“Darling. Why…?!”

“She’d have got you again. I couldn’t…you shouldn’t have to…”

“Was it better I should watch you die?!”

“...ah. Sorry. I, I didn’t-”

“No. No more. We’re not splitting apart again. Not now. If this is-”

“We can do this.”

“...”

“We can do this, Vas.”

“...then we’ll do it together, dear heart.”

******************************

The first steps of XIII cleared the field. The sound of her approach slaughtered plans where they stood. Lines shifted. Friend and foe clamored in retreat. Those creeping plants, those breathless dead, remembered the shape of fear, and scattered to new ground. The eye of Ares found better game, elsewhere. No one will stand between them, now. Nothing stands between the Diodekoi, and her prey. They will fall, and they will fall, and what sweetness it will be! Names and bodies growing cold against her! Thank you, Artemis. You kept her path clear. She is here, for her treat. She is a good girl, in the end.

Down, down, down. To doom. To death. With a glaive in her hand and a sword in his. With her body before his. Let her take a fraction of the pain. Let her lifeblood buy her husband a breath of peace. She winds up for a swing. One, last, fruitless resistance. 

XIII leaps. As does Dolce, right on time.

The sheep flies from his wife’s back, equal and opposite reaction dropping her low. The claw meant for her heart drives through her side, piercing armor twice over. But he’s away. But he’s close. So close. XIII twists, pivots off the air, body bending like a bow at full draw, to spear the little stormcloud-

[i]*BOOM*[/i]

And Vasilia’s strike lands upon the desert floor. With a strangled gasp she kicks herself off those hungry claws, vanishing into the dust cloud. She hears no shredding, no screaming, and knows her husband broke clear. She does not hear XIII’s kick, splitting the sandstorm in two. She feels her ribs crack. Then-

Silence. Chaos. Silence. Chaos. Dunes explode to dust, one after another, as she passes through them. Enough gravity not to bounce off into the sky. Not enough that her body will break. Barely. XIII is coming. Blinking closer with each silence. Coiled to pounce if she runs. No escape. No retreat.

“Vas!”

A voice shouts from behind her. Not alone.

The swipe. The strike. Thunder claps twice. XIII digs a ditch twice her height, and sand rushes to fill the wound. Vasilia vaults a hair’s breadth from destruction. Her glaive missed. The blast of sand and grit could not. XIII eyes blink themselves clear. Her ears catch the shifting of the wind. Divine sense tell her where Vasilia must be, where she will be. But for Dolce, he simply knew. XIII must leap after her. He was already there.

For an instant, two fields become one. They split, and only they know their direction. Again, the swipe. Again, the glaive. Wound. Vault. And again, the pair meet. Faster. Faster! See the trench they carve in their wake, the desert pockmarked by thunderbolts. The air resounds with the staccato of the Armada’s cannons, violence to split a planet in two. And still they fly! In patterns impossible to predict, two souls fly, untouched! As one, outrunning a nightmare!

“E. Nough.”

XIII spins, once. Her heel strikes the earth.

Vasilia’s swipe passes through open air. Dolce scrambles to land, but finds nothing. Beneath them, a yawning crater. A grave, big enough for two. Big enough for an army. Big enough that he will not find his feet before she is upon him.

He gets his sword up. She cares not. The sound, ah, the sound it makes, when her strike meet his guard. A chime so sweet, like a fork against a dripping wineglass. The steel holds. His arm does not. Pop. Crack. Go. Away, little lost sheep. Scream, that she will find you easier. She must kill your shepherd, first. See, even now, the lioness’ glaive whistles towards her. Too slow. Much too slow.

This, then, is the hunt. This is the difference between predator and prey. All that she is, bent to one, transcendent moment, where nothing stands between her quarry and her overwhelming strength. XIII moves as if she has her own rail - no. XIII does not need to move. The world is simply beneath her. And between the world and a god’s hammer, a fragile little thing of blood and bones.

Down, down, down. Down into her stomach. Down to the grave. Falling with her. Because she will bounce. She must not manifest any weight, or else she will shatter. Off the ground. Up. Into the claws. Too close to swing her bothersome weapon. Too fast to dodge away. Nothing more than an offering upon the altar of the hunt. Shoulder. Legs. Back. Arms. The thunderbolts run red. All her breath is screaming. The claws drive her into the sand. Her weightless body sends her back into them again. XIII strikes for the kill. The blow falls. Heavier than it should. Faster than it should. Pulled, by a moment of terrible gravity that draws the surrounding sand to Vasilia’s battered body. Her will screams for her heart. But an arm, not a ribcage, splinters.

Fourth Form: Atmosphere Surrounding. Reversed.

[i]Hunger of Styx.[/i]

XIII excavates her shoulder. XIII tears wide the hole in her side. XIII ruins her hand. By her choice. By her offering. For the price of a heart still beating, Vasilia hurls the blows of the Deodekoi into her body. They fall heavy, but off the mark. Wrong targets. Wrong angles. Every inch of flesh, every unbroken bone, is another hit she can survive. When her leg hangs useless and shattered, she drives it into the ground, and XIII’s claws meet an iron-hard cast of sand. Just enough to pad the blow. Enough to keep her conscious. Enough to command the rail. Enough. Enough. Enough.

One extra step in a hundred. A fraction of a second where eyes must clear. A feather’s-worth of force absorbed by sand and tattered armor. They don’t have to win. They can’t win.

All they need to do is hold long enough.

A spear haft comes tumbling down the crater wall, and her hand darts out to grab it. Away, in the light, Dolce feels a tug on a string, and pulls with all the strength left in his body. His wife comes soaring, weightless, out of the crater, out of the grave, in a glittering arc across the gray clouds. He gets her high enough, before XIII reaches him. Then he is flying too. His leg, nothing but agony. If it is even there at all.

Two stars fall, and they fall at the feet of the Anemoi.

Together.

[Rolling to Keep Her Busy: 6 + 4 + 2 = 12. Damaging Sense as the Price for acting against a Threat to the World.]