Blood. So much blood in the air. Thick and rich, sweeter than wine. Oily, cloying, the memory of bile painted across her tongue. Also like wine, in fact. The only wine that ever came to mind when she thought of the word. The taste of home.

Bella twists her now shattered sword in a slow circle. The grip is still cool in her palm, even now. The balance is still perfect despite no more than a shard. Less an extension of her arm, but still an extension of her claws. Her bloodied face is reflected in the steel: scarred perfection is still perfection.

A sudden rush of blood pulls the strength from her leg and shakes her out of her reverie, forcing her onto all fours to push her hardened bloody claws through equally bloody mud. The slick, wet material slides between her fingers with a squelching sound that calls to mind the sighs of corpses. Sword and claw dig eager grooves in swirling patterns in the velvety soil, and flower blossoms spring with astonishing speed in their wake. 

The light here is dingy and gray. Smoke and haze in suffocating clouds, and not the thinnest sliver of gold or silver spiral to be found. The smell is dirt, is wine, is sweat, is perfume, is fur, is chitin, is scale, is smoke. Love and life rule here: what was meditation but surrender? What was the hunt but nature, red in tooth and claw? The Temples themselves were nothing but monuments to the power of love. And so love was all this was. And so love was all she could do. Bella's wounds harden into uneven, ugly armor plating covering her skin and pinning the tattered remnants of her priestess' dress to her body. She drags a freshly grown, gnarled knee spike through the mud before pushing up with all her might and leaping high enough into the air to scrape the ceiling. 

Redana or Mynx? Redana or Mynx? Who did she love, and how? Stupid. Foolish. She is a comet hurtling with burning inevitability toward the only conclusion she was ever built or raised to reach. Her howl splits the skies. Her knee plunges into Redana's thigh as she crashes down on top of her. Her voice cracks and gargles with fresh pain and a sword point plunged through her abdomen. She crawls up its length to deliver a crushing headbutt to the Imperial Princess' skull. Hard enough to short circuit nerve, to derive even an Auspex of the connections it needs to guide. To turn the duel, however briefly, into a contest of pure will. 

"Ggghhh..!"

Foaming spittle flecks from her mouth, and she wrenches herself free from the jagged blade. She twists her leg around and lifts Redana off the floor only to grip her by the leg in one hand and drag her dazed body into the sky behind her. Up, up they rise. Toward the great chimeric dragon. Toward Mynx. Ask her to choose. She will not. She will not! She hurls Redana like a javelin and plunges down into the fray. 

Claw and spine meets fang, spine, wing, burr, and pincer. She tears bloody red gouges across Mynx's face and neck. Needles the size of her arm sink into her shoulder in response. She sucks a breath in, anticipating pain, but the agony is so close to ecstasy she can't tell the difference anymore. She shudders, convulses. Toxins drip like honey into her blood and fills her with a sense of wetness so pervasive she can no longer be sure if she's growing numb or if she's actually melting into nothing. 

Her smile is savagery. Her punch shatters teeth. She tears fangs free from her ribs and shoulders and plunges them like spears back into their owner, and they are falling, falling, falling toward soft welcoming mud and bright blossoming flowers growing around prism-crystal bones. For a moment they slump against each other and fill the room with the sounds of exhausted animal breathing. Already their bodies are purging their weakness, swapping it out for new weapons and armor to overcome the others. Already ears and tails are twitching in anticipation of Redana's coming counterattack. They were, after all, a trio. They would do this together, or not at all. 

And this, O Aphrodite, is what it means to love. And this, O Demeter, is what it means to live. And if these are the only two rules of the universe, then so be it. She will master them yet. She will pray until the moon shines down on her again. She will pray until one of you answers. 

"NOT DONE YET!" Bella howls and tears whole plates of twisted armor off her arm, ripping clumps of matted, bloody fur up with it, "YOU DON'T GET TO RUN AWAY! MYNX! REDANA!!"