Forcing down tears as his back screamed its agony, Crow planted his hands and began pushing himself up. He succeeded only in raising himself a foot or two when a white, radiant blur ripped through the air next to him some three paces above. Faroah.

As close to the ground as he was, the boy didn’t seem nearly so inconvenienced by the storm’s breath. Crow watched helplessly as his wings carried him closer to the ground, mathematically steady, and towards the sphere. His time dilation showed him everything, slowing the world enough for him to pick out details at his leisure.

The moment Faroah, now only a pace above the jagged floor, lined up with the dropped sphere, he quite precisely lowered both of his hands and scooped it up before accelerating off once more. Crow got to his feet just in time to see the boy’s shape begin to shrink as it rose above the ground.

Fuck.

***

All Unity had needed to do was land a direct hit with his magic. If he could grab Bim’s body and target it with the full brunt of his power, it would all be over. He could boil away half his blood and leave him exsanguinated and helpless, or simply twist one of the arms he loved to use on that magic stick of his until it was nothing but a spiral of splintered bone and malformed viscera.

He had failed to do any such thing. The moment he’d gotten dangerously close, his target had taken a wild swing, clipped his shoulder by good fortune alone and had time to recover in the span it took Unity to climb back to his feet after being sent spinning to his knees.

Perfect though his distraction had been, Unity, among the greatest prodigies of chance magic ever recorded, was robbed of his victory by bad luck. It was the sort of poetry that made him want to find the poet in question and stab him in the fucking eye.

He hadn’t gotten the chance to do that either, though. The moment he’d stood, Bim had caught another gale and redirected it upwards once more, adding his own magic to the natural wind and putting all of their combined power into hurling Unity as violently and vertically as he could.

He landed hard, staring upwards and wondering for a moment how he could see stars in such an unclear and obfuscated sky. It took those stars fading as his head cleared some for him to realise.

Mirandis was a cruel bitch, and gravity was one of the many ways she had to punish humanity for daring to civilise her.

“You know,” the boy said as he strolled after him, “I used to think you were amazing. Unity Eden, the artificial. Unity Eden, the child of the Faction Founders. Unity Eden, the living proof that love can conquer all, even nature.”

Perhaps it was the way they were barely audible over the wind, as if Bim had no idea how background noise worked. Perhaps it was the fact that they simply showed his enemy was secure enough in victory to give him a lecture. Perhaps it was the fact that they brought up the two greatest people who’d ever lived, Unity really wasn’t sure what it was. Something about the boy’s words set a lake of emotion inside him boiling.

He began to sit up, pin-pricks of agony flaring up across and within his entire abdomen as he did so. Bim just continued walking, now only seven or eight paces away, apparently no more fearful of his life than a cat around a mouse.

Good.

***

Three steps taken, six steps moved, and Amelia was upon her once more. Smile back in place, fists flying so fast as to blur in Astra’s vision. They were landing blows, specialised for speed in place of power. They had no right to be as heavy as they were.

Astra backed away as she blocked, straining each of the muscles in her abdomen to stop herself from being spun around with every impact. She found herself gritting teeth with the effort of remaining upright at the barrage, and yet even that was nothing compared to her mental exertion.

Opening gates was hard. Opening gates with dwindling magic reserves while one’s arms were racked with pain was, apparently, more so. By the time Astra had prepared her ability, she’d lost feeling in everything beneath her left elbow. The sensations in her right made her wish the numbness was less localised.

Her pain seemed to be no deterrent to Amelia, however, and the girl continued striking. Left, right, left, right. She rang out a rhythmic beat against Astra’s body, driving her further and further backwards with every blow. It felt as though there was a great pressure building between them. Like each strike added to some weight against Astra, adding stones by the moment.

It didn’t matter how well she blocked, eventually her arms would break down, and without the ability to punch, grab or guard, Astra would lose.

The realisation chilled her in a most curious way. Seeming to calm the hot panic she hadn’t even noticed building behind her eyes, filling her with a simple understanding of exactly what she had to do.

