There had been a carriage waiting outside the stadium for them, probably. Unity had most likely gotten in by choice, though he may well have been forced into it. It was difficult to remember, everything about that place seemed akin to a featureless blur in his memory.

Regardless of what had happened, he was seated inside the carriage now. That much he was sure of. Crow was next to him, yet another concrete fact he could use to pin the world in place even as it tried to slip free of his reasoning.

He’d killed Bim. He didn’t remember trying to, and he was quite sure he hadn’t wanted to. Surely not. He’d wanted to hurt the boy, yes. To make him suffer, cause him pain in retaliation for… for what? What had he done to Unity to anger him so much?

Unity remembered a moment later. Nothing. Bim had spoken to him, saying things Unity hadn’t liked, and for that he’d killed him. That couldn’t be right though, Unity had never been one to let his enemies get the verbal upper-hand before. What had Bim said? More importantly, why had it angered him so?

The answer came to Unity was startling speed, and frightening clarity.

Bim had called him a monster. He’d pointed out he was nothing more than a defective artificial, the failed creation of a pair of dying lovers, and that he was nothing more than that. It had thrown him into a blind, maddened rage to hear, and it had been for the same reason words always caused such a reaction.

It had been the simple truth, and Unity had known it.

The door to his side opened. As he numbly turned to it, he saw Crow climbing out. They’d arrived at their destination. When had they started moving again?

***

Crow’s fists were tightened so hard, he scarcely even felt them as he ran. The corridors of the Crux seemed a thousand times their usual length, the doors taking an age to open, the slight delays as he turned corners slowing him to a crawl. He reached the contestant’s housing area, barrelling through it without hesitating.

He wasn’t sure if it was luck that he didn’t struggle with finding his way, but he was at his team’s doors soon after. He pounded Xeno’s with a fist, then realised that she likely hadn’t left it locked and tried the handle before stumbling in as it opened.

Xeno was kneeling by the sofa, sweat visible clinging to her brow in the warm light of the room. An intense look of concentration was about her face, and Crow had a feeling he knew what she was doing.

For a few moments he was scared to speak, simply closing the door behind himself and moving around the room to get a look at the person on the couch, as silent as he could for fear of causing the slightest disruption. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see his sister was across the cushions.

She seemed peaceful, at first glance at least. Her eyes were open, though her stare was quite distant, and much of the blood had been wiped clear of her face. Crow noticed the wrappings that had been applied to her, feeling a shameful relief at the gentle thrum of magic he could feel from them. He needn’t spend his own credits to purchase medicinal supplies, that was good.

Upon thinking of his credits, he was overcome with the urge to see how many he had. He dismissed it almost as quickly as it came, Astra was his priority.

After a few minutes of muted standing, Xeno spoke for him as she rinsed a cloth and brought it back to Astra’s face.

“She’ll be okay,” the girl said quietly. Crow’s chest practically burst with relief at her words, though tightened in anxiety once more as she continued speaking.

“Her injuries aren’t quite as bad as they look, though she’ll still be out of action for some time. She has cracked bones, but not broken, and a concussion. Plus about a hundred smaller cuts and scrapes.”

His mouth dry, Crow struggled to force his words out.

“H-how long will it take for… uh…”

Xeno glanced at him, her face strained and tired. She looked nowhere near as small and fragile as usual, Crow decided.

“I can’t tell,” the girl answered slowly. “It’s hard to, with things like this. She’ll be conscious soon, if that’s what you’re asking. In terms of getting back into the competition, though? It could be weeks, depending on how badly concussed she is. Brains are… Well, they’re difficult. Magic isn’t nearly so effective at helping them heal.”

She suddenly widened her eyes and hastened to continue, apparently from the look on Crow’s face.

“There won’t be any permanent damage though,” she hurried. “I’m almost completely certain of that. She will get better, it’s just likely to take some time.”

