It was a grim omen of Unity’s mental state that his mood failed to be uplifted even by his imagining Karma Alabaster on her hands and knees. He tried to bury himself further in his thoughts, and bury his imaginary cock further in her imaginary throat, but no matter how much he strained himself, he couldn’t seem to remain more than a pace removed from reality.

Painting may have worked better. In times like this, when the entire universe seemed intent on driving him to suicide, Unity found that the relaxing strokes of brush against canvas seemed to numb him to all else.

He didn’t have a canvas, though. Nor any paintbrushes. What he did have was a group of simpletons for teammates, but he couldn’t use them to paint.

Or at least, not with any strokes thinner than a torso or coloured differently than red.

And so he sat at the foot of his bed. Head leaning back, eyes closed, thoughts constantly dragged from scandalously rough sex with the Princess of Olympus by the constant worry he’d been wracked with.

Worry. That was curious. Unity had almost forgotten what worrying was like.

It said a lot, he mused, that the first thing to inspire such emotion in him over the last half-decade had been needing to work with others. He almost felt a rush of malicious glee at the thought of Warper entering the next task, paying a price in blood for her stupidity.

Almost, but not entirely. Even in spite of the frustrating idiocy she’d displayed, Unity found no actual hate for the girl in him.

That didn’t mean he intended to simply let her throw her life away, of course. And yet in two hours of straining every cell in his brain for a solution, the best he’d been able to come up with was injuring her before she could take part.

It needed work, as far as ideas went. But it was still marginally better than simply doing nothing. Better, or perhaps less awful.

The knocking on his door drew him from his strategy, and with a grunt he got to his feet and answered it. He had a feeling he knew who it was, and he wasn’t remotely surprised to see himself proven right yet again.

“Hi.” The boy said, hunching slightly where he stood, blonde hair disheveled, emerald eyes dimmed by exhaustion. If Unity didn’t know him, he’d have suspected the extreme tiredness to be an act.

“What do you want?” He answered, not in any mood to hide his ever-burning irritation.

Crow didn’t seem surprised, though he certainly wasn’t happy either. He chewed a lip before speaking, nervous.

“I just wanted to see how you were… well…”

“Whether I was plotting some nefarious scheme?” Unity prompted, earning a grimace from the boy.

“No!” He answered, sharply. “I just saw you were angry, and I figured that I could understand why given how frustrating it must be to get outvoted like that. So I thought I’d come to cheer you up…”

His face began to redden, the embarrassment making itself apparent through his skin. “I suppose.” He added, mumbling.

Unity eyed him for a few moments, deciding that even if Crow had some ulterior motive, it was quite beyond him to act quite so well.

“I see.” He said, not giving away any more than he had to. “I don’t suppose you have any painting equipment?”

That earned a confused frown from the boy.

“Uh, no?”

“I didn’t expect you to. Come in, I suppose.”

As soon as the door was shut, Crow straightened up and spoke with a far stronger, clearer voice.

“Unity, I want you to vote for me to take part in the next task. I’m not going to be in tomorrow’s, I understand that and I’ve accepted it, but I won’t let myself miss any more.”

The guilt was clear on his face, even behind the feigned strength and certainty. For a moment Unity marvelled at Crow managing to pull one over on him, then he realised that the boy hadn’t. Not really, at least.

He’d barely had to fake that feebleness, now that the door had been opened he could drop the facade entirely.

A moment later, his surprise was replaced by fury. Crow had tricked him to get entry into his room for this? Another mindlessly suicidal request? He could practically feel the anger quicken his heartbeat.

“Was I not clear enough on my stance in regards to my teammates shooting themselves in the foot?”

Crow raised his hands, as if to calm him. Unity found himself reaching out and smacking them down as he continued.

“You know what the irritating part of this is?” He asked, then continued before the idiot could mistakenly try to answer. “The only people who are even considering voting in your favour are the ones who’ve never had to see magical combat.”

The blonde opened his mouth, brow furrowing as though he were about to correct him. Unity cut him off before he could.

“I mean real magical combat, where you might find yourself fighting someone twenty times as powerful as you. Where a single hit might leave you dead or crippled. You’ve seen inepts killed by magic, but you’ve never seen how easy it can be for some mystics to do that to one another, either.”

Crow’s eyes were hardened by his words, his voice sharpened.

“Don’t lecture me, I’m not a child.”

“You’re certainly doing an admirable job of pretending to be. It’s not often I see an adult so completely fixated with getting himself into as much danger as he can.”

“You think I don’t know what I’m asking for?” Crow growled.

Unity met his gaze, finding it surprisingly difficult to keep his eyes from dropping away.

“Yes, I do. Because if you did, you’d be no more inclined to ask for it than you would an amputation.”

“Imagine, Unity, that someone you loved was murdered. Imagine watching the entire world turn their backs on his memory, thinking that he was a coward and left you for dead. Imagine knowing the bastard responsible had gotten away without people so much as knowing he existed. Can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t consider a missing arm to be worth even a chance to set that right?”

Unity’s mind moved so fast it almost hurt, gears grinding against each other, filling his thoughts with flaked rust and sparks. He thought to his mothers, or rather the abstract idea he had of them- the perfect parents he’d never seen. Did they count?

Did he have anyone he truly loved?

He wasn’t sure, and couldn’t muster the will to even try and hide the hollowness that brought to his voice.

“I’d let the past go.” He answered. “You can’t change it, but you can kill yourself trying.”

“Then you’re a coward.” Crow snarled, shocking Unity with the sheer brutality of his words. Shocking him so much, that his hand came up to crack across the boy’s face without him even realising.

