Sand twisted and Crow dived, yet it seemed no matter which direction he went there was always another tendril waiting for him. They whipped, bludgeoned, ensnared and swung him like a ragdoll. A hundred methods of attacking, any one of which he’d have had a hard enough time defending against.

And yet through it all, he realised just how little of Ra’s true strength he was being subjected to.

His face struck the floor, nose flattening and eyes filling with tears as he rolled away. Metallic blood filled his mouth, and his enemy’s voice filled his ears.

“Give up.”

It wasn’t the first time Ra had said that. Nor, Crow thought, was it even one of the first five.

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t lose. And my magic can be difficult to control precisely. Understand?”

He understood perfectly. The only reason Crow hadn’t yet lost was because Ra couldn’t safely break his breastplate without running the risk of seriously injuring or killing him.

A glance at the state of his armour, all chinks and snaking splits, told him exactly how long he could expect it to last even against the boy’s mercy. It was almost tempting to give up. Almost.

“If you’re worried about me, then stop attacking.” Crow answered, words falling out in-between pants. He began to climb to his knees, staring at Ra and studying the boy’s expression. “Sorry. But I’m not stopping for anything.”

Ra’s eyes hardened for a moment, then seemed to melt. Turning from demanding to pleading in an instant.

“Please don’t make me hurt you.”

“Asking me more won’t change my decision.” Crow said, straightening up. “If you really don’t want to hurt me, your only choice is to drop out of the task yourself.”

That steeled him, setting the sand swirling at his feet once more as his eyes narrowed with concentration.

“So be it.”

Crow considered pointing out that Ra had said more or less the same thing to him several times already, but decided against it. He couldn’t afford to waste breath on words.

The grinding masses of sand grew swollen and tense before launching at Crow as a pair of waves. He saw them break him against the wall, shattering his breastplate and leaving his body in scarcely better condition.

It was everything he could do to leap them, and even then the tops of the desert tides caught his feet- flipping him over as they rushed past below.

***

Unity’s legs ached and his lungs burned. He ignored both sensations, burying them with the wind against his face and the panic at his gut. There was no time for anything else, certainly not anything that might slow his pace.

It was consistent, he thought, that he’d been further from Crow than anyone else. Whichever God may or may not have had it out for him was at least remaining vigilant.

He turned a corner, then ran through the directions once more. Halfway there.

Rumbling and cracking filled the air from somewhere to his left, blunted by distance but sharp enough to be easily identified. Fifty yards, then. Maybe so little as thirty, or so many as a hundred.

Coming to another corner, Unity flew around it- gritting his teeth as he saw that it took him further from the signs of battle.

Easy, Unity. Warper wouldn’t have gotten the directions wrong, she’s had nothing to do but think about how best to lead you for a full minute or two.

Knowing how illogical it would be to diverge from her instructions made little difference, though. Unity still felt his teeth clenching hard enough to hurt as he was forced to move yet further away.

A shadow passed over him for a moment. So small he barely caught it, so fast he wasn’t certain it had even been there at all. Were it not for the streak of blue-tinted light just barely visible against the backdrop of the sky, he might have dismissed it entirely.

The Gemini, it seemed, had arrived.

***

Gem almost missed Crow as she flew, speed and panic dulling her senses and blurring the world. It took a sharp turn and a churned stomach for her to cut down to his position, and in her haste she nearly struck the ground at top speed.

A mound of sand had formed behind the boy. A fathom wide and high, it had begun to bull towards his back when she intercepted it.

It proved surprisingly solid, feeling like a block of stone as her body collided with it. Particles scraped against skin and broke apart, escaping in all directions from the impact and filling the air with a slow drizzle of debris. And even still, Gem’s momentum carried her further.

Her forearms broke the ground where they struck it, and she barely managed to turn the crash into a roll.

Turning, Gem looked first to Crow’s opponent. He was as tall as she remembered, white hair flattened down by battle and flecked with grains of sand, and his eyes wide with surprise. A single glance showed that his breastplate had barely a scratch on it, and as Gem’s gaze shifted back to his face, she saw his expression harden.

She felt magic weave about her hands, building and coiling into a clump of pure power. The boy gestured, sending an arc of sand hurtling for her, and she threw her magic to meet the attack in mid-air.

