Karma felt stupid, knocking upon the door of a Demigod. It just wasn’t done. Not in polite society, at least.

If one wanted to meet any Immortal, it would be through their subordinates. Arranging a time and a place, and then attending it ten minutes early for good measure. Once one became an Immortal, even if one had nothing to do, it was the expectation that one would at least put on the illusion of being too busy for casual meetings.

A Demigod’s status was in excess of a lower Immortal by perhaps as much as a lower Immortal’s was of ordinary mystics. And yet when Karma had sought Ra’s attendants or even spies, she had found none.

And so she was employing her last resort. Knocking.

The humiliation was, if anything, confounded by the presence of the Kin. Such bodyguards, recognised across all continents as the symbol of Olympian power and authority, were almost juxtaposed in a situation like the one Karma found herself in.

When the door finally opened half a minute after the first knocks, it felt as though it had been hours.

“Yes? Oh, you. What do you want?”

Ra, for all the legends wreathed about his name, looked very much like he’d just woken up inside a sewer. The man’s white hair was matted and stuck out in odd angles, given unnatural rigidity by grease, and there were great bags under both of his eyes, as though the skin between them and his cheekbones had aged a quarter-century.

Karma was surprised not to smell alcohol on his breath as he spoke, yet still found herself bristling at the way he had addressed her.

“Good evening to you, too, Lord Ra. I’m her-”

“I’m not a Lord,” the man interrupted. His voice was almost lazy, as though he simply couldn’t be bothered to hide his tiredness as he spoke. Karma bit back a retort, continuing in spite of the interruption.

“My apologies, mister Ra.” She answered. Her annoyance seemed entirely lost on him. “Now as I was saying, I’m here to ask you a few questions regarding your behaviour in the organiser’s meeting earlier.”

The Demigod’s eyes narrowed at that, and Karma could practically feel the Kin tense behind her. She didn’t blame them.

“I can’t be expected to remain awake for the entirety of your shitting meetings,” he huffed.

She stared at him, feeling all agitation leave her body, the sudden pressure she’d felt from his glare residing. Had she just imagined the look?

“I’m not here to chastise you,” she answered, quickly finding her voice. “But I would know why exactly you felt so confident in sleeping, when you were surrounded by an exchange of information regarding one of your only peers in this city being murdered.”

That made the Demigod pause, and the pause was followed by a slow hardening of his expression, from absent apathy to hard consideration.

“Perhaps,” he answered, somewhat more softly than before, “I place little value in continuing my own existence.”

Karma stared at him, and he stared back. She could discern no hint of a lie from the man, yet knew that any Immortal worth their salt was an expert of deception. That left her with nothing but her own knowledge to go off.

“You took a new student some five years ago, didn’t you?”

“I did.” He answered.

“That hardly seems like the act of a man content to meet his death as it arrives.”

Once again, Ra paused before answering.

“A spider may weave many threads in the time it takes to hit the ground.”

She stared at him, picking through each word of his cryptic answer in her head, then running through them once again. Upon realising exactly what it was he’d said, anger burnt within her like a pyre, scorching her words and raising them to near a shout.

“Are you going to speak properly, like an actual person? If you intend on answering all of my questions with that idiotically mysterious horseshit then I won’t bother asking them.”

That seemed to take the Demigod back slightly. He opened his mouth to speak, but Karma wasn’t quite done.

“Tell me, oh mighty Ra, do you think people are impressed when you Immortals do that? Hm? Do you think it sells that you’re mysterious, and have all sorts of secret knowledge?”

Rather than speaking, the rather deflated looking Ra gave a light nod. That was cue enough for Karma to continue.

“Well it doesn’t,” she snapped. “It makes you look like people who are so desperate to appear as such that they’ll sacrifice the ability to speak coherently as a means of doing so. Now, are you going to answer my questions like a grown-up?”

The thoroughly chastised Ra gave her a small nod, and she felt a pang of satisfaction at having finally found someone onto whom she could unload weeks of Immortal-oriented frustration. With a newly clear voice that made evident her sudden uplifted feeling, Karma repeated her question.

“I really don’t know,” the man answered. “I took the kid on as my student because of a whim, there is no big plan or scheme.”

“That wasn’t an answer to my original question, Ra. What made you so content to sleep when you could have been receiving vitally important, possibly life saving, information?”

The man stared at Karma, and Karma stared back. Silence thickened between them like water congealing to ice, to the point that she began to grow irritated. Just as she was about to demand he actually answer, however, Ra spoke.

“You’re young, aren’t you Alabaster? It’s difficult to tell sometimes, I must say you’re cleverer than most, but every now and then you say something that just reminds me that you aren’t truly one of us. Not yet.”

Had Karma received a drop of rum for each time an Immortal had reminded her of her youth, she’d have collected enough to get the Olympian army drunk. And yet hearing the words from Ra shocked her nonetheless. She quickly realised why.

