Content Warning: body horror / gore (specifically needles)! Please be kind to yourself and skip this story if you don't feel comfortable.

The City of Steel Tides is beautiful. Miles of steel stretch across the plane, shooting upward in stark silver spires that stand higher and higher against the clear white sky. Black streets twist between them like glistening veins of ink, carrying masses of people under a thick blanket of humidity and heat. All of it is built on vibrant gray and red striped earth that was once the open pit of the world's largest iron mine; now, it operates entirely below the surface, an elaborate network of tunnels deep and rich enough to support the city's physical and technological growth.

No city has ever been so connected to the blood of its people. Walk through the streets and your footsteps will start to fall in time with those around you, the shining black streets will rise and ebb beneath you, and if you stay long enough, you can feel your heart itself sync to the city's pulse. It's a powerful feeling, when you realize everyone and everything around you is ready to fight the same battles and bleed from the same veins.

I can always feel it, and I've always loved it.

Stone brushes my cheek and cracks on the wall behind me, drawing startled yelps from the onlookers. I twist upright and stare at the man across from me, who rolls his shoulders, tossing another red rock from hand to hand.

I fling an arm forward; the wires coming from my inner forearm swirl down on the man, but he springs out of the way. Again, the crowd moves back, then pushes in, reforming the tight circle around us. The people who watch these fights are as crazy as the competitors ourselves.

I run a finger over the ridges in my forearm, making sure the wires are still secure. This weapon—three wires in each of my arms—is my pride and will one day be my fame. Called the Flying Candlewick, it's the purest way to extend beyond my body and take up the space around me; if there's anything that makes me feel as alive as the city streets, feel powerful enough to walk them, it's this.

Sapphire throws his second rock. I dodge it just as easily as the first, then retaliate faster, wires shrieking on the floor and leaving fresh black streaks as he rolls to the side. His fingers crack, stiffen, and smash into the floor. Red bits of stone scatter as he digs out a huge chunk. It's an impressive display of control and will, pooling and hardening his blood to the point of breaking stone. It's also far more inefficient than just bringing a weapon in like I have, but that only makes it more stylish, and it gets the crowd screaming.

My eyes dart across the watching faces, all lit with anxiety and excitement and anticipation. They're slipping away from me. Rooting for my downfall. Sound roars, and then it cuts out and I can't breathe.

The embarrassment is sharper than the pain in my ribs. It twists its way through my chest, spreading its thorny vines up my throat. My back presses into the cold stone beneath me, as hard and jagged as the piece that just hit my sternum. My mouth opens in a futile attempt to find air. My eyes squeeze shut as if that could hold back the screams of the crowd.

I have to win them back. I have to.

Rock crumbles somewhere in the sea of noise. I sweep an arm above me, and the wires crash into something heavy, shoving it to the side. A shock impacts the ground near my head.

I open my eyes to the abandoned mine shaft overhead. The tight tunnel seems to suck me toward it, drowning me in stale darkness. I still can't breathe. The roaring grows louder.

I have to win them back.

I smack a hand to the ground and shove myself into a roll before the next rock hits. I skid to my knees, raise my hands, let my wires flare out. Air gasps into my lungs. I focus on the wires, on the way they feel as an extension of my body—they don't have a sense of touch, exactly, but I can sense where they are in space, their movements around me, the composition of my blood inside them.

I clench my teeth, fight every instinct, and heat that blood to boiling.

It doesn't damage the Flying Candlewick—I can't make it near hot enough to melt steel—but panic fills me nonetheless, picking up my heartrate and seizing my lungs as if I needed help not breathing.

Sapphire is bending down to break out more of the floor when I thrust my arms forward. He manages to fling up a stray rock, catching most of the wires in a spray of black droplets, but one slips through and slashes his shoulder. He gasps and claps a hand over the burnt streak.