Magic detonated, dispersing in all directions as a shockwave and scattering globules of burning, molten debris in all directions.

Gem felt the heat touch her skin, saw the ground hiss as droplets of sizzling liquid rained upon it, and stared at Crow’s back as he rushed in to attack.

For a second she thought he might actually reach the Jyptian, but another length of sand unfurled from the swirling mass at Ra’s feet and lashed out. He flattened himself against the floor, avoiding the blow but halting his charge.

The sand began to shift again, and Gem realised she’d done nothing but stare. Cursing to herself, she brought her hands together once more and began to build a second blast.

Before she could finish it, a cluster of jagged strips detached from Ra’s main mass, flying for her like javelins. The energy dissipated as her hands darted forwards reflexively, fingers splayed and body lurching back.

Gem’s right hand smacked the side of the first projectile, sending it spinning off-course even as a sharp pain danced about the point of contact.

Surprisingly hard. She realised, just in time for the second javelin to hiss past her head- missing by a hair.

The third was better aimed, its point striking Gem’s breastplate and punching straight through the steel. She winced as the tip bit into her skin beneath, then cried aloud as a fourth struck her calf.

All of a sudden her leg felt weak, buckling under her weight and leaving Gem to drop down onto a knee. She stared down, seeing blood oozing from a gash that looked to reach deeper than an inch into her muscle. The spear wasn’t sticking out, having rebound and clattered away after injuring her.

Gem was quite sure that was a good thing, or at least reason to err on the wound being shallower rather than deeper.

Something blurred in the corner of her eye. Without thinking she hurled herself to one side, rolling again- though finding her injured leg dragging like an unfamiliar weight- and coming up to a crouch. She straightened up to a stand just as more sand began to convulse at Ra’s feet.

He has the advantage at a distance. She realised, then cursed. He had the advantage in close quarters too, more likely than not. It was clear even without her third eye open that his potency far outstripped her own.

You just had to compete at fourteen, didn’t you Gem?

Suddenly, Crow was nearly upon Ra. The boy’s face was out of Gem’s sight, but she imagined the expression it wore. A unique blend of desperation, optimism and insanity- just what was needed to motivate such a ridiculous attack.

Ra calmly stepped back, the sand swelling between the two boys and forming a wall. It might have proven impenetrable, had Gem frozen again.

But her blast of magic proved more than a match for it.

The sand was scattered as a white-hot shower, and she just glimpsed the shock on Ra’s face before Crow’s fist obscured all expression from it. His blow sent the Jyptian stumbling, and he followed the boy and continued his assault without pause.

Gem continued to let magic swell between her palms, holding them so near as to almost be touching. And yet as she watched the scuffle and waited, she found no opportunity to unleash it.

Get out of the way. She silently urged Crow, eagerness blending with frustration in the knowledge that she could turn the tables with a single good hit.

But of course he couldn’t hear her thoughts, and any words she might call to him would only warn Ra as well.

Sand danced at their feet. Though animated and energised by its master’s attempts to defend himself, Crow was far too close to the boy for it to be brought against him safely.

Punches rocked the Jyptian’s face, kicks broke his balance and sent him staggering again. It seemed Crow could do no wrong in his attacks, and Gem felt a stab of amazement at the boy pressing his advantage so perfectly.

But no advantage could last forever. Ra quickly switched to the defensive, guarding in place of trying to parry, and in an instant he seemed immovable by Crow’s strikes.

Gem called out a warning for her teammate, but he either didn’t hear or didn’t listen. His attacks continued right up until Ra uncurled his arms and grabbed him.

A single tug brought Crow stumbling in close, and the shove that followed seemed to launch him back like a cannon blast. He landed in a heap, rolling to his feet just in time to be whipped by a limb of sand.

This time he flew so far that Gem heard him strike the maze wall behind her. Part of her worried for her teammate, but she buried it at the sight of Ra- unobscured and unguarded.

Her hands snapped forwards and magic leapt from them, streaking between them like a firework and clashing with the wall of sand just in time to block it. The energy exploded against the barrier, ripping it apart.

Through the newly made breech, she could see that the attack had failed to so much as ruffle the boy’s hair. Just fucking perfect.

