Crow shot down the corridor like a bird in flight, legs burning as and lungs straining for every breath. His footsteps seemed to shake the building.

Only magic would have made him swifter.

Leather struck stone behind him, as loud and rapid as his own strides, yet perhaps only half so frantic. Crow did his best to dismiss the sound, found his endeavour made more difficult when words were added to it.

“Wait.” Rajah called out, voice as hurried as his legs. Crow ignored the command, ignored his body’s dwindling energy, then almost fell. Skidding on the marble as he turned a corner, and still he continued his sprint. Mind far from the hall and farther still from the discomfort of moving through it so fast.

Trapped on the sight of Gemini Menza’s writhing, tortured form.

“Crow, calm down.” Came Rajah’s voice once more. Closer, he realised. More urgent.

Pit, he really is a sprinter isn’t he?

The run continued for moments more, stopping as a hand came down on Crow’s arm. He tried to shake it off, then slowed as the grip proved too strong.

“Let me go.” He snarled, finally turning his attention fully to breaking free. Rajah released him without a struggle, but held him no less firmly with his gaze.

“You need to take control of your temper.” The boy said. “Think for a moment, calm-”

“If you tell me to calm down again I’m going to hit you.” Crow snapped.

“I’m not your enemy.” The Jyptian said, a strained anger sharpening his words.

“Then get out of my way.”

For a moment they simply locked eyes, then Crow moved to storm ahead once more- angry at losing even the seconds he already had.

“What do you expect to achieve?”

Crow’s mouth worked silently, with no answer to fuel it. He settled for wordless Ness, continuing.

“Crow!” Rajah snapped.

“I expect to be by her side.” He roared, words leaping from the gut rather than mind. “She’s my teammate, and I’m one of the ones who voted for her entering the task.”

“And is that all you plan on doing?” The boy pressed, making an accusation of the question.

Crow took a moment to gather his thoughts before answering, voice shaky even with his carefully steeled composure.

“Yes, it is.”

He glanced over a shoulder, saw that his lie had fooled Rajah no more than himself. It sparked a sudden anger to see, making Crow question why he’d even bothered.

“Then there should be nothing to lose from you taking a while to wait.”

“I’ll lose minutes beside her.” Crow snapped. “For all I know the task’s already over, she could be lying in a daze with no one familiar to so much as glance at.”

“And you think she knows you well enough to be comforted by your presence?”

Crow felt his face burn, threatening to scatter his barely held thoughts.

“It can’t hurt.” He answered, speaking through rage-clenched teeth. “But delaying will-”

“No, Crow. I’m not an idiot. I know what you’re planning to do, seen that look in plenty of eyes before yours. You can’t just attack Simona like-”

“Like she deserves?” He cried, voice raising to a shout as fury burned through the last of his self control. Crow could hear every beat of his heart, so furious was it, feeling it like the drums of war.

Such a signal was more than he needed, moments later Crow reconjured the wind with his sprint.

“Crow!” Roared the Jyptian, hot on his heels. “You need to listen to me, attacking her will solve nothing. You’ll just bring trouble down on yourself, do you understand? She’ll get what’s coming to her.”

He tried his best to drown out the desperate urging, not willing to sap his strength with speech.

Crow had barely left the Crux when he called on his magic, streets providing the space he needed. Its answer was swift and strong, empowering every step as oil did a fire. He moved faster than the wind.

It was a journey of miles to the stadium, he knew. But one taken enough times that he could remember the path. His body was smaller than any carriage, faster than any man, and the ground passed beneath him in mere minutes.

There were no crowding people about the stadium, as Crow had feared there might be. Their absence was a blessing, granting him effortless passage through.

Effortless, save for the guards about its gate. Inepts that moved too slow by far to step in front of Crow before he hurried past.

It took little longer to weave his way through the winding corridors and emerge out into the arena’s centre. His heart sank as he did.

Men and women both crowded around something with looks as varied as the moon. Crow saw Sieve staff making up the mass’ bulk, yet others were dotted among it. Flamboyantly dressed, with hair as big as heads and the towering stature that seemed a noble’s inheritance.

It didn’t take him long to pick out the looming outline of Karma Alabaster among them, barging her way through the others with elbows and shoulders. No magic intwined with her movements, yet she was strong enough still to carve a path through the walls of flesh.

He let his own magic go, moving on fast enough that the sudden absence was barely felt. In moments he was within the crowd.

Bodies pressed Crow from all sides, threatening to squeeze from him what little air had survived the sprint. He fought the urge to press on as Alabaster had, knowing he had neither her stature or mass.

“Let me pass.” He hissed, fighting the urge to bite his tongue around such luminaries. “I’m her teammate, let me damn well pass.”