Astra twisted her face in pain, finding it abundantly easy to sell the expression with her genuine agony. Relaxing her left arm, and against all her screaming instincts, she let it drop down limply in front of her, giving it the appearance of a battered and useless limb. More importantly, giving it the appearance of a gap in her defence.

As she saw Amelia begin to draw her arm back, Astra had to suppress a grin. She began to concentrate on the space between them, preparing to open a gate to catch the right hook, the most logical way of attacking the opening she’d left.

But then it all went wrong.

Amelia’s body shifted far too quickly, and Astra realised that the space behind her was contracting just as she’d seen earlier. The girl’s arm was outstretched behind her impossibly quickly, and a moment later it was barrelling forwards, fist clenched and muscles tightened like knots.

The blow landed on Astra’s ribcage, completely unguarded and with every ounce of Amelia’s strength. Sound faded from the world as it dimmed, and Astra felt a terrible sensation inside her. A momentary strain, followed by a sudden lurch as something was snapped out of place. The feeling of something breaking within.

She gasped and exhaled, the breath leaving her amid a cloud of specked blood. A sense of weightlessness overcame her as she was lifted from the ground and thrown upwards even as she flew back.

Amelia vanished to nothing more than an outline, and the deafening silence left by the absence of Astra’s hearing was replaced by the pounding of her heart, and yet something drew her focus still. Something pulled her attention from the state of her body, the pain in her side, the hopelessness of her battle against someone with a power she couldn’t begin to understand and more strength than she’d ever had.

It wasn’t until she was already halfway towards the cold, hard ground that she realised what it was. Her gate was still prepared.

Astra forced her scattered thoughts together and turned them on the spot still seared into her mind, feeling her magic crackle about it and forming yet another ovular gate. Staring back, she could make out enough of her faded vision to see Amelia’s arm disappear through the magical construct.

It was smaller than the others, at most half a metre above and half as wide, certainly not large enough for a person to step through. But a person didn’t need to step through.

Pulling at the gate with her mind, Astra felt it close around Amelia’s bicep. She’d first tried the trick on a stick some years back, wondering whether she could use her gates offensively to bisect her enemies. It turned out she couldn’t, but nonetheless the experience had taught her something very important.

She smiled as her head crashed into the stone ground, heavy raindrops breaking against her face as she lay temporarily immobilised by the injury her enemy had inflicted. Astra’s trap had worked.

After a few moments, she rolled onto her stomach and climbed to her feet. She could feel the tugging in her mind, the sensation of her magic straining against something, and it told her everything she needed to know. Nonetheless, Astra felt the need to turn and confirm the sight with her own eyes.

Amelia’s smile remained, though it was tainted now by confusion and surprise. The girl’s arm remained stuck in the gate, which had now shrank so that its edges were pressing into her bicep.

Feeling her injured side to ensure she could safely move, Astra spared half a heartbeat to bask in hope for what felt like the first time in years, then hurried forward to make the most of her opportunity.

***

Crow stared up as Faroah trembled in the air, the boy’s muscles and magic fighting with every ounce of their power to keep him steady against the might of the air currents assailing him. He stared down at him as he fought, desperation and frustration visible barely on his face through the dozen metres of rain-logged air separating them.

The higher he flew, the stronger the winds, the more exhausting it would be for him to avoid being tossed around and cast against the rocks. However, if he stooped too close to the ground to avoid the gale, he ran the risk of being near enough for Crow to catch by leaping. To avoid either scenario, he was forced to spend every ounce of his strength fighting at the middle-point, where his physical enhancement was just barely even with the strength of the currents caught by his wings.

Ordinarily, this would have been a Godsend. An enemy who’d exhaust his own strength and pass out without Crow having to lift a finger would’ve been a wondrous change.

Now, though, he was on a time limit. And Faroah still had a tight grip on the sphere in spite of everything else. Every moment passed gave him more team points, bringing the task closer to its close and bringing Crow closer to defeat. And further from his duty.

He curled his hands into fists, fingernails digging painfully into his palms, and charged one last time.

***

“Do you have any idea how many people believe you’re a decent person? Even after all you’ve done, after all the dozens of accounts of you being twisted, sick bastard, there are still millions who live their lives convinced that you really are the Eden child.”

