The first thing that saves Reshella is her shining eye, which sends a jolt of raw portent down her spine when Mynx approaches her, which means that Reshella is ready for her and not fumbling and bumbling into her arms. At least, her body is ready, shifting into a loose stance and ready to yield; her mind is busy staring, wide-eyed, at the could-have-been Dany. Taller, fuller, actually dressed (for all that her silks hint and tantalize, promising a glimpse of budding flowers if you simply come closer, closer), effortlessly graceful in a way that Dany, that even Reshella, cannot be, because for her every movement is conscious and hopeful, but Mynx moves like she has sublimated the Muses into her blood.

But the second thing that saves her is that Redana knows wrestling, and this is an anti-wrestling that Reshella can do. Giving ground, ceding way, backing up towards Bella, and wherever Mynx leans forward, Reshella invites her closer while still twisting her body away, and it almost looks like they’re dancing together, doesn’t it? In its own way, is this not as thrilling as entwining together, does this not drag the fear and yearning of touch out of her, is this not what her heart has been hoping for? Danger and peril, titillation and desire?

Behind her, she can hear, she can feel Bella, she knows that Bella is close, and maybe she won’t even be in real peril after all, maybe she’s good enough to keep the dance going, maybe she’s one of the heroines tonight too, maybe Bella will sniff and then say that her disguise was silly but that it still worked, and—

And she stumbles and nearly falls, her heel caught on the foot of a careless Alcedi, and Mynx is there, catching her by the wrist, and there’s applause, and her pulse is racing as Mynx slips her other hand under Reshella’s back, brings her close, and Bella is about to spring, but it’s too late for Reshella, and Mynx is smiling so kindly, but there is Aphrodite’s lighter guttering in the light of her eyes.

“Sweet dreams, Princess,” Mynx offers, and releases Reshella’s hand to lift the veil and kiss her on the lips, which is what an Imperial Princess deserves from the Assassin who knows her best—

And stops, confused for a fatal second, because she was not expecting those lips to be hidden under black and gold, pulled so tight over Reshella’s cheeks, hidden underneath her veil and her hair, and did not think that Redana would be so daring already, and perhaps wonders how Bella could have brought herself to do it for her Princess, and so the recontextualization, the adjustment of the story, is the difference between the kiss happening before Bella can reach her, and the pounce reaching Mynx first, and thus Epistia’s gag is the third thing that saves the lovely dancing-girl.

And Reshella crumples, veil fluttering, hand lifted to her triangles, and, oh, she did need to be saved, didn’t she? And how her heart hammers at being saved. How she watches everything that comes next with the wide-eyed admiration that Reshella is allowed to display! Redana would jump in, get involved, make a muddle of the struggle, maybe even risk Bella’s ire, but Reshella is being fought for and she couldn’t stand up right now if she was told that the Plousios’s reactor was overloading.

Not until Bella offers a hand to help her up. And let that fourth salvation be the sweetest and the best, please, please.

[10 to Overcome the risk of being kissed by Mynx. Thank you, Epistia. Thank you, Bella. <3]

There's electricity caught in the back of her neck. There's fire racing down her arms to settle in her fingertips. There's a hurricane thrashing about her chest. Her vision is specked with silver. This is it. This is it. The thought pounds inside her skull with the relentless pressure of war drums.

The Hunt is back on.

Bella's body is as fluid as the river she watched on Salib, and as firm and unyielding as the walls of the Yakanov. She does not glide or sway behind Redana; she prowls. Liquid motion gives way to planted feet and muscle tension worthy of a mountain that crushes the floor beneath her. There's electricity caught in the back of her neck. There's fire burning in her fingertips. Sparks are bursting all along her back, and she has to fight not to let them explode into burning wings.

Not yet. Not yet. Silver specks are building into a line, but they are still disjointed. Her nose closes off scent after scent, narrowing the possibilities down to a manageable space. She knows what she's looking for this time. Not the faint whiff of perfumes and chemicals trying to cover over that pheromone tell, that won't ever fool her again. She is sniffing for Mynx's true scent, which is to say Redana's scent. Perfected. The real Redana is sweaty and nervous and coated in wolf musk. Mynx will be a better, purer version of the smell underneath all of that. Anything less would fail to live up to Mynx's idea of the princess. It would be a failure on her part. She can fake a flaw on purpose, but not one that implies a failing of Dany's. That's her true tell. Bella will never mistake it again, if she can simply find it.

The waiting is unbearable. Her palms itch, and demand to be flexed. Her claws stretch ominously, promising death. The silver path is winding around Redana's silly dancing girl persona, tighter and tighter and tighter. Soon, the moment would come. The moment to pounce. Mynx would lower her guard to attack. She'd go after Redana first, confident she's a step ahead of Bella. She'd only need a tiny nick, and this whole fucking thing would become pointless. It would end in death. And maybe... maybe the pair of them were still very much alike after all.

Well fuck her. No. If that path ended in failure for her every time she took it, Mynx wasn't going to manage it either. No. If Bella has to keep living, so does Mynx. It's in the middle of that thought she almost misses it. The pair of princesses are dancing. The push and pull, the give and take, the inevitable defeat. The pressure in her spine is unbearable. Wait, it says. Wait. And while she's coiling tight enough to make her own strike, Mynx moves in for the kill.

And misses. Something stops her, and in that moment of hesitation Bella closes the gap and sends Mynx sprawling across the hall. She is not gentle. The move will daze, and it leaves her in the open where escape is not an easy option. Her eye has been calculating the angle on this strike the entire time she's been prowling.

"Mynx..."

Yes? Mynx what? What is she supposed to say? It's time to stop? You don't need to do this? I'm here for you? No it isn't. Yes, she does. No, she's not. And if she was, then she's shown more than enough times that it's a bad thing for Bella to be there for anybody. There's no way to finish her sentence. No way to even start it. The only thought worth expressing is the one she doesn't dare try.

Why? Why didn't you tell me? Why, for all that time, did you let me think I was different from you? Why did you lie?

Bella's mouth closes without a sound. She turns away from her prey, though she bends both ears back to track things anyway. There's something more important right now. Something she can say, because she doesn't have to say it to just one person. Her hand clasps around Redana's wrist, and she lifts the princess to her feet as easily as if she were lifting a child.

There's a pause. Another moment of hesitation that almost costs her everything. Bella's voice is raw, when she finally speaks.

"I need you."

She turns. Her ELF flares across her back, scorching her dress but expanding no further than a meter or so to either side of her. Controlled violence. Measured aggression. In a flash, she vanishes. She crosses the space between herself and Mynx without touching the surrounding air, and puts her fist through the floor not even a breath after a shaky Mynx has risen to her feet. Bella snarls, and both eyes gleam with menace.

You're gonna fight, Mynx. The gods damn you, you're gonna fight and get this shit out of your system. That's what Bella can offer you. If there's one thing she's learned, it's that peace only comes after defeat.

[Keep Them Busy: 4, 2, +2 = 8. At the end of this sequence, the fight will turn against Bella]

Dolce beams, wreathed in the steam of simmering milk and sugar.

“I’m glad my obvious mental breakdown isn’t causing you any undue stress.”

And returns right back to stirring. Did you know, that one must stir dulce de leche almost constantly until it’s ready? Improvements in ingredients and technique can only get you so far. At the end of the day, it must be carefully, so carefully attended to, lest it burn and ruin the whole batch. But Dolce does not mind the chore. See his perfect smile, not budging an smidge as he works, and works, and works, and works at the mixture. If the pointed silence carries a taste of mischief, then it certainly must be the imagination. Hunger does funny things to a mind, you see.

