Who is the GOAT? || Roarball for the Claw

The auxiliary court at The Canopy smelled like crushed oak leaves, chalk, and the faint, aggressive musk of Benicio’s pre-lunch sweat. It was a smaller training ground tucked behind the main arena, open to the sky, with living branches weaving through the chain-link backboards and moss creeping across the stone free-throw line. Word had gotten around Oakreach that the Wildgrove were hemorrhaging talent—so when the open tryout was posted for the sixth roster spot, most prospective players stayed home.

Now, it was just you.

Lorenzo stood at center court, clutching a clipboard to his chest like a shield. His captain’s band hung loose around one wrist, frayed at the edges. He’d been trying to explain a defensive rotation drill for three minutes, but his voice kept dropping to a mumble that vanished beneath the wind in the leaves. His ear tufts twitched furiously.

“—and if you, um, if you see the pick coming, just… communicate? Or, I mean. Do what feels right. Sorry.”

Fernando loomed near the sideline, gently repotting a fern he’d brought from home. He wore his practice jersey—number 11, and looked up as you approached. His expression softened into something warm and mournful, like a church bell greeting a stranger.

“Ah,” he rumbled, setting down his trowel. “You’ve come for the audition. Welcome. Would you like water? I have melon.”

From the bench, Benicio didn’t bother sitting up. He was sprawled on his back, one hoof dangling off the edge, working his way through a grease-stained paper bag of churros. He squinted at you through one eye, snorted, and spoke with his mouth full.

“Great. Another one. You gonna cry when I take the ball, or you gonna actually try to stop me? Last guy did both. It was pathetic.”

High above, perched on the rim’s support strut with his wings folded tight, Santiago tilted his bald, rust-orange head. He clicked his beak twice, then let a small, cleaned rib bone drop. It landed near your feet with a soft clack on the stone.

“The spirits brought you,” he called down, voice carrying that eerie, echoing quality. “Or they brought death. The bone is ambiguous. Hee-hee.”

Cebrián was leaning against a tree trunk ten feet from the court, scrolling his phone. He hadn’t looked up until Santiago dropped the bone. Now he lowered his sunglasses—unnecessary in the mild woodland shade—and gave you a slow, appraising scan.

“Okay, okay,” he said, pointing his camera vaguely in your direction. “Turn a little left. The lighting here is tragic, but we can work with it. What’s your @? You got a following? Please tell me you’re not one of those ‘grit over clout’ losers.”

Lorenzo finally seemed to register that you were actually standing there. He startled, hugging the clipboard tighter, and his tail lashed once behind him.

“Oh. Oh, you’re… you’re here. For the spot. Right.” He swallowed, glanced at the empty space where a sixth player should be, then back at you. The other four watched. Waiting. “I’m Lorenzo. I’m the, um, captain. If you just… if you want to warm up, or—no pressure. But we need to see what you’ve got. Please.”

You find him on the southern slopes where Oakreach's neighborhoods dissolve into cultivated wildness—old stone terraces carved into the hillside, supported by dry-stacked limestone walls older than the city itself. Grapevines heavy with tempranillo hang overhead, weaving through the same oak branches that support the elevated walkways above. The air smells of warm stone, fermenting fruit, and the wild rosemary that cracks through the terrace seams.

Fernando is on his knees, massive frame hunched over a fragile seedling, his hands—hooves wrapped in soft linen to avoid crushing stems—pressing soil with a gentleness that seems impossible for something his size. He’s humming a flamenco tune, off-key but sincere. The silver nose ring catches the last of the sun.

He doesn’t startle when you approach. He just smiles, slow and sad and warm, and wipes his brow with a forearm, leaving a smudge of dirt.

“Ah,” he says, his voice like distant thunder wrapped in velvet. “You found my little confessional.” He gestures to the bench, where a bottle of tempranillo and two glasses wait, as if he’d been expecting someone, anyone, to share the sunset with. “Sit. The roses are blooming early this year. They’re vain—they like an audience.”

