[b]Bella and Redana![/b]

The skies darken and the shadows gather in strength. As you ascend through the ranks of the carnival you have attracted the attention of Lord Hades himself to stand in opposition.

The games do not change other than their intensity. The God of the Dead does not speak; this is not about him, nor what he might say to you. He does not interrupt your date, your dialogue, your rhythm. A lesser creature would have demanded your attention; Hades only demands your focus.

He is there and waiting behind the frictionless flat table, circular plastic pucks ready to parry the flat circular disc that is sent sliding across towards him. He is there at the cards table, unblinking as he draws his sixth card in a row, unable to match the red you have cast down. He observes the rotating clown head machines with relentless precision before placing the ball in the mouth of the leftmost. He pulls a lever sending a boneless, rubbery horse sprawling waterfall-like down through a maze of pegs. These carnival games are his traps, his wards, the fortress vaults that conceal his greatest treasures. Lord Hades knows, after all, that even his divine brothers and sisters do not rule the chance that rules these games.

... but he wages a war against two girls with matching eyes. The Auspexes are the eyes of Hermes and Hermes always did know her way around festival games. As the God enters the competition so do the eyes and they can see the patterns that Hades misses. He is so intent on the chance implied by the throw of the dice he doesn't think to calculate their velocity and momentum. He throws himself on the mercy of the cards unaware that the metal behind him is reflective. There is a logic beneath this place; there are challenges of skill and perception hidden amongst shifting metal and the twitches of flesh. But the God of the Dead is so caught on the riddle of the whirling cups he does not even think to notice the dealer has flicked the ball into his sleeve after the first round.

Tricks are not his domain.

[b]Alexa![/b]

"I'd kind of like to just keep hating them, if that's okay," said Cerberus. "Not because they were hateable, not even because leaving was their fault. I want to sympathize with them, want to worry about them. But when you worry about someone that hard for that long it just... turns toxic."

The mechanical toy's eyes are a cluster of lights arranged into the shape of eyes, blank and sightless circles. "If I didn't hate them I'd have to love them, and if I loved them I'd have to be heartbroken all over again. They gave me a collar once, you know? I loved it. I wore it every day. It kept them in my thoughts every day. So I scratched it and scratched it and scratched it until it finally broke. It felt..."

The eyes focused again, the change in those pixels implying somehow conscious thought. "Maybe it was just a change of pace. I'm always winding up to start conversations that I'll never get to hear the other side of. After that I got to have the conversations with a different emotional energy. If all that emotion is just for me, why not have it be louder?"

[b]Dolce![/b]

The laughter eventually passes that ethereal line into tears. A lifetime of stress unwound itself in this liminal moment, this skipped beat. The Lanterns were engineered to serve the ship; created to serve as an extension of the captain's will. Even when that meant their death, even when it meant their exaltation, all of life was for the ship and all the ship was for the Captain. You may as well have swallowed the sun, Dolce. If you'd given her a thousand years this idea would never have crossed her mind. 

Eventually there is no air left; muscles are sore from strain, serenity is found amidst the ruins of reality. "Fuck," she said, at last, looking off at the distant rooftop of the Tunguska. "That's it, then? Freedom. It's..." she toys with the skull-beads of her hanfu. "Well. Is it weird to say the Rift doesn't feel like a big deal any more? I mean, it was easier to imagine life after having my personality erased than this."