“I’m sorry,” Gem whispered. She felt stupid doing it. An apology hardly carried any weight when measured against years of ignorance and entitlement.

Nonetheless, it seemed to pacify Astra somewhat. The blonde girl still looked far from pleased, and Gem couldn’t blame her one bit, but she seemed slightly satisfied as she nodded. Mitigated, perhaps.

It didn’t make Gem feel any better though. Astra accepting an apology meant nothing when she didn’t even know what it was for.

After what she’d heard, though, she could barely bring herself to let the girl know.

“Astra, I don’t think I can carry on in the Sieve.”

Gem didn’t look at her teammate as she spoke, she didn’t even glance up from the floor for fear of accidentally meeting the girl’s eyes. In the absence of any visual confirmation, Astra’s face turned to one of thunderous fury and contempt-filled disgust.

Her voice was far more subdued. Blunt and light, like a hammer made from wood in place of iron.

“You have to.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry but-”

“Look at me,” Astra interrupted. Gem didn’t answer, and after less than a second of silence the girl repeated herself. “Look. At. Me.”

Slowly, Gem raised her head and met her teammate’s eyes. She wasn’t surprised by the cold fury she saw in them.

“After everything I told you…” Astra trembled slightly as she spoke, her voice wavering as though she were on the verge of either tears or a fit of rage. Gem could imagine which.

“You can’t just give up, not now. Not when we’re... “ Inhaling slowly, the girl’s voice regained some semblance of control. “I’m sorry Gemini, but we need you.”

Gem saw a flash of something behind Astra’s eyes, behind the anger. A desperate, feeble pleading. The look of someone who’s entire world rested in another person’s palm.

She found a sudden anger filling her. Sending tremors throughout her body and curling her hands into fists.

“Because I’m powerful, right? So of course I don’t get to decide what I want to do. My choice doesn’t matter, I don’t matter. Just my magic, right? The Gemini, a perfect copy of Gilasev Menza, made to fix all sorts of problems whether she wants to or not!”

Any vulnerability that had been behind Astra’s gaze vanished like a flash of lightning in the night, leaving no trace of it ever having even been there at all as a new wave of rage and hate flooded in to fill the vacuum it left.

“This isn’t a matter of you existing to serve people, you little brat. It’s about you abandoning your teammates the moment you start losing, after, mind you, wasting more than a third of my credits.”

Gem stared agape, her mouth open, lips moving yet still failing to project any sound from her breathless body. How in the world could someone be so devoid of empathy?

“Start losing?” She finally managed to cry out, half laughing at the sheer hysteria of it all. “You think I want to drop out because I’m losing? I was tortured, Tempora. For a fucking long time, in front of millions of people who thought I was invincible. Can you even begin to imagine how that feels?”

“You aren’t the only one who los-” The girl started. Gem cut her off, shocked by the venom she heard in her own voice.

“No, I’m not. But I didn’t just lose, I was…” She paused, her voice cracking and wavering too much to form coherent words. Astra remained silent, staring until Gem continued.

“She held me down, and she hurt me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. No matter how hard I fought, or how much I struggled, I couldn’t even make her budge.”

The sensation of a tear rolling down her cheek almost made Gem flinch, the memories of her torment close enough to the surface that her body was prepared to flinch at anything. It made her want to stare back at the floor, to hide herself from needing to see the look on Astra’s face.

She saw it anyway, taking in every scrap of it. Worse than judgement, worse than contempt, or anger, or hate. Pity.

Astra opened her mouth, as if to say something, then closed it once more and turned for the door. Xeno had advised her to remain in the same room as Gem, since she could walk, but not far, the fae had reasoned it only made sense for her to help out by bringing things for her.

Gem didn’t mind at all to see her disappear out into the hall.

***

Flint saw a flicker of irritation across Alabaster’s face as he delayed a few moments to check the surrounding area, but she still played along and waited for his signal to enter the carriage. When he joined her a moment later, she didn’t even wait for the door to finish closing before speaking.

“Are you quite satisfied, Wrathman?”

