When Crow’s feet struck the ground once more, it was smooth and polished. The sounds of wind, rain and thunder having made way for something which, in a way, struck him far harder than any noise would have.

Complete and total silence.

Raising his head, he found himself looking around to make certain he was actually in the stadium. He recognised the ground, the heightened walls a few hundred paces from him, the stands filled to the brim with spectators, all too distant to be distinguishable as individuals. Even Faroah, his enemy, was standing nearby. Every logical cell in his body told him it was the same arena he’d set foot in several times already.

And yet the place seemed alien. Wrong, somehow. A crowd of hundreds of thousands and a coliseum large enough to comfortably house them, surely such a place generated sound. Surely there must have been great, raucous cheers splitting the air from all around him. And yet he could hear none.

Turning, Crow studied his surroundings, searching for some key. He wondered if something was simply wrong with his ears, yet his own breathing was heavy in them where the cries of a half-million were not.

As he came to a stop facing Unity, Crow received his answer. The boy stood with his back and legs slightly bent, as though overcome by a great weariness. His hair, face, hands and clothes were all stained a deep crimson, puddling at his feet and dripping from the ends of his body. Parts of it clung to him, more solid and congealed than the rest, and yet more seemed to occupy the space around his body as a fine mist.

He stared at Crow, and Crow could think of nothing to do but stare back. There was something about Unity which unnerved him, a look, simultaneously haunted and haunting. As though he were staring at something a thousand paces away.

“Where’s Bim?”

Crow turned to see Faroah walking towards Unity, the boy passed him before he could get a look at his face, yet there was an unnatural stillness to all but his legs. The intense relaxation, he realised, which came before a sudden, explosive bout of action.

“You were fighting him, weren’t you?” The boy continued asking, voice level and hollow. Bearing the same texture and fragility as a sheet of thin, hardened glass. “Where is he, Eden? And why are you covered in… that?”

A trembling seized the boy’s hands, and Unity simply stared back at him dully, seeming not to quite comprehend what was going on around him.

“Faroah,” Crow began. He was cut off by a sudden scream, uneven and raw like the cry of an animal.

“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!”

Before Crow could move to stop him, he felt Faroah’s magic envelope him. The boy sprinted forwards, moving impossibly quickly and making a beeline for Unity. He wasn’t a physical enhancement specialist, and his potency didn’t measure up to even Crow’s, yet Unity didn’t seem to be using magic at all.

He was going to die.

Crow looked inside himself, searching for the magic he’d foolishly dismissed upon being transported back, yet knowing the entire time he was too late to act. Too late to save his teammate.

And then there was a blur of motion, followed by a rushing of wind. Something closed in on Faroah too quickly for Crow to fully register, quickly enough, in fact, that it reached him before he had taken another two paces.

Instantly the boy stopped, body lurching and legs flying forwards as he was held back by the left arm. He turned, or at least Crow thought he did, and disappeared in a blur of motion. When he came back into focus, his hand and elbow were bent behind his back and a tight grip was held on one of his clavicles.

Karma Alabaster made no show of emotion as she kept Faroah in the arm lock, only leaning down to whisper something to him. Crow knew she was only two years older than him, but in that moment, with a mystic held in her grasp and unable to make her budge even a millimetre with all his might, she suddenly seemed far from her teenage years.

Faroah struggled impotently against her strength for a few moments, failing to make her budge even a millimetre, then his eyes widened fractionally in shock, the fight leaving his body and his head dropping limply to face the ground.

Letting him go, the Princess of Olympus kept a cautious eye trained on the boy for a few moments. Apparently satisfied that he was of no threat to her, she turned to the crowd and began to speak.

***

Xeno couldn’t take her eyes from the scrying slate, yet every conscious thought she had was to do so. To look away, cover her face, anything to avoid the sight of Unity. Of the blood.

As Karma Alabaster began speaking, she found herself glancing at Gem. The white-haired girl looked almost hollowed out, like she genuinely believed what was before to be some kind of trick.

“I should have warned her,” she whispered.

Xeno found herself frowning in confusion. Her?

“She couldn’t beat that girl, she didn’t have a chance, and yet she went in thinking she did… She fought a monster, thinking it was a human.”

Understanding dawned on Xeno a moment later. Gem was talking about Astra’s battle with Amelia, of course she was. Dwelling on, or even acknowledging, what happened with Unity… it must have been too much for the girl.

Taking several tries to find her own voice, Xeno spoke.

“You had no way of knowing, Gem. All you knew was that her potency was higher than any of ours, and you told Astra that.”

The girl shook her head.

“I saw more than that,” she snapped. “I saw… I don’t know what I saw, but there was something about her magic that was just wrong. It told me everything I needed to know about her, and yet I kept it to myself because… Well, for some fucking reason. I was scared I’d be laughed off or seem crazy, maybe?”

She laughed at that, though it was the hectic, shaky laugh of one sneering at their own mistake.

“Astra was hurt because I was more scared of looking stupid than I was for her safety. How pathetic is that?”

Xeno wanted to reassure her friend, but couldn’t find the words. Even if she had, they'd have been lies.