Crow nodded, then mumbled out a few words of thanks. Looking at Astra, the ugly, discoloured bruising beginning to sprout across her face, the shallow rise and fall of her chest, made him feel sick. Somehow there was another aspect to it which ate at him, something different from how he’d felt upon seeing Gem’s injuries.

Perhaps things were simply different when the one lying injured was a sibling.

He turned to leave after bidding a quick farewell to Gem and Xeno, but stopped as he turned to face the door. Standing in the frame was Unity, the same look on his face that had plagued him in the carriage. Still covered in viscera, though it was now beginning to dry and darken.

They stared at each other for a few moments, not saying anything. Realising Unity was unlikely to speak in his state, Crow forced himself to do so.

“How are you?”

It was a stupid question, and he knew it. A single look would’ve told anyone exactly how Unity was. The boy didn’t mock it, however. He didn’t even speak, simply shrugged, then turned and made his way down the hallway. The last thing Crow saw of him was that same wide-eyed stare he’d had since the task.

***

Astra woke with a most peculiar headache. As if her head had been cracked open, only for the pain to be displaced to her stomach all while she retained complete awareness of where it came from and belonged.

She went to sit up, and was immediately assailed by a different pain. One she could place far more easily. Her rib seemed on fire as Astra lay back, hissing slightly at the sudden agony, then feeling the tension leave her as it faded away to a dull ache.

It was, if she wasn’t mistaken, the very same rib Amelia had caught directly with her strike. Adrenaline must have stifled the pain as she was fighting, because feeling it now left no doubt in Astra’s mind that it was cracked.

With a single blow, no less.

Shifting slightly, she realised she was lying on a sofa. How long had she been out? What had happened after the task? Astra packed her questions away for later, realising by the darkness of her surroundings that she would need to wait for the sun to rise before getting any.

As she lay still, closing her eyes and trying to let herself drift back away, she found it surprisingly difficult to fall back asleep. Every moment spent remaining still and relaxed seemed only to free up her mind to focus on her fight.

Analysing it, as she always did with her losses, to discern what she could do to win.

Her shortcoming had been in a lack of adaptability, she’d taken far too long to realise what Amelia’s spatial ability was, in fact the girl had ended up volunteering the information herself. Of course the main issue had been in potency. Astra’s physical strength had been far beneath Amelia’s, had she underestimated the girl’s age? Surely she was a year or two older, to possess such power.

She grit her teeth, fighting against the swimming dizziness overwhelming her mind. Her damned head must’ve taken a blow, when had that happened? Trying to remember anything in her state was like trying to run through shoulder-deep water.

Thinking back to the strikes she’d landed, it occurred to Astra that there was something else, too. Amelia’s durability was far greater than it should have been, even when the momentum from her own strike was turned back on her with that shoulder throw.

Was it possible she’d added a condition to her ability to heighten her sturdiness? It couldn’t have been a time limit, given how lax she was about wasting seconds they surely weren’t precious to her, and if it was so great as to give her that much leeway then the effect it had on any ability it influenced would have been incremental.

Astra recalled the girl’s movements, the way she’d happily wasted time, seemed equally resilient to all kinds of damage, the generally casual way she’d addressed their battle… and the form she’d taken near the end. What had that been? To send veins bulging against skin, to bring blood flooding to the surface of her body, to Eclipse-near multiply her potency.

She realised her hands were trembling as she thought back to the end of the fight.

Amelia hadn’t mentioned her age… no, she had. She definitely had. It had been a passing remark when… she’d said she was just a few months older than Astra. How in the world could she have so much potency at such a young age? How could she be so durable, and how had she increased her power even further?

The more Astra worked over the problem in her head, the more she realised the simple, awful explanation for her loss. She was inferior. Her opponent had simply been more gifted than her. She’d trained herself raw, struck trees until they were felled, practiced her magic until it was nigh-instinctive and read every book on mystic combat she could get her hands on.

It had all been for nothing. She’d been so certain that her hard work would pay off, that surely she’d take the world by storm. She may as well have spent her time showing off for friends, as Crow had.

