Ann wiped at her mouth as if to wipe away a nasty taste. "For three weeks, there was so much fighting...and more than a dozen of the weaker Novices died in the Game. Some of them were overwhelmed and beaten by mobs 10 to 1. Others were manipulated and maliciously grinded down into powerless meek puppets by their own friends...and then there were the ones who openly tried to challenge the strongest ones right out in the open without any subterfuge. Only for the challengers to then be so publicly shamed or even crippled that they killed themselves out of embarrassment or never dared to fight in another Game again....”

Brandon listened to the horrible darkness of it all and he was almost to afraid to ask his next question, but he did anyway. “So which one were you? I mean you obviously survived this first Game and many others just like it....so how'd you survive for so long? Manipulation or just power?”

“Oh I liked to mangle the faces of the girls that thought to challenge me to Games. I ruined their bodies broke spines and ribs. I found that after I cut off the last girls nose and she killed herself when the healer put it back on crooked...Well none of the other Novices tried to fight me that year or the next....” Ann smiled at him a gleaming glint of violence in her expression that Brandon couldn’t help but feel a sickening kindred understanding to mirrored in his own black soul.

Survival was never pretty and when survival was a game Brandon could only imagine ow twisted it could make a person. So he just shook his head and told her. “So Im guessing Melda wasn’t as badass as you?”

Anns slightly dark smirk fell away and she went cold again.

“No....Melda was beaten bloody twice and both times by a group of boy Novices. But she refused to fight them or use her Mana to defend herself and I couldn’t always protect her when I had a target on my own back because I was top of the classes when it came to be known that both me and Eric Aron were being considered as Novices to the Grand Master Hovel.”

Ann rolled her eyes. “God I remember Melda was still a big cry baby at this point. I told her that she was going to die if she didn’t get stronger and use Mana to fight and prover herself as a Child of the Sun. She...she just told me that she didn’t care if she died...”

Brandon listened with a heavy heart as he saw the other Mana User bite her lip then force herself to go on.

“Well...Melda got her wish in the end.” She breathed out slightly shaky as if she were trying to hold her tone steady. “You see the Grand Master and the High Council got wind about Melda and her refusal to use Mana...and they also found out that she was close to me....”

Ann struggled seemingly to catch her breath because her mouth worked twice up and down before she said. “They paired me with her and set us up in a tag team battle against two other boy Novices...” Ann scoffed.

“You know looking back on it I guess they were trying to kill me and Melda...”

The Druid made a sound of disgust and he asked. “What? Why?”

Ann just shrugged weakly. “Melda was the weakest Sister and so she was a disgrace to the Brotherhood and her death wouldn’t have been a tragedy....”

Brandon rose and eyebrow. “But you were one of the strongest kids there at the time...” he argued.

Ann nodded. “Exactly...and I rivaled the power of Eric Aron, the Saviors adopted son. This was a problem because I am a woman and Sisters are not seen as equal as Brothers. Hovel and many others did not agree with my power and most of all they did not want me to be a future Hand to the Grand Master.”

“Hand?” Brandon interjected in confusion at the new term.

“There are Seconds Hands to the Grand Master. I was a Third Hand, the first in a century. You see the Hand to the Grand Master is in many ways what being a Guardian is like. We cater to, protect, and follow the direct orders of our Grand Master the way Ezekiel and his siblings follow the command of their Clan Head...do you understand?” Ann explained quickly.

Brandon nodded. “Yeah, makes sense but in the Shifter Clans the tittle of Guardian is an honor as much as it is a choice. Mantilo never forced his sons to fight to be Guardians or excluded any one because of their sex or power...”

Ann tossed her chin in a blasé fashion. “I can only tell you how it was in the Brotherhood and why I think I was sentenced to this Game with Melda even though I was guaranteed to lose with her on my team.”

Brandon twisted his lip, waved a hand and said. “Right right...so what happened in the tag team fight?”

Ann smiled slightly as she began to recount in a dry voice. “The first one to attack was me. I knew that Melda wouldn’t fight and I didn’t want her or me to die so I went in hard against the smallest of the boys on the other team who had black hair and cruel black eyes. He had a very strong Aura and for every two attack I hit him with one would miss or be struck aside. He hit me in the mouth and the back of the head with his fists wrapped in Mana so hard I lost teeth and my temple split open...” Ann touched her mouth and head as if she could feel a ghost of pain from the past, then she continued. Her voice even and quick, the pace of her words pulling Brandon along images played in his mind, and his heart hurt at the sense of finality and cool sadness around it all.

“Eventually I managed to serpentine my Mana into the air and slap it around his neck like a vice from behind. The black hair’d Novice fought the noose of black light as my power gripped his windpipe, but there was no escape. I concentrated on knocking him out, and I was so intent on my victory that I didn’t realizes that the other Novice had stopped trying to go after Melda and had turned his eyes on me. The boy had reddish brown hair, and he was larger than me by more then half... ”

Ann shook her head and tightened her grip on herself as if fighting a tremble.

“And yet despite that fact he launched a giant swath of pure deadly Mana at me so sharp and strong....that when it hit Melda as she jumped in the way it completely severed thigh bone and her...her right leg and...it...her stomach just....I....”

Ann’s voice eked to a whispering choke as she closed her gaze and put the heels of her fists to her eyes. “I was so angry. I was so confused. I screamed at her in disbelief and she laughed and told me that she was glad. ‘Im glad Im dying and your not’... thats what she said to me. Of course I don’t really remember what happened after that but I do remember screaming and holding her...and the blood and urine soaking into my clothes as I tried to push parts of her back into herself...”

Brandon shuddered at the ragged desolation and the terrible picture in his mind of Ann standing over her dismembered bloody friend...a sister in everything except blood.

“Ann...Im so...so sorry that they killed your friend...” he called out thickly and mournfully. Wishing there was more he could say.

"Im not sorry because she died, she killed herself!" Ann laughed broken and her voice laced with unshed tears. “Your just a much of a stupid fool as Melda was!” she shouted at him. “A waste of Mana is all that you’ll be! Running around asking to die and acting like that’s supposed to make other people happy!”

Brandon had no warning, no way of verbalizing what was about to happen. One moment he was standing up so he could walk to Ann, He wanted and he could sense how much she needed comfort and to feel another person beside her in her dark moment, but the next second his entire mind and senses were scattered and he felt all of his soul scream out and a snarling roar echoed back to him as he hit the ground...Ezekiel’s voice calling his name.

“Wait! Brandon! Brandon! No! Not again! We’re too vulnerable here!” Ann cried but her voice was swept into the darkness.