Astra had realised far too late what Deka was planning.

The girl hadn’t met her eye all evening, barely even spoken to her. Mumbled every word and muttered every sentence. She’d attributed it to nerves in the wake of her request to compete, but the luminar’s disappearance early in the night had taught her otherwise.

It was as abrupt a leave as Astra had ever seen a person take, and one she took much too long to realise the motive of.

The Gemini had seemed unperturbed by it entirely, beautiful face barely moving when Astra told her of their teammate’s vanishment. The slightest shrug had made itself known in her feeble shoulders, somehow bearing an unshaken confidence even painted purple and yellow by bruising.

“I’m sure she had her reasons.” The girl said, uncaring. Unconcerned.

Astra found herself overcome by a fury at that, burning like liquid iron and filling her with no less toxicity.

“I’m sure she does, too.” She answered, forcing herself to remain quiet. Her contempt hidden behind the curtains of her face. “But I would be sure of the specifics if she’d bothered to tell us.”

The Gemini snorted at that.

“You sound like a child fretting after her mother. It’s been a day since I needed her on hand to help me, and you were never so injured as to require that at all. Perhaps she’s simply decided to exercise the newfound freedom from her obligations.”

Astra hated the girl more than ever for her rationality, heating the coals of her rage back to glowing once more.

She caught herself before answering, then turned her baleful eye inwards. Didn’t like what she saw in the slightest.

I’m the most insecure person I know. She realised, suddenly finding clear in her mind a hundred scornful impressions and a dozen icy meetings. All born from her own jealousy and bitterness.

Even before the humiliation of her last battle, before being treated like a child by that girl with no more years lining her face, she’d been uncertain in her own convictions. Shakeable as a ceder.

“You’re thinking about your fight, aren’t you?” Came the Gemini’s voice.

It was the tenderness that struck Astra, quieter and softer than she’d have believed the girl was capable of being. She didn’t look up, didn’t answer. Somehow it failed to dissuade the Menza.

“I know how you’re feeling.” She continued.

A sudden fury washed over Astra like tides eating a beach, and no amount of shame could keep it from bringing her blazing eyes up to meet the girl.

“No you don’t.” She hissed, leaving the venom in her voice unmasked. “Don’t pretend for a moment to understand me, don’t you dare.”

Any sympathy the Gemini’s eyes had held evaporated at that, then froze back into a frigid hardness.

“I’m trying to extend an olive branch.” The girl said, anger carefully kept restrained in her voice yet no less obvious for it.

“I don’t want your olive branch.” Astra answered. “Nor your sympathy, or understanding and certainly not your pity.”

“Then you’ve nothing to worry about.” The Gemini growled. “You’ll get none from me now.”

She turned away, evidently finished with the conversation. Astra was only just beginning.

“Did you really think you knew the first thing about what had happened to me?” She demanded, finding her temper tested ever more as the girl refused to meet her glare. “That losing was all I’d be bothered by?”

That dragged the Gemini’s eyes up once again.

“Do you really think our situations are so different?” The girl demanded. “You’re far from the only one to ever suffer a defeat, and I can assure you I fell a far greater distance than you did.”

Astra’s rage might have driven her to stand, were her body not aching more than usual. Instead she let her amazed anger escape as a laugh, bitter and hysterical.

“You ignorant bitch, this isn’t about losing. It’s about having it proven to the whole world that there are people who’ll always be stronger than me.”

Her voice cracked, and the involuntary show of weakness only loosened her tongue.

“I practiced every day of my life for years before competing here, trained until my fucking joints creaked and I gave myself arcane poisoning. Me, a mystic not even into her golden years, with arcane poisoning. That’s how much I pushed myself. And I was helpless. There’s nothing I can do to change that. No matter what, that girl will always be more powerful than me. I can’t make my potency grow faster, can’t master any spheres but the four I was born with. I’ll strengthen with age, but she will faster. The gap will widen, not shrink.”

Astra turned away as the tears began to wet her eyes. If nothing else, she would keep the Gemini from seeing her cry. That measure of weakness was more than she could bear revealing to anyone, let alone the girl seated before her.

