[b]Redana![/b]

"Am I?" said Beautiful. "Severed from a world that still cared for me?" fighting her is maddening. She's weaker. She's slower. But somehow she's always going in exactly the wrong direction. "Awoken to a world that still has grudges against me?" The possibility space has closed. She is losing her ability to target specific locations, now she just has to take whatever blows are available. Cold comfort as she steps just past a jab and works your ribcage in passing. "Needing a thousand chanting priestesses to lay a foundation for each step and getting one mad princess instead?" 

She has so many opportunities, so many places for needles or pistols or daggers to slip in under guards. Her instincts carry her into opening after opening. And opening after opening she has nothing better to exploit the flaw than a punch. When she tries tangling your legs in hers to send you stumbling she almost trips herself instead as there is less give in your muscles than she expects.

"It is," she steps up her tempo, looking to lay you out, end the fight, even if it means making it a fight rather than a dissection. "A poor craftswoman. Who blames her tools. A loose gear? Why don't you give me a name, then? Why don't you tell me who to kill? Do you want it done fast or slow, loud or quiet? Do you want me to make it look like an accident? Killed by her best friend while the cameras are rolling? Who is the target, you fucking bitch!?"

[b]Alexa![/b]

You step into the rooms of Galnius' praetorian guard, the last known location of the missing Kaeri.

There's a stink in the air. The smell of booze, sick, sweat and SP smoke. The smell of soldiers gone wrong. The door is marked with the scorch marks of SP rounds, black corrosion that eats right through the white paint and half an inch of the steel underneath. Jars of weapon oil are spilled and mix with a sludge made of kidney beans and the cream-sweet smell of monkfruit. A spear is run into a wall and every inch of it from blade to haft is covered in blood.

You can trace the violence in the patterns of blood, just as Athena always taught you. The heavy oak table was overturned, used as cover. Soldiers sheltered behind it until a Thunderbolt hit it and blasted it in half. And then... claw marks? Something terrible leaped upon the wreck of wood before pouncing onwards. There is a vortex of twisted metal on the walls and on the floor - steel flowed and twisted like a whirlpool, the jagged corkscrew wreckage of an improperly aimed Esoteric. So much of the fight is crystal clear.

And so much of it is not. There is no fire concentrated at the doorway. No clear point of breach or nexus of defense - it is as though the attacker teleported in from nowhere. The attacker left the claw marks of a great lion, wielded a Thunderbolt with a marksman's precision and discipline, and there is no sign that they spilled a drop of blood - or spilled any of their own. You spot the place where the spilled stew boils a toxic black and slide it away with the end of a stick. Sure enough, SP scorch marks on the floor.

A battle occurred here but it does not feel like any sort of war you've met before.

Evocati Khaesh could not be more on edge. She stands in a corner, a long rifle trained on the door held one handed, while her other hand holds a pistol she rhythmically scans the area with. "This was the Captain's work," she hisses. "Can you smell that? The stew was poisoned. The weapon of a chef."

You may need to Look Closely.