[b]Redana![/b]

[i]Oh didn't you come on lightning?
Didn't you come in haste?
Pretender
Empress
Ignorant of power[/i]

Bella is before you, hair braided back in Molech's dreadlocks, tilting your head up on the tip of her sword. Oh how she smiles, though her face is the glass mirror of Dionysus. A droplet of saliva falls from her mouth and runs down the gleaming metal until it caresses your cheek like a lover.

[i]Didn't you come to stop me?
Didn't you come to save them?
Stars
Empire
The long view is your weakness.

Watch.[/i]

Dionysus-Molech-Bella reached up into the sky, fingers fastening around the intact Spear of Civilization, brandishing it above her as she readied her throw. She aims not at you, but at the stars themselves.

[i]You were too slow[/i]

And she began to cast the spear.

A sword is in your hand. 

You strike on instinct. You strike because the music and the rhythm and the dance allow nothing less. You strike because Aphrodite grasped your hands and dragged them forwards in a motion so vicious it could only have come from the God of Love. You strike and your sword shatters in golden fire and (Bella)[s]Dionysus[/s](Molech) falls in a rain of colloidal silver as her spear shatters into ten thousand splinters.

[Lose your rapier]

[b]Alexa![/b]

"Well, thank you," said Cavel-4954, slipping into your grasp like mercury. She's so small and fragile that you're terrified you'll break her even as she sweeps you off your feet. "It's nice to be appreciated! After all, we all have you to thank for this."

She sets you down after her pirouette is finished, and then tries to take your heart with her spear.

"After all, Molech was the [i]Emperor[/i]," she said, voice phonetically sharp, dripping with intelligence and danger. "Blessed by Zeus. Beloved by Athena. Paid up in tribute with every other god. Even the intervention of Hermes could not stop him. Only one god could possibly bring about all this ruin. Only one act of hubris not accounted for in his calculations."

She fell against your shoulder, sighing affectionately against your sculpted muscle even as her spear came for your back like a viper.

"You bought the wrath of Aphrodite upon him, traitor," she said like a serpent. "And not all the gods together, not Zeus herself, could stop him."

[b]Vasilia![/b]

"We do [i]not[/i] take orders from -" Galnius started to argue, then stopped as she glanced around - sniffing out the almost imperceptible shadow of another unit of Kaeri moving in the distance. She's [i]sharp[/i] - the kind of sharp that blurs the line between perception and precognition. Apollo's champions are often like that.

"We will talk about this later," she said darkly, and with a mighty strike of her spear she shatters a hole in the marble wall of the bathhouse and leads her soldiers through into the service passage. This is a confrontation deferred and not resolved, but for now she's at least not contesting you.

Stepping into the service passage, though - perhaps the battle against the Kaeri would have been less hellish. It is like stepping into the throat of a dragon - hot and wet, heavy with steam and with fire in the distance. Underneath your boots bones crunch and weapons clatter. A terrible battle was fought here, and shattered machines and slain Ceronians pave the surface.

A steady flow of hot, wet air pours past you, dragged towards that distant fiery light. One eternal breath filling terrible lungs, a breath that is trying to swallow the sky. The stories of Tartarus never seemed so immediate, not least for the fact that Hades leans against a wall staring at you with azure eyes.

[b]Bella![/b]

It is a different kind of power to see the Kaeri move. To unleash the machines is to command a tempest; to dispatch the Kaeri is to cast a spear. A whirlwind of shadows and feathers rush past you leaping into dark feathered glides as they cascade down into the arena. Where they must they go through the machines as though they were forged from paper, though so great is their speed and stealth that they rarely must. They progress like poison through a racing heart, and like poison no blood will be spilled as they do their work.

"Projecting nature of conflict," said Omn. "Analyzing. The Dance will deprive the Princess of her weapon. She shall be forced to disengage along controllable paths. Her path will terminate in the Aspects. If the Praetor desires, we can be waiting for her there."