Astra felt something running down her cheeks, and she realised they were tears. She was crying. Lying back, she forced her eyes shut and did everything she could to remain silent. To stifle the jerking motion each sob sent down to her chest.

***

Crow had wanted to sleep. The idea of fading out of consciousness, drifting to a land of dreams and forgetting, if only temporarily, about all the trials and tribulations of the world was something he found frighteningly appealing.

He couldn’t, of course. Not with what was going on in his head.

Lying in his bed, remaining entirely alert and unsleeping in spite of the excessive comfort of his sheets and mattress, he found his thoughts drifting from one place to the next. Carried in a different direction every other minute, as if floating atop a sea with waves and currents as fickle as a feather.

One moment, they would be firmly fixed on Unity. The sight of him standing there, drenched in what was left of Bim. Then they would shift to Astra lying broken and immobile. Occasionally his mind would throw him a curve-ball and remind him of Galad, his task and the impossibility of it all.

Every moment he spent thinking sank him further into the depths of misery and hopelessness. Eventually he pushed thoughts of Galad from his focus entirely, and in remembering Xeno’s words regarding Astra’s recovery, he found himself returning more and more to Unity.

What would happen to his friend? He’d known the boy was some high-profile mystic in the Unixian Alliance for a while, the Eden Child was, after all, someone that even a few people in Selsis had heard mention of. And yet the crowd had, from the noise they’d made while Crow was in the stadium’s main building, been out for blood.

They couldn’t demand it though, could they? Unity hadn’t meant to kill anyone, it was a simple accident in the contest, albeit a terrible one. Surely such things happened all the time.

He recalled the look on the boy’s face, the emptied-out stare which seemed to focus on something a thousand leagues and years behind whatever he was facing. That was not the face of someone who had killed deliberately. Anyone could have told that he was in misery because of what had happened.

Would that stop him from being punished, though? Surely it would. Surely…

Crow rolled over, tightening his eyes closed and concentrating on banishing all thoughts from his mind as quickly as they appeared.

***

Every moment Unity spent more scrubbing, he discovered yet more dried, clotted chunks of greasy viscera clinging to some unseen part of his body.

The Crux’s showers were luxurious, of course. Great drains in the centre, water cascading from faucets with shaped grids over them near the ceiling to ensure the bathers bodies were spattered with it all over in equal measure. Fully warmed, naturally, through the careful use of arcfire crystals, grown in such a way as to release their stored magic in the form of heat rather than light.

Running a hand through his hair, Unity closed his eyes and basked in the sensation of heat permeating his scalp. He’d always loved bathing.

He felt something pull free from his head, and as he whipped around to stare at it as it spattered against the ground, his lips curled in disgust. Another chunk of meat, and here he’d been sure he’d managed to clean every last speck of the stuff from his head.

Sliding the grotesque smear across the tiles and into the drain, he gently pushed it through with his foot.

Unity continued his shower for some time, finding no small amount of Purée du Bim clinging to the various parts of his body, detaching and draining each one as he did with coils of utter revulsion tightening around his guts.

By the time he had finally finished, found himself able to run hands through every crevice of his body without finding parts of them dyed crimson by the act, he had found his desire to shower for enjoyment lessened by far.

He stepped out, reclaiming his discarded clothing and donning them quickly, bothering to dry himself only as much as was necessary to keep the act of dressing as painless and bereft of irritation as possible.

The walk back through the Crux was almost sinister in the dark. There were no small number of staff still active in the halls, be it to clean or simply carry important notes and papers from one part to another, yet their distant footsteps served only to feed his creeping, irrational feeling that something was amiss.

It seemed an irritating fear of night and isolation was among the few ways in which he was normal. How bothersome.

The irritatingly Xion-esque corridors leading to his rooms seemed to have lost their bite as he walked through them. In time, he realised the anomaly was within himself. So exhausted that he couldn’t even muster the willpower to find himself irritated by a moronic design.

