Hani woke up drenched in cold sweat. His nightmares had mixed and swirled around his head, tossing and turning him like a ship on a distant ocean.

He couldn’t help shake the distinct feeling that something was wrong, something was missing - almost as if someone had taken a chunk of his very soul away.

"Muna?" he groaned, swinging his legs out of the bed and wondering when his sister had picked the blankets up off the floor and placed them back over him. "Muna?"

Hani rubbed at his sleep filled eyes, glancing over towards Muna's now empty bed and sighing. He guessed she must have gone on an early morning stroll to the market again. He knew they were running low on funds but she would still probably come back with an armful of pomegranates and dragon fruit that she would have used her infamous charm to acquire.

Hani paused in getting up as he listened to the musical chimes of the city clock ring out across the houses and buildings.

"What the..." he muttered as the clock reached seven or eight chimes but refused to stop there, instead carrying on until at least ten or eleven. Surely it couldn’t be that late? No, Muna would have woken him up. He knew that she wanted to go to the Trials today, although for whatever mysterious reason, Hani was yet to figure it out.

Hani slid his toes over the gratifyingly cool terracotta tiles beneath him, the room was still mostly in shade and the floor hadn't yet been heated up to the point of necessitating shoes. He walked sleepily towards the wash basin, brushing his flopping hair out of his face.

Hani scanned the room to see if Muna had left anything out specifically for breakfast, when his eyes fell on a sealed envelope lying in the middle of the coffee table. The other items that had previously sat atop of the table had evidently been cleared away to make the envelope all the more conspicuous.

Hani trod lightly over to the table, stooping down to inspect the oddity, his fingers paused in mid air as he read who it was addressed to.

"My Brother Hani"

"What have you done?" Hani hissed at the unresponsive rectangle of paper before quickly snatching it up and tearing it open. He should have known something was up the moment he had awoken feeling strange and out of place.

In his haste to open up the letter inside Hani partially ripped it. He pinched it back together with his shaking fingertips before glancing over the entire page to discover only a sparse smattering of handwritten words that he scanned to pick out the important ones.

"I never had much time left...

Find Levi, get to Alack...

Forgive me..."

Hani scrunched the letter up in his hand before frantically turning and looking for his clothes. After getting hastily dressed he grabbed his pack before heading out the door, not bothering to lock the rooms behind him.

It was easy enough to find where most of the city was today. A huge roar thundered out from the Coliseum where the Trials were being held.

Why the hell has she taken my magic?

Hani couldn’t understand it. Muna had obviously planned on doing something big and insane, something she would need a huge amount of power for...but to actually use that much dark magic in one go? Hani knew it would kill her.

Their magic was a curse, an affliction killing them from the inside, rotting their souls. Muna would undoubtedly know that by having taken Hani's usable powers she still hadn't saved him from the inevitability of his fate – he was still born of dark magic, still made of it. Only now, he couldn’t even perform a simple spell.

What the hell was she thinking?

And who on Nagimiotani was Levi?

Hani found himself sweating heavily as he finally reached the dust covered street leading to the city Coliseum. The sun had mostly risen now and he hadn't taken the time to coat his skin in any protective oils.

"Ticket?" a miserable and bored looking guard asked Hani as he drew to a screeching halt outside the doors to the stalls.

"How much?" Hani panted, knowing that the answer would be irrelevant as he didn't have a single coin on him.

"Reduced to fifteen on account of the Trials having already started," the guard informed Hani, not looking up from where he was levering grit from behind his fingernails with a toothpick.

Hani glanced around, this guard seemed to be the only one on duty. Probably all of the rest of them had already snuck inside to catch the show.

Hani chewed on his lip for a moment before making his decision. Taking a preparatory step backwards he hurled himself towards the metal barriers, leapfrogging over them and rolling across the dusted stone floor on the other side.

"Hey!" the guard yelled out behind him, sounding outraged. "Come back here!"

But Hani was already sprinting down the torch lit passageways, finally emerging out into bright sunshine and deafening crowds. The Coliseum was packed; most of the city must have turned out for the occasion. The first thing that hit Hani was the wall of heat - the sheer thermal force of thousands of citizens packed into a sun drenched arena with minimal shade.

Hani coughed as the dusty and dry air filtered through his lungs, filling his nostrils with the scent of freshly baked flat breads that were being sold from large baskets.

Hani's stomach grumbled as a reminder that he hadn’t eaten yet, but his mind was still frantic with fears of what his sister might have committed herself to without his knowledge.

He glanced behind himself to check if the guard had followed, there was no sign of him yet. All the same, Hani quickly pushed forwards to lose himself in the swarming ringside audience.

"Get out of the way!" an old woman hissed angrily, batting Hani round the head as he attempted to scurry past her and climb higher up the teetering edges of the Coliseum. Hani froze as he heard a horrifying screen emanating from the centre of the circular arena of sand.

He spun round to see the torn and twisted limbs of a man jerk themselves into death as the victim's corpse collapsed to the floor from where a sorcerer's blue flame had held it aloft.

"Ekria mat etnum!" a booming voice announced, using magic to project itself across the auditorium.

'Justice is Delivered to Us!'

Hani translated the old traditional phrase in his head, watching as guards buzzed around the sand pit like gathering flies over a recent death. The sorcerers, evidently amused by their own work and 'deliverance' of justice were milling about together by the side of the arena. They were marked out as students of the higher forms of magic by the fine satin of their azure robes.

"You're blocking the view!" a man barked roughly at Hani, making him flinch as spittle landed on his cheek. Hani wiped the man's saliva away with a grimace before bowing his head sarcastically and continuing to move up the dented and eroded stone steps.