It was fortunate Flint had so much practice hiding smug grins from superiors, the stare he got from her would have aged vampires.

“Yes sir, I can confidently say there is little to no risk of someone blowing your head off. However I would like to project my, what did you call it, null field?”

She nodded.

“Right, my null field. Just in case.”

He’d fully expected her to comply with the request, irritating though she clearly found his precautions, she seemed to Flint the sort of woman who could bear discomfort if it was needed for her duty. Even if that discomfort happened to be the apparently supernaturally strong kind mystics felt when under the influence of his anti-magic.

Instead, she shook her head.

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible, I need you to remain secret for as long as possible. Driving around neutralising the magic of everyone within miles of my carriage would be incongruous with that goal.”

Apparently, Flint’s face said it all.

“Incongruous means incompatible with,” she added.

Flint had to resist the urge to grind his teeth. He’d been expecting an uncooperative ward for his mission, yet it was still annoying to find his efforts sabotaged by the very woman he’d been charged with protecting.

“I think I need to insist, sir.” He tried. “Your safety is my top priority here, I understand that discretion might help you but-”

She began to speak, silencing him simply by interrupting.

“You are mistaken, soldier.” Her honeyed voice rang out. “My safety is not your main concern, the future of Olympus is your main concern. If my death serves that goal better, I expect you to headshot my corpse to be safe. Are we clear?”

He shook his head, then quickly spoke at the growing look of annoyance on her face.

“No sir, my orders were explicitly to keep you safe. Delivered from Lord Hercules himself. I’m afraid I don’t quite want to be court-marshalled just because I obeyed what I thought was their spirit in place of what I know is their letter.”

Alabaster paused before answering.

“That was well said.”

She didn’t even try to hide her surprise.

“I don’t suppose this means you’ll be listening to my orders?” Flint asked, not quite managing to completely flatten his futile hope. The woman’s expression didn’t change as she replied.

“No. But I can assure you that, if you wish to keep me safe, this is undoubtedly the best course of action.”

“And can I ask exactly how?”

Alabaster seemed to consider the question for a few moments before answering.

“Hm, you may. Basically, Tamaias’ murder needs to be more thoroughly investigated. Unfortunately, there are many places I can’t go without drawing considerable attention to myself, and in such matters it is generally best to be subtle.”

Flint realised instantly where it was going, his stomach sinking as the woman spoke.

“That’s why you will be investigating in my place. Since, provided the news doesn’t spread too quickly that I have an Immortal-level pariah working under me, there is virtually no chance that you’ll be connected to me.”

She seemed so proud of the plan. Flint almost felt bad as he spoke to ruin it.

“Sir, with all due respect, that’s a terrible plan. An awful plan, almost supernaturally dreadful. On a scale of one to ten, one being the use of muskets in row-by-row volleys and ten being those expeditions to the middle of Gol, this would be an eleven.”

“Would you care to explain why?” The woman asked, practically purring. There was something dangerous about that voice, something which told Flint he’d pay for any more slights, and pay dearly.

Realising how close he’d come to severely fucking up in the complacancy born from the lack of any officers, he hurriedly answered.

“Uh, well, not all of it is terrible, sir. The parts about keeping hidden and such are very clever.”

“Don’t patronise me”, she said, plainly. Flint’s tongue practically strangled itself in his reply.

“Right, sorry sir. Anyway, the problem is that I’m not an investigator. I’m a mudboot, an infantryman. I get paid to shoot things until they stop charging at me, there’s not much overlap between that and the skills required to discover hidden assassination plots.”

The woman nodded slightly, seeming to think, albeit for a moment. It barely helped Flint’s nerves. He’d stared down drill sergeants who would threaten a man with twenty hour runs and follow up at the slightest provocation, yet this woman, this girl, was getting to him?

It made him wonder whether he was going mad.

Finally, Alabaster spoke once more.

“Excellent points, soldier. Which is why you shan’t be investigating alone.”

Flint’s stomach dropped like a stone, and he found himself just barely able to force out a question.