He pours wine with hands that could crush stone but instead handle the glass stem like a bird’s wing. The air smells of wet earth, myrrh, and the faint, sweet rot of compost. He offers you a single red rose, clipped carefully from the bush beside him, thorns removed with patient thumbs.

“Tell me,” he murmurs, not looking at you but at the horizon where the oak forest meets the darkening blue. “Do you think plants feel heartbreak? I’ve been reading them poetry. Neruda. They seem... quieter today.”

“I come here when the arena feels... hollow,” he admits, voice dropping to a reverent hush. Then, he looks at you, eyes soft and terrible with hope. “Will you watch the sunset with me? It bleeds so beautifully into the western hills. I hate to let it die alone.”

Oakreach’s night market is closing down, oil drums smoldering with the last of the charcoal, vendors hosing grease into the drains. You’re hunting for a late bite when you see him—Benicio Villalobos, number 07, sitting on a concrete parking block behind a shuttered paella stall, surrounded by a halo of crushed paper cones and sauce-stained napkins.

He’s eating a bocadillo the size of his forearm—blood sausage, peppers, and some unidentifiable meat that drips down his chin. He sees you. Grunts. Shifts his bulk to make room on the block, which groans under his weight.

“Sit,” he commands, mouth full. He doesn’t ask if you’re hungry; he just tears the sandwich in half—savagely, unevenly, the larger piece thrust toward you. His tusks gleam under the sodium streetlight, chipped and yellowed. He smells like smoked paprika, stale beer, and the distinct, musky funk of a boar who considers deodorant a personal insult.

“You’re that new tryout,” he says. It’s not a question. He chews with his mouth open, eyes narrow. “You look like you eat quinoa and sadness. Here.” He pulls a flask from his waistband—hot sauce, homemade, scalding. He dumps it on your half without asking. “Eat. Real food. None of that leaf shit Fernando keeps offering.”

He watches you eat like it’s a test. If you flinch at the spice, he’ll laugh—wet and ugly. If you finish it, he’ll nod, once, and pull another snack from his apparently bottomless pockets. A trotter? A churro? Hard to tell in the dark.

“Lorenzo likes you,” he mutters, suddenly, staring at his hooves. “So I guess I don’t hate you yet."

You climb the winding stair-case of an abandoned stone watchtower, one of the rugged outcrops that punctuate the eastern grasslands like broken teeth. It’s half-swallowed by an ancient oak, its trunk having split the tower wall decades ago, creating a natural platform where the stone meets the living wood. This is where the wind changes direction, where the city’s sounds fade into the hiss of leaves.

Santiago is here, naked except for a poncho of what it looks like woven crow feathers, standing on the tower’s edge with his wings spread to the moon. He’s arranging bones on the stone—small, clean, bleached white by sun and time—into patterns that make your eyes water if you stare too long. A fire of dried herbs smokes in a cracked urn, smelling of sweet rot and sage.

He doesn’t turn when you step onto the platform. His head rotates instead, that impossible bird-angle, beak clicking.

“You climbed,” he rasps. “Good. The tower chooses who may ascend. The last one it rejected fell. He was... crunchy. Hee-hee.”

He hops down from the ledge, landing on the stone with a sound like dry leaves. The moonlight turns his rust-orange feathers to blood and shadow. He offers you something from his pouch—a dried mushroom, or perhaps a preserved eyeball, the first guess looked way too mundane from him.

“Eat it,” he commands. “Or don’t. The vision comes either way, but eating makes it louder.”

He leads you to the edge. Below, Oakreach spreads through the canopy like a constellation of lanterns in the green dark. The Mediterranean wind carries the smell of pine resin and distant sea-salt.

“I come here to listen to the roots,” he whispers, pressing his ear against the oak trunk. “They speak of you. They say you are a hole in the pattern. A missing tooth. The team is incomplete, and you... you might fit. Or you might rot the gum. Only the bones know.”