Spittle flew from Bim’s lips as he spat out his words, voice dripping with hate just as his face dripped with rain.

By Unity’s estimate, he was just a step from being close enough for his magic to be worth the reserves required to use it.

“I really don’t get that either,” he shot back at the boy, hoping to distract him with words where his actions failed. “I don’t exactly try to hide it. If you want to blame anyone, try the Alliance’s propagandists.”

Bim sneered, the hate in his eyes seeming to grow even further.

“Oh of course, the people of the Factions your parents dedicated their lives to establishing, and gave their lives to protect.”

Unity felt a spark of anger at that, speaking before he could stop himself.

“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.”

Apparently sensing weakness, Bim took a step forward as he spoke, hateful sneer widening into an almost maddened grin.

“Oh I understand plenty, Eden.”

The name spilled from his lips like poisonous sludge. Slow, with both syllables picked over as if with individual disgust.

“I understand that, great as they were, the Faction Founders made only a single mistake, or at least only a single great one. They thought that they could be the first to make a perfect artificial, and left the world a broken, disgusting, defective heir.”

A great pressure built in Unity’s throat, and the space between himself and Bim seemed to shrink. It was not until he noticed the wind having changed direction to batter his face that he realised he was charging forward. And it took his vocal cords beginning to ache in protest to let him know that he was screaming.

How curious.

Bim took a surprised step back, waving his staff at Unity to ward off the charge. It was a purely frontal one, and some deep, logical part of Unity knew that it shouldn’t have had a chance of ending in anything other than another brief flight. There was nothing logical about it, though. That irrational, sudden violence, spurred on by a rage so hot and instantaneous that Unity himself didn’t know where it came from, seemed to unnerve the boy enough that his swing went wide.

As the staff swatted the air above Unity’s head, so too did his conjured wind miss by the same measure.

Before the boy had the chance to recover and try again, Unity was upon him. His right fist crunched into his nose, his left hand gripped a handful of hair and pulled with all of his strength. The stick pressed into his chest length-ways, Bim apparently meant to use it to force Unity off him. It didn’t work, he hadn’t the leverage for it.

A moment later Bim took one hand off his staff, bringing it up to pry Unity’s fingers away from his hair. The sudden lack of pressure behind the shaft of wood allowed Unity to move forwards, pulling himself and Bim close together using the boy’s locks as a handhold. He hadn’t known what his plan was, he hadn’t known if he even had one. All he wanted to do was hurt the wind-user as much as he possibly could.

When he found his face just inches from the taller boy’s shoulder, he found himself biting into it with all of his might.

***

Astra stumbled the first three steps, more falling horizontally than walking. By the fourth, the pain in her ribs had begun to subside, or she’d gotten used to it, and she was able to straighten her torso fully. After her sixth step she tried a sprint, and cleared the remaining four paces with strides.

When she reached Amelia, the girl was still struggling to pry her arm free of the gate. Astra could feel the strength going into the effort, allowing herself to be silently awed by it.

As a construct of her own magic, to try and force the gate’s sides apart was to struggle against her power, drawing in two thirds as much potency as she placed into her strength.

Ordinarily the gates would close on their own, and it was only Astra’s focus which held them open. Now, however, she turned that power to closing it, doubling the force with which it tried to disappear and turning it from a collapsing creation to a nigh-inescapable trap.

Amelia wasn’t more than twice as strong as Astra, if she had been even a vice such as that would have failed to hold her, but it was terrifying how close the girl came to that level. If Astra allowed her concentration to slip for a few heartbeats, to let up the pressure on the gate and leave only its natural implosive force to hold her enemy, she had no doubt the black-eyed mystic would force herself out in moments.

For now, however, she was stuck. And Astra had reached her.

She circled around the ovular prison, then circled more before stopping behind Amelia. She could see the girl’s struggles grow fiercer upon losing sight of her enemy, flakes of stone being ripped and flung free of the ground as she dug her feet in to pull harder. The pressure in Astra’s mind grew, yet she still held strong.