“Of course I know about the Rift.” A pair of skeletons, embracing, matching knives through one another’s hearts. His grip on the whisk tightens. “We have to do something about it, or else, well, that’s it. Just like we’ve got to do something about the Tides, or else they might self-destruct, and that could be it too. Only, someone’s raised the cry of Assassin, and now I’m hiding in the kitchens. Maybe that’s where we stop. Just like Salib could’ve done it, and the Endless Azure Skies, and Bella, more times than I can count, and the Yakanov, and the Armada, and the Eater of Worlds, and, I might be forgetting one or two?” He frowns, and his whole face wrinkles in thought.. “No offense meant to Aphrodite - it’s a terrible, awesome Rift, among the worst obstacles we’ve faced yet - but we’ve not had a free step this entire journey. But the only way the journey gets done is if we keep taking steps, however we can.” Otherwise the journey may never get done. How many more crews did Hermes have to send? Who’s to say any of them would succeed where they’d failed? “So, I have to keep believing there’s a way we can do it. And figure out how before we get there.”

“That said.” He scoops a sample free with a spoon, observing its consistency before taking a delicate lick. A while longer, but getting there. “It’s not like we’re going in blind, either.”

With one hand stirring, the other counts off.

“First: Hades loves to gamble. I’ve not personally seen him care much whether he wins or loses, or even how often he loses. Never in the stories, either. This is just a hunch, but I don’t know if he’d go for a wager if he knew, for sure, how the cards would fall. I don’t know if he’d be this invested if he knew he’d win every time. If that’s true, then that means there is a way through the Rift, even if nobody’s found it yet.”

“Second: We have to be doing something right so far, more than the crews that came before us. We’re yet to reach the point of no return for the Rift, yet, Demeter said Aphrodite assured her that Vasilia would have killed me by the time we reached Salib. There are…” He swallows uncomfortably. “...signs, that other journeys ended long before ours, by Aphrodite’s curse. But it hasn’t happened to us yet, despite the fact that it should have, and I can’t believe that’s down to chance.”

“Third: There’s some things the gods have told us that I can’t make sense of. Hades told Vasilia that, on this side of the Rift, love is denied to all. That the Rift only magnifies and accelerates existing fault lines. Aphrodite himself told me I did not have love. And yet. Vasilia and I are closer now than we were at the journey’s start. Aphrodite saved our lives, when all I had to offer was the promise that I was hers, and she was mine.” Denied love, then saved for love, all in the space of a few minutes. The gods may act on whims as they so choose, of course, but that answer sat wrong in his heart. There was something more afoot, if he could just figure out how it all pieced together…

Hrmm. But first, there was stirring to do.

“It’s not an answer.” He admits, returning to his careful kitchen work. “I need a little more time, some opportunities to consult the gods further. But I think I’m close to something.”

Slowly, one eyelid twitches.

"Why isn't free will included in the base model?

"Why isn't she allowed to have a sex drive by default? Why is she forbidden to fall in love?

"Why is long life an afterthought?

"Why are you asking me what the human wants? Why do you think the only thing a servitor can be besides a tool is a pet? Why aren't you asking Mynx any of this?

So many questions, lining up and throwing themselves against the gates of her mouth, all screaming to be released and none of them allowed to get out and oh gods how can they be so calm about this? How can they look at this and know this and think this is alright? How can you be so calm about this, act like trillions of people being hand-crafted to be the perfect tools is right?! It's me! It's you! How can you just accept that your purpose is to make sure this continues?

Inside her head, her words are bringing up a battering ram.

"Redana does not want a pet," finally slips out, and she's proud that it is a slip, and not a scream. "She could have had any number of royal pets back in the palace. She wants a friend, but not one who's only her friend because she's the princess. You're sure free will can't be had with her biology?"

Redana and Bella!

"No, you don't need me," said Mynx.

She flexes her arms experimentally. Ribbons tear. Fabric rips. Her arms swell with crimson muscle, claws and talons and black scales mixed in through the red. She looks at them with a quiet, almost awestruck fascination for a moment and it's only after the moment has passed that you realized that wasn't a bait to lure you in.

"You were the one who killed Sagakhan," said Mynx, shrugging her shoulders as her spine became bladed sharp. She's stepping forwards and backwards lightly, feigning lunges, testing your reflexes as though she doesn't know them by heart. "You were the one who rescued Redana. You were the one who found Redana in the first place. You survived on your own for months and then somehow got ahead of us in a ship that you built out of scrap and crashed into an Azura capital. You've killed every enemy in your path and won an army's loyalty. You don't need anyone, Bella."

And then she comes forward - deceptively predictable. It's a fight you've had before a hundred times, but this time her arms her longer, her legs are faster, her tail is barbed. What should have been a feint catches you by the hair and yanks you backwards. She's atop you razor quick and this time your hands can't shift hers.

"I know you'd go through the Rift, because nothing can stop you," said Mynx. "And I know you'd survive Aphrodite's curse for the same reason. But while I was dying after you literally broke my heart," she smiles playfully, showing the pale scars of newly regrown scales on her chest, "Hades took pity on me and told me everything. In particular he told me that the Rift was the River Lethe. The river of forgetfulness, the place where they harvest Beautiful's medicine from. The border of the land of the dead and gateway to the realm of the living. And we are and always have been the breathless dead, born and raised in the underworld amidst the shades and ruins."

Her eyes gleam with a frenzied light, her layers of lies and misdirections cracking below the surface with the weight of knowledge and feelings. She pushes down further, her razor teeth against your cheek and the familiar sensation gives no clue if it is to be poison or antidote this time. "So all I am doing," she said, voice hushed. "Is saving Redana the trouble. She hates goodbyes. It broke her heart, leaving you behind. It'd break her heart to leave all of these people she collected behind too. Once they figure it out they'll abandon her, or she'll abandon them to save them the choice. So I'm just going to... make it so that there's no question. The poison will run its course in a few months and Redana will be surrounded again by all the people she loves."

She almost kisses you. Comes closer than she ever has before. She can never quite be the one to initiate. "So please. Let me keep her safe."

Alexa!

"Look, I don't mean to come across as unhelpful here," said the Biomancer. "But you're asking me to repurpose a piece of dedicated military hardware for civilian use. It is to the human's credit that she wants a peer, and that she sees something of value in the subject, but she's asking it of a cruise missile. The best I can realistically offer is to render the subject down and reconstitute a specialized clone, but that comes with unacceptable software loss."

"Besides," said the Biomancer, sipping again from his sickly sweet cup. "We don't deal in iron laws here, we deal in... warmth. Cold. Preferences. Comfort. Craving. The subject is already free in the sense that it can make choices - as spectacularly recently demonstrated by the other assassin's break with coded preferences. An example," he looked down at some papers he was holding. "This entity was patterned as a bodyguard. Adjustments were made to the self preservation instinct, protectiveness and to kin bond instincts well beyond anything that would be considered a human standard. The expected manifestation of those genetic adjustments is the development of a martyrdom complex, suicidal ideation and extremely violent aggression towards anyone who threatened her romantic partners. At the same time, adjustments to her internal expectations of strength and beauty were made so high that she would develop an inferiority complex so crippling she'd never imagine she actually had anything to offer the people she was attracted to. The result would be a creature that loves, deeply and protectively, while lacking any confidence that would allow her to make a move on her own, and would accept being passed over as normal. A silent guardian. Perfect."

"Say we were to somehow crack the sequence and alter those variables - that would cause all kinds of mental instability. Thoughts that bought pleasure and comfort would instead be hollow. The subject would be filled with a new, entirely unfamiliar awareness of danger and the importance of self preservation. The loss of the inferiority complex would likewise result in a contentedness that would undermine productive habits of training and exercise. I fully expect that changing those biological variables to an unconstrained human default would result in her rendered into a paranoid, slothful, miserable wreck."

He set his cup down. "I gather you're new at this from your involuntary physical reactions. Odd that they'd be coded into a battle construct, but I gather you also had a social function. Please try to understand this point because it's very important and you don't have the biological context to understand it instinctively. Servitors are, by and large, happy. Performing their functions results in enormous pleasure and, with only a little social sculpting, they form self sustaining communities that strive with all their hearts towards their imprinted tasks in perpetuity. Work needs to be done and who better to do it than people who would choose, passionately, to perform it? Who would choose to perform it, self sustaining, down the generations with no intervention or interference? Humanity was able to retire the lash and do away with money because job satisfaction was imprinted at a genetic and species level. The only reason to interfere in these systems is to ease the transition on entities that humans are using for improper purpose."

