[b]Redana![/b]

"Huh," said Beautiful. "She must be [i]really [/i]hot if I got involved in relationship drama that intense."

She finally managed to pull herself into a sitting position, wiping her bloodied face off on her gown. "Alright, so; I don't know much but I do know how Artemis works. So there's a couple of ways to build an assassin: lifetime of training, weird hunt rituals, but the easiest and cheapest is just to make someone into a bomb. It sounds like Bella was, like... a fighty bomb. I don't know the name for it either, I just got here. Anyway, so, if her life is anything like mine she's probably aware of it. I can [i]feel [/i]the frontiers of my consciousness getting further and further away, even over these couple of minutes, more and more stuff gets caught and processed and becomes solved. I don't think she'd have exactly that but she'd have something like that; some constant sense of tension. If she was assigned as your bodyguard then I imagine every second you're not in her field of vision is lowkey stressful. No wonder the idea of you leaving Tellus freaked her out."

She struggled to her feet, leaning heavily against her sarcophagus. "What I don't get is how you - saved her? Like, to save [i]me [/i]you literally need to undo my brain and start again from scratch. So if I'm right and she became a divine avatar of slaughter, then how the fuck did you get from that point to the point where you're worried about her not kissing you more?"

[b]Alexa![/b]

"Well, the good news is that this is absolutely fascinating," said Ninox Rufa, Biologis Weaver of the Kaeri.

The ship, meanwhile, was rapidly disintegrating into armed and fortified paranoia. Each deck had immediately entered its own lockdown. Perversely, the Kaeri are handling it the best - they are intimately familiar with the capabilities of Temple assassins and their movements, and live their entire lives in a state of militarized paranoia by default. Their quarantine and checking procedures are flawless. The problem is that the range of responses from the other factions aboard ranges from 'ineffective' to 'wildly counterproductive'.

It's a horrible irony that if the Kaeri were put in charge right now it would go a long way to managing what is rapidly becoming a crisis.

But at least there's good news! "There are, of course, a variety of poisons capable of killing a modern bioform," Ninox continued. "But none of them are perfect. There are always tradeoffs to be made to do with speed, certainty, reversibility, and so on. This one is certain - but slow, and curable with an original poison sample. I'll also note that [i]all [/i]of the victims were poisoned, even the ones that could have been killed in hand to hand combat. From this we can infer that the poisoner [i]needs [/i]these people dead even if she's prepared to wait for it."

Or she's giving you a chance to stop her, Hera willing. 

She hasn't arrived at the meeting spot. 

"But there is, of course, a psychological component to all this," Ninox chirped on. "The spectacular visual impact of the poison and its permanence is no doubt designed to throw terror into the ship once the connection was made. An unprepared society is naturally most vulnerable, but a chaotic response is easily the next best thing. It allows for spectacular raids on high profile targets in the confusion, which will only deepen the crisis."

So, Alexa: who do you guess is about to be attacked in the midst of this confusion?

[b]Bella![/b]

"Oh, don't worry about that ma'am," said Prion Paula. You take a deep sniff of the wine just to make sure it's not poisoned with hallucinogens. Maybe the girl wasn't kidding when she said it wasn't up to your standards? "It was explained to us. You were under a witch's curse!"

She drew her blade - the Peony Rainbow Blade! - and swooshes it up to the sky. "And the curse was broken with true love's first kiss! The one flower Demeter never expected to bloom upon the battlefield was love! Such is the strategic mastery of Captain Dolce of the Golden Fleece, Ram of War, whose obsidian eyes always know strength from weakness!"