After a few moments, Astra leapt forwards and lashed out a left crescent kick. Her foot landed solidly on Amelia’s ribs, as near to the spot she’d struck on Astra’s as she was able to manage. The girl shifted, her body folding slightly at the hit. Folding where it should have dropped like a sack of gravel.

Banishing her doubt, Astra whipped around with a second strike, this time a right roundhouse kick. It landed just as solidly as the first, cracking against her target’s head and sending it rocking to one side. This time Astra didn’t pause to see its effects, instead readjusting her footing and throwing a front kick to the back.

She struck Amelia time and time again, losing count of the attacks as she went. With immense satisfaction, Astra noted that her strikes were dispersing the rain just as Amelia’s had, if not so violently, and she found herself grinning as she fought.

Her role had been to buy time, based on the assumption that Amelia would be too powerful for even her. She wasn’t doing that, though, she was winning.

As Astra’s blows continued to land, she found herself acutely aware of the passing of time. The longer she continued forcing her gates closed, the more she drained from her reserve. The magical constructs were simple things, made to be opened one moment and stepped through the next.

Sustaining the magical pressure she currently was, even if it was to close rather than sustain, was draining her reserve faster than she’d expected. It didn’t take long for Astra to find a solution.

She began moving around Amelia as she struck, first by inches, then by hands. Soon she was able to stare into the girl’s eyes as she attacked, her blows guarded or parried multiple times yet hardly catching her focus. Even Amelia’s attempts to grab her ankles seemed muted somehow, of secondary note. Staring at the girl’s face, all the confidence and surety Astra had built up over the course of the fight drained from her, replaced by a deep and nerve-wracking horror.

Even after taking so many direct strikes from an opponent whose strength was not so far removed from her own, Amelia smiled that innocent, childish smile.

The tugging on Astra’s reserves became more apparent to her, either through their diminishment or her enemy’s redoubled efforts to escape. From her current angle, she could see the black-eyed girl’s arm shifting free of the gate one millimetre at a time, and though she’d already given herself a time limit, the visual reinforcement kicked her back into motion.

Astra finished sidestepping, finding her view of Amelia’s face now partially obscured by the light of her gate. Sighing and steadying her nerves, she took a new stance, crouched low with her right foot directly in front of the left, and released the ability.

Her relief at suddenly finding the strain on her magic reserves gone was almost enough to balance the shock at how quickly Amelia rushed forwards upon being freed. The girl stumbled back as her arm was released without warning, and apparently seeing no cause to hesitate she threw the same limb forwards in a strike aimed at Astra’s face.

It was exactly what Astra had been hoping for.

She’d known Amelia would stumble back upon her abrupt release, and she knew it was in the girl’s nature to attack quickly when she saw fit to attack at all.

From such a position, the only way to attack quickly was to use the arm already cocked back and turn the body’s straightening motions into a strike all at once. As the girl’s fist closed in like a roundshot, Astra stared and waited for the right timing, then ducked down.

With her unusual stance, it was a simple matter to turn her body around by bringing her left leg to the opposite side as her right. The wind on the side of her head let her know when Amelia’s fist was within range, and reaching up behind herself, Astra grabbed it with both of her hands.

The moment Amelia’s forearm had moved over her, just inches from her head, she pulled down, trapping the arm against her shoulder and hoisting its owner through the air. Amelia’s momentum was combined with the might of Astra’s entire upper body as it hurled her to the ground, then slammed her face-first into the stone.

A dent appeared in the rock, sending Amelia sinking into it at least a handspan as jagged cracks clawed out from the point of contact like it was a spider web. It seemed almost comical for a moment, seeing the girl’s body protruding from the ground neck-up while her head remained partially buried. It was like she was a plant.

Then the fear struck. All of the power behind that perfectly executed shoulder-throw had been delivered without her getting the chance to even slightly break the fall, and by the looks of things every kilogram of it had been administered to the head and neck.

She’d killed her.

***

Crow leapt again, his legs screaming as the muscles within them threatened to break down. He landed moments later, having fallen a half-dozen or more paces. Yet not even half way as high as Faroah.