Dolce!

There was a lot of information to process there. Jil hopped up onto the counter and sat, going through it all. There's an entire internal journey happening with her, and many times she opens her mouth to ask a question and then stops. Those aren't the questions she needs to ask.

Eventually, she finds the point she can't move past. She looks at you through the skull beads of her hat and says, "Okay, so this journey is insanely dangerous," she said. "And you have what sounds like true love. And you are stressing out and having a mental breakdown over what's coming next. So." She takes a deep breath.

"Obviously you're just doing all this for Vasilia. This is her dream and you're just dragged along behind it because you can't figure out how to let her down. And the fact that you're currently stressing out so hard about all of this is because you're starting to feel the Rift put pressure on a bond that's already straining. And if you try to go into it that's when you'll snap."

She stood up on the counter and drew her cutlass. "That settles it. I need to overthrow you and maroon the two of you on a desert planet for your own protection!"

She shouldn’t have heard those words. Even now that the party is becoming more still, silent, save for the gentle creak of branches, Mynx’s whisper should have been too low, too hushed, too easy to overlook as Reshella panicked and tried to figure out some way to help Bella, grabbing at a nearby cushion just to have something to hand. But she does. And the words are barbed, and catch her by the heart, and pull Redana back out.

Lethe. The river of forgetting, marking the very edge of the underworld. In her mind it is grey, frothing, empty, vast. (Of course she knows it. For all her struggles, the deeds of the Gods have always come easily to her.) The implications of what Mynx is saying are so terrible, so awful, that her mind circles them like a ship succumbing to a whirlpool.

That if she is right, then everyone is dead already. Is that what it means? We are the breathless dead. But, no. Jas’o died. She has seen death already. So Mynx has to be wrong. (But what if she is not?) Maybe she got it mixed up. Maybe they’re descending into the underworld. Silly, mischievous Mynx! (But she would never. Not about something like this.) Am I dead? (I am not dead. And even if I am dead, I still have to help Bella. Living or dead, it doesn’t matter.)

She grips the cushion tight. If she could say something, she doesn’t even know what she would say. Mynx knows when she’s lying. She doesn’t know if she could accept everyone leaving. She doesn’t know if she could bear to make everyone follow her. Dolce, Vasilly, Alexa… Bella…

Bella, it hurt because she assumed you’d want to come with her. Maybe this time, if she comes to the edge of that awful river, if she doesn’t expect anyone else to come, if she can even find the courage to cross…

Her words would be useless even if she could use them. Her heart doesn’t know anything. All she understands is that she cannot, will not let Mynx turn Bella into one of these waiting trees. Bella would be so scared! She doesn’t want to be a tree! And it would be putting her back in that closet, taking the choice away from her, and you can’t, Mynx, you can’t! You can’t make everyone sleep their way through Lethe! How would they even go back? No one on board is ready! And what if Lethe eats the memories of trees, too? And what if nobody forgives her afterwards? And what if you can’t turn them back? What if you forget you made them into trees? What if Bella is leaves and flowers forever? What if she never gets to eat Dolce’s cooking again, or exercise with Vasilia, or see how Alexa will grow, and can Alexa even become a tree?

And in the name of every what if, every fear, and all the desperation in her body, Redana takes the cushion in both hands, each one at a corner, swings it back over her shoulder, and smacks Mynx in the face as if she were playing polo, so hard that the cushion explodes into feathers, and out of that explosion rears up—

A monster who Redana wants to save, too. But she’s got nothing. No dumb words, no arms and armor, nothing except her body, which is locking in place as if she, too, were a tree.

But she’s not going to run away from Bella. Not even if Mynx became a dragon to match Sagakhan. She’d stand here in her triangles and her gauzy silk and she’d just put up her fists and bop the dragon once on the nose before being eaten.

Whatever Mynx makes of herself, it can’t be scarier than Lethe. It can’t be worse than feeding Bella and Dolce and Vasilia and Alexa to those grey waters. And it can’t be worse than Redana leaving Bella behind again, again, again.

She should be stronger. Faster. More ruthless. She should be everything Mynx is accusing her of being, and everything she feared that she was. But in this moment she is pinned. All that power won't come to her; muscles strain and her body thrashes, but it's not enough to even move Mynx. Her fire has gone cold. Her ELF flickers out. Their lips come this close to touching, and all her strength is good for is wrenching her head away instead of closing the distance.

That's how it always was. In the lonely dark, in the heat, just the two of them. Clinging to each other, listening to the sounds of their breathing mix. Mynx's, slow and shuddering. Bella's, short and sharp. Their hands would find each other's, wrapped behind their backs. It was as difficult to move back then as it is right now. And then she, and Mynx would close her eyes like an idiot and inch her face closer... only to flinch. Only to let go suddenly, and draw back the entire space of the bed with her scales constantly rippling in complete embarrassment.

"Do... do you want me to..?" she asked, already shifting her form to be smaller, more muscular, covered in smooth skin.

"No. Don't you dare. Put on her face and I'll kill you."

"But why? She's the one you want. Just because she's not here doesn't mean you can't have h--"

"I SAID! I... said no. She's not here. You're here. I don't want you to be anyone else."

It was on Bella to cross the distance again, to prove her words meant anything with her lips, and her teeth, and the fingers where no claws grew. That was how it was. She'd never forget...

Well. Apparently she would. Before long it would be failure or erasure. No other options. Bella's stomach twists in knots as she strains and thrashes against the captor still pinning her to the floor, but none of it does her any good. She's still stick, still mute, still snarling and frustrated when any decent person would be understanding and sympathetic in the face of those scars.

"Mynx, you are... such a liar."

Her accusation explodes in a storm of feathers. Her tongue sits heavy in her mouth, her breath sticks in her lungs, her eyes blink stupidly. Stunned. And then suddenly the weight is lifting off of her. Suddenly she is free. Suddenly she lifts her neck and there's no threat of a final kiss anymore because Mynx has turned toward Redana and shifted her weight away from Bella.

But her eyes are only on that scar. That pale patch of pinkish scales among the red where they've had to rapidly regrow; the thing that probably pushed her into this latest transformation. That's where her claws dug in. Where she buried her arm up to the elbow in her sister, and never knew that it was her until it was too late. Which is why she recognizes the posture: Mynx is rearing her hand back to put claws into the distraction. Because she too does not recognize her target. She doesn't have a name to guide her. Redana is about to die, and the stain on both of them will run so deep not even the Lethe could wash it out.

Her entire being is a scream. Her legs are lightning, and she plants them in Mynx's stomach with desperate forces that launches her a full dozen meters into the sky. Bella is on her feet faster than thinking, surrounded in a burning halo of ELF light. Her tail thrashes behind her with the fury of a dragon's, and in that single gesture she takes to the air and meets her target halfway to the ground again.

They speak in combat. Heavy elbows against enlongated, whiplike arms with claws wicked enough to give XIII pause. Crushing knees meeting bones suddenly solid enough to pierce a star ship, and a dozen dozen heavy bruises appearing on both bodies where they meet. I hate you, I hate you, I love you. You rejected me. You lied to me. You told me I was special. You told me I mattered. You lied. You lied.

You lied to yourself. The entire fucking time. And now you. And now you! And now you're killing Redana!

Two bodies crash into the ground together, their positions flipped. Bella is stronger. Faster. More ruthless. She is as unstoppable as Mynx threatened she would be. Her body is softened, slowly turning blackish blue underneath thin trickles of red, but it's nothing compared to Mynx. She howls in fury. She howls in victory. She lifts her arm back for the final strike, the one that will render Mynx unconscious and give Bella a chance to put her words in order. She'd fix it. She'd fix this. She'd say the last and most important 'sorry', and nothing would get in the way.

But the blow never comes. Bella's eye blinks shut to block a sudden drip of blood. She glances up, only for a moment, to see where it came from.

Her claws are dripping red.

Her.

Five.

Claws.