Magic rushed to replace the mass she’d lost, but sand corkscrewed faster. Gem’s second blast met a wall thicker than the first, her power suffocating and dying as it fizzled out against the mass. Failing to even blast a hole through to the other side.

She saw the blur of motion when her next attack was three-quarters ready, cursing and leaping from the path of Ra’s attack.

Sand broke against the ground she’d occupied an instant before, and the ground broke in turn. When Gem rose, it was amidst a rain of chipped stone and clumped silica. Both hissed as they neared the magic burning between her fingers.

The mass at Ra’s feet had not disappeared, but Gem reckoned it was a third smaller than it had been.

It certainly made a less impressive barrier to meet her magic, and the unmistakable cry of pain that reached her from behind it as the energy burrowed through stood testament to its inferiority.

As the curtain fell she gathered yet more energy, momentarily considering pouring her power into a different approach- Rain, perhaps.

No. An attack such as that was ill suited for breaking defences, she’d drain herself far too much in using it to do so. Better by far to keep the boy on his toes with lesser, more sustainable assaults.

He stumbled aside, unable to form a shield before Gem could hurl her magic and barely avoided the projectile catching him directly. She saw wisps of smoke dance around the corner of his clothing, singed by their proximity to the arcane heat.

Her follow-up blast flew for his chest, and a thin layer of sand rose up from the ground and caught it.

Another detonation shook the ground, and another cry of pain tore from Ra as flecks of burning power splashed across him. The boy’s hands moved as a blur, fingers tightening around the fabric of his burgundy shirt and tearing it free.

Before it even fell to the ground, the cloth had burned away into nothing but glowing embers dancing among oleaginous smoke.

His hands shot out, fingers flexing and wrists rotating as though he were gathering candy floss. The sediment lapped at his feet like ocean waves, writhing in time with the ministrations and leaping halfway up to his hands as he gestured.

Suddenly, the Jyptian snapped both palms forwards. The sediment peeled away from him en masse, storming towards Gem like a tsunami.

It scraped terribly against the stone, filling the air with an unspeakable screech. Like cut glass, yet tinged with wildness in the way raw iron was to tempered steel.

Gem nearly abandoned the growing magic in her hands, panic driving her to turn and flee in the precious moments she had. Instead, she stood her ground and let her power continue building as the wave neared.

She hurled it at the base of the sand, the explosion splitting and lifting the mass as it neared her.

Half, or perhaps a quarter, still struck- feeling like a horse and carriage as it threatened to bowl her over. The rest flew harmlessly overhead or else slid away on either side of her.

The sand on the right burst further apart as something plowed through, and Gem turned to see Crow rushing forward once more. She called out to the boy, desperate to make him listen, and to her surprise he actually stopped.

Something seemed to shift at her feet, sand that had fallen suddenly vibrating and sliding along the floor like an army of ants.

Gem instantly realised it was heading back towards Ra, and looked up to see the boy already had another limb contorting before him and ready to command.

“Get back!” She cried, the words escaping her even as she realised how useless they were.

Crow had begun to duck before she’d even finished speaking, his eyes proving a better warning than Gem could ever hope to be.

The tendril flexed, curving backwards and beginning to shift forward once more. Gem held her palms near, charging a new blast with as much speed as she could muster, but it was clear that the blow would fall long before her magic flew.

And yet as the sedimentary limb fell like a headsman’s axe, it met only the hard granite of the maze floor. Crow had leapt aside, evading it at the last moment.

Gem noticed with dawning horror that his dodge had been far clumsier than the last, however, and it was a mere two stumbling steps before he tripped and fell hard on his stomach.

Her magic was ready by the time his nose crunched into the ground, and it had collided with the tendril by the time it had arched up for another attack. Even as she watched the mass of sand split and burst apart, she knew it was for nought.

More scurried along the ground and buzzed through the air, moving in great strips and converging at a great ring around her enemy’s feet.

There was no advantage to be found in continuing to scatter it. Not when its controller could bring it back endlessly.

Well, almost endlessly. Gem’s gaze flicked to the splotches of melted silicate still dotting the battleground, most having cooled from a furious orange to a bitter red as the heat seeped into the air and floor.

It seemed beyond Ra to control sand that had been melted into glass. That would have been helpful, had Gem the power to melt more than a few pints at a time.

