The macrocannons of the grounded battleships speak. In another time being between the broadsides of two kilometer long warships would have been considered suicidal. This, however, is a wiser age. Ten tonne slabs of metal propelled by catastrophic chemical explosions smash into quadranix alloy hulls like hammers on a steel door. Some are poison shells and they rupture on impact, sending forth massive and billowing clouds of toxic gas. The Plousious is the larger ship and its broadside is mightier, but they are staffed by a skeleton crew of Kaeri and slaves. The volleys that erupt from the Anemoi are made with the speed and precision of a highly motivated and skilled crew born into their station. Some shells are aimed at the battlefield, but these tend to be incidental. Warriors can easily evade them, or - working in unison - even [i]catch[/i] them. Further, each volley takes the better part of three minutes to load and aim. By far the biggest impact of artillery like this is chaos and disruption - breaking phalanxes to enable swift warriors to close and pick off isolated targets. So goes the maxims of conventional war. But this is, rather, a nightmare. The flowering horde is barely sensate, operating with the deadened nerves and lack of cerebral powers shared by trees and the dead. The leaves of their branches wilt and shrivel when exposed to the toxic compounds of solid projectile gasses, but the hosts advance without care for the shock of it. They have no formation to be broken, no agenda to preserve life. They barely even dodge when solid shot crashes down into their ranks, carving furrows of broken limbs and snapped branches through the horde. That does not stop them either - survivors claw their way out from under enormous slabs of metal and rejoin the rush. * [b]Redana![/b] Waiting to receive a charge is [i]agony[/i]. Poets and military theorists talk about the tension between Athena and Ares. Here you are, on the knife's edge between them. One hand holds your blade steady, holds the phalanx immobile, perceives the conflict as flow and mathematics and resiliency. The flow of constant data from the Auspex comes into focus, providing an eagle's eye map in the corner of your vision, charting great flows of green against thin lines of violet. One hand clenches your heart and tears out your guts. That for all the genetic alchemy in your veins, you are not so different from a hart. That hundreds of [i]people[/i] are running at you as fast as they can. That the sky is thick with dark, predatory shapes like nightmare angels. And you could die. Die and never see anyone again. Not Bella. Not anyone. "Come, take my hand," said the Two Who Were One. "Your destiny was always to be a god/ a beast/ You were always meant to rise/ to fall/ When they called you Princess they knew/ they lied It is time at last to be what you were always meant to be." The mass is getting so close. Brace/ Break. [b]Alexa![/b] The Kaeri soar to match your movements, and in this moment it feels like a race rather than war. There's something beautiful about this, the way they move. They're enjoying themselves. They're enjoying this. This is the fulfillment of a purpose woven into their ancestors. Each of them boils with a chemical concoction of endorphins that runs right up to the line of making them combat ineffective. There's so much strength in those silently beating wings. So much life - but a strangely mechanistic formulation of it. You're racing them along the edge of a Coherent phalanx. It's night and day, the difference between these forces. The Coherent are warriors, certainly, but they are warriors as a profession. They have sculpted their bodies for pleasure, for aesthetic, for the realization of self identity. They have preserved things that matter to them and learned how to act in harmony with a wild range of fellows. Their diversity does not make them weak - their phalanx is an organic thing, strength taught through lessons and experience. An army of complete souls choosing to be together, rather than an army of stunted souls grouping around the only thing they can understand. It is strange how something so organic, so lively, something so joyous, can in the end be an instrument of hate as artificial as the blood groove on a spear. It's strange how, for all the harmony of the Coherent, that they're still not complete. Already the Esoterics are coming up through the formation, those strange arcane weapons cabled to the mobile clockwork reactors. Too soon. Too vulnerable. Hunting instincts from the Kaeri are perfectly manipulating their opponents... And you realize what the Coherent are missing. They're not complete without [i]you[/i]. [b]Vasilia![/b] And then Zeus is above you, flashing and glowing and radiant, a nymph of lightning. Her eyes are brilliant blue, her indigo robe has burned to cinders, sparkling glitter cascades downwards and every part of her is alight with power, power, [i]power[/i]. "You gotta respect it, though!" said Zeus. "This? This is [i]absolutely[/i] a king move. You think this happens by accident? Sagakhan has been getting up at the crack of dawn for two hundred and fifty years, just, like, backflipping out of bed, doing fifty jumping jacks, and then spreading her attention between administering a galactic network of assassins and bringing down the champions of a rival god! She put in the fucking sweat, the tears, the pain to make this happen. She's stood here before, eight spears in her chest, bleeding out of her [i]eyes[/i] and she never once gave up. Not ever! There were so many shortcuts she could have taken, so many extra miles she didn't have to run, but she's gone for all of them. Don't think you know her! You've walked this road once! She walks it every year!" She rises up through the air, alight, alive, each hair coursing electricity. "And in the end all she asked me for was the rain!" she cries in joy. "Just rain! In exchange she offered me four thousand prisoners! And you want my [i]thunderbolts[/i] - for what!?" Zeus laughs and the sky tears. "Because you are so righteous, Vasilia, and you always honour me with your prayers? Because I favour the underdogs and reward the unprepared? Because I want to see this monument to past successes burned? Because a quarter millennia after it began [i]now[/i] is the moment when I decide to get involved in the squabbles of my siblings?" And then she's back down in front of you, melting the sand into glass, eyes crystal sharp. She isn't just a girl in this moment. She is gravity. She is every planet in the sky. She is the solar radiation and the cosmic nebula. She is the heat of the Engine and the molecular bonds that hold your atoms together. She is dimension after dimension of invisible dark matter, defining everything by the implication of her presence. Magnetic force. Weak force. Strong force. All contained in a single girl of lightning. "You want it, Vasilia?" said Zeus. "[i]Earn[/i] it. Show me what you got." [b]Dolce![/b] "If I intervene," said Hades in a soft voice voice. "Then Demeter will arise to match me. If you believe this is bad then you do not comprehend the horrors that would be seen if we both took the field. Demeter has given Sagakhan her seeds. I have given you my beloved daughter." He strode to the front of the line and looked out at the empty space surrounding Princess Epistia as terrible strength began to build around her. "You would do well not to insult me by implying that I have given the lesser gift," said Hades softly. [b]Beljani![/b] Any one of a great number of monsters could have turned their gaze upon you in this moment. Any of them would have been preferable. You get Demeter. [i]Consider the fieldmouse as it is swept up into the combine harvester. Consider the snap and crunch and thresh as it is rendered unto nourishment. Consider the smoke rising from the fields. Consider the snap and crackle and roar as it is rendered unto the hungry flame. Consider the soil as it is sucked dry and rendered unto sand. Consider the aeons of death and dissolution required to make it fertile again...[/i] Her hands are stained with viscera and blackberries. She pulls you off Bella and casts you down the steps of the pyramid, and with each step you tumble down your fall is broken by mushrooms and new sprouts of grass. You see the Goddess of the harvest coming down the steps towards you. She is the fairest creature in all the worlds, cool water and the promise of life for another year, the beauty of the maiden and the fury of the crone. [i]"How dare you,"[/i] she said in the voices of every thing here that is hers. [i]"I permit no weeds in my garden."[/i] But then you see a step off to the side. A glimpse of a silver suit 'midst the ranks of the Kaeri. A path that walks into the labyrinth of a phalanx. They stand tall and straight like rows of corn, and you dash into them seeking cover. You move through the ranks of tall and silent soldiers, just enough space between them to move without pushing them, and every few moments you catch a glimpse of silver in your view ahead. And Demeter comes in pursuit.