He made his way to his door, then went to turn the handle and step in. As he grabbed it, however, he hesitated. Something about the thought of entering repulsed him. He wasn’t sure what, and he didn’t have the patience to interrogate himself. Not now.

Remaining still for several minutes, Unity found himself tapping his right foot as he thought. He quickly stopped the motion. Fidgeting was, in his opinion, among the many things which one could present to support an argument for the extermination of humanity.

Moments turned into seconds, which turned into minutes, and Unity found himself standing just as still, staring just as blankly at the door. A flash of annoyance rushed up through him, and he found himself storming away from the entrance.

He hadn’t had any specific destination in mind, but as he went to move past Xeno Warper’s room, he dawdled slightly, then came to a stop. He considered only a few moments before pushing the door open.

***

Gem woke with a start as she heard the creaking, turning to the entrance of the room and wincing as the warm, but still uncomfortable, light of the hallway’s arclight crystals spilled in through the opening. Her eyes took a few moments to adjust, and when they had she found herself frowning in confusion at what they told her.

Unity Eden stood in the doorway, clean of the blood he’d been spattered with in the last task, eyes no longer so empty as before, and mouth twisted back into that same semi-permanent grin she’d grown accustomed to seeing on him.

There was something unspeakably frightening about seeing him so unchanged after what he’d done. And for the first time since she’d met him, Gem found herself scared of the boy. Genuinely scared.

This wasn’t simply a big-mouthed creep, it was someone who could rip a boy to pieces, then smile like nothing had happened mere hours afterwards.

He walked in, door swinging shut in time with his steps, and strode further in. As he neared her, Gem found his face grow harder and harder to see as the illumination from the hall became more and more constricted. Eden was not the sort of person she was comfortable being unable to see the expression of, and so, grunting with a mix of pain and effort, she reached next to her bed and began sliding her fingers across the table.

It took her several tries to find the match box, and it was only when she’d sat up that she realised how annoying it would be to use in the dark. Giving up, she concentrated magic into her right index finger, building energy as if to unleash in a blast, though as a trickle where she would usually summon a river.

Feeling for her candle, she pressed the glowing tip of her finger to the wick and held it in place until it ignited. The sudden light almost stung her eyes, and even still it reached only a few feet in front of her with any significance. A reading light, far too small to cover anywhere near a whole room.

Shuffling came from the shadows, and a moment later the flickering, unstable lustre of her candle was smothered by a far greater shine. Pale blue in place of orange, reaching farther, illuminating more and with a constant stability which distinguished it from any flame. Gem blinked back the tears even as they formed in the abruptly harsh gleam.

Unity stepped away from the arclight lamp on the wall after turning it on, then sat back on one of Gem’s chairs. He glanced to the sofa, occupied by a sleeping Astra Tempora.

“Thanks for that,” Gem murmured.

Her voice was weak, even to her, yet she could think of nothing to do but follow social tradition. If it came down to it, Gem was confident she could fight. But that didn’t mean she was in a hurry to provoke one.

“Oh don’t thank me,” he replied. “I was just turning it on in the hopes that I’d see some skin. Had you pegged as the sort to sleep naked, I must say I haven’t been this disappointed in a while.”

Something flashed behind the artificial’s eyes as he spoke, something unsteady and fragile. Gem took no small amount of care in how she answered.

“What exactly do you want, Unity?”

The boy seemed taken aback by the question.

“What do I want? Isn’t it obvious? I’m here to piss you off. Mock you, ridicule you, otherwise make your recovery as unpleasant as I can.”

He put so much gusto behind his words that she almost missed the shaking of his voice. Slowly, Gem answered.

“And why exactly is that?”

She was quite sure what he was doing. People often tried to find some semblance of normality after a great shock, that was one of the few lessons Gilasev had given her about people.

“Because it’s fun-” Unity’s voice cracked at the last word, he swallowed before attempting to speak once more, yet his words came out as a strangled, garbled whisper of barely-contained sobs.