Unity stared as Crow took a step back, reeling more from the surprise of the blow than the force- it was beyond Unity to muster any real strength without magic. The seconds seemed to drag by as if through tar, and when Crow turned back to Unity, the brightness of his eyes seemed focused with a chilling intensity.

“Did I stumble onto the truth, or are you just in a vicious mood today?” He asked, evenly.

There was no surety behind his words, no great thought or deduction. Crow had voiced the first possible explanations that came to his mind, he’d not had the time or mind to verify them with any kind of logic.

It was nothing more than luck that they were correct.

“You stumbled onto the truth, but you aimed it at the wrong person.” Unity shot back; face burning, temper boiling, shame creeping.

“What are you talking about?” Crow asked. He was touching on something he knew nothing about, thankfully that would make it all too easy to distract him.

“You don’t really care about setting things right, do you? If you did, you’d be spending your time better than you are. Investigating your uncle’s murderer, focusing on simply getting powerful magic tutors rather than winning some miracle-juice… there are a dozen ways someone like you can become a force without needing to risk life and limb on the assumption that a random rumour about some fucking liquid is true.”

“That would take too long.” The boy began. “I need to-”

“No you don’t, you’ve already waited a year. You could wait ten, or twenty. With how powerful you already are, you’ll be an Immortal before you’re even past your prime. And yet you’re forcing a time constraint on yourself. Why is that?”

Crow didn’t answer. Unity didn’t need him to.

“I think it’s because you need an excuse to give up. Failing to win the all-powerful, legendary Eclipse’s Nectar is so much more understandable than failing to work hard or research something for a few years, after all.”

“Bite your fucking tongue.” Crow spat, his eyes narrowing like a viper’s. Unity recognised the look in them, it brought a grin to his lips.

“Why? Had you not figured that out for yourself yet?”

The smile died on his mouth as he continued.

“Your plan is fucking idiotic, Crow. It’s adding a time constraint to something you can do at your leisure, and if you fail because of that then it’s your fault.”

Something danced across Crow’s face as he said that. A flash of emotion, or perhaps pain? So swift it could scarcely be said to have happened at all, so strong it remained seared into Unity’s notice even in spite of its briefness.

“What was that?” He demanded. Crow frowned, feigning confusion with pathetic transparency.

“What was what?”

“What was that look, just now. The one you gave while practically recoiling.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The boy answered weakly. Unity saw through the deception before it had even finished.

If Crow weren’t hiding something, he’d have reacted with nothing other than pure rage.

“Oh, well then let me narrow the question down a bit. Why did you look like you were hiding something when I said you had all the time in the world?”

Unity was growing angry now, more at Crow’s pathetic attempts to continue lying than the lies themselves. If he was trying to be dishonest, he could have at least made it less frustratingly obvious. As things were, his reluctance to abandon the falsehood was wasting Unity’s time.

He hated having his time wasted.

“I don’t need to answer that.” Crow replied, more or less answering it. “I came here to try and reason with you, if you’re going to insult me for daring to not share your opinion then I have no reason to stay.”

“That was an awful lot of “I”s in one sentence.” Unity shot back. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were extraordinarily self-centered and didn’t understand that your actions could negatively affect others despite not being actively malicious.”

“Choke on a cock!” The boy shouted, storming out of the room and slamming its door behind him. Unity stared at the wood, turning the conversation over in his head.

He had to hand it to Crow, his story had seemed genuine. Genuine enough to fool Unity, when bolstered by the assumption that he wouldn’t try to deceive him with something so heart-felt. Still, now he knew that there was something the boy wasn’t telling him.

And he’d find out.

***

Xeno woke with a grin already on her lips, and within seconds it was fighting for control over her mouth with a grimace.

It was the day of the task. The day of her task. The day she’d fought tooth and nail to make hers, finally.

With a sickening rumble, her stomach gave her just enough warning to leap out of bed, rush across her room and hurriedly pry open a window before the stream of acidic vomit could escape from her lips.

There were, she reasoned, worse starts to such a day. Though none came to mind.

She hurried to get dressed, ordering her discarded clothes and making her way out into the main living area of her quarters. Only Astra was awake already, and a quick glance at the clock made it evident why.

“Morning.” The blonde said, not looking up from her book. Xeno greeted her back, then headed straight for the front door.

Astra didn’t ask where she was going, which was fine by Xeno. The thought of lying was almost as repulsive as the thought of admitting to vomiting out of pure anxiety.

She walked quickly, not wanting to delay any more than was strictly necessary, and soon found something to wash the awful taste of her own digestive fluids from her mouth. Her journey back was even faster, and Crow was only just stumbling out of his room when she completed it.

There was little time to talk, with the task looming ahead at noon there was little time for anything, but being up before Unity or Gem induced a kind of leisure. The fact that they had a full five hours similarly contributed.

By the time Unity emerged, half of that had expired. It had waned to merely a fifth by the time the bickering over whether to wake Gem or let her rise on her own had subsided.

Surprisingly, Unity had decided to come to watch the task. When asked about his motivation, he answered only with sarcasm and more of his biting words, so the topic was dropped quickly. Even so, he did nothing to delay them and the group had departed before long.

The journey was written in silence and punctuated by tension, which lasted as long as they travelled.

Once they reached the stadium, Xeno and Astra found a number of men and women wearing the apparel of the Sieve’s staff waiting for them. They were quickly whisked away from the rest, taken to an entirely different exit before they could so much as say goodbye.

It occurred to Xeno that there had been a chance for her to ask Astra, who’d taken part in one of the team-based tasks already, what she’d be getting into. Gem, too, would have been an excellent source of information.

There was no time for that now.

As she was hurried through the winding corridor, walls barely muting the uproar of the spectators waiting for her, Xeno suddenly felt just a twinge of doubt.

And then she was out in the centre of the stadium.