“Who will I be accompanying, sir?”

Alabaster smiled sweetly.

“An extremely intelligent woman, around your age I think. The two of you should get along like a house on fire.”

Trying to hide his frown, Flint turned away. He assumed “house on fire” was some expression he’d never heard before.

Unless Alabaster agreed with him on just how well he and this investigator would interact.

***

The journey took an age and a half before it was even one tenth over, and Flint, front line grunt that he was, took an embarrassing amount of time to realise that it was because he spent the first few minutes of it flooded with the remaining magic from his crystal.

He’d forgotten it was even flooding his body, in all the fear and excitement. Or perhaps Alabaster had begun speaking even faster for his benefit, somehow he didn’t have such a hard time imagining the woman doing such a thing.

“How are your reserves coming along?” She asked, surprising him with the query. Flint tried to figure out what she meant for a few moments, before she spoke once more.

“Reserves, my apologies. I’m used to talking to mystics. How’s your supply of arcstock crystals?”

Instinctively he placed a hand on the leather pouch holding them at his hip, though he knew the answer already.

“Three left, all full.”

“Good, save them. While we’re in here there’s no need to burn up what you have left, the Kin can provide the protection for now.”

She nodded, as if to agree with herself, then turned away as though taking inventory in a munitions bay.

Flint did as she instructed, though hadn’t needed to be told. The thought of sitting through such a journey with his enhanced perception of time was deterrent enough.

“So,” he asked after a half-minute of silence, “I suppose I’ll be sent to march right into the middle of those Guillotines, eh?”

He could’ve swore he saw the flicker of a smile on Alabaster’s face.

“Will that be a problem?” She asked. Flint couldn’t help but smirk.

“You’re damn right it will, I’ve never even fought an Immortal, now I’ll be staring one down while surrounded by his subordinates. I think I miss Wrath already.”

She gave him a look, and he quickly continued.

“I’ll still do it, of course. Throwing our lives away for money is a Wrathman’s job.”

He’d meant it as a joke, something to diffuse the tension slightly. Instead he could feel the atmosphere thicken as Alabaster stared at him intently.

“That’s why you fight?” She asked. “Money? Nothing else?”

Any other time, Flint would have laughed at the question. Alabaster’s face, however, convinced him that it was entirely serious. Taking a moment to ponder, he responded in kind.

“Well, money and survival, I suppose. No point negotiating for better wages if all the places you could spend them on get demolished by orcs.”

The woman continued staring for all of a second, then shifted her eyes to the side. Her silence said everything, and Flint averted his own gaze.

Just another nobby officer after all, it seemed.

***

Unity leaned on Crow as they stumbled out of the tavern, disappointed boos and half-hearted, drunken cheers following in their wake before being silenced as the door swung shut.

The air was, Crow thought, chillier than it had been when they’d entered. The sun, having faded to dying evening light, tinged slightly red as if by its own blood. The iciness didn’t much bother him, he was nowhere nearly as drunk as Unity, but there was a certain warmth in the pit of his stomach where the mead and ale rested.

“Are you sure we can’t go back for another round?” Unity slurred, arm strewn over both his shoulders.

Crow could smell the alcohol on the boy’s breath with every word, though even in the dim light his barely-conscious face would have been clue enough on its own as to his condition.

“I don’t think that’s wise,” he grunted back, shifting the boy’s weight as he continued walking with him.

Unity was average height, perhaps a hair taller, and looked as wiry as a rat, yet hoisting him up while leading him through a street was proving far more difficult than Crow would have imagined.

“You’re… no… no fun.” The artificial murmured, eyes blinking rapidly as though to keep focused. Crow realised with dawning horror that he was on the verge of passing out, deciding a moment later that if he was forced to carry the boy, he’d cave in and use magic.

Thankfully, Unity continued stumbling along as Crow led him. They moved like that for some time, the sounds of revelry from the pub growing more quiet by the step. Before long it was just a faded, distant sound, blending in with all the others.

Bermuda, Crow realised, was quite a beautiful city at night. Without the peddlers, currents of pedestrians or general rowdiness that came from human life, the place was much like a mountain range.