“So no.” She finished. “You don’t understand what I’ve been through, you could crush any two of the mystics who beat you at once. Pit even a year younger than me, it wouldn’t surprise me if you could contend with Amelia yourself.”

She smiled bitterly as she finished speaking, the expression proving her only guard against weeping.

The Gemini said nothing at all after that, her silence remaining unbroken for more heartbeats than Astra cared to count. Slowly, surely, she felt her anger subside. Diminished by time where thought had failed to make any difference at all.

It was rekindled a touch from the girl’s voice alone.

“You’re right.” Said the Gemini, somehow emptier than before. “I didn’t understand you in the slightest, nor were our… experiences comparable. I’m sorry for my presumptuousness.”

Astra said nothing. The girl was far from finished, her suspicions far from abated..

“But you need to understand how hypocritical you’re being in this defeat.”

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It was like a slap across her face, and the Gemini was continuing before Astra could even register it.

“Losing doesn’t make you weak.” The girl continued. “Nor does the existence of those better than you. You’re among the most gifted mystics I’ve personally met, perhaps in the top ten. And yet you sit here mourning that you weren’t born with even greater talent than that while countless people across the world live and die too weak even to find work in the arcane, or without magic at all.”

There was no aggression in the words. No provocative distaste or challenging contempt. Each sentence was spoken flatly, with breaths made shallow and brittle by the Gemini’s wounds.

All rang against Astra like a hammer blow, carrying a force born from reason where volume lacked.

It was almost enough to leave her silent, almost enough to strip her of the power to answer.

Almost.

“I never said I wasn’t fortunate to be born as powerful as I am.” She snapped, feeling her face burn. “But standing high on a mountain doesn’t make it any less of a bitter realization to know I’ll never reach the top.”

The Gemini opened her mouth for another answer, then paused at the sound of an opening door. Astra turned to meet Deka’s eye as she entered, prepared herself to lash her tongue out like never before.

Then froze as she saw Karma Alabaster walk into the room.

It had been nearly a week since Astra had seen the woman last, and a single glance made it clear how much the days had changed her. The woman’s hair was tied back where it had previously hung loose, her eyes tired and soft where before they’d been perpetually diamond hard.

She towered, standing almost as tall as the doorframe itself. And still she seemed to grow ever larger with every step towards Astra. Reputation and presence making her a titan.

“Good evening.” She said. Her accented voice felt too great for the room, even without magic to bolster its volume. Walls appearing smaller and narrower as it rebound from them. “I’ve come to visit the Gemini. Would you mind if we spoke in private?”

Astra realised only then that the Taik was addressing her. Her breath caught in her throat, eyes captured by Alabaster’s. She’d almost forgotten how they looked up close. Burning, truly burning. Like molten gold.

“Of course.” She forced, standing hastily and hurrying to move around the larger woman even as her body groaned in protest.

Silently Astra hoped she might draw Alabaster’s focus, that the Taikan prodigy might remark upon her performance or talent, any of the things that could draw such a phenom’s gaze.

She didn’t. Astra was out into the corridor when the door closed behind her, left with nothing but a fresh serving of her own contempt, and a newfound disliking of the Gemini.

***

“She hates you.” Karma noted dispassionately, glancing at the door. “It’s rare to see one immune to the fabled Menza family charisma. Perhaps you’re losing your touch.”

The jest was delivered with an unimpeachable innocence, but it stung all the same. Gem fought the urge to recoil from her friend’s barb, inhaled sharply to keep her eyes from loosing tears. It was as hard a task as she’d expected.

Gem was no fool, however often she acted like one. She had wit enough to know there was only one reason Karma would have paid her a visit. Cause enough to know how her tutor had surely felt, seeing the pitiful excuse for a fight she’d had just two tasks prior.

She steeled herself for what was coming, raising her chin and tightening her jaw to meet it unflinching. In that much, at least, she could follow Karma’s lead.

“Good evening Karma.”