As many bodies parted before him as didn’t.

Lavastro knelt down by Gemini, reaching for the girl and feeling a feverish calefaction as she pressed fingers against brow. The burn of a tormented body. Pain drawing heat more strongly than rage and shame combined.

There was no groan to speak of the child’s animacy. Merely short, whispered gasps. So fast as to bleed together, almost too shallow to reach Lavastro’s lowered ears.

Her stomach dropped at the prognosis.

A feel of her side quickly pinpointed the broken ribs, drawing a gasp from the girl but leaving her unconscious. Lavastro muttered an apology, then found herself at a loss.

She knew what ailed her, knew it for a treatable wound. Knew the consequences for giving aid.

If Lavastro ordered it, she had no doubt Gem would receive treatment. Foreign element she was, no organiser would be dismissed by the staff long enough for another to arrive and contradict them. Not even her.

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Yet the thought of doing so gave her pause.

Would she forgive me?

The Sieve had been carefully balanced around the management of resources and expenditure of credits as its only source of medicinal treatment. Not even Lavastro could argue for the Gemini’s continued presence if she were to receive outside attention. Not even in exchange for her every credit.

It would be the perfect opportunity for any dissatisfied with her presence to push for its removal.

But she’d be safe. Lavastro thought, staring once more at the girl. Small, she realised suddenly. Her face soft and rounded by the slightness of true youth, merely approaching adulthood.

More a child in her eyes than ever before, and more fragile even than that. The pained flush of her cheeks and delicate closure of her eyes made Lavastro’s guts squirm in a way that rendered thought impossible.

She steadied her breathing, tried to enter the cool, collected part of her mind that always held its walls so firmly against emotion.

It was a futile effort.

Just one glance at Gem, a single strained gasp or pain-halted cough, was enough to shatter Lavastro’s calm. Drowning reason in passion, leaving her mind unsteady to its foundations. Tearing whatever careful dialectic her thoughts weaved and leaving nothing but instinct to govern her.

Another cough drew her back to the present, pain evident enough across the girl’s face to make Lavastro’s decision for her.

Life before victory.

She stood, opened her mouth to bellow an order and command the treatment Gem needed. Then paused as she heard a voice call for her.

“Alabaster!” It cried, turning her head around. In the moment’s fire, Lavastro barely even registered their use of her name’s mutilated translation.

She came to gaze upon a tall boy with hair like threaded gold and eyes like crushed emeralds, face twisted in concern. Somehow it was the fire of his stare, not its runes, that let her recognise Crow Tempora.

“She has a healing relic.” He cried, voice barely reaching her over the masses surrounding them. “It should be on her person, use it. Quickly!”

Lavastro acted without thought, digging around through the leathery material wrapped about Gem finding her prize in barely half a minute.

It was easy to recognise the vial, a finger’s length and twice its breadth. Lavastro had seen dozens lining crates and shipments during the preparatory stage of the Sieve; the most inexpensive magical healing available.

Uncorking it with her teeth, she tipped Gemini’s head back and pressed the bottle to her lips.

“Gemini, do you hear me? You need to drink.”

The girl’s answer was a bleary groan, quickly turning to a gasp as the movement of lungs jarred her ribs once more. Lavastro felt a stab of fury as she peered into the insensate child’s face.

“Gemini, this will help you. Make the pain go away. But you need to listen to me and drink.”

Miraculously, the girl did. Cyan eyes flickered, though failed to open. Her body seemed able to move at a snail’s pace and a flea’s scale. Inhaling softly, exhaling carefully. Lips parted, but by barely an inch.

Just enough to allow the viscous, violet fluid passage down into her gullet.

That she could spare the breath at all soothed Lavastro’s frayed nerves, coaxing from her a held lungful of air and letting her shoulders slump in relieving calm.

Crow was forced back along with the rest of the crowd once the Princess of Taiklos began to bark her orders, strong hands like walls of rock.

He barely minded. The Gemini had received treatment before his very eyes, that much sated him for the moment.

Karma Alabaster remained kneeling beside the girl, her incandescent face marred by an uncharacteristic grimness. He couldn’t fault the woman for it. Seeing how carefully she held the Gemini’s hand in her own, how deep the worry in her eyes was, Crow found himself marvelling that her composure remained unbroken.

As if feeling the touch of his gaze, Alabaster turned to meet Crow’s eye. She stared for a moment, then realisation seemed to pierce the fog of concern about her.

Mere minutes later he was whisked to the kneeling Taik by the guiding hands of faceless staff.

Unsure what to say, let alone what to do, he merely stood stagnant. Eyes drifting down to the Gemini, stomach twisting at the sight of her.

