[b]Alexa![/b]

There is much that has surprised you today. The Kaeri are, blessedly, not amongst their number.

You recognize their formation, liquid and continuous in secret prayer to Ares and the fear that shatters armies. You realize the futility of striking out against it. You set your back to the wall and hold your spears and now you are a mountain before the wind - two unassailable forces, united and apart. The Kaeri consider their options. They consider gas and grenade and confusion and darkness. They consider all the techniques by which one can be rendered weak, all of the air's subtle poisons, all of the lashings by which they might shatter stone. You see their motions and contemplations as clearly as if they were asking you out loud. These are not exchanges, they're tests in the language of war.

But they are weaker than you. They need to prove themselves. And instead of hunting in their true way, seeking out your weaknesses over the hours or days that may require - if they found them at all - instead they send forth their champion.

A Kaeri Bloodfeather. This secret too you know. The ideal of the Kaeri is stealth and subtlety, the ideal Kaeri leader is one who manipulates from the shadows. To stand plain and open is a curse, a vulnerability, a trial borne by those too brutal to wield the dagger. A pitiable figure. There is no doubt they see Bella the same way.

There is low cunning in that stance, the way that gleaming crimson-orange halberd hovers low above the ground, the fusion-heat of its miraculous cutting edge causing the stone to sizzle and hiss. There is precision whirring in the joints of that sleek, matte-black divine armour. This is not a true warrior you face, it is an assassination via single combat. She is not dangerous because she might win, she is dangerous that you might both die here.

"I am Captain Lorventi, lord of the Anemoi, bound in service to Imperator Nero," and here you must be careful for the speech too is part of the assassination. Blink your eyes in reverence to the name of the Empress and you'll never open them again. "The Throne calls its wayward children home. Submit."

[b]Vasilia![/b]

"Ah, little lioness, don't think I don't hear you telling me off!" laughed Zeus, as bright as noon-time, her hair and eyes and laugh and dress crashing from indigo to radiant blue. "You're trying to be mad at me, just like my big brother Hades is. But I'll tell you the same thing I always tell him: I'm always right, you're just mad because you haven't got around to admitting it yet."

She pinches your cheek affectionately, like a little sister playing at parenthood. "You're so cute, thinking you're above all this. You think you're above bombast, above showmanship, above pride! Isn't that the way of things? When children like you think you're smarter than your old lady you become gothic edgelords like Hades there, like dressing in dark colours and thinking badly about space dad is some deep truth about the cosmos you're clever for having figured out! But just like Hades, you're wrong about everything because the future is [i]bright[/i]! It always is! And I see that underneath all those scowls you have the strength to overcome your curse, don't you see if you don't!"

[b]Dolce![/b]

What surprises you is how often and readily Hades loses. Not tragically bad, but you win two thirds of hands that the two of you play. For all the stories of the hubris of challenging death to cards or chess or checkers, the God of the Dead seems to trust to luck and his luck is often poor. He does not bemoan or curse his misfortune either, but each hand of cards causes increasing intensity to burn in those neutron star eyes,

"Against," he said quietly. "You are the two hundred and fiftieth crew I have sent on this errand," that number is not random - it is the two hundred and fiftieth reign of Empress Nero, two hundred and fifty years since this planet burned in the fires of the great war. "And you have nothing to set you apart from any of the others. This is not the first princess I have called on, nor the first captain, nor the first legendary warrior, nor... the first chef," his mouth twitched enigmatically. "In each case the crews are consumed by their own nature. Strengths and weaknesses are the same thing, you see. When the stars change then arete becomes hubris, compassion becomes indecision, valour becomes idiocy. There is not a being in this galaxy who can cross Aphrodite's scar, and yet I throw soul after soul into the depths of the river for no sane end. My strengths, too, are my weaknesses."