There was nothing more pathetic than someone who let uncertainty paralyse them.

***

The moment Crow was out of sight inside the tunnel of the stadium, he fell to his knees and retched. Any other day he may well have brought up a spray of vomit to puddle at his feet and fill the air with its rancid stench. He’d already emptied his stomach before, however, and so all his spluttering released now was spittle and coughs.

Unity was standing two paces beside him, yet the distance felt so much greater. Crow wanted to speak to the boy, to ask him what had happened, and hear the explanation from his lips. He couldn’t even bring himself to face him.

His further attempts were interrupted by another set of footsteps behind them. As he forced himself to straighten up, stomach still tightened from his gagging even though there had been nothing to puke up, he saw a group of four men in Unixian uniforms, each carrying one corner of a stretcher.

Astra lay sprawled across it, eyes closed and face almost unrecognisable. Her nose had been crushed completely, laying flat across her flesh like a levelled building. There was a mass of blood still dripping down from the ruined nostrils, signifying that either the blow responsible had been mere moments before the end of the task, or the injury spouted too much for the rain to wipe clear.

Her hair was disheveled, caking flat against her scalp and soaked through entirely, and her lips had split in so many places they resembled burst fruit. With her deathly pale skin, she almost looked like a corpse.

It was only the gentle, barely visible rise and fall of her chest which removed the claws of panic digging into Crow’s heart as he stared at her. His sister, beaten. Ruined.

As Crow made to step towards them, a voice called out to him from behind.

“Stop.”

It was weak, almost distant. Barely recognisable as belonging to Unity, and yet nonetheless Crow found it holding him in place as the men carried Astra along. He turned reluctantly to look his friend in the eye, instead finding Unity’s own face aimed pointedly at his feet.

Without shifting his gaze to meet Crow’s, the boy spoke once more, still just as quiet, still just as subdued.

“They’ll be taking her to our quarters on a specially-made carriage, it’s what they did to move the Gemini. She won’t receive any more help than that, either, so we may as well lie back and let them give her a smooth ride home.”

Though his words made sense, Crow still found himself tensing to rush to his sister. The men didn’t so much as glance at him as they moved past, and just as those holding the bottom corners were about to overtake him, he saw something that made his heart lurch.

Astra moaned weakly, her lips shifting silently and her eyes parting fractionally. It was enough for Crow.

He hurried to her side, taking his sister’s hand in his own and staring down at her as he spoke.

“Astra, can you hear me? Are you alright?”

The second was a stupid question, and one he fully expected her to mock. Instead she simply squeezed his hand as a tear built in the corner of her eye. A tugging came as the stretcher almost continued on, only to stop. Crow looked up to see the men staring at him icily. He got the message, turning back to his sister and speaking quickly, though as softly as he could manage.

“Astra, you’re gonna be taken back to our rooms in the Crux, alright? Just wait there, we’ll get what we can to treat you, you’ll be okay.”

He opened his fingers and released her hand, then felt his heart break slightly as her grip persisted for a few moments longer, broken only as the stretcher continued moving. Watching his sister disappear down the tunnel, he turned back to Unity, dimly noting that his fearfulness of the boy’s gaze had gone.

“Unity, what happened in your fight?”

It took Crow a few seconds to recognise his own voice, empty and tremulous as it was. He wondered if Unity’s sounded the same to his own ears.

“My opponent seemed to know of me, more than just by name, too. He’d heard all sorts about things I’ve done, the sort that the Factions usually kept hidden from the public eye. I’m not sure how, most likely he’s related to someone I crossed personally and simply learned more about me by digging up the right sources.”

There was a chilling dispassion in how he spoke, as though he were reading the events from a piece of paper, entirely uninterested. Old Bert had mentioned something like this to Crow. Sometimes soldiers would go over memories of their battles with a strange sort of distance, he wondered if the same thing was happening to Unity.

“Well he was winning,” the boy continued. “Easily, the environment gave him the edge you see. And as he was winning, he started talking about… certain things. And he ended up making me angry.”

His lower lip began trembling, but he kept talking. Apparently not even noticing.

“Eventually I got angry enough that I stopped caring about winning or losing, I just wanted to hurt him. I charged and took him by surprise, then started hitting him, grabbing hair and… I think I bit him. Finally I used my magic.”

Unity looked down at his body, eyes widening as he took in the greasy, fleshy chunks clinging onto him, already drying from the lack of the rain. He swallowed, then continued speaking. His voice had changed, no longer disconnected and numb. Now unstable, like a child just moments from tears.

“I don’t know what I was planning to do. I think… I think I just wanted to hurt him, leave him with a few gashes, maybe a broken limb or two. But then I just kept building more and more magic, and…”

Crow thought back to the sight that had waited for him when he’d first appeared in the stadium, to the way Unity had stood alone, with his opponent nowhere to be seen. Not even as a corpse.

He stared at the gore clinging to his friend’s clothes, suddenly feeling the urge to retch all over again.

***

Karma didn’t like using her Eye of Analysis, as tenuous as her image among the Immortals was, being seen to rely on her strain under any situation was something she thought best avoided. After all, anything she did with its help would be attributed to the magic first and her own abilities second.