Something caught in her eye from a few metres away. A patch of light hovering above the ground; red, curved and slightly jagged. Like a wound in the air, caught between infection and festering.

As though pulled wide across stretching skin, the patch expanded outward and upward. In only a heartbeat it became clearly ovular, and a handful more left it taller than a man and as wide as a door.

Gem recognised the magical gate an instant before Astra came barreling out of it.

***

The first thing Astra saw as she stepped through her gate was the sight of Ra, five paces away and sand coiling around him like a den of vipers. The second was several of those very tendrils leaping for her.

She was startled by the speed, barely avoiding the first as she stepped to one side. The second clipped her shoulder, knocking her off balance for the remaining two to hit directly.

Her stomach lurched as the sky became the ceiling, and then she felt her back strike something that felt confusingly dissimilar to granite.

It wasn’t until she flipped over the object, coming to a stop on her stomach and groaning with the disorientation of her flight, that it made enough noise for her to realise what it was.

“Ow.” Moaned Crow, sitting up just at the edge of Astra’s vision and massaging the back of his head.

She tried to apologise, but her words tumbled out as little more than a spluttered grunt. The urgency of the situation gave her muscles more cohesion, and she quickly scrambled up to study the state of the battlefield.

Her gaze rose just in time to catch the Gemini being sent sliding back along the ground after blocking a volley of strikes.

The girl’s back snagged on a patch of uneven ground, which sent her careening upwards like a makeshift ramp. Astra had risen before she finished falling.

Ra turned to her the moment she was on her feet, two of the five sandy limbs around him lurching straight for her without a moment’s pause. Astra froze despite herself, the instant of inaction forcing her to block the strikes rather than dodge.

It was a mistake. Either one had more power than her own blows, both proved enough to launch her over again.

Astra slid backwards as she struggled to remain standing against the wind at her back and the snagging at her soles, she saw Crow sidestepping another tendril.

Fear plucked at her heart when the two that had struck her reared up to turn on her brother. And yet just when it seemed they would crush him against the ground, a blue flash filled her vision.

When her eyes refocused, it was on twin piles of sand newly appeared by Crow’s feet and no small number of sizzling splotches, spitting steam and smoke into a rising stream that clawed up for the sky.

The sand on the ground flowed like water downhill, quickly clumping back together. Crow seemed unsure of what to do, wavering aimlessly with curled fists and wide eyes as he stared at Ra.

After a heartbeat, he settled on attacking. His offensive lasted no more than a single step before the remaining tendrils- three, Astra gathered two had been obliterated by the light- shot for him.

Her brother raised his arms and shut his eyes in anticipation for the blow, but it never came. Just as the sand was about to strike him, Astra's gate finished, crimson and perfectly aligned to meet the three limbs as they twisted over and around one another.

The sand disappeared through the magical passage, and as Astra saw them contort to the bases- clearly trying to back out with a frantic haste- she closed the red ring shut on them.

She felt the strain instantly.

Her first thought was that she was lucky Ra hadn’t had a single tendril to spare. Her second, that her optimism was foolish when even three were so clearly more than her trap could handle.

Within heartbeats the pillars were sliding free. They were each at least six yards long, and looked to be pinned up to half their length, yet even a hand’s progress each heartbeat would free them quicker than Astra liked.

Two more rose from the ground near the base of the three she had a hold on, clearly formed from the sand Ra had already recollected. Astra found herself ignoring the tendrils, even as they flew for her.

Don’t worry about what you can’t control. She repeated to herself. A strange bit of advice to recall at such times.

She couldn’t control whether they crushed her, that was for sure. But the knowledge hardly kept her from worrying.

Crow rolled beside her gate, leaping to his feet with all the springy energy of a cat and barreling towards the wavering tentacles. Astra stared as he ran, struggling to believe anyone could be so stupid- even him.

It wasn’t until another flash of light, this time slanted left, reduced one of the limbs to a cloud of sand piling at the floor that she realised he’d been banking on the Gemini’s support.

With only a single tendril to avoid, Crow’s rush seemed far less suicidal.

He leaned to one side as it snapped for his face, letting the length miss over his shoulder and then throwing himself to the ground just in time to avoid it whipping back around and cracking across his temple.

