"Well," said Hades, [i]Zeus Katachthonios[/i], looking down at the scene with the faint surprise of someone who has lost a ninety-percent gamble. "I suppose you don't need [i]all[/i] of him."

Princess Epistia, face grimly lit by the fires of broken machines, stepped in with her blade. The headless body hit the floor and the trophy was raised up high. A hundred Kaeri froze in place, shocked to their foundations by this act of regicide, unable to rouse themselves to give pursuit.

There are more wires and sparks than there is blood. This was only a man in the vaguest of senses, body crammed so full of miracles that even reduced to this he lives. And the blade of Princess Epistia is now firmly and constantly between Alexa and the severed head. She does not understand your relationship with this monster, she knows only that the Princess gave him his life and you disobeyed - she only knows you struck to kill in defiance of the decree to preserve life. It is not anger or coldness that animates the Ceronian, this is not a judgement of morals, it is simply a fact that you are now outside the pack and therefore cannot be trusted.

*

[b]Bella![/b]

The operation itself was trivial, painless, almost instant. Mastery of living matter was an ancient art and the days of bloody surgeries were millennia in the past. This too was technology designed to serve an Emperor who might switch augmentations as readily as switching coats. The optic nerves set perfectly, the blood vessels align, not a single cell out of place. This is not why the machines strapped you down.

Your eye opens and you see the cosmos with the vision of a god.

All things. All places. All people. Every star and every road that binds them. Every city and every river that feeds it. Every brick and every mountain that birthed it. You met the Ikarani Adept, the data-assassin who can, for a while, absorb this information and wield it in its fullest extent. You understand why they go mad. You envy that they can go mad. You cannot. The eye is still asking you questions.

With each cycle, the Auspex dumbs itself down. Piece by piece it cuts back on the flow of data, abstracts more and more of it into symbols and interface, learns through condescension how to stop hurting this tiny, unprepared mind. You are infinity and piece by piece infinity is taken away from you like a disappointed parent packs away unloved and messily strewn toys. You are reduced to a galaxy, to a sector, to a system, to a planet and each time it feels like a failure that you could not handle the enormity of that information. How did Nero? Who did she design these for? What possible creature could handle the flow of data they were capable of? Were these secret weapons to assassinate Molech through data overload? Where does all this information [i]come[/i] from? How did Redana bear it?

It draws itself down, learning through trial and error to speak your language. Learning that instead of attempting to fit all of creation through your eye it needs to be condescending in its approach. It reduces itself until you can start perceiving colours again, can start perceiving the room again. Finally it stops, barely an augment, restraining itself from providing information that you do not specifically ask for.

But as you look at your reflection in the painstakingly polished carapace of Omn, it answers the question that drove you to this. You are a guardian, only able to access your full abilities when your mistress is in peril. This input can be fabricated by the Auspex at will. With power driven by terror and love you might, for a time, fight the gods themselves - or the demigod that shares a form with Redana.