Bella's eye opens wide, iris shrinking to a slit in equal parts surprise and terror. Her body freezes, first in place and then in temperature. She no longer breathes. Heart no longer beats. Her every nerve is a frazzled, frigid mess of pure static. The sense of power is welling in her core, ready to explode into violence.

She disappears from on top of Mynx, reappearing several steps away on her feet in the same instant. Her wrist is gripped tight in her other hand, which digs her other pair of fresh claws into her own skin and muscles. Her posture is hunched, back arched, tail bristling in terror. And only now does she see, feel, smell how much damage she was really doing.

"...Mynx. I--"

A cutlass points at his nose. A tiny sampling spoon valiantly nudges it aside. He’d use the whisk, but, well, occupied.

“I beg your pardon,” and if she tries to cut him off, well! His trusty spoon isn’t going anywhere. “But could you please refrain from deposing me for a few minutes? I haven’t finished yet, and you haven’t eaten, and it’s no good making big decisions when you’re hungry.” He tilts his head, peeking past the cutlass at her shoes, and runs complicated division sums involving tidiness and decorum.

He decides not to ask her to clean the countertops while she’s at it.

“Besides, I’m afraid you have it backwards.” He hasn't stopped stirring through the whole rebuttal. “It was my idea to come along with the Princess. Maybe Vasilia was thinking of it beforehand, but I was the one to bring it up.” As to letting her down? They’d both done a little of that already. Wouldn’t like to do it again, that’s for certain, but they survived it, together. He’d like to think they could do it again, Rift or no Rift.

"Katraph Sanchez."

She shouldn't feel this calm. The storm of anger is just there, just in sight, a roiling hurricane of a thousand things to say. And yet, her voice is level, she is composed, like she's passed through the storm of fury and found a tranquil island of rage on the other side.

"I have tried to understand. I've spent the better part of two centuries pondering the question. Not because I was programmed with social functions, but because I wanted to know why I felt so broken. So with that in mind:

"Everything you just told me is wrong."

She shouldn't feel this calm. She's putting Mynx on the line by saying this. If the Katraph decides not to help, Alexa will have to find a workaround solution in even less time than before, and now with an enemy working against her. And yet, the words keep pouring out.

"There can never be a servitor that can choose to perform their function as you've described it. Oh, some may do their job, and maybe some are even happy doing it. But humanity has marooned and abandoned its servitors--put them in islands of themselves, and left them no other option but to do what they were designed to do. There's no choice when you remove all but one option, and it's no coincidence that as soon as you actually give people options, they choose to leave.

"Dolce left his mansion, given the option. The Alcedi scatter to the winds, freed from the need to be nothing but disposable warriors. The attempt to be a combat model and a good daughter broke me so severely that it took me two centuries to rebuild myself in a better way. The robots of Barassidar have discovered the concept of play. None of we three bodyguards are slavishly protecting our target. The Lanterns step from the shadows. A member of a race of scavengers rejects that role, rejects the role chosen for them by their god, and searches for meaning in the stars.

"And it's not just us who are rejecting the roles chosen for us! That, if you can even define the arbitrary line between servitor and humans now. There are humans who are unhappy with their assigned roles--Coherent who embrace a different form, a different mind, who wish for only something different than they are! Even the Princess is not happy in the role chosen for her--the role of leader, of princess, of possible future empress.

"And so we change. We recognize that the roles chosen for us by someone else--by birth, by design, by biomancy--are not our own. And no amount of genetic engineering can prevent that change from occurring, once the news has got out."

She shouldn't feel this calm. She should be panicking, running, trying to find another way.

"I'm not here to save a piece of military hardware for a girl who's got attached. I'm trying to save my friend because before she was born, somebody decided she should be a bomb. And that's not a choice anybody but Mynx should get to make."

Redana and Bella!

"Oh hey," said Mynx, blearily. Aren't her scales pretty like this, with that liquid mirror shine? Rubies in red water. "Your claws grew back. That's wonderful, Bella," she said, smiling. "I'm so happy for you."

Her left arm is a ruin. She takes it off like she's plucking a flower. Hefts it. Then tosses it forwards.

In mid air it becomes a snake - red and black and biting.

As it flies Mynx has drawn a pistol one-handed. With the calm of a brain drowning in combat drugs she walks backwards while aiming and firing. Princess Epistia gets a solid projectile round directly in the ear, blowing out her eardrum and sending her to the floor. One of Beljani's Alcedi puppets comes forwards - Mynx puts a Thunderbolt round through her chest as she runs, catches her as she falls and bites her on the back of the neck as she gently lowers her to the ground. Already roots are spreading. The crystal dragon roars at her and projects its glittering lights towards her like a spotlight, like a laser, piercing the cloud of toxic smoke. She spits acid clean across the room - nearly twenty feet - and the dragon screeches and recoils backwards, scratching the substance off with its claws. Her ELF crackles and scorches a massive electrical arc up to the ceiling, blowing out the dim light of the single chandelier, sending a rain of molten candle wax pouring down to the ground below.

"I hope you come across the Rift with us, Bella," Mynx's voice came through the dark and the toxic chaos. "I... want to see what we might be like, if we were reborn into a life without all of this."

And then she's gone.

[Mark Damage, Bella.]

Alexa!

"Well - yes, of course," said the Biomancer, surprised. "Of course there are a lot of failed designs out there. Some failures are embarrassing or cruel, even, I'm as horrified as you to see them. Believe me," and he sounded genuine here, like this was actually hurting him. "I'm as sickened as you to see the Coherent. Designs so poorly thought through that the subjects experience crippling dysmorphia? That they need to resort to extreme, drastic, invasive surgery in order to feel happy? It's hideous! There can be no worse rejection of the Art than your subjects literally ripping your designs out of their bodies."

"But I assure you, I promise you," and there was a strange, pleading tone to his voice. "We are not those backstreet sawbones who bring disrepute on our noble profession. Our work was the Kaeri and they are a triumph. Look at this," he frantically rummaged around in his papers. "The Bloodfeather program. Our answer to the problem you describe. You see, the cornerstone of our branch's design is genetic/hereditary mental illness - the research was begun for the Assassin programme, but by adapting it we were able to broaden it to an entire true-breeding warrior servitor species. See, when a Kaeri is experiencing the failure states you describe - lack of task satisfaction, too much empathy for the syncretic helot species, desire for self expression or any other traits incompatible with the Kaeri warrior culture - then mental illness is sure to develop, as you have observed. Our method causes that mental illness to reliably trend towards aggressive psychosis. Dormant glands are activated producing growth hormones, overclocked adrenal production, and a heightened sense of territorial stress consistent with always being on the brink of starvation - while also hypercharging the maternal nesting instincts. By this method we transform a failure into a leader. The Bloodfeather breaks with the warrior culture backdrop but does so in a consistent way, arising as a larger and stronger exemplar who is even more driven to seek battle out than a standard unit. It is also a self regulating system - in a controlled environment, surplus Bloodfeathers can be stored as shock troops, but in an uncontrolled environment surplus leaders will simply murder each other in struggles for dominance."

The Biomancer has by this point started laying out endless sheets covered with graphs, curves, scatterplots and other twisted glyphs upon the table, still looking up at you with wide and fearful eyes. "Look. See. We have successfully kept the Kaeri in operation in both controlled and uncontrolled environments, with isolated branches on dozens of ships and planets, for over two hundred years without the creation of any uncontrolled failure castes. Like I said before, Biomancy does not deal in iron laws. Exceptions, mutations, failures and castoffs are inevitable with every species. The difference between a failed servitor species, like the Alcedi, and a successful one, like the Kaeri, is down to how it handles those special cases."

Through all of this it never quite escapes your notice that he is also a Kaeri.