Hani managed to spot a couple of spare seats on the third row down from the top, next to a large family of laughing and screaming relatives. By the time Hani was able to wheedle his way past them and collapse into one of the unused spaces the Coliseum was already starting to hush in baited anticipation for the next 'Trial'.

"Our final criminal is a shape shifter!" the same amplified voice announced to the booing and jeering masses. Shape shifting had never been a particularly respected form of magic - too much like trickery and deception. Hani himself, however, had always been rather fascinated by the art of changing one's own skin at will.

The voice went on to list the crimes of the perpetrator, it was quite a long list really, which only served to agitate and hype the crowd up further.

"I give you Levi!" the voice cried out at last, snapping Hani's attention back to it like a catapult string.

Levi

That had been the name from Muna's note - surely it could not just be a coincidence? But why did she need him to find one of the criminals up for Trial? It wasn't like the whole city didn't already know where this 'Levi' was.

The twenty assembled sorcerers readied themselves by fanning out across one side of the ring, a sure firing squad if Hani ever saw one. Levi was led in with a metal collar around his neck, it was attached to a chain, which in turn was attached to three guards. The guards kept attempting to trip Levi up with their metal tipped boots - they managed it a few times and they further rewarded the prisoner by bloodying his mouth with a series of kicks.

The magic emanating around the arena allowed Hani to watch Levi as clearly as if he were at a ringside seat, only feet away from him at this point.

The man was strong looking with broad shoulders, long brown hair and rough stubble. His eyes were grey but twinkling and there was a strange confidence to his face, considering his imminent execution.

This criminal was quite a handsome one, Hani thought distractedly for a moment. He looked like the kind of weathered ruffian that would frequent the dingy alley bars that Hani had always been so intrigued by.

Not that Hani had lived a sheltered life - far from it. Hani and Muna had grown up on the streets like any other orphans, although they also happened to be born from dark magic. The latter quality had tended to make them both somewhat wary of society as a whole - more cautious when it came to the drinking houses they visited or the shadows they would share in the back alleys.

Hani was still lost in thought when the voice began announcing something across the Coliseum. It was evidently something important, given the elbow he almost received in the face as the girl next to Hani spun round to yell something at her mother.

Hani frowned as he caught the last few words of the announcement, "...a Champion in his stead."

"What do they mean?" the girl asked loudly, looking somewhat put out at this turn of events. "Is the criminal not going to be trialled by the sorcerers like all the others?"

"Didn't you hear?" her brother exclaimed, pulling a face. "This one's got himself a 'champion' to fight against the sorcerers for him!"

"I can't remember the last time that happened..." the mother murmured, her eyes already lighting up with fascinated curiosity.

"Who would fight for a criminal?" one of the other men called out, looking vaguely disgusted.

"Probably a lover - or a family member," the brother replied with a shrug.

"Or some idiotic member of the public wanting their five seconds of fame," the mother snorted nastily, her eyes narrowing as she caught Hani staring open-mouthed at their conversation. Hani quickly jerked himself back round so he was facing the arena again.

He had never been so desperate not to hear his own thoughts before.

No, no, no - it can't be her, it won't be her.

Hani slammed his sweating palms over his eyes. There was just no way that his sister would be this suicidal. To go up against twenty sorcerers for the sake of some criminal?

Why?

"Why?" he cried as the achingly familiar dark haired girl finally stepped out into the ring behind Levi, causing Hani to leap from his seat and nearly throw up at the sight of her on the sand.

"Muna!" he screamed, rushing to clamber back past the loudly protesting family and fall out onto the stone steps. Hani didn't care how many people he knocked over or who was yelling at him as he descended the stairs like a madman - determined only to get to the ring.

Hani reached the waist high barrier to the sand pit just as the sorcerers' shield was erected. He slammed his hands against the newly formed transparent, but shimmering, bubble that separated the gathered crowds from the violent magic of the fights in the arena.

"No!" Hani spat angrily, hitting his hands against the shield again and feeling the resisting resonation thrum through his skin like a warning electricity. No one broke the shield until either the criminal or all twenty sorcerers were dead.

"The fuck are you doing kid?" one of the Coliseum guards growled at Hani, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder and pushing him down into a newly vacated seat. Hani sank limply, his body recoiling in horror as he realised that this was actually going to happen.

"That criminal's got himself a champion!" an elderly man leaned in to tell Hani excitedly, obviously worried that Hani might not have understood what all the excitement was about. "Such a pretty young girl as well," the man sighed, "what a waste of life."

Hani's eyes stung with tears as he now felt himself sink further back in his chair, as if he could distance himself from this reality and wake up with none of it ever having happened. Muna would be stood at the bedroom door, telling him to get his sleepy head out of bed – there would be dragon fruit in her arms because they were Hani's favourite. Their green and pink scales would be peeled back to reveal tender white fruit riddled with crunchy black seeds, an inverted winter blizzard inside the flesh.

Hani blinked away from his fantasy and watched numbly as the fight was announced and Muna took her position opposite the sorcerers. She shucked off her flowing black robes with a dramatic flair that could only make Hani smile bitterly. Her dress was a muted dark green and showed enough flesh for the matriarchs in the audience to purse their lips in enthusiastic disapproval.

Muna raised her arms in a fighting stance, although it was one of attack rather than defence - something that did not go unnoticed by the people around Hani.

"The girl's got some spirit in her!" a woman laughed from behind. "Maybe this will last longer than four seconds?"