First came registration. Each of the contestants stepped up to one of a line of Azcan representatives, offering their palms. The representative then deposited a crystal ball, an artifact which sent a pulse of qi through the user to check for some basic vitals—things like age and qi response. The brighter the ball’s glow, the higher the talent. Standard stuff. He saw a series of teens go before him, all receiving glows of around a candle’s strength. Every so often, though, the ball would shine like a morning star: a youth of great talent had surfaced. Usually these were the Young Masters, groomed from birth and given the best bloodlines.

All around them the crowd of spectators milled restlessly. The competitors were directed into seemingly random groups of ten after their registration. The Tribes were all divvied up, spread out. The other Rust competitors had already gone ahead. Kaya and Hento got bonfire gleams which meant ‘high-grade talent,’ or so a sticklike Azcan representative had intoned in a reedy voice. Kuruk had gotten a sputtering mid-grade glow, a result which drew a low sigh from his father. Among the competitors, it seemed the median grade.

To his left, there was a sudden commotion, a flurry of exclamations. Dorian turned to find a mountain of a man clutching a crystal ball; between his two thick tree-branch fingers it looked like a mere marble. Albeit one shining like the sun in miniature.

“Y-young Master Yalta,” said the representative before him. “Talent: Peak!”

With a grunt, Yalta chucked it back and stalked to his cadre. Dorian scratched his chin and gave the man a closer look. Albino, hair like dirty snow, a body so dense with muscle it overflowed to places where it shouldn’t be. His face was thick and made of harsh, brutal squares: square nose, square jaw, square, sheer cheeks. He made no attempt to mask his aura—which spoke to either foolishness or brazen confidence—and so Dorian could easily read that the man was far up in the Vigor Realm; he might’ve even passed the viscera refining stage, meaning he was at least three major levels ahead of Dorian’s initial stage. A ferocious bloodline lay in his grasp, too. It was no wonder he’d won the last Festival. Even for Dorian, dealing with him would be no trifling matter. Dorian would need to keep an eye on him. First impressions didn’t always make for the surest of judges, but by an eye’s glance the man seemed like a doofus. At least there was that.

Dorian’s turn soon arrived. A heavyset representative told him to hold out a hand. “You’ll feel a slight prickle of qi. Don’t resist it—let it circulate fully,” said the man, whose hairy brows reminded Dorian of writhing caterpillars.

“I will.”

As it went up his arm and around his core, Dorian turned his mind to strategy. There was a time and place for showing off, but this was not it. The qualification rounds should be reserved for just that: qualification. There was no sense in revealing his cards before the main event, the Tournament, which gave out the vast majority of the goods. For now, then, he’d do just poorly enough to eke out a low, inconspicuous finish at the Festival while doing just well enough to sneak above the qualification threshold. He’d not shine too bright.

This plan was foiled almost immediately, when the crystal ball in his hand promptly morphed into a blinding exultation of ivory light. If he wasn’t in Vigor, the heat would’ve scalded his fingers. The Azcan representative’s brows shot all the way up like a butterfly breaking free of its cocoon.

“Io of Rust Tribe,” he said. “Talent: Peak!”

A hundred pairs of eyes were trained on him in an instant. The whispering began the instant after. Cringing a little, he nodded perfunctorily to the representative’s instructions and walked over to the random group he’d been assigned. All of them were looking at him like he’d grown three heads and a tail. So much for inconspicuous.

Registrations done, Zhang took the stage once more.

“The Trial of the body is split in two parts: a Trial of Speed and one of Strength. For the first part, we’ve taken the liberty of organizing you into heats for the race. There are no more than two of the same Tribe in one heat so as to discourage cheating. Needless to say, cheating of any sort, including interfering with any other competitor’s race beside the officially sanctioned option”—here, he nodded to the crossbows—“is strictly disallowed. I hope I’ve been clear.”

“The objective is simple. You shall all be ranked based on the scores you achieve in both sections. The top 128 in the Trial of Speed advance to the Trial of Strength; the top 64 ranks in the Trial of Strength shall advance to the second day of the Trials at this year’s Festivals. Everyone else must try their luck next year.”

That set off a smattering of heated conversation all around. Dorian saw wrinkled foreheads and white-knuckled hands in droves. For many of his fellow competitors, it seemed, things were starting to get real.

“Remember,” said Zhang with a light smile, “Failing here is nothing to be ashamed of. You have all qualified to compete at the Festival—the biggest in Desert history—for a chance to defend your home and honor! That is admirable enough.”

Of course it wasn’t; failing here meant abject humiliation, and no number of pointless platitudes would smooth it over. Dorian got the distinct sense that this Zhang fellow was going through the motions of being a great tournament organizer—playing a character, as it were. He meant very little of what he said, which made him a nuisance to pin down. He seemed a typical Azcan bureaucrat stuffed into a role which mingled with the commoners. He spoke what he thought he should say, and never what he meant.

Frowning, Dorian glanced back at the heat to which he’d been assigned. This heat, like seemingly all the others, was an eclectic mix: by their smooth, unmarked clothes Dorian could tell some came from the big, richer tribes. As the tribes grew shoddier the clothes grew more battle-torn; some had faded coloring or sloppy patchwork. Then there was those like Dorian, whose clothes nobody had bothered to patch up at all. Low-caste tribesmen like him were by far the weakest. If he had to guess, they’d be lucky to make up a tenth of the qualifiers.