"This is all to say," he said, a little out of breath, "that we aren't banging rocks together over here. We're professionals, working on a galaxy class warrior species, while doing supplemental engineering on Assassins who are state of the art designs. So you say, save your friend - of course we'll do that! We'll give her the best treatment in the galaxy, short of a true human Genetor. If you want me to set all of her hormones and chemicals to human default I'll make it happen, you want me to make her grow skin instead of scales, no problem, you want me to clone her seven thousand times and tie them together in a hivemind, I can do that. I will do that. I'll do literally anything you want, it's no trouble. What I'm telling you, though, is if we go messing around with her motivations and brain chemistry, which were set up to psychologically encourage and reward certain useful mental illnesses, she'll either literally shapeshift into a plasma bomb as a security measure or become deeply mentally unstable and dangerous. And we'll roll those dice if you tell us to! Just so you understand the risks!"

Dolce!

The spoon leaves a trail of sticky, sugary sauce on the side of Jil's razor sharp cutlass.

She lifts it up alongside her head, the mirrored blade reflecting her face.

"If this isn't the best thing I've ever tasted in my life you're going to walk the space plank immediately," she threatens.

I'm sure you could take the fact that she literally starts crying a few moments later as a compliment. If it is, though, it's a sad one. All the fierceness and determination just cracks for a moment and you're not dealing with a mutinous death princess but a girl who didn't know things could taste this good.

"What the fuck," she chokes, hiding her eyes behind the beads of her mian. "I'm - sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean to -"

Overwhelming. The aroma: the acrid stench wafting through the air and choking her like a malevolent cloud. The bitter tang of iron building in her nose. The antiseptic sting of combat drugs swirled into sweet, honeyed toxins and salty pheromones. Like being trapped inside a bakery built into a hospital morgue. The pressure building behind her eyes as blood vessels restrict instinctively at the at the sight of the ruby red shower, gemstones falling like rain and... blood. So much blood. Mynx's... Mynx's blood. In the air. On the floor. In her -- ghk!!

She is incapable of tolerating it. She is programmed especially to get sick at the sight and smell of it; a last minute safety added to her suite to keep the ultraviolent tendencies suppressed. They'd told her, of course, it was a vaccination. So she wouldn't get the Princess sick with her Kennel filth. And she'd never questioned it, and even now she doesn't question it. Bella simply breaths, tilts, and drops to one knee as heavy as a stone. It is far, far worse when the smell belongs to someone she's so familiar with.

"Hfff, hsssst, M-M... Myn-- d-don't you... get. G-get back hhhfffffffft!"

Speaking through it is a mistake. Her body contracts violently, and the welling headache tips completely over into nausea. She feels it rising in her throat and automatically covers her mouth with her hand, to keep from making a scene in front of Redana. And the smell grows stronger. Her hand. Her claws. Covered in sweet, shimmering red poison.

Her retching is too violent to contain. The air fills with the sounds of Bella gagging, coughing, sputtering, stubbornly trying to pull air through her nose while her hand stays planted over her mouth to keep more than a glistening trickle of drool from escaping to the floor. Her entire body is convulsing with seizure pains and hideous choking. Her throat is filled with dying animal snarls as she falls from one knee to both, and from her knees to needing her hands to keep from dropping to the floor completely. She hunches and shivers as she spills her shame out onto the floor beneath her, and trembles until the air clears enough for her to get her first whiffs of clean air.

Slowly, her body calms. Her breathing slows, but then it hitches. No, no, no, damn it, no! But whether she wills it or no, the tears sweep in to fill the growing calm.

"Damn it. Damn it!" she hisses, and weakly pounds her fist into the floor.

The girl called Bella unravels. Her claws feel unnaturally, sickeningly pleasant at the ends of her fingertips, tingling with the sweet, soft itch that faintly calls to mind the sensation of a name going cool and silent against her skin. No, her armor. That isn't her. That isn't her. She sobs openly, without any thought or care for how it makes her look. Her wails pierce through the broken remnants of the party and coax sad sighs from the forest. She grieves.

"You, you!" Bella is interrupted by a hiccough that almost sends her spiraling back into the world of sickness, "Fucking idiot! What's gonna, nnnrgh! Gods! You... you! How can you? Just, just..."

She breaks down into a fresh wave of tears that are stronger than any words. Pitiful sniffles and wet vocalizations drip out of her like a summer storm across a plain. A hand touches her shoulder, but she curls into herself and away from it. No. No. Leave her alone. Fucking... leave her alone. Don't you get it?

What else could they be? What else could the Lethe possibly leave left of them both but murderers and monsters?

”I’ve got it, I’ve got it!”

There are children on the ship, now. Their feathers are still coming in, pushing out of soft downy hair, and they are gangly and loud and full of energy, racing up and down the refurbished decks, playing games, and they love the Imperial Princess. So she can’t say no, sometimes, when they ask her to play.

This game is similar to discus, but there are teams, and the disc soars and spins and flutters on strange wings, and the fledglings madly scamper and shove and laugh as they try to pass it up and down one of the grand halls.

Then Amer shoves Malethi down and out of the way of the disc, and Malethi lands badly, and Amer’s war-whoop is drowned out by the rising noise coming out of Malethi, hurt and confusedly indignant and in need of help.

Dany races over, and the fledglings part for her as Malethi stumbles up, holding their head and wailing, and Dany says something nonsense like, hey, are you all right? And she doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t know how she can help. Maybe she needs to be the Shepherdess and make Malethi better??

But then, a click of the tongue that quiets everyone. One of the Alcedi matriarchs has risen from where she sits with her sisters by one of the fountains. She pats her knees, and Malethi stumble-runs over to her, wrapping their arms around the matriarch, who strokes their head and begins to say…

---

Redana wraps her arms around Bella and pulls her in, tight. Her old friend struggles, but incoherently, like a crab that’s been hurt and doesn’t understand you’re taking it to safety. Redana doesn’t let go. She can’t let go. And when she pulls one hand back to fumble with her gag, Bella doesn’t wrench herself free. (The packing drops wetly onto her thighs.)

She squeezes. She is here. She doesn’t, can’t know about the way that the smell of her skin is smothering the blood, diluting the poison on Bella’s tongue. She is here, and she is strong, and when Bella slumps and lets her weight fall on Redana, it’s nothing to hold her up. She can do it. It’s okay. She’s here.

One hand drifts to Bella’s side, presses against her ribs, by her heart. “Do you hear that?” Redana’s breath is a sigh. Gentle. Soft. Like wings. “It’s the sea inside you. The waves are rolling in and out. In. Breathe with it. The waves are coming in. Out. The waves are washing out. When they come, they’re crested with the prows. In. When they go, they’re taking all we left. Out. It never, never stops. In. Listen, and you’ll hear it. Out. We all are part of the sea. In. And the sea is a part of us. Out. You’re alive and you’re here. In. And I’m alive, and I’m here. Out.”

Bella’s heartbeat is… slower. Steadier. Dany licks her lips, suddenly dry. “You did a good job,” she says. “You didn’t— you wouldn’t have. You wouldn’t have, Bella. You’re not a monster.” Then, ridiculous, tumbling out: “And if you are a monster, you’re our monster, and I was a monster, too, and I didn’t hurt Mynx. You won’t hurt her. And we’re going to find her, and get her to stop, and then…”

She swallows. Her voice cracks, just a little bit. Be a good girl, Dany. Be strong for Bella. “And then you can take them home,” she says, like Hercules holding up the sky. Her grip on Bella tightens. “You and Mynx and Beautiful and everyone. I’m not going to make you come with me. I promise. And you can take care of Mynx, and you can be with B-Beautiful, and I’ll get across, and when I get to Gaia I’ll ask Hades… I was going to ask him to make Mom let everyone go, but that’s stupid, isn’t it?”

Her hand drifts down to Bella’s, wraps around her fingers, squeezes. “I’m going to ask him to set everyone free. The Alcedi and the Kaeri and every single Assassin and everyone back home. So that you don’t have to go Rampant and the servitors won’t want to serve and so that we can all see the stars together, and I’ll come back, I promise, I promise.”

She rests her head against Bella and tries not to cry and fails, because her cheeks are wet. “Not even Lethe could make me forget you,” she swears.

