[b]Redana and Alexa![/b]

Of all the enemies the Nemean might face in glorious battle, Captain Lorventi Bloodfeather is the worst.

Were you to fight a stellar colossus, spawn of many-limbed Poseidon, you would triumph! In glory you would rend its tendrils and shatter its teeth and save billions from its onslaught! Were you to fight a king on open plain you would shine in glory before Zeus and demonstrate your power through word and deed and might! But this is no honourable battle, this is no glorious foe. This is an assassin's implement, trained and honed for the express purpose of subduing an Imperial Princess by someone who knew exactly what that meant.

You shatter her left arm, Redana! Her right too breaks beneath your grip! You hold her down exultantly, amidst the ruins of her weapon and any means by which she might harm you. What has she left to her? What have you to fear from this broken toy, this injured brute? How did she ever expect to harm you?

And yet she has stabbed you all the same.

You look down. The armour upon her chest has parted. Her ribs have opened. In place of a heart there is instead an [i]arm[/i], and that third arm holds a dagger. She hisses and spits blood into your face and cuts again and again and again, the strength of your embrace turned into your own demise. Around her brow and in her eyes burn the fires of Ares, he who brings the high to defeat and disgrace, whom all the galaxy's advantage cannot deny.

It is the Kaeri that save each of you, rushing the melee to pull the Princess away from their blood-crazed warrior - both lives too previous to spend thoughtlessly here. But the marks are left on both bodies, rent and bloody, and no one emerges from this battle in glory.

[b]Alexa[/b], you too are cut, for there are too many blades here for it to be any other way. But the Kaeri champion is defeated, and now is clearly the time for you to take the princess and escape before they can find another.

[Damaging [b]Frenzy[/b], which triggers. Alexa, take one point of damage, Redana, take two]

[b]Vasilia and Dolce![/b]

Zeus rolled her eyes in a surprisingly pouty gesture. "Sure. Tell you what, why don't you hold the next one of these parties, and invite [i]all[/i] your friends and when I see how wrong I am I'll be ever so humiliated and be forced to apologize. Until then -" she stands up in a gesture of such authority that all revelry instantly slams to a halt and people immediately begin packing their bags again. "- I will wait."

Hades folds his cards back together and tucks them into the pocket of his vest. "I'd honestly never imagined she could be so still. Exile and mortal form has changed her a great deal. But then," he pursed his lips, "I supposed she's always loved racing against time more than anything else."

He stands alongside Zeus, leaving you with your winnings - three cigarettes, a silver earring, and a marbled business card with the word TUNGUSKA written on it in fine calligraphy. 

[b]Bella![/b]

By the time you are free the conflict has passed from the room, a hurricane's trail of blood and feathers in its wake. By the time you are free Redana is gone again. The time it took to free yourself was the time it took for everyone in the world to forsake you. Not long at all.

"Praetor."

Not quite [i]everyone[/i], it seemed.

OMN, the advisor unit, has diligently waited for you. It has no arms; it is a thing of thought and no strength so it could not have intervened. But it has not abandoned you. It has waited with the idiot loyalty of an inanimate object, the obedience of a sword. Its mind clatters and revolves and for all its knowledge it does not spare a single cycle to thoughts of self preservation. If you were to tear it in half that would be as irrelevant to it as if you were to pin a medal on its chest. 

"Do you require information?" It asks.