Gray and his squad left their room in their uniforms and coats and joined Freek’s orcs out in the hall along with Froggy’s squad. Settie was there, in her hat and mask. She didn’t have to push her way through the crowd—no, the way opened up for her.

  “We are going up to the rooftop. Believe me, this is unexpected but not all that surprising. The Magistrate wants to break us. He’s going to find that particularly hard to do.”

  Right then, Gray knew the game wasn’t going to be physical, it was going to be mental. And he also knew they were going to be targeted. Maybe it was because of the captain, but he had the idea it had more to do with Freek and the mysterious money flowing into First Field.

  The hallways were painfully loud with all the bootsteps, talking, and yes, Freek and his orcs started yelling. “We are the Wrath City Raiders! Go Raiders!” His bruisers repeated that, over and over, as they climbed up to the rooftop. The big orcs shoved everyone out of their way to get to the top first, which was okay with Gray because the climb was so much nicer without their yelling.

  Gray found himself walking up next to Froggy, who was lagging behind her squad. She threw him a smile. “For the record, we don’t think you killed Sindara. We still hate your sponsor though. And we didn’t steal that angelhead’s trunk.”

  He regarded her strange face—wide eyes, big mouth, gaps in her teeth, stringy hair—and smiled back. “Trying to get on our good side, are you?”

  She laughed. “If you’re open to an alliance, I’d like to know. No use letting our pride get in the way of making through this alive.”

  Gray couldn’t trust her, and she had to know that.

  But he could press her for information. “Any idea what the main Soulshred event is going to be?”

  Froggy grunted. “Besides being woken up in the middle of the night nine hours before we were to report to the stadium? No. Not a clue. Squad 49 has been seen practicing some kind of sport where you move a ball down a field. Chaotica, I think it’s called, but our sponsor doesn’t think that’s it. It involves demons, and over at the Briarblood Colllective in Lust City, someone died playing it. They don’t want to kill us…not with what happened to Sindara and Thormud Forgemace.

  “You’re probably right,” Gray said. He wasn’t sure if she was lying or not, but in the end, it probably didn’t matter. Half of the squads were already practicing Chaotica——his, Freek’s, Blythe’s, and Pinch’s. Had they been as careful as Squad 23 to hide that fact? Gray hoped that was the case.

  Froggy went to say something else, but then, they were out of the staircase and out onto the roof. Squad One—the Raiders— were already there as were the dwarven squad and the beastskin squad.

  A sheet of freezing rain swept over them all up on the roof, pushed along by frigid rains. Covered lanterns gave the expansive rooftop light. Eight stacks of thick glass containers were there along the rooftop. The containers seemed to be filled with water.

  Malcon Crewel stood in his robes, unbothered by the rain because a big orcish Fieldkeeper held an umbrella over the Magistrate’s head.

  He waited for the wind to die down, which also gave them a break from that rain.

  “Welcome to the Soulshred. Make no mistake. I am here to break you. If at least one squad doesn’t quit, if at least ten of you don’t walk way, then I believe I am not doing my job. All is the Testing…”

  “And all is the Test!” The orcs thundered.

  With a smile on his face, the Magistrate nodded. “It’s better you fail here than fail at the Reckoning. Only the strongest and toughest among you will be continuing. Only the best will win the day. Now, let’s see. We’ll do a roll call. Is Squad One here?”

  “We are the Winners! We are Squad One!” The fae shouted. They were wearing gold, green and black uniforms with their logo, a stylized W wrapped in flowering strangle vines on their back of their hooded coats.

  Not all of them were yelling, though. Gray noticed that Pinch stayed quiet, but she wasn’t looking his way for once. Her face was as hard as stone, impossible to read.

  “Is Squad 7 here?”

  “We are seven! We are savage! We are the Savage Seven!” The beastskin squad chanted. Their colors were dark blue and teal green, and they had a claw inside of a circle as their logo.

  Tomi laughed. “A little on the nose, right? I mean, animal people being savage. And do we have a chant? What’s our logo, Gray?”

  He grinned at her. “My middle finger.”

  Tomi snorted.

  The Magistrate called out. “Is Squad 13 here?”

  Froggy’s hand shot up. “Squad 13 is here. We are the Froggy’s Thunder! Our colors are black, purple and gold.”

  That made Gray feel a bit better. So not all of the squads had prepared chants. He was thinking they probably should’ve come up with a name, though. It just hadn’t seemed important.

  “Squad 19?” the Magistrate shouted.

  We are the Wrath City Raiders! Go Raiders!” Freek and his band of merry orcs burst out into their chant, which had gotten stuck in Gray’s head. Their colors were blood red and brown, and they had a logo, which combined the first letters in their name into a symbol.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Gray stepped forward. “Squad 23 is here. We don’t have a chant, or a name, and we’re just wearing your typical First Field uniforms. Just trying to save some time here.”

  Settie hissed her displeasure.

  The Magistrate glared at him. “Is Squad 23 here?”

  “Yeah, we’re here.” Gray said.

  “And you’ll do fifty pushups. All of you. You’re here to shut your mouth and follow my rules. I’m the master of these games. No. Start.”

  Gray knew better to fight the Magistrate, so he and his squad started doing pushups.

  Midj wasn’t happy. “Are you trying to kill me, Gray? Those fritters don’t taste too good the second time around.”

  “Sorry, Midj. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  The Magistrate went through the remaining teams—Squad 33, the dwarven squad, who called themselves the Golden, and to prove it, they had gold and silver uniforms. Then there was Squad 42, the Lucky Bastards, who had squeaked by in the Culling Day. They were led by a hard-faced woman, but the real talent were three gamblers who spent a lot of time in the Dice Markets. The rest of the Lucky Bastards were a mixture of races.

