The doctors had told Crow that he needed a few more minute’s rest, and he was happy to oblige them. The hospital room was more than just comfortable, it was near luxurious. All bright stone and fancy decorations, with windows filled with what looked like coloured glass. Crow would’ve spent longer marvelling at the affluence of whoever had commissioned the place, but then he’d noticed the scrying slate.

He’d seen one before, of course. Selsis had had a community slate, once a week everyone would gather to watch it as it showed a live performance of some play from however many leagues away. But that slate had been bigger than a house, Crow never thought he’d see one as small as the slate in his room. He hadn’t even known they could be made.

And so that was how he’d spent his day of recuperation. After having all sorts of doctors and healers fussing over him, he’d lay back with the warm breeze on his face from the open window and watched show after show. It felt strange to have so many options. This slate could switch to one of many hundreds of performances with a wave of Crow’s hand, giving him his choosing. He could very much get used to being so spoilt for choice. In fact the only thing he’d had to worry about since lying down on that hospital bed had been laughing hard enough to pop his stitches. Well, that and the fear that the sweetened fruits and breads he gorged himself on would ruin regular food forever.

And yet sitting still for hours on end, even with an endless source of entertainment, wasn’t something anyone could do happily. Soon enough Crow felt his legs begin to ache. Not from their injuries, the gold-patterned bandages the doctors wrapped all his limbs in had left him unable to even feel his wounds. It was simply the feeling of being cooped up and immobile for too long.

Eventually and against the doctor’s advice, he got to his feet and walked quite painlessly to the mirror on the wall. It was quite a jarring sight, seeing his head wrapped in layers of bandage but what was likely more upsetting was the fact that he couldn't even feel the material against his skin. One of Crow’s friends had had his arm broken when they were kids, it had taken nearly two months to fully heal. From what he’d heard the doctors say none of his limbs were quite that badly damaged, and yet the thought that eight hours would be enough for the magic bandages to fully repair them seemed impossible. Then again, how many impossibilities had he seen since arriving in Bermuda?

A voice came from the doorway behind Crow, making him jump.

“I’m glad you realised we were only joking when we repeatedly warned you not to move around without our say so.”

He turned to see the source, an elderly man with a severe gaze and the expression of one who was being forced to watch paint dry at gunpoint. Crow felt his face redden.

"Uh, sorry…”

The man simply grunted, striding into the room with a slight limp and approaching Crow.

“Fortunately for you, I was coming up to tell you you should be good to move around regardless. Not that you wouldn’t have deserved it if your arms and legs had melted.” Crow almost didn’t notice his accent, but it was of course a Bermudan one.

Crow blinked, feeling a rather sudden tightness in his chest.

“That could have happened!?”

The doctor smirked.

“No, but you’d have deserved it.” Crow stared at the old man as he reached him, then noticed the doctor’s wink and relaxed slightly. This one had a nasty sense of humour.

"Sorry I'm late." He sighed. "We got wind of someone trying to defile the corpses in the morgue."

Crow's nose wrinkled at the thought. "Did you turn them in?"

The man groaned. "No. Turns out he was one of the greatest minds on the planet so we had to let him go."

"Oh."

"I did try to get his autograph though."

"Did he give it to you?"

"He puked on me." Crow didn't think the doctor could look more defeated at the moment.

"That's...not an autograph." Crow said.

"It isn't." The doctor agreed, shaking his head slightly as if to rid it of the memory.

"Now you should be able to take the bandages off, assuming my students put them on correctly. Those are dragonoid scales you have wrapped around you so they should have healed you up after about four hours.”

Crow frowned.

“The other doctors said eight hours.”

The old man seemed to find that quite amusing.

“That’s to make sure our idiotic patients don’t go running off too soon under the assumption that their willpower and determination can knit their body back together like a vampire.”

Before Crow could respond the man raised a hand.

“Now don’t interrupt. As I said, dragonoid scales. They're reserved for the few of our elite Knights who were unfortunate enough to go up against mystics or creatures they weren't quite elite enough for. But of course you, as a random school child, are equally as worthy of having such expensive and rare medicinal resources used on you. Give me your arms."

Crow didn’t quite know what to say to that. He just held up both of his arms as the doctor instructed, watching dumbly as the man examined them. After a few moments he realised the doctor’s ears had a rather unusual point to them, he’d heard about that feature. An elf.

"Ah so they didn't apply it properly then. Neat." The doctor grit his teeth.