Astra glanced at the Gemini, noting the light and heat building between the girl’s hands. And then a sudden lurch dragged her focus back to her gate.

In her lapse of concentration, the tendrils had cleared another pace of her trap. She swore under her breath, cursing Ra’s strength and her own stupidity in equal measure.

Another flash lit up the corner of her eyes, and she was careful not to lose focus as she looked at its source. The final tendril hadn’t broken apart as she’d expected, yet Ra was stumbling back. Pain etched into his face, smoke curling out from between his fingers as he pressed a hand to his side.

The tendril went wild, thrashing as though the air itself were an enemy. Crow slipped by in its madness.

Ra turned to meet him, arms raising into a guard as a fist flew. He batted it aside, then sent his own fist swiping for Crow’s face. The blonde leaned back and avoided the blow by a hair.

Astra saw him adjust his footing, preparing to step in again. His timing was perfect, as was the motion itself, but Ra reacted impossibly fast- and moved quicker still. Crow’s punch met air and his ribs met knuckles. As he folded over, Ra closed his fingers around the boy’s shoulder.

The knee seemed to come incredibly slowly, covering mere inches with every beat of Astra’s heart. She wanted to let her gate go, charge forwards and help her brother- keep him from suffering a strike from someone so strong as his opponent.

Before she could even consider doing so, another streak of light hissed for the Jyptian’s head.

He barely avoided it, releasing Crow and leaping back as smoke followed behind him- trailing from a patch of hair, singed black in a sea of white.

Crow followed, apparently undaunted by the near-disaster. He struck like a hurricane of limbs; kicking at ankles and knees, punching at every spot Ra left unguarded. The Jyptian parried and dodged and ducked and blocked, remaining ahead of each and every blow, yet still on the defensive.

No matter how fast he was, he could only run for so long. And Astra didn’t miss the moment his defence began to break down.

The wall halted his retreat, and Crow’s punch caught him across the jaw before it could resume. A connection so perfect Astra found herself wincing even to see an enemy subjected to it.

What would a blow like that have done to me? She wondered. Crow’s only a hair weaker, it might well have left me lying in a heap, staring up at the sky and waiting for my head to stop spinning.

It was a testament to Ra’s toughness that he didn’t even begin to fall as his head snapped back and rebound from the wall. Yet toughness wasn’t enough.

Crow dived to one side as the Gemini called out to him, and Ra straightened up from the strike just in time for a blast of magic to crash into his breastplate and drive him back into the wall once more.

The stone broke like glass, cracks circling into rings and reaching out like spiderwebs. Steam and dust filled the air for a moment, and Astra just noticed the boy’s right arm folded over his breastplate.

As he leaned away from the wall, Crow struck him once more and sent him stumbling. Astra might have cheered, were it not for a particularly strong tugging of the tendrils she was holding.

Light began to spill from the Gemini’s hands again, and Crow charged in for another clash- surely eager to use the Jyptian’s moment of weakness to its fullest.

His mistake became clear before he’d taken even a single pace.

Ra’s hand was a blur as it came for the boy, and Astra was startled to see her brother smack it aside. When the Jyptian twisted around and followed up with a strike to the ribs, she wasn’t remotely surprised to see it connect.

The metal deformed and Crow’s body folded up as he began to drop, but Ra didn’t let him hit the ground. Almost too fast to believe, he grabbed the blonde and spun- dragging his body in a wide arc and hurling him like a pillow.

He crashed into the Gemini, a bolt of energy leaping from between the girl’s hands as the collision floored her- detonating against a wall and spitting sparks and debris in all directions.

Astra stared at her teammates as they lay in a heap, then turned back to Ra. The boy’s face was triumphant, his eyes filled with fire. With flexing fingers and waving hands he conducted the sand around him like an orchestra, and in only a handful of heartbeats there were two new tentacles lapping around him.

So, he can only maintain about five at once. And it seems he needs his arms free for a few moments to produce new ones.

She took no solace in the realisation- it would do her little good.

All Astra could do was maintain her grip on the three tentacles she had trapped, staring helplessly as the remaining two shot right for her.

