"Quiet!" Ashtoreth said suddenly, freezing and spinning toward the large doorway that seemed to lead deeper into the hotel.

"What—"

"Shhh!" she hissed.

She'd been dancing in the lobby for the past minute or so, doing little more than trying to dissolve her thoughts and clear her head for the battles she knew were to come.

But then she'd heard something…

Dazel stood poised on the nearby desk, his tail raised as he looked exactly where she was looking: at the doorway, beyond which was a large hallway with a bright red carpets and a few elevators.

Ashtoreth looked into the hallway, her eyes scanning everything: the ornate lines of brass that decorated the wall lamps, the pools of orange light on the carpet, the distorted reflections in the elevator doors. It seemed to her like the hall was wavering, coming closer, vexing out at her.

She blinked. Nothing was happening. She'd been staring at the hallway for thirty seconds.

Had Dazel been onto something earlier, when he said that she was acting strange? Was something wrong with her mind?

Slowly, she sang a four-note tune with a wavering, anxious voice. Beside her, Dazel looked over in confusion.

The song didn't pull her away from any unseen psychic influence as it was intended to. Neither did it echo back to her as she had feared it might.

Still, she kept staring at the hallway. She had the unshakeable feeling that something was deeply wrong.

Then she began to hear voices in the distance, followed by the low thudding of footsteps on the carpet.

"There's someone here," she whispered, still staring at the hallway.

"I'm worried about you," Dazel said in a low voice.

She wanted to go to the hallway, but her feet felt frozen in place. "Dazel..." she whispered.

"Please tell me what's wrong."

She blinked. Swallowed. What was wrong? She'd been dancing, then suddenly she felt as if she was in danger.

She held out a hand and conjured her sword.

Then she let out a sigh of relief as she recognized the voices coming toward her from the hallway. It was her people—Frost, Kylie, and Hunter came round the corner, spotted her, and then let expressions of their own relief cross their faces.

"Ashtoreth," Dazel prompted softly.

She raised a hand and passed it over her eyes. "Call it fiendish paranoia," she said. "Must have been. Hey guys!"

The humans drew closer. "So when do we get on the elevator filled with ghosts?" Kylie asked. "Down in the boiler room, right?"

Ashtoreth gasped. "Tower of Terror! I know that! I got that reference!"

Kylie blinked. "You do? How?"

"Disney World has videos that you can watch to get stoked for your vacation," she explained, smiling. "All about all the cool things you get to do when you get to the park. Anyway, I've watched like a billion."

Kylie gave her a peculiar look and laughed. "Of course you have." Then she shrugged and looked around at the empty lobby. "So this sucks."

"This can't just be coincidence, can it?" Frost asked. "We were cut off seconds before we would have gotten a lead of another hundred levels."

"Looks like the real heist was on us," Kylie said dryly. "In the end, I guess the real score is going to have to be the confidence we earned when we saw how well we did against that Bastion."

"That's a consolation score," said Ashtoreth, dismissing her sword. "The real score was the cores."

"Okay, fair," said Kylie. "Anyway, I already opted out. Good luck, fearless leader." She held up a hand. "Here."

"Thanks, Kylie," Ashtoreth said, reaching out and taking a transfer of all the cores that Kylie had harvested in their brief combat.

"We're sure we're not participating?" Hunter asked. "No fighting?"

"Well I'm sure," said Kylie, eying them. "Did you guys maybe miss the part where Ashtoreth is going to kill you if you stay in?"

"Yeah," Ashtoreth said. "You have to opt out, you two. The election's only going to have one survivor."

She almost winced as she glanced at Frost. His face was dark with anger. He clearly understood exactly what the rules would mean.

"So we're not going to fight, huh?" Hunter asked.

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"Uh. No?" Ashtoreth said. "But that's good."

"I guess."

"Do we need to figure out our standing relative to one another, or something?" Ashtoreth asked dubiously.

"Can't Ashtoreth beat you with just her claws?" Kylie asked. "Like, have you… ever gotten the better of her?"

"Look," said Hunter. "I just feel like, you know, with the pressure on, it would be different."

"Okay," Kylie said.

"With the Monarchy at stake, we'd be more determined," Hunter said. "The pressure would be on. We could fight and learn some things about ourselves."

"Except now I'd have to kill you," said Ashtoreth.

Hunter sighed and hung his head. "I don't want to sit out," he said.

"You haven't, Hunter!" said Ashtoreth. "It's a campaign, not a battle. You've taken us this far, but maneuvering yourself into the best position to win future battles is part of being a good fighter!"

