Sorry Perspicacity, but this was below your standard.

The whole thing seems rushed out the door, more of a touched up first draft, then a multi-drafted work. An unpolished feel would be understandable because it's a contest submission, but this story needs more than a few surface level read-throughs; it needs a focused work-through.
You need to especially deal with emphasis and tone within scenes, setup and context within scenes, and speed throughout. Right now the whole thing is way too breezy, with scenes and events whipping by without any oomph or pause, leaving it all hollow.

The battle between Connor and the Bloody Baron is a great example. It opens with a run-on sentence info dump and telling instead of showing,

moved into a fight scene without any set up or context clues (leaving us with no good reference to where in the great hall it is happening, no reference to for the fighters are interacting with the packed crowd, and no reactions/desperate fleeing of bystanders), and segues from Connor threatening the Bloody Baron to a joke,

in a sentence that fails to feel deadpan.

This scene had good content, and would have been great it you'd given it the proper setup, showed us instead of told us, and gave the events the emotional inflection they need.

The mechanics of the writing show that you know what you are doing, but the story hasn't seen enough work to work as is. Right now this is more than unpolished, this is badly written. And I can't forgive that, no matter how good the the concept and ideas are. (They are great by the way.)

2/5