***

Unity watched as Astra was struck, his view from the top of the wall making him privy to every detail. Her breastplate groaned as it crumpled, arms shot for her gut as though they could block an attack that had already landed. Eyes wide, mouth agape and spittle flying free.

It was a small mercy that the impact launched her clear, sending her to crash limply against the far wall and drop to the ground amidst a shower of stone fragments.

Movement caught his eye, and he saw Crow struggling from underneath the Gemini. He seized the girl by the hips and, before Unity even had time to envy him, tossed her to one side before scrambling to his feet.

Predictably, he headed straight for the Jyptian- paying no more heed to the danger than he ever did. Two lengths of sand awaited him, moving like cobras poised to strike.

Unity decided to beat them to it.

He dropped down, bending his knees as he landed and darting wordlessly for Ra. The boy was a mere three yards from where Unity hit the ground and surely heard the collision, as he began to turn.

Not fast enough.

Magic leapt between Unity’s fingers like trapeze artists, but he knew the moment Ra began to round on him that he wouldn’t get the chance to use it. Instead, he waited to come within two paces before leaping into the air.

Both of his feet crashed into the boy’s chest, sending a shock through his body as he practically bounced off the Jyptian.

Unity grunted at the sensation of his back meeting stone, staring up at his enemy and swearing as he saw him right himself.

He hadn’t knocked him down. That left Unity on his back against a faster, more powerful opponent. It barely took him a heartbeat to realise what the outcome of such a thing would inevitably be.

Crow crashed into the boy from behind, surprising him and sending his torrent of sand wide to crush stone instead of Unity.

The Jyptian cursed, slamming his head back and flattening the boy’s nose with his skull before turning back to Unity. A perfect move, as fast as it was efficient. Yet too slow all the same.

Unity felt the power reach critical levels in his hand, sending a shiver down his fingers as they dug into the ground. Before Ra could bring his sand around once more the very earth beneath his feet shook and ruptured as though under cannonfire.

The boy stumbled, his arms darting to either side of him reflexively as his body fought for balance. Unity was sent rolling by the sudden lurch of the ground, and he glimpsed Crow crawling away from their enemy just before he stopped.

Ra whirled on him, eyes filled with fire and ice. He raised a hand, tendrils of sand lifting into the sky along with it, and began to bring it down.

A blue flash burned in Unity’s eyes for a moment, swallowing the world and bathing it in incendiary light. When his vision cleared, Ra was on his knees and the air reeked with burnt fabric and flesh.

Unity saw his chance, hurrying to take it.

***

Astra felt the tendrils slipping, and her insides screamed their protest as she continued to struggle.

Pain shot along her abdomen, sharp and hot like broken bones. Her lungs throbbed and worked themselves to exhaustion trying to replace the air that had been driven away by her impact. She ignored both. Ignored even the burning of her knotted arms or stinging of her blood-hot head.

All that mattered was keeping those damned limbs immobile. If she could maintain her hold, her teammates could win.

And after sustaining it through a collision with the wall, she reckoned there was no excuse to let up for anything else.

***

Gem nearly leapt with joy as she saw her magic explode against Ra. Her satisfaction at finding such a solid connection after so many of her hits were blocked or dodged was such that she almost forgot to begin charging another.

The tendrils lodged in Astra’s gate flexed, and she saw them inch further from the corner of her eye.

All but the last yard of them had been freed, now, and Gem doubted her teammate could hold them for more than twenty heartbeats longer.

Perhaps twenty heartbeats would prove enough, or perhaps it would be five too little- or a hundred. The uncertainty dried her mouth and hastened her lungs as she channelled more magic.

Crow was struggling to his feet, as Eden reached for Ra’s leg. Gem felt a stab of concern as the Jyptian kicked him- she had no love for the artificial, but the impact’s weight and savagery sent a tug at her gut as the boy shot backwards.

The moment Ra took to strike Eden proved disastrous for him, however. Crow slammed an elbow into his side, catching him under the ribs and sending a wavering down his legs.

Gem was sure the boy’s liver had been hit by the way he clutched the point of impact, hands almost hesitant around the crater of buckled steel. Crow stepped in and drew his arm back to follow up, but his punch met only a pillar of sand.

The second slammed into his side without warning. If Ra had aimed to outdo the brutality he’d shown Eden, he succeeded. The blow split Crow’s cuirass down the middle and sent him sliding five yards away.

