series of beautiful, incongruous couches rest in the center of the glade of willows, pristine and clean as if the woodland setting can’t touch them. The sight is a weirdness that aches and twists in my spirit. Home, yet not.

  People sit or lounge on the couches, their words and accents familiar like the smell of home. One of them laughs, and I feel coolness on my cheek. Tears. I’m crying? It hasn’t been that long. A few days. Maybe a few weeks. Hard to tell in this place. Did I miss humanity so much?

  “We long for our kin. However we attempt to fill the hole of their absence, nothing can serve.”

  I don’t even like anyone. Literally. The only person I liked is dead.

  “A lie. Even if just to yourself.” Kora hesitates. “And, this Katie, are you sure—”

  Don’t. Don’t you dare.

  “It is just—”

  It’s suddenly no longer daunting to step into the room.

  The willow branches trail across my shoulders as I push through to the glade. Several people look up at my entrance, though several don’t. A group a ways distant sits hunched in a circle, looking by all appearances like soldiers waiting for the next bomb to fall. Others lay in various states of undress… holy shit. That is a lot of skin to be showing. A pair of women sleep off to my left, more of their bits open to the air than I had with the shreds of my graduation dress. Aside from the broken looking people across the way, everyone looks happy, healthy, and carefree. It’s almost like I’ve stumbled on a meadow from Greek myth, where humanity lounges eating grapes and sipping wine.

  A man with dark hair stands from where he was laying with a woman on the couch, though he holds onto her hand. He’s handsome in an oily kind of way. Jersey Shore made real. His smile seems genuine enough.

  “Hello!” he calls, lifting his free hand in greeting. “Welcome to humanity!”

  I smile nervously and wave.

  “I’m Alessio,” he says, ignoring my awkwardness. His smile is understanding, if a touch condescending. “I’m sure this is a lot. We all spent quite a bit of time gawking when we first encountered the common room.”

  There’s two reasons that his words feel like they’re glitching in my brain. First, I’m quite certain he isn’t speaking English, but the Tournament is translating the words for me. And second, he seems to know, almost instinctively, that I’ve never been here. I mean, there are nearly a thousand humans alive. I can’t be the only one he hasn’t met.

  “Uh, yeah,” I say, realizing I’ve been silent too long. “This place is pretty wild.”

  “American, I see,” he says, laughing a laugh that is, if only a bit, mocking. “And very young. What have you been up to, to survive this long, piccola?”

  The woman on the couch laughs, deep and low. Her skin is rich and dark, her eyes deep pools to get lost in. Glancing around, I immediately feel inadequate. There are maybe two dozen people scattered around the glade, and all of them are absurdly attractive. Did they all get some kind of seduction Class? What the hell?

  “Were you wounded?” another woman calls, coming forward, her smile light on her lips. Blonde and beautiful, her accent is unmistakably Eastern European. “Or have you forgotten how to speak?”

  “No,” I say slowly, a bit stunned. What kind of hostile bullshit is this? “I’m fine. Just a bit overwhelmed.”

  “Sorry, we’re bombarding you,” Alessio says, sitting back down and gesturing grandly towards an unoccupied armchair. “Have a seat, and tell us your story.”

  I take the seat, feeling out of place. None of these people are wearing armor; in fact, none of them seem the slightest bit like they’ve been fighting for their lives. If they’ve been out completing Challenges, they’re way better at it than I am, and better at hiding their Artifacts. I let my eyes linger on each of them long enough for Identification to pop up. My mouth falls open.

  Identification: Alessio Gallo, Human of Italy

  Level: 2

  Strengths: Charisma (only because it happens to be his highest stat)

  Weaknesses: Everything else

  Humanity is the Competitor species of the Twelfth. The only species to be entirely unaware of the evolutionary pressures readying them for the Tournament, humanity also has the dubious honor of being the only species to compete in every Tournament that has ever been held in the name of the Twelve. Compete, and lose.

  Addendum! Hah. The rest of us try to evolve better species when we lose. We most definitely don’t keep throwing the same weak and worthless insects into the grinder. You know how some of your legends seem to fit the species that you’re supposed to defeat? Drelni and your vampires, Otachai and your pygmies, and the like? It’s how we prepare you, at least a bit, for the shock of initialization. You know what myths we spread about your kind? Cautionary tales about unevolved brutes and idiot pride. And jokes. Your species is literally the butt of jokes for the rest of the Twelve.