"If you don't mind me asking-" Crow stopped the moment the doctor looked like he minded but continued when met with silence. "-is this like a new policy or something."

"What?"

"It's just that I read about people dying in the sieve or dropping out due to critical injuries but you just pulled out all the stops to heal me so..."

He nodded "Ah yes well we're only allowed to heal people who failed the Sieve."

Crow's eyes shot wide open at the thought and he watched the doctor for the very first time burst out laughing.

"I'm sorry, it's just, the look on your face!" He hunched over, near cackling. "You didn't-" he stopped, gasping for air. "You didn't fail. We do this for everyone who clears stage one."

"Oh." Crow let out a breath he hadn’t noticed himself holding. This old bastard....

The doctor continued chuckling lightly. "Yeah from now on, you're on your own...well until you fail."

"When I f-" he took a deep breath. "You know what, forget it."

"You do need to take those bandages off though, its healing properties are currently going to waste making sure you're refreshed." The man bent down, undoing the material from his right leg with careful, practiced hands and then doing the same for his left.

Crow immediately felt strange. He’d grown used to the numbness in his bandaged limbs, and while the pain did not return with the removal of the wrappings it was still an odd change to be able to fully feel them again. While the doctor moved on to his arms, Crow smiled to himself and wiggled his toes- marvelling at the sensation he’d spent the last few hours without.

“Hmm, it should be fine. Well, it will be fine. Though by the looks of things it healed more recently than it should have, seems my students are more idiotic than I gave them credit for. Well no matter, you’re healed. Get out.”

Before Crow could argue, or even really process the sudden change in attitude, the doctor had turned on his heel and limped away. He stood there dumbly for a few seconds before sighing and gathering his things to leave.

His clothes had essentially been incinerated during the first stage of the Sieve, and so he’d been given a set of replacements. Something called a “hankah” had been left for him to cover his torso with, Crow had never worn anything like it, though he’d seen a large number of people wearing one in Bermuda, and took a number of tries before finally managing to sling it over his shoulders and wrap it at the back. Thankfully the pants, green like the hankah, were more conventional. He glanced at himself in the mirror and grinned, much preferring even this unusual apparel to a hospital gown. As an after thought he replaced the gauger on his wrist, then headed out.

Making his way through the medical building was no task, Crow had used his memory to track the route to his room the day before and was able to navigate the twisting labyrinth of corridors regardless. He still found its size staggering, however. It was one thing to see the giant towering buildings of Bermuda from outside, but being within one brought an entire new dimension to their size.

When he finally exited and took his first breath of completely fresh air, however, Crow noticed something that most certainly was not there on his way in.

An arm wrapped around his throat from behind, dragging him back and lifting him from his feet. He let out a yelp, but found it cut off by the choke. His enhancement came on almost instinctively, but in the heat of the moment he didn’t even notice the feeling of strength and energy. What he did notice, however, was the hot breath of his assailant as they whispered in his ear.

“Hello birdie.”

Crow took a moment to process what was happening, then relaxed. Immediately the attacker let go, giggling as he stumbled forwards and turned. He looked at his sister and recognised that superior smirk she always had when one of her little surprise attacks worked out.

“You really need to stop doing that without warning, Astra.”

Crow massaged his throat absentmindedly, though his twin would never have gone in hard enough to actually hurt him. Astra was a tall girl with a medium build, her hair was blonde where his was gold but her eyes were the exact same emerald green as his own- though without the markings lining the outside of the iris. People often seemed to recognise the two of them as twins at first glance, then become less sure the more they saw of how they both behaved. Crow imagined it said a lot about himself that his behaviour was that different from the eternally hard working and focused Astra’s, but right now he also didn’t much care.

“I gave you plenty of warning, it’s not my fault you weren’t paying attention to my footsteps.”

“I was, I just mistook them for an earthquake. Have you considered a diet?”

Astra snorted, then licked her lips in that way she always did before subtly bragging about how great she was.

“So,” she began without quite managing to keep the smile from her face. “I came first in the first stage.”

Crow nodded.

“Yes, I happened to notice the giant Olympian lady shouting about how great you were. Pure chance.”

“Alright smart ass, where did you come in? I know you passed, but how well?”

Crow blinked.

“Uh, I’m not sure. I did pretty well I t-”

Astra rolled her eyes and raised her hand, revealing a gauger identical to Crow’s still strapped to it. Looking closely, he noticed a number one was perpetually displayed on the stone front- the same place his own gauger had delivered instructions. Crow glanced at the contraption on his wrist, then felt his heart sink slightly.