But the attack still left an opportunity. Gem hurled her magic before sprinting forwards, realising that there was little time to hold anything back.

Sand scattered and steam hissed, forming a cloud of thermal refuse that shattered like a mirror as Gem sprinted through it. The airborne debris must have obscured her approach, as the wild swing Ra threw for her face would have missed even without her dodging.

Her fingers closed around his wrist, and she pulled him off balance.

An uppercut sent his slanted body right before he could do it himself, and her boot sent him to the floor as it met his gut.

The sudden swirling of the sand on which he lay wasn’t lost on Gem, and she dived for the boy without hesitating- desperate to pummel him before he could cast her aside with his specialty.

She fell upon him. Elbows struck chest, head fell upon face and a sharp pain crept around her hip as it slammed into his stomach.

One of her knees found itself between his legs and Gem worried for a moment that the boy might cover her with his breakfast, but despite the pain and sickness evident on his face, there was no spray of vomit.

Whether he grew more or less nauseous after that, Gem wouldn’t know. Her fist obscured his expression by crunching into his face, pulling back slick and salty with blood from the boy’s nose.

She winced at the blunt pain in her hand, then raised her arm to drop on the boy once more even while her other remained locked tightly around one shoulder.

Pin them and hit them. Do as much as you can as quickly, and they might just be out of the fight before they can gather enough wits to throw you off.

Karma had told her that, albeit around the same time she’d warned not to punch where she could elbow. Gem thought she deserved credit for recalling half the lesson, at least.

Bone fell like a lightning bolt, crushing lips and stopping only when it met teeth. Gem grinned as she felt more than heard the satisfying thunk of the impact, then hurriedly aimed to draw her arm back once more.

This time, however, something stopped it. A tightening around her bicep, unyielding as a vice and powerful as a piston. Ra’s free hand had reached out to grab her, fingers digging into muscle with a strength she hadn’t known the boy possessed.

Gem grit her teeth, trying to snatch her arm back, but it proved the wrong mistake.

As her torso moved to aid her limb, it gave Ra the space he needed to dart his other hand out and have it join the first.

Both hands locked into place, and Gem found pain creeping across her flesh as they squeezed ever harder.

She struggled, pitting her upper body against his and straining every ounce of physical and magical strength she possessed to tear free. And it made little difference. He grit his teeth, narrowed his eyes, leaked sweat to join with the blood clotting around his mouth and chin.

But he didn’t let go. And Gem didn’t escape.

He was supposed to be a ranged specialist, he was a ranged specialist. Gem was far from overly concentrated on physical power- a mere quarter of her potency had been dedicated to her strength- but she certainly had more of it than him.

Yet there was no doubting it, Ra was stronger. Not a lot, but more than a hair. Fuck.

Even while held in place and drenching herself with sweat, Gem found her attention turning to the ground around her- the sand lying in place. That was odd.

Why would Ra not whip it into a storm and break every bone in her body while she was undefended? The answer came to her quickly, and it brought a grin with it.

Because he couldn’t. He needed his arms free to control the sand.

He stared at her, eyes hardening as they focused on her smile and grip seeming to grow harsher, if not tighter. Gem cried out despite herself, giving ground millimetre by millimetre in spite of all her efforts.

She redoubled her exertion, yet it seemed only to make Ra redouble his own.

He fought to free his arms, repel her far enough that he could turn his limbs to conducting the sand. She fought to keep him from doing so for as long as possible.

It was a battle of time as much as sweat, where the grains of sand scattered around them might as well have leaked from an hourglass.

Fear seized Gem. Along with panic, desperation, fury at her weakness, exultation at her strength- for how many could contend with a years older mystic in such a way as her? Before long a bizarre madness seemed to wash over her. Swallowing all other emotions, leaving her only with the certainty that she had to win.

It was a precious strength, keeping her going even while she clearly lost.

Finally, just as Gem felt herself about to lean back past the critical point- to have her weight forced far enough away that she could be tossed back like a ragdoll- the contest was decided.

Blonde hair flashed in the corner of her eye like threads of woven gold, and a boot fell upon Ra’s chest. Metal groaned and a cracking noise reached her ears.

Then the world began to fade away.