He turned his face to the ground, obscuring it from her sight and presenting only the top of his head. The shuddering of his shoulders let Gem know he hadn’t stopped, however.

Gem thought back to her first meeting with the boy, the way he’d gone out of his way to insult her simply because he wanted to make her feel as bad as he could. Then she recalled the way he’d looked at her, for just a moment, with complete, genuine hatred. A look that single-handedly told her he wasn’t just light-heartedly joking around.

She remembered the way he’d turned his malicious attention on Astra, Xeno, everyone they’d met. The way he’d lied, belittled and tormented them. Over and over, Gem reminded herself of every opportunity he’d had to extend or accept an olive branch. Despite her efforts, however, she couldn’t quite stop the pang of sympathy which pulled at her heart upon watching him.

“Are… Are you okay?”

The moment the question left her mouth, his head snapped up as if it were a mouse trap. Eyes affixed on hers, the artificial practically spat his reply.

“Why do you suddenly care?”

The hostility shocked Gem, and she took a long, stammering pause before replying.

“I… what? What do you mean suddenly? I care because you’re crying now, have you cried before?”

Her head was swimming with confusion. Surely she’d never dismissed him, she’d have remembered had he shown such a side as this. Her wondering was stifled as the boy’s face twisted into a sneer.

“Don’t pretend you never noticed, oh Gemini. The perfect artificial, the first of your kind. A being so miraculous and perfect as to make all other attempts at artificial life before you seem pathetic, miserable failures.”

And then Gem understood where his hate had come from. Her sympathy and surprise quickly gave way to anger.

“What in the Eclipse’s grasp is your point?” She demanded, voice slipping to a higher volume than she’d have deliberately used in the same room as a sleeping teammate. His rose to match it.

“My entire life I’ve been the defective.” The venom in his words likely killed the germs in the very air through which they travelled. “And it’s because of you, little-miss perfect. I was a monster because you were an angel.”

Tears fell as he spoke, the delicate, fragile lines of his face curving in his grief, giving it a roundness which betrayed his youth. Gem found herself speechless, not knowing how to respond to him.

Finally, she found the right words.

“You’re a fucking moron.”

He leaned back, apparently surprised. Gem would have relished the exceptionally rare sight, had she not more to say.

“That’s seriously your excuse? You’re a monster because people were mean to you? Holy shit you’re pathetic. My life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows just because I don’t have your exact problem, arsehole. I spent the last five years of it living with the knowledge that there are about a million people in the world who’d quite happily kidnap me just to use as breeding stock.”

The boy opened his mouth to speak, and she cut him off.

“Oh and before you idiotically bring up all the people who love telling me how great I am, yes I have it much better than most. Here’s something that’s gonna shock you though, so do you. What do you think would happen to the average person if they went around molesting Princesses and antagonising Immortals. Do you think they’d be left off with a few slaps on the wrist?”

Eden’s misery turned to anger, his face reddening and the youthful ovular shape of it being hardened into a jagged, steely expression of outrage.

“I get more than slaps on the wrist.”

“What does it matter? You’re still the heir to the Factions, you’re probably going to inherit as much political power as I will magical. What don’t you understand about that? You can bitch and moan about being seen as defective all you want, but the truth remains that if you were really being treated as such, you’d have been “scrapped” long before today.”

Unity frowned, then his face fell to resignation. The fight left him as his shoulders slumped, and Gem almost found herself losing the motivation to continue.

Almost.

“You were one of the most fortunate people in the world, Eden. And then you threw it all away by crossing the one line you couldn’t afford to. I don’t know what the fuck that kid said to you, but I hope it was worth letting the entire world know that you’re no more deserving of ruling the Alliance than any other petulant child.”

Gem inhaled heavily as she finished, the air forcing back a burning in her lungs she hadn’t even noticed. For a few seconds Unity simply stared at her, and she stared right back. Then, silently, the boy stood up and left.