Her ship is dying. What other explanation could there be?

The sound of the Lanternites scurrying about the corridors is deafening. Their small and careful feet make hundreds of tiny pitter patters across what should be dampening plastic compound. But the sound of it that carries to her twisting, twitching ears is the stomp stomp squelch of feet atop densely packed and sodden earth. Every few steps they stop with a heavy thump that makes them sound more like a phalanx of heavily armored giants. She can hear the grinding of their heels as they wince. Some of them even chance panicked whispers, which echo through the halls like trumpets played by serpents. Bella's teeth grind with the same frustrating audibility as she senses their panic.

Somebody is killing her ship, and these are its death throes. Her ship. Her people. Hers.

Bella squeezes her hands into fists so tightly that her claws draw blood from her palms. She should be worried about showing weakness in front of an enemy, but she isn't even looking. There's too many sensations assaulting her to care about anything else.

Ivory Smile's corpse doesn't even smell right. That dork should've gone out smelling like paper and vellum and sickening amounts of sanitizer. He should be huddled in a corner somewhere, muttering mystic nonsense to his depressing god or to himself, with his robes so starched they digging into his throat when he bends over. Instead he smells like sap and rotting leaves. Instead his robes are a disheveled mess. Even his stupid hair has been eaten through with roots and the gaping hole burst through his empty skull. Is this the way her priest is meant to enter Elysium? Who would let him through?

She tosses a coin onto what's left of his body. Inside her own, her blood boils and her stomach writhes. She was built to be a protector. The Master taught her a thousand and one tricks for pleasing her future owner, and for all she dedicated herself to perfecting them all she ever had to show for it was...

[i]"Worthless brat! Do you have any idea how expensive it was to breed you? Get out there and make it back for me or you'll learn how many worse things than the whip are waiting in my closet!"

"Oh, you thought the song would be prettier this way? Is that right? The unsellable [b]mutt[/b] without a single desirable talent thinks she knows better than the Master! How about a month with no food then, huh? Does that sound pretty, too?"

"You stupid. Little. Bitch. If I catch you fouling your mouth eating the rats one more time... I'm going to make you wish you'd never been born."

"You're lucky I'm a genius, you stupid sack of shit. Despite your best efforts, I've managed to line up one last audition for you. But I'm warning you. I'm warning you, you fucking disgrace to the gene pool, if you don't go home with them? I'm harvesting you for parts.[/i] Those [i]I can sell just fine."[/i]

Bella heaves. Again and again she retches, but her traitorous body won't bring anything up. She brings a hand to her mouth and squeezes her eyes shut, where the cold smile of the Master waits for her in the black. His face is so folded with lines etched into his skin from all the times she made him angry that he looks more like the Eater of Worlds than a human. No, that's just what he is; his mouth stretches wider and wider and wider, showing row after row of teeth that could cut her to shreds without even feeling the crunch of her bones and she can't even scream, she needs to scream, no, no, no, no, NO!

The image bursts open like a box and in an instant everything is too bright. She's shaking like a kitten and trying not to cry, don't cry, don't cry, don't [i]cry[/i] everybody knows that Good Girls don't cry! But the second face she sees has the most beautiful golden hair in the entire universe and eyes as kindly as Hera's and twice as lovely for their different colors. [s]Redana[/s] Empress Nero pats her head and stands her on her feet.

[i]"Do you love my daughter, little one? Mmm, mm! Of course you do! So honest. What a good girl you are! Well, how would suuuuuuch a good girl like to have a very special new job? All you have to do is..."[/i]

Nero's face sharpens into something that is not anger but could comfortably stand next to it at a party. She turns her back, and the air is filled with expectations.

[i]"...Come back with my daughter, or not at all. [b]Praetor.[/b]"[/i]

She's standing in her bedroom on the [i]Anemoi[/i]. The sounds of frightened crew scurrying on wet muck is omnipresent. Her eyes behold a dead human on the ground, a human, a human, dead in front of her, in defiance of the precepts, a failure, her failure, [i]what if that had been---![/i]

On the bed, Vasilia is watching her. And reaching for a knife. Bella blinks, and rises slowly to her full height. Her face twists into a truly evil smile, the kind of thing that the gods would capture so they could shape it into a blade for felling planets. Her laughter is wet, and hacking, and cruel. 

"That's right, sugartits, you take that knife. It's got your name on it and everything. Have fun with the next monster that shows up to kill you, ah! Just... don't forget to scream. I don't wanna miss the show."

She turns on her heels and stalks out of the room before the wetness can show in her eyes. There's silence for almost a minute before the hallways around the room fill up with the sound of furious howling and the scream of rending walls.