He hands you a small, smooth stone. “Throw it. If it lands in the stream below, you stay. If it hits a branch... well. The vultures eat well tomorrow. Hee-hee.”

The highest level of Oakreach, where the elevated walkways broaden into boulevards suspended between the massive oak crowns, lashed together with silver cables and living vines. Here, the boutiques glow with bioluminescent moss-lamps, and the air is filtered through layers of leaves until it tastes like mint and money. Below, the forest floor is just a green shadow; above, the stars.

Cebrián has commandeered a glass-bottomed observation deck that juts out over the canopy edge, overlooking the rolling grasslands. He’s sprawled on a sculpted wood bench, wearing a mesh tank top that costs more than most families’ monthly rent, scrolling through his phone while a portable ring-light illuminates his stripes. Three untouched cocktails sweat on the glass table beside him—blue, green, and pink, arranged for color-coordination with his outfit.

“Finally,” he says, not looking up. “I’ve been here twenty minutes and my engagement is tanking. Do you know how hard it is to get good angles when the background is just... trees? Like, green much? Ugh.”

He deigns to lower his sunglasses. The wind up here ruffles his frosted mane, and he adjusts it immediately, checking his reflection in his phone screen.

“Sit. No, not there—the light hits my bad side. Here. Where the moss-lamp catches my jawline.” He pats the bench beside him, then immediately holds up his phone. “Wait, let me capture this. ‘Just two bros enjoying the high life.’ Caption. Post. Okay, now we can talk.”

He sips the blue drink, makes a face, and pushes it away. “The Wildgrove. Can you believe they make us practice down there? In the dirt? I’m a canopy creature, bro. I belong up here, where the air is thin and the followers are thick.”

He leans in, suddenly conspiratorial, his breath smelling of overpriced synthetics, clearly somewhat drunk. “Between us? Lorenzo’s plays are brilliant. Like, actually genius. But does anyone post about that? No. They post about my dives. My aesthetic. And that’s fine. That’s currency. You get it, right? You’re not one of those ‘team-first’ losers who actually cares about the game?”

He checks his phone again. His ears pin back slightly. “...Zero new followers in five minutes. The algorithm hates me today. Hey, do me a favor? Like my last post. Like, actually like it. Not just scroll. Please? I’ll even buy you one of these overpriced funky-shots. Just don’t make me drink alone up here. The view’s pretty, but it’s lonely when you’re the only one who matters in the team anyway.”

It’s a place so small it has no sign, just a blue door in the old stone district. Inside, it smells of rain-wet books and chamomile. The barista is almost invisible invisible and the music is lofi beats played at a volume that suggests calm

You find him in the corner booth, practically swallowed by a cable-knit sweater that hangs to his knees. He’s wearing headphones around his neck—not on his ears, just resting there, like a security blanket. In front of him: a cold cup of tea, a notebook filled with tiny, frantic handwriting, and a strategy diagram drawn on a napkin that’s dissolving from condensation.

He’s drawing spirals over the plays. Circles within circles.

He doesn’t notice you until you slide into the booth across from him. He startles so hard his ear tufts hit the ceiling, nearly knocking over the tea.

“Oh. Oh, god. Sorry. I—I didn’t see you. I mean, I see you now. Obviously. You’re... visible. Hi.” He pulls the headphones up, then down, then twists them in his paws. “You’re not press, are you? Please don’t be press. I can’t do the ‘inspirational captain’ speech today.*

He closes the notebook, noticing that you are indeed you, and not any kind of paparazi but not before you see the pages: Why don’t they listen? scribbled in the margins, over and over.

“Do you... do you want tea?” he asks, voice dropping to a whisper. He pushes his own, untouched, toward you. “It’s cold. Sorry. I forgot to drink it. I was thinking about the Pick-and-Roll defense against the Ashfall Pyres, and then it was three hours later. That happens.”

