Sagakhan is an impossibly complicated knot of life lines that blaze hotter than a bonfire with the pulse of divine light. No simple puzzle to be clipped short with a sharp set of claws, these: many of the lines cross jaggedly around nothing at all that she can see, while others form tightly clustered lumps that could each be a heart on a lesser creature. They are more numerous and more vibrant than anything else on the entire battlefield, even Redana. 

Her words drip black-devouring-white, so unwholesome and powerful that they rattle XIII's senses and try to force her back up into the world of sight and sound and taste and touch, and reduce her understanding back to a mortal level where they couldn't terrify her half so much. But she snarls instead of quaking. Her fingers quiver with power and longing. She charges, before another word can be spoken. And two heads become three. Three heads become four.

You couldn't call what happens next a dance. Blood spatters everywhere from dozens of deep cuts made with suicidal abandon. XIII flashes everywhere; above, below, from every side, appearing and disappearing only to deal death to the newest name shining brightest on her skin. It is violent to a degree where even the gods might turn their heads. She trades shattering blows from a Hydra's talons for what would against any other creature be a mortal wound. Her armor chips and cracks on her neck, her shoulder, her left leg, her stomach. It holds. Her mouth fills with blood around a shattered fang. She swallows it without complaint. 

She is beyond pain. Beyond all reason but the hunt. Where she bothers to dodge Sagakhan's strikes it is only in service to preserving herself enough to make sure the job is finished before she falls. Each strike, each moment where she freezes after she scours out a new line, each shower of blood is a scream. A defiance.

I. Am. Here, Mother. I. Am. What. You. Made. Me. I. Can. Not. Be. Raised. Anew. A. Beast. Can. Only. Raise. A. Beast. I! Am! The! Hunter! I! Am! The! Monster! Who! Hunts! Who! Slays! Other! Monsters! You. Will. Not. Erase. Me!

It feels like a battle that lasts an eternity. In reality it's over in seconds. The cuts turn out to be superficial, closing easily. Four heads become five. XIII only makes her mother stronger. Until at last she finds it: the opening at the left of her breast. Her claws drive into it with a thrust like a thrown spear. Her arm disappears into Sagakhan's flesh up to the elbow. Her claws close against the brightest cluster, and she squeezes.

She snorts. "Is. That. All?"

But she cannot see smiles. She misses the sardonic grins. Held in her moment of victory, she does not feel the skin close around her arm. And she is bitten. Again, and again, and again, and again, divine whips lashing an unworthy slave. Wounds that burn with venom. A tail smashes her full in the face with more power and fury than the largest sword swung by the strongest warrior ever to appear in the history of Empire. 

XIII is free. XIII is flying. She crashes to the ground amidst the ruins of the black pyramid, and coughs in place of breathing. She head flops to one side, against her will. She feels pain. She wheezes. She smells blood, tastes it. She sees. She [i]sees[/i]. The faceplate of her armor, already cracked in five different places, falls apart. 

One eye is milky silver, tinged through the middle with murderous red. Her lips are unpainted and her face is covered in dirt and cuts. But that golden eye could only belong to Bella. She hisses as she struggles back to her feet, and her head snaps back into place with a heavy crunch. But her gaze stays on you, Redana. Her vision fills only with you.

The tears from her one good eye wash her face clean for her mistress.