[b]Dolce![/b]

"Do...lce..." 

The scarlet light flickers like a heartbeat. The distant darkness of a blood-cloaked Azura assassin stalking down endless hallways. It wars with the flickering fires of oven flames that spit and hiss as water drips into them. Water runs down on your head unsteadily from spilled saucepans, just as your blood runs unsteadily from ruptured veins. You're so tired and there's so, so, so much road left to go. 

And above you stands the God of the Dead. The ceiling light casts him in a dusty blue halo - red bow tie like a bloodless slit across his neck, black and white waiter's dress making it seem as natural for him to take your coat as take your life. When you look at him all you can think of is how easily he would fold up; he gives the impression of a sheet of origami paper, so loosely tethered to this world all of those angular joints might bend and crease and sweep him away on crane's wings.

He has an expression as though you remind him of someone. Given your state this must be a very sad memory indeed.

Jil is weeping by your side, embracing you, cradling your head in her lap as your blood stains her silver fur. You see in her sorrow another world, one of assassins and violence and darkness, where the will of the centre radiates out in endless waves of violence. Where a single act of kindness was so startling and unexpected that it changed her life and won her loyalty. Of course Bella's gift was so meaningful to Jil, for in her world it is not enough to be kind - one also needs the awesome courage and strength to endure the consequences of that kindness. 

"It was too heavy a burden I laid upon you," said Hades. "A quest to find Ancient Gaia? Some things are hubris, even for the gods."

He folds at the knees, then the waist, then the shoulders, elbows, wrist, and each finger in turn, one after another, like watching a slow moving river run up through his legs and down through his arms. He offers you his hand.

"Come. I will hold no grudge for your failure."


[b]Alexa![/b]

For the first time, you tune into the battle.

It is a disaster.

Walls burst open with volleys of SP fire and swarms of mouselike menials flood out to form phalanxes in unexpected positions. Shadowy flights of Kaeri strike out and withdraw in waves. The ground is littered with brutally mutilated bodies, terror tactics from the Kaeri as they emphasize just how prepared they are to make sure their opponents are dead. Here and there you see flashes of the enemy Champion - a cybernetic Kaeri berserker who can seemingly smell the weakest point in every formation.

The Kaeri are warriors by nature, they have the numbers, they have engaged in clan warfare all their lives, and Zeus likes them - but that is where their advantages end. On the other side of the ledger you have the following problems:
- There is no singular, charismatic leader who binds the Fleets together
- They have no experience fighting a void war under these conditions. Even solid projectile weapons are relatively new to warriors who until recently were planetbound in primitive societies.
- They are attacking a well resourced and supplied Imperial warship.
- The Kaeri are terrifying enemies who are not taking prisoners. 
- The Kaeri have trained for this opponent specifically. They have always been determined to proving their worth as the premier war species and, until the Ceron conquests, the Alcedi were the standard to beat. 

All of these were accounted for in Molech's plan. If the question was simply one of a disorganized rush of Alcedi flying into slaughter at the Kaeri's talons, there would still be victory - albeit pyrrhic - as the more disciplined Tidal and Hermetic forces maneuvered to claim the engine deck. But there's a new, entirely unexpected problem - the ship's menials are armed, disciplined, battle-hardened, and [i]pissed[/i]. From their phalanxes deep, chilling whispers of Apollonian prayers roll like autumn winds, and they swarm and flow in and out of hidden passages in the walls. There is evidently no love lost between them and the Kaeri but the two forces work together with the kind of implicit understanding that only warriors who have fought side by side before have. It's startling to watch - many ships form deckhand militias, but it's a sight rarely seen on [i]Imperial[/i] ships who would often rather risk capture than arm their menials.

And then come the Plovers.

They storm into the battlefield, massive armoured titans of battle, cables trailing behind them as they crush through Tidal formations, smashing crab shells and releasing huge plumes of flame that envelop entire corridors and send wailing Hermetics retreating, robes burning. These are not the standard repair forms common on Imperial ships, these are dedicated combat engines the likes of which only savages use. It's a crushing blow on what is already wavering morale, and in another few moments a rout will set in.

And advancing at the head of the Kaeri formation is their champion, their Bloodfeather. Captain Lorventi, with hatchet and spiked flail, blood soaked and with hate in her eyes. You have fought her before, Alexa. The last time you were saved by the Nemean, but even then she inflicted grievous injuries on both you and her in her death frenzy. Both of her arms are wrapped with coiling metal bands, covered with scars where Redana shattered them before. 

And so the Alcedi, lost, demoralized, terrified, hover on the brink. And they look to you, Pallas Rex, to defeat this nightmare and turn the tide of the battle through your glorious skill alone.

[b]Vasilia![/b]

"Do you ever think of the Underworld, Vasilia?" said the Furnace Knight, watching the sea. "How strange an adventure it must be. In death to arise anew, reborn and whole and beautiful, in the fields of Elysium. But what fills those fields? What do warriors become when the kings they fought for are gone? When the kingdoms they died for live on upon the surface? Does each warrior have to, at last, lay their spear aside and learn an entirely new identity apart from war, apart from the culture they swam in all their lives? Do you imagine the warriors would enjoy that - fish cast from oceans, told to evolve lungs in a world that may be a paradise if they only had the souls to appreciate it?"

He coiled his hand out, slowly, tracing a gleaming blue fingertip across the length of a cyan-green apple. "Or do you imagine that Lord Hades might allow them to take their empires with them?"

Hades' eyes gleamed blue in the distance, a deeper colour than could be found anywhere in the Skies.

"If you were to take the Furnace Knight from the Skies, he would be a child," said the ancient warrior. "His story would be over. His reputation would be meaningless. His home would be forgotten. He would have to sacrifice centuries of achievement. He may as well dive into the River Lethe," his hand traced the razor line of Aphrodite's Rift across the sky, an ever present violence upon the heavens.

"So in this," he said, "you are my elder. Where I have lived but one life, you have already tasted two. What was your first? Why did it drive you away?"

[b]Bella and Skotia![/b]

And in the distance, brutal red light, thick and toxic and strobing. Beneath the clouds of the drug that Thelis Thist cloaked her true nature in you can smell it. Death.

Death that smells like everything you know.

In that distant corridor, Thelis Thist exhales corpse smoke and charred bone. In the centre of her daemonic cigar is a bone, and it tastes as kin to Beautiful. You can feel the shuddering horror of this creature at last. It has taken an Assassin and carved her apart for meat and bones. It has cut her hair and rolled it into cigars. And now, as it tastes corpse, it draws in the nightmarish power of the Assassins of the Temple.

This is the Eater of the Dead. 

"As Artemis is my witness," said Thelis Thist, as a cloud of infernal smoke at the entrance to an entirely different corridor. "I dedicate this hunt." She's gone again, moving through different doorways, reflection warped in crimson across the broken mirrors that line the throne room. "As Hades is my benefactor, I give praise and thanks to him. As the Skies are my home, I will defend them against invaders. As Kronus ruled all things, I will feast upon the strength of the young."

She was there, on the second floor balcony above the Satrap's throne, surrounded by shadows that seem like ghosts - howling and clutching and tearing at the monster with ineffectual limbs. She smiles down at the two of you as metallic spikes erupt in pairs all along her spine. Thick red lightning surges up along these channels, these organic ELF spikes, to wrap around her head in a crown of bloody lightning.

"And, as your host," said Thelis Thist. "Let me again show you the hospitality of the Endless Azure Skies."