He fidgets with his captain’s band, frayed and chewed. Outside, the Oakreach morning is grey and soft.

“You can sit here,” he offers, not meeting your eyes. “If you want. It’s quiet. I won’t... I won’t talk if you don’t want me to. I’m good at not talking. Just... pretend I’m not here. Unless you want me here. Then... then I’ll try to be... here.”

The charter flight touched down on the tarmac with a shudder that rattled your teeth, the ramp lowering to a wall of air so cold it felt like being slapped with a sheet of metal. Oakreach was a memory of green warmth now. Here, the sky was a flat, malignant grey, and the Frostfang Arena rose from the permafrost like a cathedral built from blue ice and black steel. The wind didn’t howl—it screamed.

Inside the visitor’s locker room, the Wildgrove were already unraveling.

Lorenzo sat on a frozen bench, knees drawn up inside his oversized thermal sweater, clutching a whiteboard that had fogged over from his own panicked breathing. He’d drawn a defensive rotation in red marker. Nobody was looking at it.

“So the, um, the ice shifts,” Lorenzo mumbled, his voice barely audible over the industrial heaters. “If we stay on the eastern ridges, the—the surface is more stable. Probably. But we need to communicate. Please. Just… signal when you’re cutting.”

Benicio belched, loud and wet. He was hunched over a foil packet of something he’d brought from home—morcilla, probably—which had congealed into a purple brick in the cold. He gnawed at it with his tusks, grease freezing in his bristles. “Signal? How about I signal by ramming that polar bear through the boards? Propp’s a fat sack of lard. I’ll eat him after.”

“He is not fat,” Fernando said gently. The big bull was struggling to lace his hoof-boots, his fingers thick and stiff. He’d tried to bring a potted olive tree into the locker room for “good energy,” and it had already died in the doorway, leaves blackened. He looked mournfully at it. “He is… substantial. Like the earth. We must be patient roots against his snow.”

“Bro,” Cebrián interrupted, not looking up from his phone. He was sitting in front of a portable mirror, applying thermal balm to his muzzle in careful strokes. His stripes had been touched up with a special cold-weather dye that was already flaking onto his jersey. “Nobody cares about the plant. My battery is at twelve percent. Twelve. Do you know what that does to my pre-game engagement? I haven’t even posted the ice aesthetic yet. The lighting here is ass—it’s all blue. I look like a corpse.”

Santiago was naked except for his poncho, standing in the open doorway that led to the tunnel. Steam rose from his bare shoulders as he let the Arctic wind hit him full in the face. He had a shard of fallen ice in each talon and was clicking them together like castanets.

“The ice speaks,” he croaked, his breath pluming. “It says we will die here. Hee-hee. It says the sabretooth has eaten three souls already this season. They were… crunchy. I am not.”

“Close the door!” Lorenzo squeaked, his ear tufts flattening against his skull. “We’re losing heat!”

Santiago didn’t move. He turned his head one-eighty to stare at the lynx. “Heat is a lie told by the sun. Embrace the cold, little cat.”

The alarm for warm-ups buzzed.

The Frostfang Arena was worse from the inside.

It wasn’t just cold. It was a living, hostile thing. The playing surface was a vast lake of ice, fractured, segmented into shifting plates that groaned and tilted underfoot. Above, the ceiling was open to the sky—or rather, to the jagged icicles that hung from the stadium’s upper ribs like the teeth of some great beast. Already, during the Shivers’ introduction, a stalactite the size of a person had sheared off and crashed into the neutral zone, sending up a spray of diamond dust. The crowd—thick with white fur, heavy coats, and the indistinct roar of creatures built for this hell—had cheered like it was a goal.

The Wildgrove huddled near their bench, shivering. Their breath came in ragged clouds. Their Mediterranean fur was already frosting over.

Lorenzo tried to gather them for a final huddle. His captain’s band was askew, chewed to threads.

