[b]Redana![/b]

By the time she finds her escape her face is too broken to speak. No twisted kindnesses or poisonous insights comes from her lips. No philosophy, no bargains and no prayers.

Only [i]dragonfire[/i].

Sagakhan knows the art of all the Assassin Temples, but her origin was in the Toxicrene. Shapeshifting is her oldest and most deadly weapon and it is what she turns to with her senses scrambled and all her grace and cunning turned away. While you beat her, inside genetic alchemy was extracting advanced hyperium composites from her blood and bones and converting it into a plasmatic fusion compound, and it is this she unleashes on you. It is hot as sin and as blinding as rage and it buys her a moment's reprieve to advance her transformation.

When you see her again her flesh is hardening into jagged metallic scales, her face lengthening and inhuman, broken bones reconfiguring into aspects of war. Talons grow and a tail long and lashing extends behind her. Her delicate butterfly wings are twisting and hardening into avalanches of muscle and batlike leather. Sagakhan, Master of Assassins, wore a human face but in the end she was a servitor like any other, built for purpose. And her purpose was to transform into a killing monster. Just like Bella.

Intelligence crackles in slitted eyes. A monstrous thing, an iron will seeking to exert itself even as the source code of her genetic alchemy plays itself out on her mind and body. She picks up her sword and holds it out in a combat stance again even as her biology renders the weapon an irrelevant toothpick in comparison to the arsenal she now wields. But it is a symbol of civilization, of authority, of power. All things clawed tooth and nail from a universe she could trust nothing within, not least her biology.

You have a fearful sensation of why Zeus favours Sagakhan so. You fight for vengeance, blood running hot, Alexa's name on your lips. But for all your righteous fury in this moment, even you cannot say that you want this victory more than she does.

Lightning strikes overhead.

Her warriors rally against the onslaught. While Sagakhan is prepared to fight every cell in her body to rise above her conditioning she has no compunctions on using the deepest warrior programming of her slaves to its fullest and most suicidal extent. The duel is no longer single combat; now it is a bloodbath with both sides constantly pouring in to the reach of your weapons. Any mistake either of you make in your stance or awareness is paid for with the deaths of dozens. Your fight positions you at the heart of a whirlpool of blood.

This she bets: That your heart for this slaughter will give out before hers does.

[b]Alexa![/b]

Princess Epistia of Ceron lies between two battlefield surgeons, yellow robes stained with blood as they struggle with their patient. Even missing an arm from the elbow, a leg from the thigh, and her left cheek to the bone she fights them. She will throw them off, snatch up a weapon or surgical tool, hurl it, and kill some Kaeri warrior as she flies before being tackled again by her surgeon. She and Ares are one; sparks flow from her nose and her blood melts the sand to glass where it drips.

Bella's work was terrible. A precision strike that rendered the most chaotically destructive piece in this war neutralized at a stroke. Yet seeing the carnage Princess Epistia works even here, on the brink of life and death, you fear what might have been otherwise. The Warriors of Ceron were designed to fight alongside their own kind, and without any familiar scents for her limbic system to identify as friendly she is as much a danger to friend as foe. As you watch she takes a hand from a doctor, causing them to retreat at last, her crippled rage growing even more terrible.

If only you had another Ceronian, who might reach her and...

The thought comes to you that the assassin Beljani is of Ceronian descent.

[b]Vasilia and Dolce![/b]

The explosion stops the rain. 

The shockwave parts the clouds for a moment, knocks aside the wind. It leaves you blinking in a brief flicker of sunlight, lying paralyzed and shocked on soft sand sprouting with soft grass, in each others arms. Soft wool, soft flowers... sharp flowers. Thick vines. They wrap around your ankles and wrists. They wrap around each of you, tying you in increasingly tight binds. The verdant life of the desert beneath the rain grows with a hostile purpose and you can feel a third heartbeat running through the sap of the trees that are growing around you, almost a meter high already.

"You know," said Demeter, spring maiden fair, garlanded with flowers and smiles. "It's really quite rare that I get the opportunity to kill someone [i]myself[/i]. Normally I have to rely on my nieces and nephews to do this kind of thing for me."

She leans down, smile warmer than all the summers of all the worlds. "But for you, Vasilia? You, who slashed and burned my bonsai on the [i]Yakanov[/i]? Reveling in your victory as though it was not an insult to me? You who have not offered me prayers and libations, who offended my sister Zeus after all her aid for you, who have not killed your husband yet, as Aphrodite [i]assured[/i] me you would? You I will take the time to render into soil [i]myself[/i]."

And then she turns aside to face Dolce. "Hello Dolce. You, I have nothing against. You always remember to thank me when preparing the fruits of my gardens, and I can't remember a time when you offended any of my family. I see no reason not to spare you." She snapped two bright fingernails and the vines loosen around Dolce and turn all their attention towards binding Vasilia tighter. "Off you go."

[b]XIII![/b]

Redana's name burns into your skin.

You are moving. You are moving.

It's so close. So bright. Redana. Redana. Nothing has ever mattered more. It is written on your forehead, pressing at the delicate skin there, pressing right into your brain. The crown. The highest kill. Clear this name and for the rest of the battle you can kill without thinking, kill without waking up. The suffering of the hands and thighs is nothing compared to that word burned into your brain. Redana.

You know every part of this. You know every hole in her stance, every trick of footwork she never quite learned, every flinch and habit. You have studied this target your entire life. You know her to her braid. To her hearbeat. To her scent. You flow around her like water, preparing at last the kill you have been visualizing your entire life but never acting on until now.

It's perfect.

She's perfect.

You're perfect.

And the name burns on your forehead still.

...

No.

"Hey... Bella..."

Impossible. You know perfection. You are perfection. She has a tell. She has a tell! Her scent is never quite right. You'd know! You were meant to know! 

"Pretty disciplined of me, huh? I faked a mistake... for twenty years. Just so I could do this. I always thought it would be you..."

She was perfect. For much longer than you were.

"It's okay!" her voice is smiling through tears. "I never could make you see me. Even when we were making love. But I know you can hear me now so... I'm happy. That's all I wanted. I just wanted you to see..."

Her voice trails away, and Mynx's frail body falls against yours. Her blood mixes with Beljani's on your armour. You feel it, warm and soft against your skin. And where Beljani carved your armour you feel a new name glow across your skin. Not bright and painful like the others, warm and soft. Warm and soft like...

[b]SAGAKHAN[/b].