I take the momentary pause to flare the Flying Candlewick in the air and spin around, grinning at the gray-toned faces surrounding me. "This is what we call a comeback!" I shout at them, and a chorus of unintelligible shouts answers. My chest pulses with pain, but I refuse to react to it, focusing on Sapphire again as he charges straight toward me.

My head swims. I add it to the list of bodily alarm bells I'm ignoring.

Looking murderous, he takes a flying leap at me, fist wound up above him. I lunge out of the way, turn on a dime and lash my wires forward, lacerating across his back. He cries out and clumsily spins toward me.

The Flying Candlewick wraps its burning fingers around Sapphire's head. His scream echoes off the walls—he's the only one screaming now, as the spectators look on in sudden breathless silence. I clench my fists and push forward, feeling the wires slide down further into my veins as their far ends squeeze tighter around Sapphire's head.

My blood runs down his face. Thick, black, sizzling.

Sapphire desperately grabs at the wires, then yanks his hand back from the heat. His wide eyes flick somewhere behind me.

"Sapphire Gem, do you yield?" It's the announcer's voice, magnified through a new technology called a megaphone.

He shakes his fist wildly, an indication of no. Sound crescendos behind me, first surprised murmurs, and then sudden yelps and scuffs. Hands grab my shoulders and something bony drives into the small of my back. Pain flares through my ribs as I twist, trying to free myself. Another set of hands grabs my arm, then tugs the Flying Candlewick out of my veins with a horrifying ripping sensation.

I screech, flailing a foot behind me and impacting something, but by then they've pulled the wires from my other arm too. The crowd is roaring even louder now—I can only make out some of it. "Let them go!" "You can't interfere with the match!"

And then, the magnified voice of the announcer. "Unhand the contestant, or the match is forfeit!"

The grips on me only tighten. Worse, as I twist against them, I recognize some of the faces around me. Other opponents I've beaten. People openly disgusted by my weapon's design. There's no one from Sapphire's team—the Gemstone Circle—but it's plenty clear who set this up.

"Both contestants must be disqualified due to outside interference," the announcer concludes, sounding weary more than outraged. "Looks like Sapphire Gem and Scarlet Gilia will need a rematch, folks!"

The hands let me go and other bodies surge in. I glance around, mind hazy, as fury grows like fire in my chest. There's no way that just happened. Both contestants disqualified, when it's obvious Sapphire cheated? No way. I crane my neck to search for my attackers, but they've dissolved into the crowd.

With my wires. Sudden, wild panic takes over me as I shove into the masses of people. Stealing my victory is one thing, but stealing my weapon is something else entirely.

"Scar!" a high voice calls, nearly buried in the rest of the noise. I see a small person pushing her way over to me. Her petite face is nearly swallowed by a wave of dark hair that flows over her shoulders, but the worried eyes staring through it fill me with immediate relief.

I blink at her. "Tira. They took my wires-"

A large hand plants on my shoulder, and a face smiles in front of me. "That weapon of yours is a stroke of genius," the man says, breath hot on my nose. "This was foul play on the Gems' part, for sure. I'm betting on you for the Tournament. Don't let them rob you again, yeah?"

It takes a second to process the words, before a grin rushes to my face, temporarily pushing the Flying Candlewick to the back of my mind. "I promise I'll beat every member of the Gemstone Circle. I don't care how they try to cheat."

"Scar!" Tira insists from next to me. Her hand closes on my empty, aching forearm.

"Coming, coming." I nod to my fan and follow Tira into a narrow tunnel.

It's quieter in here, and the air is dustier. When I cough, causing my sternum to ignite with pain all over again, Tira holds out a water flask I hadn't noticed her carrying.

"Thanks." I grab it from her and take a few desperate gulps.

"Are you low on blood?"

"Maybe..." I close my eyes, and almost immediately lose my balance, tripping into the wall. Tira grabs my arms and guides me down to sit on the floor with her.

"You're obviously low. One second."