The boy’s hovering was uneven and unstable at best, yet from the few glances Crow was able to glean of his face he seemed far less anxious than he had been. He couldn’t begrudge him for the self-assurance. In his hands was the key to victory, an item which brought his team closer to winning by the moment. Something Crow had seized only for a brief time, and even then from fortune alone.

A lightning strike had been necessary to make Faroah lose his grip before, and unless the Teary Eyed God saw fit to send another arcing directly next to the boy, Crow had lost his chance at victory.

But that was unacceptable, and so he crouched down, tightened every muscle in his legs, and leapt once more.

***

A shrill noise cut through the air, audible over even the thunder and rain, and Unity tasted hot iron in his mouth. He felt his teeth stop as gristle and muscle strained against their force, and with nothing to do but force them in deeper he began jerking his head from side to side so that he might tear them where he failed to slice.

The noise intensified, and Unity realised it was Bim screaming. Something wrapped around his neck on both sides, tightening until it squeezed his blood vessels shut. Hands, he realised. Bim was strangling him. He’d likely lose consciousness within ten seconds. Dully, Unity found himself surprised to learn that he truly didn’t care. All he wanted was to continue causing as much pain to the man whose flesh was between his teeth as he could.

Something shifted in Unity’s mouth, like a wire under tension snapping and shooting back. A moment later the taste of iron in his mouth increased, and something hot splashed across his face, temporarily warming the skin before being washed clear by the rain.

One of the hands left Unity’s neck, and Bim’s screams, which he had almost begun to drown out in their repetition, reached a new height. The world began to darken to him, the colour leaking free like dye in prematurely washed clothing, and a great pounding appeared in his ears.

Five seconds, perhaps.

Unity pressed his hands against Bim and pushed out, leaning back with his torso and neck as he did so and straining every muscle in his upper body to pull himself free. He felt the strands of meat between his teeth protest for a moment, then snap as the force proved too much for their already ruined fibres to bear.

The second hand fell from his neck, and he stumbled back as, suddenly, there was nothing locking him in place. Unity staggered for several steps before losing his footing and falling, his head striking the rock beneath him with all the weight brought to it by his magic.

The moment he regained control of his momentum, he leapt to his feet. Hurriedly rushing back towards Bim, eager to do more to the bastard before his task ended. The boy was in poor condition, kneeling down with his left arm hanging limply at his side while the right hovered impotently around a bloody mess just beneath his left shoulder.

A small crater was visible in the flesh, or perhaps ravine would have been a more apt comparison. It was some inches wide and high, and seemed roughly as deep, with a hand-wide stream of crimson running directly down from it and pooling beneath the boy's feet, gathering faster even than the downpour could wash it away.

The wretch raised his head to stare at Unity as he came near, and his eyes widened.

What was that? Fear? Horror? Disgust? All, no doubt. All and more. What else could be expected from one who gazed upon something as wretched as the Eden child charging at them. A failed artificial. Defective. Twisted. Monstrous.

Unity’s rage cooled, then chilled. Then froze. As the molten fury solidified in its casting, it took shape as rigid, crystalised hatred. Clear and rational.

The aim was to hurt the boy, to destroy him. That hadn’t changed, but with his calmer perspective Unity realised his mistake. He’d been working towards it so inefficiently with his outburst.

As he reached Bim, he dragged more magic from his reserves and poured it through his arms, projecting it as arcane, crimson tongues of electricity and letting them crackle about his fingertips in their hunger and eagerness.

***

Astra stared at the broken form of Amelia, waiting for a rush of whatever emotion was to come. Horror. Disgust. Regret. Self loathing. There were a dozen she could have found herself overwhelmed by, fallen into and wrapped around herself. A hundred, even.

Instead there was nothing but the empty numbness of silently knowing what she’d done.

Taking a step towards the girl, she found herself raising a hand, as if she could bring her back with a gesture. Astra really wasn’t sure what she was going to do, and before she found out, everything changed.