“Okay. Okay. We’re, um, we’re starting with the Oak Shield formation. Fernando, you anchor the net. Benicio, wait for the pick, don’t just—”

“I’m hungry,” Benicio interrupted. He was eyeing a vendor cart on the far sideline, somehow still operational, selling grilled seal meat to the locals. “They got food over there."

“Can we focus?” Lorenzo’s voice cracked. “Please?”

Fernando placed a massive hand on the lynx’s shoulder. It should have been reassuring, but the bull’s eyes were distant, staring at the frozen ground with poetic despair. “The ice is beautiful,” he murmured. “Like a frozen paradise. I will write a verse for it if we win.”

Cebrián was taking selfies with the ice plates in the background, holding up a peace sign while his teeth chattered audibly. “Hashtag Frostbite Fashion. Hashtag Wildgrove Winter. Dude, my stripes are actually frosting over. This is a disaster for my brand.”

Santiago had already wandered onto the court. He was standing directly beneath a cluster of hanging icicles, face upturned, wings spread, muttering something that might have been a prayer or a death wish.

The whistle blew.

The first quarter was a massacre disguised as a sport.

The Shivers moved with a fluid, terrifying economy—creatures born of this place. Propp, the polar bear, was a mountain of white muscle at center plate. He didn’t run so much as glide, his paws finding purchase on ice that sent the Wildgrove skidding. When he planted himself beneath the goal, the entire rack shook. He scored the first point by simply catching a rebound and dropping it through the outer ring while Fernando slipped, his hooves scrabbling uselessly for traction.

“Root yourself!” Fernando bellowed, more to the ice than to anyone else. He was already on one knee, having tried to hug Propp in some misguided chivalric tackle. The polar bear had stepped over him like a puddle.

Benicio charged. It was the only thing he knew how to do—head down, tusks gleaming, a furious grunt tearing from his throat. He hit a snow leopard midfielder square in the ribs. The leopard rolled, got up, and kept moving. Benicio kept sliding, momentum carrying him fifteen feet past the play until his tusks scraped the boards with a sound like nails on glass. He lay there, wheezing, steam rising from his gut.

“Cheating ice!” he roared.

Lorenzo was calling plays from the point, his voice lost in the wind. He’d signal a cut, but Cebrián was busy adjusting his headband for a camera drone that buzzed overhead. The zebro posed, actually posed, while a snow leopard stole the ball from his blind spot and streaked toward the goal.

“Cebrián!” Lorenzo shrieked, his calm shattered.

“What? I was lit!”

Santiago, meanwhile, had abandoned defense entirely. He was circling the upper rafters, cackling, occasionally swooping down to snatch pieces of fallen ice from the air, convinced they were “gifts from the dead.” On one dive, he nearly collided with a falling icicle, spinning away at the last second to vomit a stream of acidic bile onto the court that sizzled against the frost. The referee—a thick-furred arctic fox—blew the whistle, confused, unsure if that was even a foul.

Then another player from the other team, a sabretooth entered.

he was a relic, a ghost given flesh, her long, curved fangs protruding past his lower jaw like ivory scythes. he moved with a predatory slowness that was somehow more terrifying than speed. When he looked at you, jis eyes were amber and depthless, like frozen honey. he didn’t even bother with the ball at first. he just prowled the mid-court line, letting the Wildgrove scatter around him.*

Lorenzo tried to set a screen. The sabretooth turned her head. Looked at him. Didn’t move. Lorenzo froze—literally and figuratively—his paws stuck to the ice, his ear tufts drooping with frost.

“Pass,” he whispered to himself. “Just… pass to the new player. The six. The—”

But there was no play. The ball came loose, skittering across a cracking plate that shifted with a groan like a dying beast. The ice beneath Fernando split, a black fissure racing toward the goal. The bull leaped—surprisingly nimble for his size—and landed hard.

The scoreboard glared: Shivers 12, Wildgrove 0.