When the unexpected happened, one could only accept, adapt, and move on.
This was the truth that governed existence across all Scales and all Observable realities. Plans fell apart. Certainties crumbled. Beings who had cultivated for tens of thousands of years could be eliminated in single moments by forces they never anticipated encountering!
Those who survived were not always the strongest or the most cunning but rather those who could process the unexpected without freezing, without denying what had occurred, without wasting precious moments mourning what should have been.
The spectators in the Coliseum of a Thousand Ascendant Glories were learning this lesson now.
---
Achilles stared at the space where Khaemwaset-of-the-Nine-Suns and the others had been as truly, he had not meant to kill them so quickly.
