“I lost because I fought like an idiot.” Chaths growled, pacing the floor just as he had for the past ten minutes. Anger moving his legs almost by instinct.

His own quarters had proven a poor place to vent the fury, his teammates had been dejected enough as it was. And yet keeping it bottled was beyond him. Chaths had done as he always did in times of such difficulty, heading to Rajah for advice.

“That much is true.” The Immortal answered.

Chaths glared at him.

“You’re meant to reassure your apprentice. Tell him that it wasn’t his fault, or that you couldn’t have done better yourself.”

Rajah seemed entirely perplexed at his words.

“But I could have done better myself. Much better.”

Resuming his pacing, Chaths muttered the answer.

“Any tips for next time, then?”

“Well, personally I’d have sensed the location of each enemy mystic and then translocated to them one at a time before melting their breasplates with my amazingly strong Immortal powers.”

“And for us mere mortals?”

Rajah made a show of thinking for a moment.

“Try not to talk to your enemy while they’re actively consolidating their forces.”

“Piss off.”

Still Chaths paced, and after a moment his voice returned.

“I’m not going to let it happen again, I don’t care what I have to do to win. That was my mistake this time, I didn’t want to hurt Crow. Now I see that I don’t have the luxury of pulling my punches.”

Almost instinctively he looked up, searching for his mentor’s reaction. As always, Rajah’s face gave nothing away.

“Words are wind.” The Immortal said, speaking softly. “They mean nothing without deeds behind them. Prove you speak a storm rather than a breeze.”

Chaths didn’t say anything, having nothing more to add. Rajah, as seemed always the case, was right. Words were meaningless.

He found himself suddenly looking forward to compounding his own with action.

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The Gemini had left peace and quiet in her wake when she’d moved from the room, and Astra, for the first time in weeks, had found herself enjoying both.

Her thoughts were always loudest when nothing else rang in her ears, and for once she took satisfaction in hearing them. Running over the task again and again in her mind, recalling moves and countermoves, near-defeats and near-wins.

Above all, recalling how skill had taken her almost as far as power.

She massaged her side absently, finding it still sore from where Rajah’s sand had whipped against it. A mighty blow, unlike most she’d felt before, yet one she’d weathered.

A strike left against her by a mystic years her senior, and Astra had withstood it. In spite of the exhaustion and pain, she found herself smiling.

The Sieve’s corridors were left with peace and quiet by the late hour, and as had always been the case in recent weeks, Gem found herself loathing both. She wanted nothing to do with mental exertion of any kind, yearning for a bed and warmth rather than a dialectical resolution.

Gem knew she’d find neither until her decision had been made, and so she walked and thought.

Her mind occupied itself while her legs moved, drifting more than travelling. Her own steps no more a choice than the current on which a boat sailed.

It wasn’t until she started to ascend a flight of stairs that Gem realised she was headed for the roof. Not until she felt her hands close and meet resistance that she realised she’d brought the resonance stone with her.

Of course. She mused to herself. It does seem the logical conclusion.

Gem thought of Karma as she climbed the steps. Beautiful, powerful, strong willed and sharp witted. Karma, who she’d always idolised and adored, Karma, who she’d aimed to mature herself purely for the sake of becoming entwined with.

To see her friend’s hidden face had been a shock, but more than that it had been a revelation. Gem had used Karma as a crutch in her father’s absence. She’d used her father as a crutch her whole life.

Both habits had left her unsteady on her own legs and with a fragile balance, and Gem saw only one way to amend the flaw.

“I’m not a child to be bundled up and protected, whose heart might be shattered by the sight of flaws in their heroes. I’m the fucking Gemini.”

She spoke the words outloud, as an oath. Uncaring of who might hear them, barely even registering what they were as they left her. All she knew was that they sounded right.

A serviceable obituary to the little girl she’d once been.

Drawing her arm back and squeezing the stone tight, Gem hurled it from the roof with all her strength. Muscle proved a poor substitute for magic, but she succeeded in sending the treasure flitting from sight all the time.

Remaining on the edge for a moment, Gem looked out into the city. Soaked in the sight of smog-coughing chimneys and unending slums, the lustre and glamour of its central buildings measured against the squalor of those closer to the city’s border.

It sickened her to see, and not for the first time her mind moved back to something Karma had said. Talk of the millions living in poverty the world over.

Gem was in no place to change it, she knew. Yet one day she would be.

The knowledge gave her mind something more to do as she turned to head back into the Crux, storm of thoughts barely reduced by her closure. Gem felt no need to look back as she walked.