“Forty eight.”

Astra shrugged.

“Well that’s not great, but it’s not awful either. If you’re in the top eighty then you still get into the second stage, so congratulations.”

“The second stage isn’t enough.” Crow muttered, a little harsher than he’d meant. Astra looked away at that, he couldn’t blame her. They’d had that argument a hundred times by now, and every single one of them had ended the same way. After a few seconds his sister cleared her throat.

“I was going to get something to eat, do you want to join me? I don’t think we’ve eaten at a restaurant together in… Eclipse, years.”

Relieved at the change of subject, Crow grinned.

“Yeah, sure. Lead the way.”

They set off through the streets, chatting as they went. Astra talked a lot about how easily she’d cleared the first stage, and Crow begrudgingly recounted his own less than stellar experience. He had never been able to fully lie to Astra, so attempting to simply change the topic would’ve only made her more curious. And Crow was in no mood to discuss what he’d done to Ethi, so instead he decided to do what he often did when faced with such a conundrum- joke, smile and pray to the Teary Eyed God that she didn’t see through his act.

"And so I looked her in the eye, said “sorry sweetheart, but I ain’t one for second chances” and then flicked the cigar to light the trail of gunpowder and blow her up." He said as he tucked away his plate.

Astra arched an eyebrow, clearly bemused.

“Sounds like you’re stone cold as the Eclipse.”

Crow nodded, then added. “Did I mention all the beautiful women following me around and saying they thought I was really cool?”

“Only about seven times.” Astra replied. She’d finished her own meal before him, both of them having ordered the same dish- meat smeared in some dark red sauce which made Crow’s mouth feel like it was on fire, but was well worth it for the taste.

“Ah, well in that case you haven’t heard it enough times for it to really stick in your memory. You see there was a bunch of beautiful women-”

Astra rolled her eyes and Crow trailed off, the pair chuckling to each other. He’d last seen her only two days ago, right before he’d found his way into the Sieve. It felt like so much longer, like he’d spent days or even weeks fighting through those ruins. He’d almost believed it, too. And yet like always Astra reminded him that things were still the same.

Suddenly she got to her feet, stretching for a second and rolling her shoulders with a satisfied sigh.

“Well, we should hurry up if we’re going to see the orientation.”

Crow nodded, furrowing his brow.

“Of course, can’t miss that.”

What the hell was the orientation? It seemed important. Crow was quite glad to have run into Astra, she always was better at remembering such things.

Astra led the way once more, though this time they didn’t talk quite as much. From street level, Bermuda seemed even larger than it had from the top of the building or the window in the hospital. No, bigger was the wrong word. More like denser. People still swarmed the streets in that mass of different colours, each representing a certain major nation, and the few pockets without a mass of hurried bodies were around shop stalls selling all sorts. As they grew closer to their destination, however, the crowds became even thicker. What had been an ocean of pedestrians changed to great rivers of tar, and soon enough Crow saw why.

The arena he, and the rest of the first stage victors, had been sent through appeared to have been set up for multiple uses. It made sense, even the Unixian Alliance wouldn’t fork over enough money to build something like it if they would get only a single use from it. From the outside it looked, if anything, larger. Twice as high as any of the buildings next to it, and far enough across that Crow imagined a horse would pass out from exhaustion before managing to run all the way around. He and Astra were making their way towards a large gate, through which a stream of many thousands was funnelled. He didn’t like being around so many people. It made him feel hot and itchy, as though he were being pinned between two great walls. As if that wasn’t enough, the air was filled with cheers from the people already seated inside. And they only got more intense as they grew nearer. By the time they reached the entry checkpoint, the woman sitting in the boothe needed to almost shout to be heard over the ruckus.

“Tickets?”

She was rather hawkish, with a hooked nose and narrow face. She stared rather than looked at Crow, and he felt suddenly reminded of their old school teacher- specifically the expression she wore whenever they did something to really annoy her. For a long moment Crow panicked, assuming he would be thrown out due to not having a ticket of his own. Then Astra raised her arm to show the gauger strapped to it, and Crow hurriedly did likewise. The woman’s eyes widened in realisation.

“My apologies sir and ma'am, please make your way up the stairs to the right until you reach the top- then go through the door you see.”

Crow wanted to ask a question, perhaps something along the lines of “where do those stairs lead”, but before he got the chance Astra seized him by the arm and dragged him along with her.