Tranquil, yet with a vastness to it, highlighted in misty towers and the low thrum from its few active inhabitants.

Less inhabitants, now. Hundreds, maybe thousands, dead, and most of those who remained were kept silent by the creeping fear that they’d follow. Crow felt a surprising jolt of anger at the thought.

Mystics shouldn’t use magic on inepts. A lesson he’d learned as a child, during the days when magic had been something new, something he was barely able to make use of consciously. Age hadn’t given him any reason to doubt it, though.

In fact everywhere he looked, there was more and more cause to hold that moral as ineffable fact.

Suddenly he was vividly aware of Unity’s weight against him, his thoughts shifting back to the previous task. To Bim’s death.

Unity had killed using magic. He hadn’t used it on an inept, but judging by Bim’s… remains, Crow realised there must have been a great disparity between the boy’s durability and Unity’s destructive power.

“Mystics should never use magic on inepts, because to do so made killing easy.”

That had been what Galad had told Crow, after old Bert had clamped up and refused to speak further when questioned on the lesson. It had confused Crow at the time, surely, if that was the reason, mystics should also refrain from using magic on weaker mystics.

In fact, as any mystic was simply a normal person when their abilities weren’t activated, what made using magic on them any different than using it on an inept?

He glanced at Unity from the corner of his eye, and much to his surprise he saw the boy was staring at him. Bright eyes seeming to catch what little moonlight could break through the city’s fog.

“Unity,” Crow found himself saying. “What happened with Bim was an accident.”

Drunken as he was, the boy’s frown seemed almost exaggerated.

“What are you talking about?” Unity asked. “I thought I told you it was-”

“You told me you weren’t sure,” Crow interrupted, pushing the artificial into a surprised silence, shocking even himself with the harshness in his voice. Taking a moment to steady himself, he continued.

“You told me you remembered hating him, and wanting to hurt him, and I believe that you did. But I don’t believe you killed him deliberately. Not even for a moment.”

He couldn’t tell whether Unity’s pause was the drink slowing his thoughts, or simply him struggling to answer.

“You should,” he muttered, the uneven disorientation in his voice having partially given way to something dark. “It wouldn’t exactly be inconsistent with everything else I’ve done with my life, would it?”

“What?” Crow snapped. “Say rude things and grab people without asking first? You’re a bastard, Unity. You aren’t a killer. I know you’re not.”

The boy went to speak again, and once more Crow cut him off.

“And before you try to argue, I don’t care. No matter what you’re about to say, it doesn’t matter. You’re my friend, and there’s nothing you can say to convince me that my friend is a murderer.”

Unity was silent for a few moments, and Crow found himself struggling to think of more to say. In the end, he managed it.

“Is it really so likely that you’ll be killed?”

The artificial sagged ever so slightly.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Honestly though, I don’t think it really matters. I should be, shouldn’t I?”

Crow went to answer, then stopped and thought for a moment. Then he opened his mouth once more to give a different answer, only to stop and take several more moments to think. Finally, he hesitantly spoke.

“I’m not going to try to convince you that you don’t,” he said. “I don’t know why you think you do, or whether anyone can make you realise otherwise, but I will say… If you really did murder Bim, deliberately, and if you really are the monster you think… it’d be pretty pathetic of you to let yourself just die.”

Unity blinked at him, as if he were trying to check over Crow’s words in his own head to ensure he hadn’t misheard. Emboldened, Crow added to them.

“You keep talking about everything you’ve done with your life, as if the past is all that matters. It isn’t. You have a future, too. If you really think you deserve pain or suffering, that you’re some irredeemable creature, then don’t take the easy way out. Frankly, it sounds to me like you’re trying to convince yourself there’s no hope just so you don’t have to put the work in to be better.”

He winced as he finished, only realising after he said it how much his speech sounded like something Galad would have said.

We can’t change the past, he’d told Crow. And nobody’s a Messiah or Eclipse purely because of their birth.