“First heat, step up!” said Zhang, and a circle of runes appeared in the sand, shining a soft silver like moonlight streaming upwards. Dorian watched with interest as a group of ten gathered in the circle, then floated up to the obstacle course as the runes took effect. The stones were so big that all ten of them could fit on them comfortably. Whether all ten would remain by the end of the course was another question. Two in particular stood out to him—the first was a big beefy boy clad in white furs, clearly another Yalta member. By the bulk of the clan Dorian guessed they worked grappling arts primarily. They were poorly suited to this sort of contest. The other person of interest was nearly the exact opposite: a lithe, thin pretty boy clad in white, form-fitting silks which slipped around him like streams of air. He stared down the hundred-odd feet of scything blades and spike-traps and falls and plumes of fire with an expression of placid calm, like it was a stroll down a hometown street.

“Begin on my signal,” said Zhang.

He paused, letting the space be filled by the clamor of the crowd, the jostling, everyone edging for a closer spot.

Then there was a sound like a peal of thunder, and they were all off at once.

The lithe youth shot out like an arrow from a bow, kicking off of sheer air. A chorus of surprised shouts came from all around Dorian; he cocked his head, one brow raised, as the youth twirled around blades and dodged arrow-traps with an acrobat’s grace, breezing through like a spring gale. He moved so fast he made the rest of the group seem like they walked through mud. In scarcely twenty seconds he’d cleared half of the obstacles. Now he’d been slowed down some, entering a field of spiked lashes and needing to navigate them with care. Still, he was literally running away with the competition.

Dorian let the gossip from all around him flow into him. One could gather a surprising amount of intelligence by simply eavesdropping in a crowd.

“—the poor sods! Up against Young Master Zhaopai this early…”

“That’s the Sky-Walking Steps, their signature technique! He’s sure to claim number one.”

Dorian tuned back out. Sky-walking steps, eh? He could say with near certainty that his Cloud-Treading steps had originated as a bastardization of this technique. With his modifications, his technique would likely hold a decent edge. The issue was his qi, heavy and thick; he could only ever move as a wrecking ball did, not as a light breeze. Weighed down as he was and at his stage of cultivation, Young Master Zhaopai likely outsped him.

He scratched his chin as the man leapt to the final stone. A reverberating crash like a banged gong rang through the air. On a man-sized stone tablet by Zhang’s side, a new name was inscribed at the top: 1. LIN ZHAOPAI. 42S.

Young Master Zhaopai lifted a dainty, proud chin as he descended to thunderous applause. He seemed to care not a whit, instead walking calmly back over to his clan, cold-faced.

Meanwhile, the others of the first heat were struggling. The course was about as hard as it looked, which was to say: very hard for the typical Desert teen. Two had already been thwacked off the course, plummeting tens of feet headfirst into the sands. At ground level, a group of healers were stationed to fix them back up. Of the ten, Dorian estimated perhaps three would finish the course—much less do well.

His judgment was only further affirmed when the Yalta clansman, seeing himself fall behind, tried to discreetly shove the person in front of him off the stone. There was a flash of black qi, a horrid scream, and suddenly the Yalta man was plummeting from the sky. A second later, his severed hand followed him. Gasps spread all around. Dorian looked in Zhang’s direction, where he first felt that black qi appear; Zhang’s lips were pursed. No cheating. Point taken.

The number of competitors numbered in the hundreds, but the heats were fast. Soon a list of names started populating the ranking stone. The Zhaopai tribe, which seemed the speedsters of the bunch, claimed five of the top ten slots; the rest went to Young Masters of the bigger tribes. Dorian paid only fleeting attention to the lot of them. There were still too many here to be worth parsing down to form a profile of potential competitors. He only took note of those who really caught his eye.

One was a certain Young Master Narong. Dorian knew to pay attention to him just by the whispering that started once his heat came up. He shot off like a throwing knife; by footspeed he was only a fraction slower than Young Master Zhaopai, but he had the unique advantage of being a human sword’s blade and seemingly indestructible. It must’ve been a perk of his Vigor Physique; if Dorian had to guess, he’d long cleared the mid stages of Vigor. He moved with speed and precision. Where Young Master Zhaopai would skirt around obstacles, he’d simply slice straight through them and keep moving. He ate two fire plumes to the chest unscathed. He ended with the number one spot and descended to massive cheers.

He almost lost it the very next heat. This one featured Young Master Yalta, who looked every bit like a hairless bear. He did not move like one. Dorian did a double-take as he saw the man take flight. Contrary to his first impression, Young Master Yalta was no barbarian bruiser. His footwork was precise, his weight distribution pinpoint. He moved with near-perfect technique; where he should’ve rumbled and groaned, a thudding ball in the air, instead he moved like an avalanche. He tore through the course with ease and claimed third place, losing to Young Master Zhaopai by mere seconds. He seemed furious at the result. Huh. So the bear can dance.

“Next up,” said Zhang, “is heat twenty-six.”

Dorian stretched out his legs with a grin and rose to his feet.