I open my eyes to see her shuffling through her medic's kit, gingerly pulling out a large glass bottle with a sharp metal needle in place of an opening.

I am low; I barely have to concentrate to feel that my body is dangerously empty. "I'm not that low," I say anyway. "Did you see where they took the Flying-"

"Don't even start." She takes a deep breath, lets it out, and pokes the needle into a vein on the inside of her elbow. As we watch, blood fills the bottle. It's impressively fast; anyone can move the blood around in their own body, but it takes real practice to move that blood into foreign objects. The same kind of real practice that makes the Flying Candlewick so impressive. When the bottle is full, the gray color drains from Tira's skin around the needle as she holds her blood back from the opening, pulling the bottle free and holding it out to me.

I take it and look down at my forearm. Like an idiot, I've been letting it bleed. "Fuck," I mumble, focusing on holding my blood back. An embarrassing amount has already trickled through the holes left by the Flying Candlewick, escaping my control and running in black streaks down my arm. I slide the tip of the needle into one of those holes and slowly let my blood flow back to it, reaching up into the metal until it registers as part of my body and I'm able to pull Tira's blood out to join my own. My head almost immediately feels clearer.

"You have to be more-"

"Careful, yeah, duh," I interrupt. I pull the empty bottle free and give it back to her.

She takes it and offers a strip of cloth bandage in exchange.

"Don't patronize me, Tira."

"Don't be an idiot, Scar," she counters, shoving the bandage back in her kit.

"I'm doing what I have to to make it down here," I tell her. "If I can get enough of a following, I can make my whole living in the ring and tell Maris to shove it. And maybe I'll actually get someone to cheer for me." I huff out a laugh.

Tira frowns. "I was cheering for you the entire time. Enough to buy these stupid things back for you." The next item she pulls out is a tangle of steel wires; the sight of them fills me with relief.

I take them eagerly as her words register. I don't know how to explain why her support is different from that of a stranger, so I just mumble, "Thanks," coiling the six wires into a thick ring and slipping it into my pocket.

"You keep them in your pockets, Scar?"

"Where do you want me to put them? Up my ass?"

She snorts, but doesn't look amused. "Those things are bad for you, you know. Training yourself to boil your own blood messes with your head. Not to mention the regular blood loss..."

"I'll be fine," I interrupt. I don't have enough energy to get pissed off.

The rush of the fight has long worn off by the time I enter the factory the next day. I'm having an unusually difficult time controlling my blood, and end up making the thirty-story climb with muscle alone. By the time Maris shows up with his latest way to decrease my quality of life, my energy is at approximately rock bottom. "Scarlet!" he beams. "How's it going?"

"About as efficient as usual," I answer, because that's what he's asking.

"Splendid." He plucks a newly-complete light bulb from my hands and passes it to one of my coworkers, who inches closer to hear the conversation. "I heard you were in one of those fights yesterday. Just wanted to make sure your hobby isn't impacting your ability to work."

Frustration flares in my chest, right alongside the lingering rib pain that Tira told me I'd be dealing with for at least four weeks—up to the start of the Tournament, if she's right. "No impact I'm not willing to deal with," I tell Maris, fighting the urge to share my 'hobby' with him via a punch to the nose.

He laughs. "Right, but I'm the one who gets to make that choice, you know. And I need a little extra help from you today."

I stare at him. The pain in my chest gets a little sharper.

"They're falling behind downstairs. One of my best workers is out on important business—a fellow named Ruby, if you know of him?" He doesn't let me respond, because yes, I know of him, and this is all getting crueller by the second. "He's usually in charge of carrying supplies to the glass blowing stations. If you're strong enough to fight worth a damn in the ring, you're strong enough to carry a few bags of sand. Mind helping out once you're done up here?"

I clench my fists and force out, "Not at all."

"Great." He ruffles my hair and struts away. I swear I can hear him whistling.

