[b]Redana![/b]

Zeus freezes for a moment - and then gently, so gently, starts to relax.

"I killed my father," she said. "And he killed his father before him. Some part of me expects every embrace to contain a knife - some part of me thinks that despite all my striving I've somehow made my family as toxic as his. So... thank you, Redana."

And as you turn and run you know her smile will stay with you for as long as you ask.

*

You emerge into [i]war[/i].

This is not the war of the modern age, the thing of glorious phalanxes and terrible poisons. This is a mythic war. This is the battle of Ridenki as remembered in the chants and stories of the Alced. This is the war where the golden rooster and the world-shattering wolf battle in the heavens and the fleets burn upon the surface of the waves.

But oh, how the Alced move in their storming flocks! They fly like birds but when they cut below the waves they swim like fish. They swoop and dive as mirrors to the burning skies, falling in time with the voidships falling from the skies.

It's a moment of overwhelming scale and violence, and all the more overwhelming for the inaudible lament that runs through it. [i]We failed, we lost and this was how our world burned.[/i]

[b]Alexa![/b]

Just as rapidly as her initial assault tried to carve through you, the Master of Assassin's plan shifted to trying to disengage and go around you. The matter shifts from duel to something more like wrestling, where she tries to slip by you and you need to position to block her. 

The entire nature of the fight has shifted, now it is like trying to hold onto an oil-slick eel. Success is no longer measured in blood, it is measured in inches and intersections - when the corridor opens up to allow the Master to sprint away across open ground. Violence proper has become incidental but still Ares pours his blessings upon you. He has offered them to you for so long it would be churlish indeed to make them anything other than glorious in this moment.

[b]Dolce![/b]

"Her what has [i]what[/i]?!" said Mynx, lifting you up and giving you an experimental shake to see if your senses had been knocked loose. "Redana is a precious and naive little goofball who once cried because Bella drew a stick figure with a sad face. She stayed up for two nights wondering what made that stick figure upset! Her judgement is [i]not[/i] sound! She is [i]not[/i] prepared to see all of [b]this[/b]!!"

She sounded genuinely agonized by the idea. The idea of Redana's heart breaking was causing Mynx genuine and real hurt in turn.

"And she's not the only one her departure is hurting..." Mynx said. "You don't understand, but she doesn't belong out here. Bella's been... Everyone would be so much better if she just..." the shapeshifter sighed. "Why am I telling you this?"

[b]Vasilia![/b]

Tell us a legend, Vasilia. Tell us of how you cut through those cursed by Demeter and Artemis. Tell us how you leap from the [i]Anemoi[/i] moments before it decouples from the Yakanov and sails out into the Void. This moment is your [i]aristeia[/i], your moment of excellence when the tale stops and all marvel in your skill. Tell us of it.

[Roll to Overcome]

[b]Bella![/b]

It is a long moment in the bloody red emergency lighting. Then, finally, the lights flicker - off, and then back on to their normal pale glow, casting everything in a surreal and sterile light - everything that is, except the green-yellow verdency pouring from the open door to Magos Birmingham's vault. 

Machine Intelligences are not alive (Dionysus' blessings notwithstanding). They're exceedingly complicated difference engines, clattering pistons and whirring microfilm scanners - Rube-Goldberg machines of transcendent complexity, analog computing in raw and heavy metal. The Magos performed calculations and managed a mighty starship but it was continuously maintained and updated by a council of senior engineers and programmers who would carve in new priority cylinders to load into the fiendishly complicated device. They have been dead for a very long time.

The inside of the Magos' vault is a garden. Soft and fresh grass runs underfoot and cherry blossoms fall in sheets. Amidst the wildflowers, bones. It's so soft, so quiet, all the machine gears muffled by moss - and it sends a shiver up your spine even without knowing that this same environment is unaccountably replicated in the depths of the [i]Plousios[/i]. 

But your golden eye tells you that the golden heart upon that table is what powers the mighty weapon that will kill Redana. The heart you know you cannot break for it is as divine as your eye - but the brilliant wire-weave mesh that the Order of Hermes built to surround it, so full of crunchable crystals and tearable steel? Oh, that is so very mortal.

[You must Pay a Price to Finish Magos Birmingham]