The sound of the moment is the sharp crack of bone and body crashing into a set of hardened synthetic wood shelves with an intensity even the [i]Anemoi[/i] cannot or will not devour entirely. Bella wheezes, pain without air to express it with, and goes dropping forward onto her hands and knees. 

Behind her, she feels more than hears some of her treasures wobble atop the suddenly unstable surface of their home. She turns her head away from the horror and the coming carnage to see the shape of her life falling apart.

She pushes herself up, but her legs stay folded uselessly underneath her. The shifting furniture soundlessly upends a pile of books and a box of assorted uneaten candies, but her attention is focused solely on the ancient camera teetering valiantly on the edge. She sucks in a sudden breath and then, as if that were the signal, it comes tumbling down to the ground. What's absurd is that she sees it happening in slow motion. The way that it spins as it falls. The delicate lense and the film ports glinting in the light of her sanctuary, sending her a message that she doesn't need an Auspex to decode. Goodbye, Bella. 

It happens so slowly that she must surely be able to catch it. With all of her strength and speed? She could catch a dozen falling in the same breath! But she doesn't. Aphrodite takes her by the shoulders and stands her back up again. He dusts off her jacket for her. But even as he worries over her, she stands and watches the device fall and knows without understanding why that she was always going to let this happen. It drops to the ground without so much as a crunch, but pieces break off of it in silence. This far out in space, she has no power or resources to fix it, excepting the Hermetics she would never in a hundred lifetimes trust with such a treasure. Goodbye, then.

...The smell of the moment is sterile. Clinical. Perfect. Ivory Smile is utterly clean of blood or gore or any of the other telltale signs of death. Everywhere there should be signs of her priest there is only the smell of sap and dying leaves, without even the traces of soil that made plants feel so comfortable. There is nothing of sentiment here. The first human to take her side is gone. There is nothing of gardens here. There is death, and there is mastery, and there is the promise of more. 

The feeling of the moment is fear. Bella's eye is wide with horror as her heart drums fiercely inside of her, perhaps to make up for Vasilia's. She watches the lunge, knowing Redana's replacement for her is helpless. Deprived of weapons, she saw to that personally. Still shackled tightly enough to hamper her natural athleticism, she saw to that as well. Lying on the bed, where Bella left her, where Bella pushed her, where Bella ordered her to stay, as unprepared as she might possibly be. 

The deathblow is certain. Bella saw to every step herself. And yet, she did not choose the shape of the weapon. She had not called upon Demeter nor done anything to invoke her wrath. It's not guilt that crawls around inside her; she knows the sting of that disease as surely as she knows the coursing of her own blood. She feels no compulsion to help, even as her body tightens up and tells her that this is within her power too. This is a choice that she can make. 

She looks away again, and there finds Aphrodite standing at her side. Silent and bristling with irritation as is his way. He gestures toward the bed. Well, Bella? Choose.

The Auspex lights her path as fast as she can pick it. The spots where her feet need to land shine golden in front of her, the hazy white death lines crisscross her target at her destination. Her muscles surge and spark with power as she crouches lower, and lower, and lower, flicking her tail with the force of a whip as her single sign of warning. 

The knife is diving for the kill when she pounces. She comes at Ivory Smile from the side, wheeling about with a swift kick that would send most warriors sprawling on the floor. The assassin merely flinches, driving the knife deep into the bed no more than a fist's width away from Vasilia's ribs. It, or He, or They, or Whatever, twists the knife without reacting and wrenches its arm to slash at her instead. But Bella's hand is already moving, her claws are already bent and quivering with lust for the kill, and when she swings her arm she tears through his where she meets it, and the knife stays lodged in the matress where it is. 

The Bonsai turns to look at Bella with milky, useless eyes. There are vines where there should be veins dangling from the stump cut short at the elbow. There are roots twisted around bones. Thick, sweet sap drips slowly from the ruined appendage, which it does not lift or spare a glance to. The assassin lunged again as Bella twists nimbly out of the way.

She has misunderstood. Ivory Smile's remaining fingers clench tightly around Vasilia's throat, and they squeeze. Tighter and tighter, with strength that couldn't possibly belong to his lanky and malnourished form. Tighter and tighter. End of breathing, end of life. Tighter and tighter. There is darkness here. Welcome aboard the [i]Anemoi[/i]. 

Bella's claws can tear through anything. Her Auspex shows where all things are held together by the will of the divine, and how they can be separated. But when she slashes, for the first time in a long time that she can remember in a fight, she feels resistance. It's like pushing her hand through a bog. Or a river. Her fingers tremble with the effort of staying dug in. Her arm quivers with the terror of what it is she's doing. Her howl of fury is almost as terrible as the grip around Vasilia's throat. 

But then all at once it falls away. Air returns to you once more, Vasilia, rushing in like a lover come home from war. Ivory Smile falls to the ground in pieces, the branch growing from his head reduced to splinters. The hole left there is so clean it makes you want to vomit. 

Bella stands there in silence, breathing steadily. Her lustrous white fur and the sleeve of her sleek black jacket are dripping and covered with plant muck and wilting golden leaves. She glances down at her arm with disgust etched on her face. But the way she looks at you, when she finally does, has none of that. There's an intensity carved into her eye, and her lips, and her jaw, and her ears that's made sharper by her silence?

But, if you had to attach a word to it? Then that word would be vulnerable.

[Finishing Ivory Smile('s corpse) with Blood: [b]10[/b]]