[b]Redana and Dolce![/b]

As Redana reaches for the axe, Dionysus reaches for the Neamean. Its creation! Its daughter! For all the fertility of the gods it can always be forgotten that they can claim children through adoption just as surely. This, then, is the Nemean! Redana, daughter of madness, reaching back in time for the moment when she would be born! The Laughing God has ever been silent but as it reaches out to draw forth the final extinction of the human species from this [i]game[/i] that all the other gods have been playing the silhouettes of Poseidon, Hades, Apollo and Zeus are but horrified shadows on the wall, waiting for the echo of coming laughter.

No god can undo what another god has done! This is the law! And none of them saw the truth of this moment, none of them had the eyes to perceive this future that had been making its way back to this past! All it needed was a Redana-shaped hole to fill and...

In that moment the grip of Dionysus slips. The Nemean cannot enter. 

For there is already a Redana here.

Not the one broken in mind and heart - there is another Redana. Redana as she might be if she were made of marble, crowned with olive and with radiant hair. Redana as a queen, a leader, a commander, an empress. Redana stable and kind with the serene light of Apollo resting upon her head. 

The Nemean rages forth anyway. It animates the shell of this lesser Redana, the alternate Redana, and flies at the Apollonian Redana with that spectral axe of entropy. With open palm, Redana the greater turns it away. Step, step, step - the light of calm and serenity boils against the madness of machine chaos. A thunderous blow carves the center map table diagonally; with light fingers the scattered papers are snatched from the air. With dark howling the air thickens into sludgeish poison, erupting in waves of venom wherever the Nemean darts. With perfect breathing even toxic air is cycled through each chakra in turn. With the shimmering crash of broken lights the Nemean makes its case for superiority. It was here first! With a gentle touch, Apollo's Redana cups the Nemean's jaw in her fingers and gives her a chaste and pure kiss on the forehead.

And with unhesitating violence, Artemis erupts from her forehead and drives her knife into Dionysus' mask. 

It cracks. The machine god staggers back, eternal silence filed with horror as its fingers cover the fracture in its mask. The Nemean cannot struggle against the gentle embrace that pulls her closer for in this moment she is as weak as a kitten. Dionysus tries to pour dark energy, mad inspiration, despairing energy, into its child but every drop drains away. No god can undo what another god has done. And far-sighted Artemis had Mynx poison Redana [i]years[/i] ago for just such an occasion. An arrow fired by a child has finally hit its mark.

For a long time this poison has lain dormant, but now it pours out from where it hid in her bones, relaxing each muscle and sapping away the strength of divinity. The furnace of Redana's heart and the silver shield of her bloodstream nanites already strive to purge it from their systems. But it will take time, and in that time the Nemean is slipping away. It is too weak to claim to be the true Redana in the face of this saintly apparition before her. And so it fades, withdrawing alongside its creator-parent, leaving only the shell of the broken girl behind, gently held in Apollonian Redana's arms.

(And though it is Mynx behind those eyes, there is yet a price to pay for defying a god. Redana, pure and transcendent, she shall remain until a Redana arises who is stronger than she and the Nemean both.)

[b]Alexa![/b]

It's like teleportation.

One moment you're stepping behind the curtain and the next you're sitting in a small recovery room, blinking away the fog. There is absolutely no intervening time or sense of motion. Whatever anesthetic or... whatever the priest gave you during the operation must have been [i]really[/i] good.

The room is simple; a bed, a table, a shrine, a bathroom. The only thing that marks it out is the large silver tray resting beside your bed, filled with five biscuits. [i]Salty[/i], one reads. [i]Bitter[/i], says another, followed by [i]sweet, sour,[/i] and [i]spicy[/i]. A glass of water and a small basin is besides the biscuits with a note suggesting you rinse your mouth between each new flavour to cleanse your palette.

[b]Vasilia![/b]

"Surviving is a remarkable drive, and remarkably uncommon as a motivational force," said Iskarot. "The former Emperor Molech whose decapitated head now steers our ship was not motivated by survival, else he would never have declared war on Ares. Nor were the Cerons who overcame him - they are a war species whose genetics place their pack instinct above their individual survival, a trait that is instrumental in their battlefield triumphs. Many amongst the Priesthood have to work hard at prioritizing individual survival. They are locked in a silent struggle to convince themselves that their lives have meaning beyond their function, even years removed from it. That their travels have meaning in the eyes of an absent god. That there is some [i]value[/i] in them living long enough to experience new wonders. Survival is an assertion of self worth, at a time when treacherous minds and unbalanced biology might deny it."

He tapped the side of the coleslaw container. "That is why I bought this. As a... celebration? Acknowledgement. Mark of respect. That you decided to prioritize your own survival rather than end us all and wreck this ship on the altar of stubborn hubris and refusal to be made irrelevant. You could have defied Zeus, and you did not. Given the stormclouds that have been brewing that may well have saved us all. So. Thank you."

[b]XIII![/b]

To move through the city of the Azura at such speed is to navigate through a dream. This is nothing like Tellus, nothing like the Imperial Palace, nothing like Baradissar. There is so much here and you're moving through it at speeds that render it more emotion than place.

At the end of the water channel is something that walks the line between lake and inland sea. Roads channel through short buildings, barely two floors high, made of brick and with their alleys filled with graffiti. Along a series of spires you can feel gravity change and warp as you draw close to those strange structures the Azura ships were using as turning points - you alter your sprint and lean into the same curves the ships made and you're almost flying. There is something like a street grid here but it's misaligned, all of the grid lines at different angles that result in entire buildings balancing themselves like inverted pyramids on tiny flecks of land in the middle of horrendously complicated intersections. Streets lined with trees lead up to networks of skyscrapers in the distance. Bridges and bridges across that lake-ocean, some thin and some wide, but you know better than to try any of the ones guarded by those silent Azura sentinels - even if you could win you're running so fast it'd take you longer to rebuild your stride if you stopped to fight. The violet sun is setting against the waves as you race, traveling along the network of piers that surrounds a harbour, heavy with strange boats and glowing blue lights beneath the surface. The Azura are an aquatic species, aren't they? Plenty of them swim here, bodies flashing through the water with a speed and grace that you wouldn't imagine their bulky bodies capable of on land. Your feet move in a blur with that cluster of distant skyscrapers ever in your vision, the fixed core of the world you can always navigate by.

It's like a dream. You've never ever covered as much distance as you have on this day. You've run for longer periods of time, certainly - when training for the Olympics you would run for days at a time, but there you were chained to the closed circles of the Imperial palace. Running without destination, running without arriving, running without making progress towards anything except exhaustion, running against nothing except time. Now you're running to a destination, now you're running in pursuit of a starship, the strength and beauty of your limbs matched in contest against solar fire.

You find the right bridge and you're running across it, from the twilight city towards an ancient university and cathedral mall, step by step closer to the shadow of that endless tower. You see glimpses of lives, shops, warriors, vehicles, ruins, statues, elevators, swimming pools, suburbs, tropics, dams, mountain observatories, escalators, toys, signs, tangles, doors that lead to other places, shortcuts that are spectacular secrets, tidal locked gates and trees wet from rain. You run and counting time and pace is impossible in a world too grand and too small to be chained by time.