"Yeah," he said. "I know. I just don't want to sit out. I wanted to fight with the pressure on." He raised a hand. "Here."

She took his hand, absorbing far fewer cores than Kylie had given him.

"You two have both opted out then?" Frost asked. "Hunter, you opted out?"

"Yeah."

"Good," Frost said. He turned to Ashtoreth. His face darkened, but the longer he looked at her, the more his anger seemed to fade and soften.

"Hear me out," he began.

"Okay..." she said hesitantly, eying him.

"The scale of the consequences is unthinkable," he said. "Even the slightest increase to our chances would be worth the expenditure of a single life."

"Woah woah," said Kylie. "Are you suggesting what I think you are?"

"If I don't opt out—" Frost began.

"No," Ashtoreth said. "If I fight War knowing that I have to kill you, that's not going to increase our chance. If I fight War having already killed you, that's not going to increase our chances either."

"Opt out, Frost," Kylie said. "This idea is insane. You should never have even considered it."

Frost sighed. "I know," he said. He was looking somewhere past Ashtoreth. "I'm a fool, sure. But I wish that if only one of us could fight, it could be me. You guys are kids to me, you realize?"

"Sure," said Kylie. "I'm a real child soldier. But you realize that if you have any value to us at all, throwing your life away by making Ashtoreth kill you is just sheer idiocy on a—"

"Yes," Frost said, raising a hand to rub his temple. "Yes, I get it Kylie. Let's just… look, can we actually address the elephant in the room?"

He looked over at Ashtoreth, expectant.

"Look, I didn't quite mean for things to go this way," she said defensively. "Things were, admittedly always going to get a little ugly."

"There will be humans in this tournament."

"Yep."

"You didn't tell me that it would go this way."

"I didn't know exactly how it would go," Ashtoreth said, raising her hands defensively. "But I mean, actually, if we could look at all our prior conversations on this topic, I think you'd find that I have been deftly indicative of some level of cognizance that I might have to kill people."

"Meaning you talked around it so that you could pretend to yourself that you told me."

"I was really, really hoping that things wouldn't go like this," she said.

Frost sighed as he looked down at her. "You gonna be okay?" he asked quietly.

She blinked. She'd been expecting more of a chewing-out, more hostility. He'd been so unhappy about the way she'd spoken to General Matthews, after all.

"Ashtoreth?" he asked.

"I just thought you'd be angry, not worried," she said.

"I can do the math," said Frost. "And any of the soldiers that you kill know exactly who you are and made their choice anyway." He sighed, then shrugged. "I don't even think they're making the wrong decision, not from their perspectives. But you're our best shot—and now… you're gonna be burdened by what you have to do if you wind up facing some human soldier who also wants to fight for Earth."

Ashtoreth shrugged. "I mostly got over killing my sisters pretty quick, and I knew them."

Frost winced.

"What?" she asked. "Look, I'm from a martial culture, okay? My people are hardcore. I can stomach getting my hands dirty, all right? A little innocent blood never hurt—" she paused, frowning.

Then she began again. "A little… hmm. What I sort of meant to say there was more like, uh—okay honestly, I'm not really sure I can salvage that last sentence."

"Maybe put it through Grammarly or ChatGPT," Kylie rasped. "Just like, ask if there's a benign way to declare that you're emotionally fine with killing innocent people to attain your political ends."

Frost was shaking his head. "I think I would have been a lot more comfortable with this conversation if, when I'd tried to comfort you about the grim reality of what's ahead, you just… acted like you needed it, just a little bit."

"But I didn't," Ashtoreth said. "So I guess the takeaway here is that I'm authentic. I'm honest even when it's bad for my image—the sort of person humans wish became politicians!"

"You know what?" Frost said. "Sure. I'll take it."

"Anyway, I'll feel bad for a while, but not too long." She shrugged, then looked at Frost. "It's part of my training. And if it helps…" She thought about the tune she'd sang just before he'd walked in. "I am haunted by one of the things I've done—but that's… I mean, that's mine, you know?"

She looked past him, at the warped reflections in the elevator door. "Nobody gets to touch my ghost," she said quietly. "Mine all mine."

Frost looked pityingly down at her, then opened his arms, offering a hug. She grinned and threw herself against him, smiling as she rested her head on his chest, wrapped her arms around him, and squeezed.

"You guys want to know something I just thought of?" Ashtoreth asked.

"What?" said Frost.

"If one of these humans ends up kicking our asses, it's going to be, like, super embarrassing."

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