There wasn’t a drop of malice or disparagement behind them.

“I’m not certain what this has to do with anything,” she began. He interrupted with a voice so soft and quiet that it was hard to tell he’d spoken at all.

“I’m sure you’ve grown used to Immortals scheming and plotting against one another, and I won’t deny they represent the majority of those gifted with eternal life. But not all. Some of us grow tired of the secrecy and cut throats. Then we grow tired of investing our time into governing and ruling. And then…”

A distant look seemed to take his eyes.

“Well, then we just get tired. So you can believe me when I say that I genuinely, truly have no preference in whether I live or die.”

“Why would you tell me this?” Karma asked, finding herself unable to do much else.

The Demigod shrugged so lazily that he may have been remarking on the day of the week.

“Because you asked,” he explained. “Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

There certainly wasn’t. Karma felt she’d learned more than enough, more than she’d ever wanted to, or even suspected there was to learn. A gaze into the head of an Immortal as ancient as Ra hadn’t been something she’d been prepared for.

And yet her wants and comfort had no significance, not measured against Olympus. And so she bit back her fear, her revulsion at being shown such depths of the Demigod, and pressed onwards.

“There is,” she heard herself say, hollow and numbly as though the words came from a distant stranger. “Where were you when Reginald Tamaias died?”

Ra’s eyes widened fractionally, a miniscule expression that Karma caught only for her habitual scrutiny of the man’s face. She wondered what she’d done that surprised him in particular.

“As a matter of fact, I have absolutely no alibi whatsoever. I was meditating in an apartment on the outskirts.”

“I don’t suppose a mystic could verify that?” Karma asked.

In general, mystics were far more reliable eye-witnesses than inepts. Their bodies were no more durable than usual, outside the use of specific abilities aimed to achieve such a result, however even when their magic remained unused, they had a resistance to the mind-altering effects of the Manamis sphere.

If Ra’s claim could be supported only by the account of an inept, whose mind was easily influenced and bent, it was next to unsubstantiated.

“Well, I’m sure that Zilch fellow could. The Quanturn is quite an engine, after all. Tell me, why exactly don’t you simply ask him whether he remembers my location?”

“Professor Zilch is… in a delicate state of mind,” Karma answered. She did her best not to punch the man as she caught the slight, understanding smirk as it flashed across his aged features.

Zilch was not in such a severe state as to be unable to recount what he did and didn’t see, however Karma had weighed her options and decided that keeping the Unixian Alliance’s loyalists too informed regarding her investigation would be a mistake.

After all, there were enough in positions of power on the island that it would be easy for them to shift evidence around and find an easy scapegoat for the events. If that happened, they could move past it more quickly, and its financial damage would be fractional to the potential.

Olympus would benefit far more if Unix were weakened further than that.

“That’s unfortunate,” the Demigod answered smugly. “Then it seems there’s no way either of us can prove whether or not I’m telling the truth.”

Karma’s questioning continued only shortly from there, her remaining inquiries being designed more to trip the man up and outline any lies than be answered themselves. In the end, Karma could find no proof that Ra was being anything but truthful.

She wasn’t arrogant enough to take that as irrefutable evidence that he had made no deceptions, but if nothing else it pushed him backwards in priority and rendered him something to focus on only when she had more information.

As she made her way back through the Crux, Karma turned back to her assistant.

“What time is it?” She asked, almost laughing at the hurried manner in which he rifled through his jacket for a pocket-watch, fumbling so much as to nearly drop it twice.

“Just half an hour from midnight, lady Alabaster.” He answered.

Too late for a visit, then. Or at least too late for a visit not to be rude and possibly disruptive to whatever sleep schedule Gem was trying to get into.

A stab dagger of guilt twisted in her gut as she thought of the girl. Gem had undoubtedly found out when the next tasks would be, by now. Karma should have been there to help calm her nerves, or at least advise her on how to handle them.

No, I shouldn’t have. She thought to herself, forcing all thoughts of regret and guilt far from the front of her mind.

Karma was the princess of Olympus, and her loyalties belonged with her nation. Anything else was a distraction. And if Karma was distracted, it may well bring the world ever so slightly further from where it should have been.

Walking past Gem’s new quarters, Karma headed straight for her own and turned to other matters. Provided the assignment was not delayed, Pyrhic should have returned. From what Karma had learned, information regarding the less reputable side of Bermuda was exactly what she needed to further the investigation.

The investigation which would weaken Unix, Olympus’ largest potential enemy, and Hercules’ largest obstacle. Something which, if humanity were to be brought to the future, would need to be overcome.

Yes, I made the right choice. Karma reminded herself. Olympus comes first. The world comes first.

She was doing the right thing.

So why did it make her feel so twisted?