[b]Redana![/b] Madness, Madness, Madness. You race through battlefields. Ghost, breeze, god. [b]Alexa![/b] Madness, Madness, Madness. You race through battlefields. Maiden, avatar, friend. [b]Vasilia and Dolce![/b] Madness, Madness, Madness. You race through battlefields. Artists, leaders, partners. [b]Beljani![/b] Madness, Madness, Madness. You race through battlefields. Predator, prey, sister. * Madness, Madness, Madness. The Kaeri descend on bloody wings. Many fall in bloody embraces with Alcedi. Wings entangled, stabbing and stabbing and stabbing. It takes so much effort to kill. So much effort to make hate manifest. As they die they live again, skulls shattering in cherry bloom, corpulent fingers plucking seeds from heavy branches and forcing them past unwilling lips or into struggling ears. The Plovers are upon the field, sweeping about with swords and d-scythes. They accelerate towards the Lantern formations even as Jil lets out a war cry and hurls a javelin right through the multiglass that shields the cockpit. Black blood splashes the interior but still the machine comes. The Plovers make impact and an entire Clan disappears. Princess Epistia does not carry her scythe. Why should she? Every time it returns to her hand she can cast it out in a broad spinning horizontal saw of death which clears a bloodless swathe through the Garden. In the time spent waiting for it to return her weapon is the battlefield itself. Every dropped spear or cast javelin, every broken shard of metal or sharp splinter of wood. They pass through her hands briefly on their way to new homes inside the bodies of her foes. Demeter scythes down Kaeri like corn. They do not move from their phalanx, do not flinch as the goddess hews them down. She would have this be not a hunt, she would have this be a harvest. There is no relationship between you and she, [b]Beljani[/b]; no mutual respect, no lesson of spoor or flaw. This is an industrial, uncaring death that she wishes upon you. But you run. The combine harvester comes and you run. Your sin of blood and love and language screams for awful punishment, but there is strength in your legs still. Ahead of you there is cigarette smoke. Ahead of you there is cigarette smoke. [b]Vasilia and Dolce[/b] can smell the faint and odd taste of it on the edge of reality. Aphrodite takes a drag as plant monsters the size of bears scream past him in every direction. He gives you a lazy salute and is on his way - unhurried at first, but then surprisingly quickly once he sees Epistia coming for him. You are at the tip of the spear, coming rapidly upon the black pyramid of the Master of Assassins. You fight from flight and are glad for it, else you would walk a path paved with the bodies of Epistia's foes. You are so close. You are so close. A procession makes its way through the Coherent lines, chanting and incense and symbols and lyre music rising above the flow of battle. You hear the bellowing voice of Ramses at war, [b]Alexa[/b] call and response to the phalanx. A mechanical priest directs a clattering walking wardrobe with a staff, and thirty attendants follow in his wake. Plovers shadow in the poison smoke beyond, slashing through flank forces, orienting now to destroy this irregular phalanx in turn. And through this terror comes the priest, voice raising high for this too is the time for gods. And the gods are immanent. And the GODS are IMMANENT. To walk invisible is to be as Hades. In a sense it is to be within his realm. And oh, how little changes once you are there [b]Redana[/b]. The God of the Dead is everywhere. You see him in the cosmic distance, a black pyramid the size of the milky way. This immensity is not the act of death, not the flickering moment of transition between two states. It is the accumulated and recorded history of every moment that ever went from present to past. It is the living embodiment of all knowledge, the accumulation of all matter, the end destination of all souls. It is as dense as a black hole and billions of times more vast. That, then, is Hades. Or is he the altar? The black pyramid upon which the Master of Assassins stands is him too - a reduced, tiny, pathetic version. It is both conjuring and binding. Hephaestus once wove a net that held even Ares. What, then, is this self outside of the self? What did Demeter do to reduce a fellow god so? How can the great be reduced? How can the great be reduced? The Hermetic priest brings his travelling altar to a halt. He bangs on the edge with his staff and it settles, descending with hisses of hydraulics onto the ground. And then Ramses throws the door open. Two arms of gold await there. They wait for you, [b]Alexa[/b]. Not four as befit a god. Two, as befits a girl who is at last made whole. It waits for you. It waits for you. Aphrodite and Artemis are both there, [b]Beljani[/b], sharing a cigarette. Artemis gives a thin smile and stubs the butt out under her feet. Aphrodite gives a corrupt grin and spreads his arms. His left hand holds a shovel. And beneath his feet, a grave. Open. It waits for you. "Only one way to hide from Demeter," said Aphrodite wickedly. "And that's in the realm of Hades. Once I bury you, take a deep breath and put yourself in a suspended coma. Hope you're not claustrophobic." End of the road. End of the road. The red ribbon path of Epistia has ended here, beneath the black pyramid of Sagakhan. Her attention is not upon you - she tends to her armoured servant, muttering and cursing and working with a micro-welder. The blood of fifty Kaeri pours down through the pyramid's blood channels. That gets her attention. Finally, Sagakhan turns, her magnificent butterfly wings opening to their full extent. She taps her two monsters on the shoulders, a grandmotherly gesture. "XIII, my daughter. Liu Ban, old friend. It is time for you to wake up." [b]Bella![/b] Madness, Madness, Madness.