What the Kaeri do here is not blasphemy. They take no pleasure in it and give no thought to the possibility of rising above their station or dragging the princess beneath hers. When they seize Redana by the arms, they are precise and firm, restricting her movement while harming her as little as possible. When they take her by the legs and lift her in the air, it's only because she's writhing too much to guarantee her safety. They follow the orders of the Empire, and the Princess' safety is paramount. But her return to Tellus is more important still. 

It's a trap as thorough as can be. Lines of proud owl warriors wait in slowly fanning semicircles spread out from door to door in the chamber. They shift about in confusing and mesmerizing patterns, not with restless energy but with the calculated skill of a hunting pack. They whirl and wheel about, but slowly, slipping in and out of the battle lines to present no opening to attack and offer no obvious paths to escape. Even with their princess captured again they maintain their net. Breaking free and making a run for it would still leave their quarry with an endless-seeming, constantly morphing net to try and scramble through. The way is shut, Princess. You were never free.

But they do not gloat, do not leer, do not paw greedily at all of the skin they worked so hard to bare. A Human phalanx might be so bold as to trust in their divine favor to make sport of their princess in such a fashion, but Servitors know their place in the chain. In this way, one supposes, it is better to be caught here by them than by some of the alternatives. But can you say that, Redana, when they hold you so tight and fast and make so little noise that the room you're in has nothing to swallow but your own useless grunts of exertion?

A high pitched scream cuts across the question like a cruel sword, so sharp and piercing and horrible that it could freeze the blood of the honored dead in Hades' keeping even through that locked door. What could even make a sound like that? A monster could. Or a wild animal with its heart filled past bursting with the kind of primal hunger that wouldn't be satisfied unless it ate a whole village in a single night, tearing out throats one by one to drink the people's screams. Pain. That scream is pain, ugly enough to freeze even the Kaeri where they stand. That scream is vile and... and [i]wrong[/i]. Why won't it stop? Doesn't she need to breath?

The door pounds against its hinges with bone rattling force. And then nothing. The quiet is somehow more horrible than the screaming, and the low scraping that trails away from the wall is worse still. The space of a heartbeat, and then two more. The door shudders violently, seeming like it was trying to hold back a ship's cannons. The scraping. The anticipation. The thunder: the door explodes into splinters, and Bella leaps through it with a desperate fury that swallows the idea that she might have been sweet and beautiful, once. 

Her saliva soaked mouth glistens in the dim light of the room as she stands there, hunched over and tensed, muscles bulging, claws curling in and out and in and out again. Her breath comes in wet and ragged gasps while her hair falls in tangles across her shoulders and over her face. She leans lower and lower, close enough to drag her claws against the floor; the tiger preparing to pounce and devour its prey.

But then she stands up straight, and when the light catches her face it's the new worst thing in the universe. Her mouth is split in a feral grin even as she drags her dainty sleeve across it to wipe it dry. But it's her eyes that make it awful: those cold, dead eyes that have slipped so far past mere anger that nothing shows inside of them at all anymore. She is gone. The old Bella is gone forever, if she ever existed at all. She makes a wet gurgling sound which probably passes for laughter where demons come from. 

"You wanna do this the hard way?" she spits, "Fine with me."

Bella crosses the room with inhuman stiffness, ignoring the looks her warriors shoot her as she passes to press her face right against Redana's. She shudders violently, and suddenly backs off several paces. Then she rears back and spits in her princess' eyes. Her clawed fingers reach up right after to brush against Redana's skin, not quite hard enough to pierce. 

"...Ah. You really think they're coming to save you. You really think you've got friends, don't you? Lemme tell you something, princess. You couldn't make friends with beasts or dolls if you tried at it for a million years. More toys, more slaves, that's all you've ever bothered with. Does it make you feel better when you call them your precious friends? Well. They're already figuring out how little they mean to you, just like... everyone else you've ever met."

The claws pull back. Bella's grin, terrible as it was, disintegrates into a scowl. Every muscle in her body is trembling and rippling in waves that send her carefully selected clothes into spasms where she stands. 

"You. Are. Alone. And to prove it, I'm going to drag you back to [i]my[/i] ship and tie you up so tightly even that dumb fucking eye of yours won't have any ideas about what to do. And then? I'm going to lock you in the darkest room I've got and leave you there with nothing until you understand that there is one person. Just [i]one[/i], princess! In the entire fucking universe that loves you even the tiniest bit, not that you deserve even that much, you defective, traitorous, sorry excuse for a spare battery."

Even now, there's no flash of emotion in Bella's eyes, but her face is nothing but pain. Is it hers, or the promise of someone else's? She spits on the ground this time. 

"And guess what? That person's not on this planet."