"You're a fighter?" someone speaks up—a coworker whose name I've forgotten.

"Yeah, they do that shit all the time," another speaks up before I can answer. "Call themself Scarlet Gilia. They're not one of the big ones or anything, though."

"I'm getting there," I protest. My hand drifts to my pocket.

She snorts. "Sure. Ruby Gem's still gonna kick your ass, if you even get to fight him in the Tournament. And since you tied with Sapphire, I doubt it."

"I almost beat Sapphire. He cheated."

"That's not what I heard."

"Well, he cheated. Everyone knows the Circle are full of it," I insist. "We have a rematch scheduled for tomorrow, if you feel like seeing for yourself." My voice is offhand when I make the offer, but part of me really hopes they'll consider it. Part of me thinks that if they'd just see me fight once, just see what I can do when I'm not being crushed under lightbulb mass-production protocol, they'd love me.

My coworkers turn back to their lightbulb mass-production, and it doesn't look like they're considering it.

It's after noon by the time I make it down to the fourth floor of the spire, where raw materials are stored—the first three floors are reserved for offices, nicer offices, and the gift shop, from top to bottom. The air down here is gritty, even hotter than the stuff outdoors and half as breathable. There's something raw about it; every particle of sand that scratches down my windpipe is a reminder that I'm standing right in the belly of my city's industrial progress, ready to put my hands on its organs.

"Oh good, it's Scarlet Failure," someone sneers.

I squint, making out the face of Amethyst Gem, my next victim in the ring if everything goes well. "That's...that's not clever." I'm not sure how else to respond.

"You're not clever. And you're behind schedule." She thrusts a pointing finger at a stack of metal boxes. "Those are going to the sixth floor. Have at it."

"My supervisor said I was moving sand bags."

She shrugs, teeth baring into a grin. "We did those for you. You don't mind moving tungsten instead?"

I stare at the crates. My sternum aches. "Easy," I tell Amethyst, mirroring her grin.

She blinks, repeats, "Have at it," and disappears into the stairwell.

The problem becomes obvious as soon as I pick up the first box. The weight itself is just barely manageable, but the contents inside slide around, and it's large enough that I can't get my arms around it without jamming one edge into my ribs, right on my injury. I pool my blood in my arms and legs until my brain gets fuzzy from deprivation, and manage to stagger up the first flight of stairs, but every step drives the edge into my chest. By the time I make it up the second flight and a worker shows me where to deposit the box, my ribs are screaming in pain.

The wires in my pocket bounce against my thigh as I hurry back down the stairs. I pull out the Flying Candlewick, rub my thumb over the neat coil. It's tempting—really tempting. It'd make the size of the boxes manageable.

At this point, I have two options: tell Maris to get someone else for the job, or use the tools I have on hand. This wasn't my job to begin with, and one of those options is probably smarter. Tira warned me to take a break; she said I'm losing too much blood too frequently, and maybe even messing with my perception of self.

Amethyst Gem's sneer flashes in my mind.

I'll be quick. I won't lose that much blood.

I grab the end of one wire, line it up with a hole in my forearm that hasn't closed from yesterday, and push it inside. I watch my pale gray skin stretch as the wire travels under the surface, mirroring the burning sensation that crawls its way up to my inner elbow. The next two go in just as smoothly, and then I repeat the process on the other arm.

I don't even have to pick up a box to know that this was a good idea. As my blood flows out into the wires, I feel my awareness flow with it, extending into the space in a raw physical way it doesn't anywhere else. I feel correct. Capable. Powerful. My head spins.

I dig my hands under the next box and wind the wires around it, holding it securely in my arms without touching my chest. Again, I direct my blood to my arms and legs, and without the constant shifting, I make it up the stairs significantly faster. The worker at the top stares openly as the wires slide away from the box, adding a shrill rasp to the hum of machinery.

"I call it the Flying Candlewick," I tell them with a wink.