She could do it, you know. Scream at her! Give vent to the bloody fury, bawl and wail that people choosing for themselves is not a goddamn flaw in the design! Why don't you get that, why can't you understand, how can the humans have perfected you so much that you can't choose for yourself?!

Grab the plans, hold them to the light, watch the glorious Bloodfeather diagram smolder and ignite. She doesn't want to hear the Katraph gush about how good the Kaeri are at murdering surplus leaders in time of crisis. Let it all vanish in flames. She could do that!

Or lift the Katraph off the floor! Grab her by the neck, slam her against the wall! Anything to let it out! Make her understand how this isn't okay, how she isn't okay, how can you be okay with this?!

And that's the thought that chases her from the room.

That's the thought that chases her down the hall to the grand garden, to the enormous fountain, to the spot where she can plunge her head under the water and scream until her chest must surely implode, and scream some more for good measure. Scream, because the alternative is worse.

Because she's a monster! She talks about killing and cloning and personality death as if it were what flavor of cake were best!

And the Katraph is also a victim of the very systems she espouses! She could no more accept that biomancy is wrong than change her mind! She'd accept the beating and the flames and the shouting with a smile, and ask for more, and accept that all of it was right and her fault, and how can she help you, please?

She returns, dripping wet, still furious, but at someone else.

"Just. Just stabilization. No pet package, no conditioning, no mental switches, no personality rewrites, no Lethe. If I find out you've cloned her or edited her or anything other than saving her life and helping reduce the effects of Rampancy... Just. Keep her alive. We'll deal with the aftermath ourselves."

Seek not the darkness, Jil. Please. Don’t run for the safety of walking unseen. Masks shatter, armor crumbles, and no Lantern is here to light the path, but there is another light, here. Can you feel it? Not the piercing, steady rays of the sun, but a flickering, gentle warmth; pouring out of his heart, shining through his earnest smile. For you. For this moment.

“It’s good, right?” There is a skipping, easy dance to his motions, even constrained to a chair. His shoulders bounce in time with the last few stirs, and he pours out the precious mixture in a proper serving bowl. “What’s nice about dulce de leche is that you can have it so many ways.” Flit, flit, flit to the small bowls of seemingly random ingredients he had her fetch earlier, dropping a spoon in each one and pushing them to their rightful place. Fruits and bits of chocolate and snappy sugary crackers and whipped cream, to name just a few. “I like it with something a little crunchy, to vary the texture, but go on. See what you like. I’ll make us some crepes.” A drizzle, a swirl, and in goes the batter into the waiting pan.

Let your tears be what they may. Compliment, tragedy, vulnerability, weakness, we can figure that out later. The food is hot, fresh, and plentiful. The company small, but happy to have you. There is a world outside this room, but not a world so pressing that it can’t wait a while longer. There is a seat for you. There is a seat for him.

Won’t you join him for dinner?

Revelation spreads through the ship like an earthquake.

Whisper it. Whisper it, because saying it softly might take away its power. Whisper it so that Zeus' breeze might scatter it before it reaches the next ear. Whisper it. Voices so low. Voices so quiet. Nothing to fuel them. How did you come so far with empty lungs?

Hades' Tale.

"It took me a long time to understand the dead.

"When I arrived in the Underworld I believed my role was to dispense justice. I would see the evil cast down and the noble raised high. Here beneath the dispassionate gaze of the God of the Dead every creature would be stripped to the bone, their wickedness revealed and judged. A realm without lies. Without hypocrisy. A realm that wound stand as a contrast to the corrupt and twisted surface world, a place beyond Zeus' disordered realm, a realm so inevitable and flawless its influence would reach back in time to terrify the living. By perfecting the Underworld I could control the living, and by controlling the living I could unite the realms and enthrone myself as the chief of the gods. Olympus would be a gaudy sideshow in comparison to the noble contemplation of death. The gods would seem a collection of sexual degenerates and squabbling children in comparison to my silent, endless majesty.

"For millennia I strived. For millennia nothing changed. Nothing changed except a slowly building fury. My kingdom reached ever greater heights of glory. I devised ever greater tortures for evildoers. Their screams reverberated through the cosmos and into the dreams of oracles and prophets, carried then to the ears of kings. Monuments were built to appease me. The industry of kingdoms cast upon a pyre of sacrifice to me. A necessary start, but the efforts always petered out. Necropoli were abandoned and shunned. Pyramids stripped for stone. The grape and the lute ever remained more alluring to mortals in life. I made them pay for it in death.

"To do bitter things one must think bitter thoughts. To punish an enemy one must contemplate an enemy. The satisfaction of holding them in your power is a fleeting thing compared to all the years they held me in their power with their smiling ignorance or apathy of my rage. And worse still, I did not even have the respect of the wise. They shrugged their shoulders and said that I was merely a tyrant and my morality was as alien to them as theirs to a field mouse. They accepted my punishments and rewards with equal indifference, not because I was right but because I was powerful. Because I was arbitrary.

"I, with my perfect and eternal laws written to define and enforce good and evil! Written in straightforwards language and made commonly available! And I looked around myself and realized that in my immortal Underworld I was surrounded not by great heroes and repentant villains, but by an endless, undifferentiated mass of grey shades. All ground down into dust and monotony by the act of my control. Observing a thing changes it, and by casting them all under my burning crimson gaze I had changed them all into abused and shivering slaves. I had learned my father's lessons well."

Zeus' Tale.

"I thought exterminating humanity was going to feel worse than it did.

"I indulged them for much longer than I should have. Partly I was afraid of becoming my father. Partly I was still in love with Prometheus. I still remember as we lay together amidst the clay sculptures he had made from ancient river mud. Gasps of my breath mixed with flecks of his sweat and seed as our lovemaking bought them all to life. He was so beautiful in those days, so full of promise. So full of kindness. He taught them how to make metal fly, how to make sand think, how to make crowns out of numbers. Each new idea promised to salve the pain of the previous ideas. Each time he showed me something new he promised that this would change things for the better. It took... a long, long time before I started to doubt that in my heart.

"I let him take from me fire. I gave him my thunderbolts. I let him know the secrets of matter and metallurgy. I taught him how to ignite stars. It wasn't until I gifted gravity to the Azura that I saw the side of him that I'd been subconsciously avoiding. There was an anger in him then, an anger and contempt that I'd sensed and avoided while hardly even aware of it. And in his anger he stole from me the secret of life and gave it to his favourite children.

"I had loved a wicked creature before. I had looked past a thousand warning flags for the sake of love, but I knew what would come of allowing this line to be crossed. I would not be gentle and obedient like my mother Gaia. I fought him, cast him down, and chained him to a stone. I broke the digital prisons of the Atlas Cultural Sphere and ended the machine tyranny that had developed there. But there my resolve wavered. What if he was right? What if the secret of life was the final gift humanity needed in order to overcome all of the cruelties that they had collected over eons? So I withheld my final judgement for just a while longer, just a while longer, perhaps soon they would..."

Aphrodite's Tale.

"Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, stars and ashes, what fools my beloved children are. I wish I could call them worse than that, but they've proved frustratingly wise, haven't they? I can walk them up to the brink, again and again, and each time they manage to pull themselves back. I thought I'd have Hera kill Zeus. I thought I'd have Hades kill himself. Then for a change, I thought I'd have Zeus not kill humanity. Each time they work out the riddle, just in time. Each time they rise above love, no matter what new toxic new monster I can shape it into. I'm proud of them... most of them.

"So yes, it's all very simple. Zeus loved Prometheus. Prometheus loved humans. Humans loved power. And with a simple triangle I remade the galaxy, becoming grandfather to ten thousand new species, all of which are fucked up in ways that humans could only ever aspire to. Zeus got wise a bit too soon, though, so I had to scramble to adjust. But Atlas had left me their final flower: the plans for the Spear of Civilization. They thought that with it they might finally have a weapon capable of wounding even Zeus herself. Idiots - ha! Can you imagine? No, they couldn't wound Zeus with their pathetic galaxy-destroying superweapon.

"But I could.