The girl had been pale from the moment Crow first saw her, and he was thankful for the fact. It blunted that what little colour her skin could spare to lose was gone. Perverting the pristine, ivory flesh and rending beauty into sickening dessication. The ethereal left skeletal.

Crow’s eyes left him distracted enough that he barely noticed the Gemini’s breathing. Like wind running through a rickety house, every shift of the breeze exposing yet another weakness.

“Pit.” He muttered, suddenly finding his legs unsteady beneath him. Robbed of strength to see the girl without hers.

“When will the rest of your team be here?”

The nonchalance and abruptness of Alabaster’s question took Crow off guard.

“I’m not sure.” He said, trying to think of the distance. The Taik spoke again before his mind was halfway to the conclusion.

“When will they leave, then?” She pressed. “For that matter, are they the sort to do so at all?”

“I don’t know.” Crow answered, a shakiness to his voice.

Alabaster's eyes had no less intensity than they had in the wake of his announcement at the orientation. Crow felt just as small gazing into them as before. Just as stupid. Just as clumsy.

“You don’t even have a prediction?” Asked the Taik, irritation bleeding into her voice. It combined terribly with the crushing expectancy already threading her manner.

“I’ve only known most of them for a few days.” He answered, finding anger swollen to match her biting tongue.

“Days ought to have been enough.”

Crow went to retort, then paused. Turned away from the woman with nothing more to say.

Days surely would have been enough for her.

“Forgive me.” Alabaster said, voice bereft of its bladed edge. “I’m in the grip of emotion. I imagine you can make an educated guess regarding your sister at least?”

He thought, finding himself eager to meet the woman’s expectations. After seeing them tempered before his eyes, the alternative was no choice at all.

“She’ll be on her way now, I think.” He said, then forced certainty into his voice where he heard none. “No. She definitely will.”

“For what reason?” Asked Alabaster. Her tone surprised him. Though fury had been wiped from the woman’s face, it still left him panicked to trade words with her.

Those golden eyes seemed to demand excellence, picking apart every fibre of Crow’s being in search of it. And the intelligence burning behind them left little doubt that their owner was more than a match for whatever she might find.

“To help.” He managed. “Or to see if she can, at least. Certainly in part because she’ll realise I ran over.”

“Not to gloat?”

“Of course not!” Crow answered, aghast at the very question. “Who in the pit would?”

Alabaster seemed reserved as she answered.

“Plenty.”

Their conversation ended after that. Alabaster seeming content with Crow’s answers, focusing all her attentions on the unconscious Gemini.

He found relief in being ignored, for once. Entirely uncertain whether his composure could have stood those molten eyes for much longer.

By the time colour began to return to the Gemini’s face, those crowding around them had been fully dispersed. Her first unbroken breath came just minutes before a voice caught in his ear.

“Crow!”

There was an urgency to it that turned him instantly, dragging his gaze to sweep the arena for its source. It wasn’t hard to find; Astra made an obvious show as she practically wrestled with one of the Sieve’s staff.

“Let her through.” Called Alabaster, taking notice barely after Crow did. As if magic had threaded her command, the burly man stepped aside and allowed Astra to continue unhindered.

An air scorching string of curses announced Unity’s presence, and the Taik ordered him to be allowed forth as well with only a moment’s hesitation.

Alabaster stood as the pair neared, seeming reluctant to leave hold of the Gemini’s hand. She turned a stormy eye to them both, practically glaring at the pair and redoubling Crow’s relief to not find her eyes centered on him.

“The three of you are to take Gemini back to her quarters in the Sieve. I have already sent word for a carriage to be prepared, the moment it arrives you shall depart with utmost haste.”

Crow was interrupted from wondering when she’d gotten the chance by Unity’s crackling voice.

“And why is it us who needs to take her?” Asked the boy.

Fury fell across Alabaster’s face like drawn curtains, driving the air from Crow’s lungs and loosing dread to poison his blood.

“Because hired drivers are unlikely to carry unconscious girls into private Alliance buildings, no matter how much they’re paid. And none of the staff here will obey me so far as to leave the stadium. Do you have any more inane questions?”

Unity opened his mouth, but whatever he’d been about to say was crushed beneath Alabaster’s voice as she continued.

“Excellent. Now leave.”

There was neither argument nor hesitation. All thoughts but immediate compliance were melted beneath the bubbling gold, heat giving haste like a floor of burning coals.

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[https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/512595944613740556/1163397519636705290/STEAM_POWER_IS_EVIL_POWER.png?ex=653f6d5f&is=652cf85f&hm=bdffc79b2c3759cc8a26c523991a63d636034d60b9db06687aeaffd92ed13fd0&=&width=889&height=498]

Protest poster , Udrebam, Unix,

Circa 1,195 I.E.