To Hani it seemed to last several years before the final bell was rung, signalling that the fight had begun. However, even before the vibrating sound reached its climax and began to die down - a dark cloud was already starting to swirl around the bare feet of his sister. It grew with a force and a power that he knew came from the strength of two combined magical souls.

"That's...that's dark magic!" the elderly man whispered hoarsely, keeping his eyes glued on the scene unfolding in front of them.

Hani could feel it now, the change of atmosphere around the Coliseum as the realisation sank in. This 'pretty young girl' was suddenly of interest, suddenly someone worthy of note.

Hani blinked as he remembered snatches from his past, clinging to them like they might now give him the answers on how to fix this mess.

*

"You're more powerful than me," Hani had pouted, only ten years old and watching his sister turn foul muddied water into something drinkable for them both to quench their thirsts.

"Our power is a curse," Muna had snapped angrily, forcing Hani's head down so he drank first from the bubbling gutter at the side of a busy desert town road. "Every time we use it - it will take a part of us away. It will continue to do so until there is nothing left."

"If you're so powerful why do we live on the streets?" Hani had exclaimed frustratedly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, but not missing his sister's responding wince.

"Fool," she had hissed, clutching at her chest in something Hani later realised had been pain. "We're the most powerless people I know."

*

Hani hadn't realised then what Muna had been talking about. But he had grown into the knowledge, the hateful knowledge that power meant nothing if you couldn’t use it without destroying yourself in the process. And now - Hani was expected to sit in that stinking Coliseum and watch his sister wield a power that would steal her soul from him.

Before he had barely even processed the thought, the ground beneath the arena began to shake.

"What's happening?" someone shrieked from his side.

"Oh Muna," Hani whispered, his gaze finding his sister's across the expanse of the sand, before a huge dragon head cracked through the surface of the earth and speared up into the sky in a pillar of glittering scales.

"Holy shit!" the man beside Hani spluttered, nearly falling straight off of his seat as Hani sat, unmoved and numb. His eyes were transfixed by the obsidian armour of the dragon as it was birthed from the sand - impregnated by dark magic at Muna's will.

The dragon's curving neck, mirroring Hani's own reflection back at him, reminded him of the echoes of another time, another place. An evening spent by an inky river attempting to catch fish with dimming glow-worms.

*

"I want to hear the dragon story again!"

"Hani for gods' sakes will you stop shouting like that - you'll scare away any fish."

"Sorry, Muna - but please? The dragon story? I'm so bored and no fish are biting."

His sister rolled her eyes affectionately, reaching out to ruffle Hani's dark mop of hair. "What is it about dragons huh? They've never even really existed!"

"Yeah - but one day they might," Hani grinned, causing Muna to stare at him with a look of disbelief on her face before they both laughed and gave up fishing for the night.

*

Hani's already stuttering heart caught further in his chest as the dragon threw back its terrible head and roared. All eyes were now focussed on the response of the sorcerers. The magical masters seemed just as shocked at the appearance of a dragon as everyone in the audience was, but still one of them stepped forward to raise his hands and began chanting his own incantations.

Swarms of bright red birds poured down from the roof of the azure tinged bubble, enveloping the dragon's head in a flurry of scratching talons and beaks. Hani snapped his head to Muna and saw that her lips were curled back in a sneer, she was almost laughing.

Hani wondered what it must feel like? After two decades of desperately abstaining, what did it feel like to finally use her magic? To let its potential rampage freely through the Coliseum in the form of a snarling dragon, swatting sorcerers' birds away from its smoking face like bothersome flies.

It was through this horrifying tangle of pride and power that Hani finally accepted his sister was going to die. If the sorcerers defeated her - Muna would be killed. If Muna won - she would still be torn to shreds by her own dark magic. Regardless of the outcome, Hani would lose his sister there that day, and he still didn't even understand why.

Hani’s mind was quickly dragged back to the ring as the dragon descended upon the sorcerers with a terrible scream. Several of the sorcerers raised their hands and shouted out broken defensive spells at the last moment, but even as the dragon dissolved from their counter attacks, the wake of ash it left behind still covered four distinct corpses.

"Sixteen sorcerers to go," the man beside Hani hissed. "And it looks like our champion is just warming up."

Hani jerked his head back to his sister who was rising off of the ground in a swirling cloud of dark magic. Shimmering streams of her own power sprang forth like rivulets, winding across the sand and forming a monstrous whirlpool in the centre of the Coliseum. Before the nearest sorcerers could realise what was happening – it was too late and two of them were sucked down beneath the crashing waves of sand, suffocated and crushed like Muna and Hani had seen happen to desert mice during storms.

Eventually, however, the sorcerers seemed to finally recover from the shock of having a worthy opponent. The remaining fourteen collected themselves and drew into a tight circle before launching a myriad of powerful curses at Muna.

Hani cried out as the spells threatened to reach their target before a wall of sand rose up in front of his sister's dwarfed form.

We are children of the desert Hani

Hani gasped as the golden wall transmuted into a wave of charging stallions, lightening flashed across the arena, melting extended limbs of sand that hardened instantaneously into glass, sharp horns from each horse. The shrieks as a sorcerer was impaled on one of the conjured beasts echoed around the Coliseum without the need for magical amplification.

Hani's heart beat in time with the pounding of the horses' hooves, he even shattered when they did, struck by the blow of a sorcerer's spell.

Next came bats - the winged vermin had always been a favourite of Muna's. They mutated from the very black robes she had discarded earlier, flapping with venomous fangs towards their prey - taking down two more sorcerers in their wake.

Of course Muna got hurt too, the sorcerers were not children. They were men and women trained in attack magic and they were there to win.

But they didn't.

And when it was finally down to the last two sorcerers it seemed that the crowd had finally accepted that as well. There was a wave of silent shock as the final body was seen crumpling to the ground, dragged down by slithering serpents of crimson that Muna brought forth from her own blood - her own cursed blood.

And yet it was not the sorcerer's death that Hani was watching, it was his sister's.

He could see the moment the darkness consumed Muna, the exact second her body failed underneath the weight of the power she had wielded that day.

Hani's voice was already long gone - driven raw and hoarse from his screams and yells. But his mouth still fell open in muted pain as his only family fell to her knees on the blood soaked sand.

For the first time that day, Muna's dark eyes found Hani's amongst the crowds. Her lips curved into a small meaningful smile before she was enveloped in a cloud of black smoke.

Hani found himself beating against the arena shield, staggering forwards as it finally dissipated with the last sorcerer's death. But it was too late, Muna was already gone.