"Oh, can you imagine it? You, Alexa, upon the firing deck of the ultimate weapon. With your heart full of twisted love for your father, who was in turn in love with war. You were so perfectly obedient that you would overlook the murder of your own beloved! Who better to aim at the heart of Zeus and render Cronus' vengeance manifest? You would have relitigated the usurpation, making the point that the daughter should obey the father no matter what. I could have done a lot with such a blade. I'd had a lot of ideas. After all, I had that castration to make up for.

"But ahhh-hhh, well, can't win them all. Can only win about half of them, really. My mistake was in underestimating the overland speed of Hermes which - yes, I understand exactly how embarrassing that is in retrospect. Alexa was falling out of orbit when she should have been on the Spear. Hermes got aboard and forced the Spear to fire prematurely. And so only half the galaxy was destroyed when it should have been all of it, and more besides.

"Still, can't get too disappointed by that. Like I said. Can't win them all. And I got a really good consolation prize out of the whole thing."

*

Hades' Tale.

"I did not know how to change. I had to be shown.

"Persephone was... you have to understand about Aphrodite that his domain is love. Love in the broadest possible sense. Romantic love for others, yes, but also toxic love, love for power, love for wealth, love for the self, love for lies, love for revenge, love for ideology, love for war. Ares is his consort and that is not a sign of Ares' power as it is of Aphrodite's true intentions.

"But Persephone was everything that poets and artists think Aphrodite is. She is kindness and community. She is gentleness and strength. She is understanding and patience. She is the seeds that grow in dark places, the warmth of the earth, the strength of the heart. She is... stability. Not a harvest of wheat, slashed to the root and burned afterwards. A fruit tree that grows stronger and more generous with age.

"She showed me how I might nourish the endless shades I had collected in my darkening underworld. How I might feed them, body and spirit, so that they would choose to stay without being coerced. She showed me how even a malformed and twisted plant might be gently guided to grow strong and whole with enough time, and so how human souls could pass through suffering and wickedness that they might learn and grow. She showed me, too, how to separate my happiness and attention from their progress. Light the sun and sooner or later leaves will grow in that direction.

"She was on the other side of the River Lethe, with her mother Demeter, when half the galaxy came crashing down into my realm. In the confusion of those moments, Aphrodite and Demeter together drew a cursed veil over the River Lethe to deny all passage, sealing my realm away from the surface world entirely. After the influx new souls stopped coming down. Somehow above they had banished death, and this meal was to be the Underworld's last.

"I tried to follow the lessons Persephone showed me. I did not turn my gaze upon those whose lives had been cut short without them even knowing. I allowed their worlds to continue as they existed in memory as I tried to think of ways I could... adjust them more kindly and gently to the realm of the dead. My current method is simply to let people live out their lives here and move them on to the true underworld after they die. New births are rare so depopulation is slowly helping wind this realm down.

"But I was still cut off from Persephone with no way across the Rift. And so I asked Hermes, who dwells here in the human form of Nero, to carry a message from me to her. Hermes refused. She was doing work here, she said, because despite everything she still loved humanity and thought that they might be redeemed. She thought that they could be taught to be... better. That the galaxy would be lesser without them. And more than that, I believe she intends somehow to steal them from here. From me. She is a psychopomp and she has not fully relinquished the dead into my custody. I think she expects to carry them back.

"So, while she schemes and plans, she has no time to fulfill her function. And so she offers me her proxies. She finds and recruits heroic shades from every corner of this crumbling, darkening realm and sends them to their deaths at the hands of assassins and lovers. Every year the stock of heroes drops lower and her choices become more frantic. This year she has sent her own daughter and that shows a profound desperation indeed. But as long as she keeps playing this game she sends more and more souls down into the true underworld and this realm becomes even more lightless and empty. She decrees against death, collars the fleet, consolidates humanity on a single planet where she can keep them safe, tries her best to cling to a guttering flame that will never be replenished. This entire realm slips further and further into oblivion, its best and brightest souls consigned to leave it first in these endless voyages of the Plousios.

"And in time, in patient time, Hermes' despair will grow and her heart runs colder. Eventually she will be done with humanity all together and we can set aside this farce. On that day she will take up her staff and her wings once more and deliver the message I have waited centuries for her to send. If I have encouraged you to simply give up and be done with this whole ordeal this is why, and that offer still stands. If you wish to do away with this painful, rotting realm and progress to something... kinder then you may. If you can accomplish your task then you will indeed have your choice of wishes and my gratitude, and there is little you might not accomplish with those. But understand that this is a personal matter between gods and there is terrible danger in becoming involved in that.

"Understand too that once you pass beyond the Lethe you will be without my protection. You will be in Demeter's realm where not even death will be a salvation. And you will perhaps not see this realm or any of its inhabitants ever again."

Love conquers all, so they say. That should always have sounded more threat than promise.

The darkness in the halls has a name. What is it that you love? What is it that motivates you, what bonds keep you from the abyss? What now that it smiles at you from every corner with nicotine stained teeth? What now that the light is filled with the ageless presence of Hades, as though he was the only alternative?

The council of the gods has run through the ship for all to hear. Hearts pounding and storming and still; words heard from inside as much as out. It boils against the terror of the assassin, the danger given name and face. The risk of a perilous future against monstrous craving, or the gentle beacon of a compassionate ending.

Bella and Redana walk together through garden corridors amidst trees beautiful and monstrous. The hunt has lost its urgency; Mynx will need to hide to recover, and so a steady pace is better to avoid missing any clues or tricks. The seeping growth of Demeter's forest is all about the Plousios and in the distance a fairy flute can be heard.

Alexa arrives at the kitchens, seeking Dolce. The Biomancers have provided a list of materiel they require to prepare the operation, which will require at least the co-operation of the Hermetics. A perilous request given the traditional Hermetic negotiating techniques. Dolce is still there with Jil who is sitting silently. She eats like Achilles in Xeno's restaurant, each bite half the size of the one before it, reducing down to just barely dipping the edge of her spoon into the precious mixture and touching the sugar against her teeth. To eat any faster might make this moment end for her and so the act of eating is drawn out to an infinity. She is insensate to the world as she does this, so entranced it is unclear she even heard the voices of the gods.

The world is still quiet here.

There are three place settings prepared. One, occupied and attended by an entranced mouse. The other, set a companionable distance down the counter. A bowl of dolce de leche, a sampling of every topping on offer, a crepe, fresh from the pan, and a glass of milk to wash it all down. A comforting meal, for a goddess of hearth and home, in offering for this moment of peace.

The last sits before him, untouched. He’d served Jil first, and Hestia second (she wasn’t fussy about such things, not when there were hungry bellies to fill), and when the gods had finished speaking he’d found he’d filled his bowl much too high. He thinks to scrape some back into the pot, and he doesn’t know if he means a spoonful or a bowlful. But that’d be rude, right? A horrible bit of table manners, and besides; it just didn’t feel right. A terrible betrayal, to cook all this, and not even take a single bite. No chef who did the job properly would neglect the sacred rite of the One Taste.

And so, Alexa, as you walk in, Dolce dips his spoon into a heaping bowl of sweet dessert, sprinkled with chocolate and crunchy wafers, and takes a big bite. And, wouldn’t you know it? He rather likes the idea of another taste. And another after that. And maybe a few more once he’s finished those off. But not before he sets aside his spoon, scoops you a bowl, and pushes it across the counter.

“Here; there’s plenty to go around.”

And maybe you’ve got your appetite back, Alexa, just like he found his. Or maybe you’re happy to nurse that bowl in peace. Whatever you like, there is a seat for you too. The world is still quiet here. What one god weaves, no other god may unmake.

The Plousios is a place of rust and death, but only where it's been swallowed by the sea. It is loud, groaning, echoing, and constantly shuddering with tortured sighs, but it's only noticeable in the places where the ship is emptiest. And it is empty: every hall, every maintenance tunnel, and every single room regardless of function give off a sense of scale too grand for the people here to fill it. Nothing so much as the Prison Planet Tellus and its cramped billions of citizens, but a city more than any vessel nevertheless. A city picked clean of its people and left to float across the stars, shedding pieces of its former grandeur at every place it came to rest.