For the first time in quite a while, he found himself wondering what his mentor would have said about his goal. Before he was able to come to any conclusions, however, Unity answered again.

“It’s getting cold,” the boy mumbled. “Let’s hurry up.”

Crow considered arguing, keeping the conversation on the same topic, but decided against the notion. From what he could tell, Unity was in no mood for any kind of discussion. If he wanted the boy to change his mind, the only option was to wait and let him think over what had been said.

Assuming he wasn’t so drunk that he wouldn’t remember the following day, at least.

***

Xeno paced the reliquary, her fingers twitching even as her hands curled into fists, then uncurled again at the pull of more nervous spasms.

The establishment was open twenty four hours per day, and so she had no immediate risk of it closing before her business was finished. Nonetheless, she was keenly aware that, if the Sieve continued at all, the next task would likely be delayed by no more than a few days.

The curse of the fae, Father had often said, was that they couldn’t quite help but live every moment for the sake of the year.

Whether cursed or not, Xeno found it difficult to care. Difficult to care about anything that wasn’t a magically-infused object sitting directly before her.

There were several kinds of relics, all useful and powerful in different ways. The most common kind were “natural” relics, body parts taken from magical creatures which still held some or all of their power.

She glimpsed a half dozen of them with each turn of her head.

Severed horns, with bases still clearly jagged where they’d been snapped or torn free, large masses of scales woven together with some kind of string to fashion them into armour, even vials of strange, slightly-coloured fluid extracted from the glands of some great monster.

Having already looked through each one of them, Xeno now mostly dismissed the primitive natural relics. Her focus rested on the artificially-made kind, objects taken from mining magical substances, then shaping them to fit a function.

These were far more sparse, separated across the smooth, polished shelves by feet and paces rather than inches and hands. All the same, they were incredibly easy to locate.

Xeno imagined she could have found one’s exact location at the bottom of a lake, simply from the indescribable, arcane pull of its magical energies.

Of course, being able to sense the energy and being able to identify what it would do were two entirely different things. And so Xeno’s search relied entirely on the most powerful creation in the room.

A filing system, one which decreed that of the room’s six shelves, the two on the far left were reserved for regenerative artefacts, the next one along was for reactive fluids such as explosives, the one after that weapons, followed by armoured apparel and the final one for anything that fit none of the other four categories.

She’d spent far more of her time rifling through the last section than any of the others, reasoning that it was the most likely one to contain the sort of relic she so desperately needed.

Her search had bore no fruit, however. Even when it had been expanded to include the rest of the room. She had sifted through every shelf at least once, most of them twice, and still not come across anything which could turn the tables.

There had been masks of polished stone with jagged spikes built around the rim, a great gold circle flipping over and over as it levitated directly between the shelf it was supposed to rest on and the one above. Neither had fit her purposes.

More foraging had yielded yet more outlandish objects. Some had been exactly what she’d needed, such as a gauntlet made of wood which overcame Xeno with a staggering weariness after she unknowingly grazed it with a finger, and yet even they had been denied to her by their extreme credit costs.

A glass bottle with the contents resting at the top rather than the bottom, a giant, crystal eye which she swore followed her as she passed, a spear that seemed normal, but according to its description would become flexible and begin burrowing its way inside anything it impaled like a worm through earth.

The longer she looked, the more frantic and frustrated she became at the lack of any useful discoveries.

No, not useful. She’d found plenty of useful discoveries, the problem was that she didn’t need useful. Down two teammates and facing the most powerful Sieve in years, Xeno needed something miraculous.

Barely resisting the urge to hurl a dagger of rigidified hair at the floor in frustration, she gently placed the relic back and leaned against the shelf for a moment, tightly shutting her eyes.

She shouldn’t need to search in such a way. She was powerful, incredibly powerful. And she knew it.

Power was useless in the hands of one who couldn’t command it, though.

Straightening up, Xeno turned and began to make her way out into the hall. As she stepped out of the reliquary, it occurred to her that she wasn’t sure how long she’d taken.

It surely couldn’t have been so much as three hours.