They made their way through the route they had been instructed to take, the staircase being set inside the structure of the stadium’s wall and stifling some of the sound from outside. Between that and the fact that it was wide enough for five people to walk shoulder to shoulder meant that Crow greatly preferred it to the walk towards the checkpoint.

Crow had not enjoyed being in the middle of such a large crowd during the finale to the first stage. Of course it wasn’t as bad as the agonising struggle of actually making his way through said stage, but still… unpleasant. It had made him feel naked, exposed almost. As though his every breath were being judged and appraised by the hundreds of thousands of eyes he had felt affixed on him. Being one of those eyes, tucked discreetly away in one corner of the sprawling stadium, was something he much preferred. And when he reached the corner in which he was to be tucked, that preference turned into an outright liking.

The contestant’s sitting area had around two hundred seats, though only eighty of them would be filled. The reason for this was that many of those seats were laid out in different ways. Some were grouped together in clusters of ten, others were completely isolated. All were sectioned off in a little velvet lined box with walls and a ceiling to separate them from the rest. As Crow and Astra entered their own box with two seats, they also found out that they came stocked with a rather excessive stash of food and drinks. A large block of ice about as big as a person’s head was laid out next to a chisel, though Crow was quite sure anyone capable of reaching the second stage could have snapped a corner off with two fingers using their magic.

Still, he wasn’t complaining. He’d almost worried that his stay in the medical facility had spoiled him, however he saw now that he wouldn’t need to worry about readjusting to going without the lap of luxury until after the Sieve had ended. The thought of the Sieve’s end, whether he won it or not, brought up feelings of anxiety he’d worked quite hard to suppress- and he quickly pushed them down once more.

From their current seat, Crow could see much of the other occupants. Far below them were hundreds of thousands of people, all sitting next to each other and screaming their lungs out. It seemed that loyalty to different nations had caused a schism in the audience, as they all sat in large clusters depending on which colours they wore. It was impossible to make out individuals from the distance, instead the crowds resembled large wriggling carpets. Except for one section.

Crow nudged Astra, gesturing towards another box similar to their own. He couldn’t see inside it due to its walls, and yet just glancing at it made his skin crawl as though he had a guillotine hanging over his neck.

“Who’s sitting there?” He asked his sister. “I thought there were only eighty people who passed the first stage.”

He wouldn’t have thought their box, spacious as each of its compartments was, would have been insufficient space for so few people. And yet not only was there a second, it seemed to be far larger than the one in which Crow sat.

“Those are the Immortals,” his sister replied in the airy tone she always took on when explaining something. “You didn’t think they’d be sitting next to ordinary people did you?”

Suddenly embarrassed, Crow shrugged.

“I don’t see why not.”

With a rather condescending sigh, Astra replied.

“Even the regular mystics are seated separately from the Inepts. Look at the front seats.”

Astra gestured below them, and Crow realised that even from as far as he was he could tell the people occupying the front rows were quite a lot less crowded than most. He turned back to Astra. He didn’t know what to think about that. He’d always been told that mystics were a higher class of people as a child, but that was only in school. No one in Selsis actually cared that much outside of classes, most of his friends were Inepts. All of them, in fact.

Before he could carry on the talk, however, there was a sudden and deafening change in the stadium. It wasn’t an increase in volume, quite the opposite. A silence swept across the crowds, low and buzzing with barely contained energy. Lights shot down into the stadium, illuminating small patches of the floor at once and moving towards an enormous arch with a curtain covering it. Crow wasn’t sure what, but he got the feeling something very important was about to step through it.

And then he heard it. A low pitched, rhythmic chant beginning to pick up in the audience. At first he couldn’t tell what it was, but before long it grew loud enough to easily reach his ears from the dozens of feet between him and the closest other spectators.

Princess. Princess. Princess. Princess.

He suddenly had pins and needles. Crow knew who the Princess was, or at least he thought he did. Hell he’d met her, sort of. Of course back then it had happened suddenly, he’d just made it through the Sieve and been dropped in the middle of a staring crowd. Now, though… He caught himself leaning forward in his seat as the chanting became louder still.

Time seemed to stretch out into an eternity as he waited for the Princess to make her appearance, almost tempted to join in the chanting himself. He could feel Astra fidgeting next to him, clearly just as excited as he was, and all the while the chanting intensified until it was nearly as loud as the initial chaotic cheers.

And then the Princess of Olympus, Karma Alabaster, stepped through the curtain.