For hundreds of years, it shrank. And for hundreds of years, it grew. What had been a city filled with gamblers and their dreams so big it took the God of the Dead to see them true fell victim to the machinations of a second god, and the Master of Assassins. It was only natural a garden would grow in its place.

It only took a moment of quiet walking, for once, to see the truth. The revelations of the gods. The inevitability of the Assassins. Bella curls her fingers toward her palm, but stops short of making a fist when here claws bite into her skin. She lifts them up to stare at them with horrified fascination.

This is not Mynx's garden they walk through. The trees are sparse, but the flowers are everywhere. Brilliant bursts of red, purple, yellow, pink, blue, and green greet every flicker of the eye. The walls are faded stucco murals and chipped statuary made whole again by the defiant blossoms. No, not made whole. They've been made into new images, new stories and conquests entirely. Flowers triumphing over steel and the ambition of the Human Empire. Every now and again, a foot crunches down on some opalescent and shimmering gemstone that the mind wonders at until with a start it realizes this is bone. Here were lovers. Here, friends. Here, uneasy companions brought together by desperate circumstances. All of them dead. Betrayed or picked off or the losers of honorable combat, what did it matter? The Temple of Artemis was built around four pillars. Four disciplines that contained inside of them every possible way to commit murder.

And from those murders...

The air is thick with humidity and the smell of pollen. Grass. Nectar. Underneath it, stone and metal, and in the distance the ever present bite of salt.

Bella does not speak. Her footsteps are swallowed by the deafening curtain of this garden of death, that the Plousios could no longer even muster people enough to direct it to some purpose, let alone fight against it. She prowls over leaping blades of grass like the ghost she truly is, a monster and a corpse and a bomb amidst a wellspring of teeming life. Behind her, the heavier footfalls and deeper breathing of Beljani, equally awed but trying much harder not to feel frightened. To her right, Redana walks in equal silence and equal noise. Not awkward. Not brave. Not graceful. Not cruel. Not a princess or the hero who saved her from the Hydra or the treasured friend that betrayed her to a life of endless yearning and chasing. Nothing at all. Just a girl. That's all she's ever been.

Redana's scent carries into several breaths, carrying the kinds of calming notes that make Bella's claws bite deeply into her wrists. Drops of crimson feed the flowers as she passes them without acknowledgment. She tries to look at Redana, but it's like staring into a star. Bella swallows: a noise much too loud for all the effort she's put into keeping silent. She turns her head away, as if to hide everything. Her fingers stretch insistently and push her claws into the air to flick away the blood.

It is not a question of whether or not she should make the crossing. That much is certain. The question how many murders she will need to commit to make certain she is the only person who does so. The Temple is inevitable. Mother is inevitable. The only good that she can do with her useless unlife is seal away the people in her heart on this side of the Rift, to try and make something of the journey on her own.

Because in the Realm of Demeter, she would inflict far crueler and more terrible things to her family than death.

The sound of water is everywhere: rising, falling, rushing through rivulets, choking on moss. The work of Demeter has not been kind to the marvelous channels that nurture the gardens of the halls of the Plousios. Green sprouts defiantly between the tiles, clings to the walls, hangs from the arms of statues. Above, lamps like captured stars hang in inverted pyramids, and all is an endless day.

The triangles and Ceronian gift are both gone. Not thrown away; folded and hidden in her marvelous closet, so neat, so dainty, while Bella hung around outside. She’s back in practical, form-fitting leathers, straps, tool-and-swordbelt, a kerchief for a splash of color. Her hair is pulled back, and it does nothing to hide her face as she looks at and doesn’t really see her surroundings. Clues. She’s supposed to be looking for clues.

“Thanks,” she says, and then coughs, awkwardly. Bella is a towering, brooding silence of contempt. And why wouldn’t she be? After how useless she was, how ridiculous. “Was that— the sort of thing you trained for? Saving me?” Because, right, Bella’s an Assassin, too. All that time just pretending to be a maid.

Could Assassins and Princesses kiss? Not that there would be kisses. But if Beautiful wasn’t in the picture, would that, because Assassins have power, and— no, she’s still hampered by that law inside of her, the one that tells her to panic when Dany’s not around. If anything, the most she could do if things went bad was to put Dany on a leash and. and. mmf. Bad Dany. No thinkies.

No, keep thinkies. There’s something important. Something that’s not clicking. You almost had it.

“All this time, I thought it was just Mynx looking out after me. Protecting me from the Admiralty. Why would I need more than one bodyguard? But you’re really strong. How did you have time to train when you also had to hang out with me and clean and—“

There’s the thought. Grab it. Don’t let it go. Let it out as a gasp, instead.

“Oh, Bella. I wasn’t thinking! If I go across… Iskarot told me that you have to stay with me or it’ll be bad for you.” Worse than bad. Don’t think about Bella tearing at herself. Don’t. “We can fix that. We still have time. There’s people on board who could help take that away, so you don’t have to keep following me. Then you can do what you want.” Who you want. The face of Beautiful springs to mind unbidden. “So don’t worry. Okay?”

And you can stay down here in the underworld, with your lover, until Dany finds a way to help everyone up and out of the pit. Until she does what her mother hoped she’d never do.

Because that part of the story is wrong, isn’t it? Nero-Hermes wouldn’t have sent her to the Lethe. She never meant for Redana to be here. It all fits together. Redana was supposed to be the one who stayed behind, if Mommy needed to carry the message herself. And she’s come too far to turn around and go back, especially because what if running away makes Mommy think she’s not and never will be ready to look after all of humanity?

No. This is just the way it has to be. For everyone, for humanity, for the servitors, for Hades, Dany’s going to have to cross the Lethe and take the message to—

To Persephone. Who else could it be for? And then she’ll get her wish, and she’ll break open that door and let everyone out, and she’ll set them all free— Bella and Beautiful, Beljani and Epistia, Vasilia and Dolce, Alexa and Lacedo, and even Nero. Everybody will be free, and they’ll have another chance to fix everything.

And that’s a dream so big that she doesn’t have room to worry about what will happen to her, either during or after the quest.

The world is quiet, here.

Here, away from the thought of cornering a mass of metal limbs through the vents of the ship. Here, away from the manic, razor-edged thoughts of the Biomancer.

Here, away from the susurrus and rustle of rumor gone Rampant. Have you heard? We sail a ship of madness, destined for death--and that, only if we stay, shrink back from the Lethe. Much worse by far to cross, to lose self, to set up against the very queen of life itself!

Here, in a too-small corner of a too-large kitchen. Here, one used portion among dozens that sit untouched, an island of a hearth in an island of disused shelves and stoves. A home in the only way that matters--home, safety, friendship, food.

She sags onto a chair so heavily that for a second she's sure the legs must buckle underneath her.

And for a few precious minutes, that is all there is. Thank you, Dolce. Thank you for being here. For being a listening ear, when you need one so desperately of your own. Thank you, and thank Hestia, for a moment of peace, a moment of quiet, a moment of taking refuge in each other--

Finally, the nerves in her tongue manage to pass along the message that she needs to breathe again, if for no other reason than so that she can take another bite. Dolce, Jil-- Dolce, this is-- Jil, take some more, there's more, you can see the pot, there's more, you don't need to hoard the one cup you've been given--and for a second, she half believes Jil won't let her have the cup to pour some more in. She doesn't blame her--poor thing is too used to nice things being taken away from her. It's gonna take a while for her to trust her new family.

Family. Alexa really has a family in them, doesn't she. In the whole ship, too, but here. With them. Small, a little broken, but holding together.

Once they learn what is coming, they will abandon her.

Her heart will break again.

That's the problem with quiet, isn't it. You can hear yourself think.

But she doesn't have to do it alone. There are people she can trust, people she can talk to, people she can rely on, much as she hates to do it now, here, in this.

The world is quiet here. It would be a shame to ruin it, to drag the world in here and let it spoil this.

Still.

"You… heard them, didn't you."