A twitch ran up Amelia’s body, followed by a wave of motion from top to bottom as her hands pulled her free of the small crater and her torso toppled her. She lowered her legs, planting the soles of her feet directly on the ground by reaching them down ahead of her, then straightened up directly into a stand, finishing with her back to Astra.

When she turned, her smile was exactly as it had been.

“That was weird,” the girl grinned.

Blood ran down her face in twin streaks, separating just above the spot between her eyebrows. It seemed her forehead had been torn open by the impact, but save for that and her nose, which had already been broken and misshapen, there was no damage to be seen on her.

She took a step towards Astra, speaking even as her face was washed clean by the skies.

“I didn’t expect you to trap me like that, or to trick me into a throw. I shouldn’t have gotten so cocky, that was really smart. We’re the same age, right? You’ve just turned fifteen, a few months younger than me? We should be friends!”

Her expression shifted to one of puzzlement, and before Astra could answer she continued talking as though she hadn’t even asked a question at all.

“How does your ability work? It’s cool. Mine is pretty simple, I just shrink or grow the space between myself and whatever I’m targeting. Lets me change the range of my attacks, but not by a lot. Oh, also it’s great for footwork...”

Her words seemed to fizzle out like candles, killed by the rain just as any flame on a wick. Astra could still see her lips moving, still see the sincerity in her smile, yet she heard nothing. Her mind whirred, picking through everything she’d seen. Every impossibility, producing a thousand questions to make use of Amelia’s chatty mood

She asked none of them. Instead, Astra received the rush of emotion she’d expected. Anger, hot and energising, urging her body to move just as it forced her tongue to.

“THIS ISN’T A GAME YOU BITCH!”

Amelia stopped speaking at the cry, blinking in confusion while she stared blankly. Astra felt her chest heaving as her body trembled, and in spite of the frigid rain she felt suddenly hot. It was something she knew well, humiliation.

All of her work, all of her strategy, all of her focus. She’d been so sure of victory, so sure she’d gone above and beyond, and it hadn’t even wiped the smile from the girl’s face.

Voice trembling as much as her body, she spoke once more, quieter this time.

“This is a fight,” Astra almost whispered. She wasn’t sure if Amelia could hear over the roaring sky or slapping rain, but she continued regardless. “This is a serious, real fight. So treat it like one. Stop playing around, stop giggling like a child, and fight me.”

Amelia frowned, her brow furrowing in much the same as a little girl being told the earth was round.

“This is a fight?” She asked. “I see… sorry, I couldn’t tell. I assumed you were just playing around.”

Astra’s guts twisted at the girl’s words, doubly so at the obvious sincerity in them. The sensation lasted mere moments. As Amelia spoke, Astra felt… something. The girl had already been giving off an astonishing magical pressure, but it began to increase further, like a faucet that had been only half turned.

Veins became visible across her face, and a glance at her hands showed them just as apparent there. Bulging, pressing against the skin as though they were being pulled against the surface by some unseeable force. The skin seemed to tighten around them, and Astra realised that the girl’s muscles were straining against it just as the blood vessels.

And then her skin began to redden, like a native of Takamagahara. Subtle at first, barely even visible, but more obvious by the moment. As though every inch of her had been slapped, the sting and rawness brought to her entire form.

“If it’s a real fight, though, then I should take it seriously.”

Amelia’s voice hadn’t changed, and neither had her smile, but something most certainly had. It took Astra a moment to discern what.

Her own knowledge.

She’d begun the fight thinking her enemy was a naive girl, thinking that smile akin to one of a child’s as she played with a toy. She knew better now. With that form, shaped for battle as it clearly was, surrounded by that intense, suffocating aura of magic… It gave her the final piece of the puzzle.

Amelia kicked off from the ground, releasing a sound like a musket shot and sending an explosion of stone chips and dust into the air behind her.

She moved so swiftly Astra was sure she must have been using her spatial ability once more, yet she could detect no contraction in the air.

And then she was before her, left arm shooting out for an uppercut to Astra’s body. She raised her own arm, guarding against it with her right, and the moment it connected, all her hope died. The impact was like a fallen star, crushing her muscle against the bone beneath, then cracking that for good measure.