  Last but not least was Blythe’s squad ,Squad 49, the Fire Flyers, who chanted along when they were called. Their colors were red and yellow with black flames on their back surrounding the two Fs of their logo.

  By that time, Gray was already standing, his chest muscles tingling. All in all, it was a good warm-up.

  The Magistrate stood under his umbrella. “You will be evaluated in two ways during this Soulshred Week. One is your ability to play the game Chaotica, which involves moving a ball down a field while you are attacked by the enemy team as well as demons we have brought in from Old Town.”

  Immediately, there was chatter, smiles, frowns—Gray was quick to notice who was surprised. Like he thought, the four teams he hoped wouldn’t know about the game were the ones who were shocked. The Lucky Bastards seemed to know about Chaotica, while the others were clueless, including Froggy’s Thunder. Good.

  Pinch looked on, expressionless while Blythe smiled.

  Freek grunted laughter.

  “Silence!” Crewel shouted, and a wave of mana erupted of him. It wasn’t like when Rynn vented her core, it was more like a pressure that filled the air.

  “The other way you will be evaluated is through tasks, challenges, and the many hardships we will be visiting upon you. We will call these activities downtime, and if you win downtime, it will effect your standings and the times you play your daily Chaotica match. We will have Chaotica matches at various times throughout the day…sometimes in the middle of the night, early morning, late afternoon. It will all depend. As I think I have said, if you win, you get to sleep. If you lose, your sleep will be limited. All is Testing!”

  And the Fieldkeepers shouted out the rhyme, which Gray was learning to loathe with every fiber of his being.

  He doubted that the Briarblood Collective would be torturing their recruits like this. No, this was only at First Field, and maybe it helped weed out the weaker recruits, or maybe it shattered them unnecessarily. It didn’t matter. He was there, with his squad, and they had to make it through. To do that, he had to have the right mindset. That meant self-mastery. He couldn’t let his animal mind, already exhausted because of the lack of sleep, push him into fear.

  Downtime. It was meant to be ironic.

  “Your first Downtime activity,” Crewel continued, “is to take these glass containers down to ground below. There is a location marked by your squad number.. I must warn you—they are as heavy as they are slippery. Here are the rules. No flight and no interfering with another squad’s endeavors. However…” he paused to give them all an evil smile. “Accidents do happen. Breaking these rules will affect your Downtime score. You have nine hours to complete the task. Begin!”

  Gray did a quick count. There were around twenty containers. Even if they were careful and only carried one down at a time, it would take about twenty minutes. So if they did three an hour, they would be finished in seven hours. Only they could do more…at least two if not three, depending on if Tomi could carry one all by herself. In her giant cat girl form, she should be able to. But would she fit through the doorway to the stairwell?

  Once again, the other teams had the advantage because they had seven members and not just five.

  Gray led his squad over to their pile—there was a sign near the lantern with their squad number on it. “Rynn and Ames, grab one, and don’t drop it. Midj and I will get another. Tomi, let’s see if you can carry one on your own.”

  “As a karijun?” she asked. “Oh, right, you don’t know what that is. It doesn’t matter. Let’s just get started.”

  She grew to her cat size, went over, and picked one up easily. That was good, but the other Beastkin could do the same. The new dog man on Blythe’s team, though, bobbled his and it fell and smashed on the ground.”

  “That will affect your score, Fire Flyers,” the Magistrate barked. “Unless you an find another squad’s container that they aren’t using. That will be tricky because there are twenty-one containers. To score, you will need all twenty-one containers in your team’s area.”

  That was a laugh. Encouraging a squad to steal when it would be breaking the rules.

  Gray knew he had to change his tactic. “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,” he said, quoting something Master Keef back in the arena had said. “We’re not going to focus on winning. We’re going to be focusing on taking our time and guarding our containers.”

  There was another crack as another container fell. The Beastkin squad had lost one of theirs.

  “Help me, Midj,” Gray said.

  Both of them picked one of the containers up, and it was awkward because Midj was smaller than him. It was extremely heavy, but worse, the glass was so slippery. He now knew why two of the containers had been dropped. At least they were cubes and not spheres, but still, he had to change his tactics.

  And there were two squads, including Blythe’s, that would be looking to steal a container.

  “Rynn, Ames, you start but be careful. Tomi, are you okay?’

  She nodded.

  “Good.” Gray frowned. “Midj, you’re going to be on guard duty. I’ll run protection and keep your mana cores filled—”

  One of the Lucky Bastard gamblers screamed, “Oi! Hands off!”

  An orc roared. “I didn’t do anything!”

  “You fucking knocked the cube out of me hands!”

  “Quickly now,” Gray said.

  Rynn and Ames picked up a cube, both grunting under its weight. Gray gave them mana, along with Tomi, and the started toward the door, but they weren’t alone. The fae were there—Pinch was acting as a guard like Gray.

  Gray nodded at her, she nodded back, and the fae were the first through the door.

  It was chaos going down the steps. The fae were ahead but the Lucky Bastards were fighting with the orcs the entire way down. Another cube was smashed—the Bastards were down two containers.

  Outside, they found their section on the lawn and they put the first containers down.

  “Tomi stay down here and rest. And don’t let anyone take our cubes.”

  The big cat girl nodded, looking miserable. “It’s going to be a week of this, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Gray said. “It’s going to be this task. Our entire life is just carrying containers. Don’t let yourself think about anything else. It doesn’t exist. It’s just now. It’s just us. Nothing else matters.”

  Tomi’s eyes filled with tears. She nodded.

  He wasn’t sure what to say next. In the end, she would either break or she wouldn’t.

  For now, they had work to do.