This situation, however, was one that she couldn’t afford to jeopardize simply for the possible future returns of making a good show among powerful circles. There had been a stunned silence when the contestants first arrived back, and even with Balogun sending her retainers to escort them out the moment they returned, the screaming had picked up once more before they were even five seconds gone.

Still, the outcome could have been worse. Had One of the more temperamental organisers been positioned in Balogun’s place, it may have led to a disaster. Karma made a mental note to insist on there being more than two of them present at the stadium.

She’d have to insist later, of course. At the moment, she was staring down a screaming, roaring crowd which looked perhaps a dozen poorly chosen words from rioting. Despite herself, she felt all certainty and confidence begin to drain from her.

Karma, for the first time since arriving in Bermuda, became truly aware of the fact that she was not standing before an Olympian crowd. These people saw her as a novelty, a beauty from foreign shores to be admired and appraised, but not one of their own, and certainly not one to whom their loyalty belonged.

Finding her lips suddenly dry, she licked them before speaking.

“WHAT WE HAVE WITNESSED,” she called out. “IS A TRAGEDY.”

Karma paused, keenly watching the masses of spectators and scrutinising them for any hint of their attitudes, Crowds had a bizarre unity to them, as though people became less as they gathered together, reduced to mere parts of a whole. That made it possible to glean some measure of a cluster’s temperament, provided enough attention was paid.

She’d never attempted to read a group as large as this, however. And though every bone in Karma’s body rebelled at the notion of acting on such little info, she continued after seeing the general energy rise no higher than anxiety and annoyance.

“WHETHER THROUGH A FREAK ACCIDENT, UNFORESEEN MALICE OR MY OWN PERSONAL FAILING AS THE ATTENDING ORGANISER, A LIFE HAS BEEN WASTED. SOMETHING THAT CAN NEVER BE UNDONE.”

Murmurs of dissent carried through the rows of seats, punctuated by occasional shouts of dissent or indignance, but the people remained still. That was good.

“I AM UNSURE OF WHAT EXACTLY WAS THE CAUSE, OR WHO, IF ANY, WERE RESPONSIBLE.” Karma continued, taking a few seconds’ pause to study the reaction further. She felt a noticeable increase of tension upon mention of responsibility, good.

“HOWEVER, AS AN ORGANISER OF THIS EVENT I PROMISE TO DO EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO ASSURE THAT, NOT ONLY ARE STEPS TAKEN TO PREVENT SUCH A THING FROM OCCURING AGAIN, BUT THE ONE RESPONSIBLE WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO ESCAPE FREE OF REPERCUSSIONS.”

That earned her no small amount of assenting cheers, and as Karma looked out over the faces of the watching crowd, their features blurred into nothingness from the shee distance and number, she found herself overcome by a genius, maddened idea.

The Unixian Alliance had been pushing against Olympus for some time, decrying its alliance with the newly formed Jaxif Faction and aiming to poison the view people had of it globally. No doubt her presence in the Sieve was nothing but a diversion made to let them continue undermining Olympian authority elsewhere.

So what if she turned the game against them?

Swallowing habitually, Karma spoke.

“THERE IS NOT MUCH MORE I CAN SAY, NOR ANYTHING I CAN CONCRETELY PROMISE. HOWEVER EVERYTHING I DO FROM THIS POINT ON WILL BE TO SEEK JUSTICE, REGARDLESS OF ANY ATTEMPTS TO KEEP IT AT BAY. THIS CRIME WILL GO UNPUNISHED ONLY IF I FAIL.”

A noise responded to her, too raw and primal for any words to be made out. For a moment Karma nearly leapt back, sure she was about to be swarmed by tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of frenzied men and women, all thirsty for blood and vengeance.

The irrationality of that fear occurred to her only after she had spent several moments watching the crowd further and confirmed that virtually no significant number of people had any intention of leaving their seats at all.

Just because people were passionate enough to scream, after all, didn’t mean they were passionate enough to actually do anything.

Turning to the organiser’s exit, she made her way through the stadium, relishing in the cries of support and carefully hiding her irritation at those accusing her of dishonesty or sexual promiscuity. Moments later she was within the walls of the tunnel, and the crowds were muted to her.

***

Tamaias found himself rather impressed as he watched Alabaster’s show. If not by her judgement, certainly by her bravery. He’d never have predicted a move as brazen and reckless as that, but then he supposed that was the sole advantage held by the young and gifted over the ancient and skilled.

Every now and then, they’d change the game in a way no one else would think to.

Alabaster had certainly changed things, though he wasn’t sure even she realised quite how much.

Then again, it didn’t really matter much to Tamaias. Her actions’ repercussions would be for the Unixian Alliance. It was their poster boy she was subtly placing in the crossfire, and his protectors she was silently condemning as causing the boy’s death. None of that would have any effect on the Sieve or its organisers.

Well, except for Unison. Despite himself, Tamaias couldn’t help the grinning sprouting across his face as he thought of the expression the Fable would have upon finding out what had transpired.