Astra felt her stomach lurch as up became down, then down became up. Her spinning ascent lasted only a few heartbeats, and as she hung weightless in the air for a moment, waiting for gravity to reclaim her, she found herself thinking of home. Of Old Bert, and of her mother.

Her back crashed into the ground, the impact rolling her onto her stomach with her head lying in such a way as to have her face pointed directly at her enemy. Giving Astra a perfect view of her smile, all innocence and playfulness, and framed by those bottomless black eyes, dark as melted shadows and empty as the void.

“You’re Crow’s sister.” Amelia said as she strolled forwards, almost leisurely. “Also you’re way stronger than anyone else on his team, except for the pale girl. So he’ll probably lose if I hurt you too badly for you to continue.”

She frowned, apparently in deep consideration.

“I think he wants to win, and he’s my friend… so I’ll be careful not to do too much damage.”

As she trailed off, she turned to look directly at Astra before speaking once more.

“How quickly do you heal?”

Tears filled Astra’s eyes as she realised her mistake.

The child wasn’t playing with a toy. She was pulling the wings off a butterfly. And before Astra could so much as make an attempt to start standing, Amelia rushed her once more, raising one leg high and bringing it down towards her head.

Astra was dimly aware of her nose being flattened under the girl’s heel, and the stone caving in beneath her skull, then everything went dark.

***

Bim seemed to try and stand, only serving to make himself topple. He fell all of a foot before Unity grabbed him, gripping the boy by his jaw and right bicep with all of his strength. The wind-mystic struggled, almost succeeding in shaking himself free before jarring the wound on his left and seizing up with an agonised cry.

Unity felt the magic build in his hands, increasing further and further. Emptying his reserves like a punctured waterskin. He didn’t care, the task would be over soon. Efficiency be damned, he’d be better served using whatever he had left.

***

Crow kicked off, feeling the weightlessness as he lifted from the ground and soared towards Faroah for all of a few seconds. Just when the boy came within an almost manageable distance, Mirandis grabbed Crow once more and dragged him back to the ground.

This time, as he fell, the familiar shifting of colour came about him.

***

Holding as much power as he could, Unity poured all of it into Bim. He felt every cell in the boy’s body, the way they all clustered together like cattle in a herd. Forming tissue, which formed organs, which formed the delicate machinations necessary to keep him alive.

Defective, he’d said. Unity snarled as he recalled the word, picking through it in his head. The issue with defects, in his opinion, was that they weren’t limited to any single stage of production. Improper lacquering could leave a straight building tilting as one half of it resisted its own weight more than the other, and a promising, arrogant, self-righteous young man thrown into battle in his tender years might find himself suffering all sorts of damage when goading the wrong person.

The wrong monster.

Gritting his teeth with focus, he let the power continue permeating Bim’s form. Wrapping itself around every part of him, until it was as much a presence within his body as moisture or heat. Then, when Unity could feel it truly ensnared within every corner, inseparable from the essence of his enemy, he pulled it free.

Skin split, muscle tore, bone fragmented, tendons snapped and blood boiled. Organs, so complex and tenuously functional, were rendered inert soup within moments, the fascia around them tearing apart like cages made of spider silk and leaving their liquefied contents to spill into the rest of the body.

Without a skeleton to hold him up, he began to fall, limp. Without an intact epidermis, there was nothing to keep his viscera where it was, and even as skin fell free in scraps like shredded paper, shards of bone became clear jutting out of the semi-solid sludge as it began to lose its humanoid shape.

The sudden expansion from within, caused by every ounce of him coming to pieces, left the mass which used to be Bim with a far greater volume than it had earlier. This led to an intense pressure from the centre, forcing everything outwards with shocking speed.

Less than a second later, all of the ruined meat was flung out in all directions. Splitting apart like a grenado filled with ground beef. Unity watched, fascinated, as the remains of his enemy slashed across the ground.

By the time he noticed the tell-tale visual results of in-process transportation magic, the parts of Bim that had shot upwards had begun falling back down, descending alongside the rain and breaking apart from clumps to mere spatterings upon impact.