The air is filled with the smell of ozone, just like it was the last time. Bella's nose wrinkles as she takes shallow, involuntary sniffs, even as she raises a hand to ward off the storm of marble flecks. They stab at her palm, and at her cheeks and her forehead despite her best efforts, like a volley of tiny spears. 

Her feet slide back. Again, and again, further and further away, but never shrinking the distance. The rush of blood in her ears is deafening, and when they press flat against her skull it offers no relief. Her tail bristles and stands on end behind her, her claws flex to the point of pain, but even so her feet carry her backwards. The monster comes at her without remorse. 

It's the eye. Every other part of her could be forgiven, since it was all still so obviously Redana. The height didn't matter. The arms as thick as ship struts didn't matter. Even the scent didn't matter, woven through as it was with the heart of the princess. But that eye... that swirling universe of infinite power and possibility, it threatens to swallow her whole even as it narrows with horrifying focus to bore a hole straight through her chest. 

Bella startles as she hits a wall. Only sheer force of will cuts her yelp of fright short, but nothing can stop the furious hiss that wells up in its place. Her back arches and she hunkers low to the ground, digging deep grooves into the floor with her claws. Stay away. Stay away! Her tail lashes frightfully behind her. Stay away!

Her heart freezes inside of her chest. For a second every part of her is still. Her muscles do not twitch, for as much as they long to. Her claws are held fast to the ground as though they'd been bolted there by an artisan. Her lungs refuse to pull anymore of this storm-tainted air, even though they burn with the effort of their restraint. Bella is locked inside the world of that eye. Crushed by it. Torn to pieces. Drilled through over and over and over, unable to live, unable to die, because Redana's promises were worth so little that she would turn herself into an instrument of Zeus' fury aimed solely at her. 

No more words. No more taunts or pleas or threats. Betrayal wars with hatred on Bella's face in silence. But in the end what wins is terror. She twists her body unnaturally as she scrambles up the side of the wall behind her and leaps off of it to put the kind of distance between herself and that [i]thing[/i] to let her breathe and swallow and think again. Like her champion father before her, she sprints. Fuck Alexa. Fuck the Kaeri. Fuck how this might look. Get away. Get away!