Saia expanded her domain further to figure out what had happened and hopefully find Serit. Before she could look around, the opponents caught the gray ball and one of her team’s runners shouted for her to go in pursuit. She focused on the action as best as she could, running behind the ball and trying to prevent the Stars of Jade to score on the green circle, while her expanded domain still drained her viss. She remembered Serit’s words about their security being the reason they had advocated for the representatives to not deactivate her. As much as she hated it, she needed to make sure they were still alive.

Checking the stands row by row was an exhausting amount of work, and probably useless considering Serit and whoever had attacked them could move around. Besides, if someone wanted to hurt them it made sense to leave the crowd, so she decided to start from the inside of the arena.

She expanded her domain again, including the rooms and corridors behind the stands. She wondered what to do once she found Serit and the attackers. What had happened at the warehouse made it clear that she couldn’t leave, or she’d be deactivated as soon as she stepped out of the field. Without being able to get closer or keep her domain expanded indefinitely, she could only alert the security and wait for them to solve the situation.

There were people going around the corridors under the stands, staff members as far as she could tell. Most of them paced and talked to each other, slow and aimless, clearly waiting for the match to be over before they could spring into action.

In the midst of all that calm, the group of five people running in the general direction of the exit stood out like a sea snake in a school of sardines. She saw that the one at the center was Serit and stopped moving her statue, focusing all of her attention on the situation. They were trying to struggle, but the other four people pushed and shoved them forward, forcing them into a quick pace.

Her attention was abruptly brought back to the arena by a teammate screaming her name. She started running toward the opponent who was holding the ball, keeping purposefully a bit too slow; she needed someone to score if she wanted enough time to investigate what was happening. She saw an attacker getting closer to the circle and positioned herself in front of him in place of an actual defender. When he tried to score, she stepped forward a bit too soon, leaving some space to her right. He quickly passed the ball from one hand to the other and scored. The defender Saia had replaced yelled something, but she was already tuning her out. She expanded her domain once more while the opponents cheered and the ball was carried toward their narrator.

The group that had taken Serit was taking a detour to avoid two janitors. Saia kept a bit of her focus on what was happening in the field, using the rest to quickly examine the four kidnappers: they were three shilvé and a human, their lower faces covered by scarves of different colors, without a common pattern she could identify. Their heads were shaved to the scalp. They wore common tunics with pink plumes that showed support for the Doves, identical to many she’d seen among the crowd that day. They left their forearms half visible, showing the swirling tattoos that covered them.

She checked inside their pockets. Apart from the small lights and tickets, three of them carried knives. The third one was holding his own, pointed at Serit’s back, close enough they could feel the tip every time they struggled too much or tried to slow down.

She cut the pockets with a slash of wind and carried the knives away before they could clatter to the ground and alert their owners. After debating with herself on how to get rid of the last knife, she sent a strong gust of wind to tear it away from the shilvé’s hand.

“Stop!” he whispered, sharply enough it had the urgency of a shout.

The four kidnappers halted, one of them clamping a hand around Serit’s mouth before they could scream.

“Your knives?” the one that had been holding one asked.

They quickly realized their pockets had been cut.

“She knows,” the human hissed.

They broke into a run, dragging Serit with them. When they tried to struggle again, the shilvé right behind them punched at the base of their head, making them fall to the ground. They weren’t unconscious, but hurt and confounded enough two of the kidnappers picked them up without encountering resistance.

Saia pushed waves of viss into their bodies, trying to make the whole group fall asleep. They slowed down and stumbled, but they didn't fall onto the ground as she had expected. She pushed more viss, increasing the quantity bit by bit despite the days of life that were leaving her at every second just because she was keeping her domain expanded for too long.

Back at the match, the Stars’ narrator had finished talking about something Saia hadn’t followed in the least. She redoubled her efforts, pushing out so much viss it made her connection to the mountain disappear for an instant. The four kidnappers dropped to the ground as one. Saia nudged Serit with a bit of viss, looking for the nearest guards near the exits. She screamed in the corridor behind them with a fake male voice.

“Help! They're attacking me!”

The three guards looked at each other for so long Saia was on the point of nudging them forward. She just created another scream, further down the corridor.

The guards finally sprung into action. Two of them extracted their tridents and ran away, while the third headed in the opposite direction, probably looking for support. Saia guided them with two more screams, making sure they were heading toward the four asleep kidnappers and their barely awake prey. She pushed some viss into Serit to help them along, then shrunk her domain again. She focused on the field just in time to witness the purple ball falling onto the field.

She started running even before guessing who had thrown it. If her team scored twice in a row, the match would end and she could check on Serit in person. She ran behind the attacker that was holding the ball, waiting for her to throw it to a teammate, then sprinted to intercept it. She circled around the defenders to cross into the midfield with the purple circle. She passed the ball to an attacker and slowed down, pretending to be tired. She found Serit’s seat on the stands, but it was still empty.

She waited for her team to score, then decided to check on the situation inside the arena again. She found a group of people collapsed on the floor, but they weren’t the kidnappers. The guards were rolling on themselves and clawing at their own tunics, the tridents abandoned on the floor beside them.

“Let me rain!” one of them screamed when one of the janitors appeared at the end of the corridor.

Saia expanded her domain more, hoping the kidnappers hadn't left the arena; she wasn't sure she could go much further before her connection to the mountain disintegrated all the viss she had left in a matter of minutes.

Luckily, they were still running down the corridor, Serit a stumbling figure in their midst. They had almost reached the exit that wasn’t guarded.

Saia tried to make them fall asleep again. They only stumbled, but this time she paid attention to how the viss moved inside their bodies. Part of it was moving in slow waves like she intended, then reverted back into alertness before the tiredness could take over. The flow started to change when passing from the shoulders to the torso.

She remembered the tattoos and looked closer. The viss followed the swirls and waves as if it was a pattern on an object, then came out on the other side without traces of tiredness.

She needed to disrupt the tattoos in some way. She tried to extract the ink, but only managed to move it around under the skin. She would keep going if she didn’t fear creating a new pattern with unknown effects.

Back at the arena, the narrator had almost finished his turn and was about to release a copper ball. She didn’t have the time to think of a better solution, so she used her winds to slash at the first layer of the kidnappers’ skin.

Their screams paralyzed her for an instant. She pushed viss into them until they fell asleep.

“Run!” she yelled at Serit, giving them a bit of energy.

They were startled out of their stupor. They stared in shock at the bodies and blood, then shook their head and made their way toward the inside of the arena, yelling for the guards’ help.

Saia returned her focus to the field in time to intercept the ball. She ran toward the purple circle, checking both the entrances to the stands and the positions of her teammates with her all-around view. She let an opponent touch her back to stop in her tracks and make a sudden passage to the Doves’ attacker that was wearing the protagonist’s cape.

The crowd exploded in a cheer when the Doves scored in their own circle. In the moving lights of the lanterns, she finally saw Serit emerge from the corridors of the arena. She pretended to join her team’s celebrations, wondering about the kidnappers and how much, exactly, they knew about her.