[b]Redana![/b]

"You will succeed," said Zeus. "Or you will fail. People will call you king or you will fade into obscurity. You will not know which. It is not logic that calls you now Redana, not recognition of station or respect for your natural talents or judgement for past successes. It is madness. Madness that makes you take responsibility for all suffering and all death. Madness that makes you shoulder the weight of the cosmos. Madness that makes your heart break in time with each breaking heart."

Zeus stood up, shoulder damp with tears, and with a thunderclap of her fingers a door opened in the distance. She offers her hand to you.

"The madness will not heal your scars. It will not give you wisdom. It gives one thing only: The will to stand. In a galaxy lost in darkness that is a mighty thing indeed."

[Heal your Grace]

[b]Alexa![/b]

[i]"I thought you'd never ask."[/i]

It is perhaps the most sick joke of your existence that you have never before had a real fight.

The training was endless, of course. The battles were likewise. You've fought against phalanxes and Plovers and monsters on every battlefield you could be sent. You've fought kings and the warriors of Ceron and Codexia. You've won and you've lost, but the dark truth in every battle is that you always knew you had the potential to win. It simply wasn't always clear why you should exert that strength. Your cause was lacking and your opponents were weak.

Neither is the case now.

Is this what Princess Epistia dreams when she dreams of war? 

The Master of Assassins fights as Artemis does. She has performed every ritual, worked every prayer into that mighty armour, devoted a lifetime in service to death precise. She overflows with knives. To think of her is to be rewarded with jagged counterattack. She has mastered no forms or practices of war except insofar as she is the inverse of you. To fight her is to swim through blades engraved with the words of your inadequacy.

And you?

You fight to save the lives of all those you have decided to care for. You fight with the unrestrained power of Ares erupting inside you like a volcano. You fight as the ultimate weapon of war finally unleashed and the station around the two of you melts and shatters in the inferno of unleashed energy.

Tell us how you fight, Alexa.

[Remember that you must Pay A Price as the Master of Assassins is a [b]Threat to the World[/b]]

[b]Dolce![/b]

"Don't get too friendly," said Mynx. "I might have to kill you myself someday."

There is much more 'trying to sound like a calloused badass' than 'calloused badass' in that warning.

"But on that note, is this finally enough to convince you that Redana belongs on Tellus?" she said as she cautiously advanced to avoid the constantly flowing Coherent and Hermetic movements. "You've got [i]no idea[/i] what you're messing with when it comes to Imperial politics."

[b]Vasilia![/b]

You will later concede that Zeus Most High, whatever her flaws, is unparalleled when it comes to giving gifts.

You enter the armoury where your gear is contained and there, floating in mid air upon a time-frozen web of violet electricity, are your pistols. They are as you remember them in terms of grip and weight with but one alteration: the charge chambers are sealed shut and crackling with intense violet energy. You respond to motion as a bonsai zombie rounds a corner and you disintegrate it with a single shot that does nothing to drain the charge in your weapons.

You have an army and a goddess between you and your husband. Zeus has given you two guns and infinite ammunition. 

For the first time today you finally feel like the scales are even.

[Your pistols have the stats Ranged, Piercing, Dangerous, Ammunition: Infinite until the end of the issue.]

[b]Bella![/b]

The lights flicker out - and blood red emergency lighting fills the hall.

The Coherent move unexpectedly for a just a moment and then recover. Khitava gestures and twenty bare-chested and masked warriors drag forth a glass cage that stands atop a stone altar. Inside is a bonsai tree, heavy with apples and flowers both. This greenhouse is the altar of Demeter and in this bloody light it seems like a vision of the Styx.

The Coherent roll and dance around the Altar as it is wheeled out before you, the cage doors opening to reveal that the soil in which the tree grows is thick with bones. Khitava stands tall and domineering and with flick after flick of her fingers she lifts you up and drags you closer to that monstrous garden. The beat is still there but it's been stripped away of every instrument leaving only the twisted sound of your blood rushing in disordered time.

"Well?" said Aphrodite, lighting a cigarette - the only real light in this twisted place. "Go on. Back in the box."

[Damage your [b]Sense[/b]]