Something flitted across the Taik’s face as she neared, emerging almost the moment after Gem spoke and disappearing before she could recognise it. A thin smile grew to replace it.

“You sound awfully formal, Gemini.” The woman said. Her voice carried with it a great warmth, terrible in its sincerity and sickening in its function. Gem could scarcely believe her friend would wear such a facade.

“Stop feigning friendliness.” She said, speaking before she could catch herself. Karma halted her approach paces from her, smile wavering. Gem forced herself to press on heedless.

“I know why you’re here, Karma. You want to chastise me for my performance. To point out where I went wrong and… and…” Her breaking voice made itself a nuisance as she tried to speak, tears welling in spite of her best efforts. Gem forced both down as she continued. “Want to make sure I don’t get too cocky. Well you can save your breath. I’ve had little to do for the past week but think on all those things, and I don’t think my pride could be cut down more than it already is.”

Least of all by you. She thought, but found herself too disheaveled to say the words outloud.

Gem peered at Karma through tear-sodden eyes, sight distorted. Just barely clear enough to see the woman walking towards her, stride as confident as ever.

“I wasn’t aware that was how you felt.” She said, voice still carrying that grotesque warmth. A torment even as Gem broke down fully into tears.

She was beyond words as the Taik reached her, having spent her allowance of coherence on the single outburst. Gem could do nothing but brace herself for whatever discipline her failure had earned.

Strong arms stunned Gem by encircling her, wrapping gently around her shoulders and pulling her tight against Karma’s body. The hug broke every code of Jaean propriety she knew, an unthinkable thing in any court of Unix and inappropriate as any gesture could be.

But still she melted into it, found the tears suddenly welling more voluminous than ever in her blurry eyes.

“If you thought I would come here to berate you, then you have revealed nothing but my own failings.”

Karma’s voice was quiet in her ears, gentler than Gem could remember ever hearing it before. It seemed to reach her as a feeling rather than sound. Cooling the flames in her thoughts and killing the chill of her spine.

Gem didn’t try to speak. Doubted she was able, even had she chosen to make herself. She just remained still and felt Karma hold her, allowing the relief to come.

I’m like a child. She thought, dimly. Distantly. Speaking with only a fraction of herself yet untouched by emotion or distress. Gem paid no heed to the creeping thought, found it as trivial a thing as was possible.

Perhaps, at fourteen, she still was a child. Perhaps it was acceptable for her to behave like one, if only once.

The time until they parted felt like years, the parting itself like suffocation. Still Gem was steeled by the time Karma looked back into her eyes, strength having come to set her face. Restoring her composure and rendering dried tears insubstantial.

“Thank you.” She breathed, finding it a task to steady her voice enough to say even that much.

“Don’t thank me, Gemini. I stand by what I said. That you ever believed I might blame you for a moment betrays a deep neglect on my part. I’m… sorry for that.”

Immediately Gem felt terrible, hurrying to reassure her friend. Falling silent at a wave of her hand.

“But that is a tangent we can address at our leisure.” The Taik said, eyes still resting on her intently enough to feel like weight. “How are you, Gemini?”

It was the topic she’d most feared coming to, but somehow Karma coaxed speech from her almost before she could feel the apprehension that came with it.

They talked. Then talked still, and long past the hour where Gem would have drifted to sleep, they continued to talk some more.

Thoughts Gem had kept from considering for days bubbled back up to the surface, leaving her lighter by the word as they conversed. It almost brought tears anew to her as she spoke of the helplessness, the emptiness of a shattered delusion. The disappointment of a generation’s reverence.

She didn’t realise until long after hollowing herself of the poison that no small amount had been held back with her father in mind, saved to share with him alone.

But he’s gone now. She reminded herself. And wherever he is, he seems to have no interest in answering me.

It was long dark by the time Karma had finally exhausted all Gem had to say, hours past the time she’d planned to slumber. She felt the tiredness only after her friend had left, when the burning kindness could no longer smother it.

She lay back in her bed at ease for the first time in a week, closing her eyes and finding sleep waiting for her without delay.

Gem drifted off with a smile on her face.