From the severed tentacles, vines begin to creep. They burst upwards rapidly, wooden tendrils replacing metal ones, and immediately they begin to blossom. The flowers merged together in a storm of vibrant pollen and, pink and white, Lancer stepped down. A long green dress drew behind her sparkling with a million stars, a wreath flowering crowned her head, and long flowing white sleeves perfectly captured the bloody red stains that spoke of blood sacrificed in the name of Rome. "Mine was a seed that never had the chance to blossom," she said, trailing a long spear behind her. "Mine was a reign could have healed the world."

She raised her spear to the roof; with a terrible detonation it blew away the stone that Berserker had made, and with a twist the entire castle she had erected began to peel apart and blow away on the sand.

"You knew Julia the Apostate. Julia the [i]failure[/i]," said Lancer. "Who I would have been if I failed at my ambition. The Empress who presided over the final break between East and West, the Empress who failed to burn out the Church and was damned by them, the Empress who in a stroke of tragic luck was struck through by a spear," her fingers curled around her nightmarish weapon, "before her reign could truly begin."

"But the Gods have answered my prayer," she said, "even before I triumph in this contest of ours. My victory is inevitable and so travels back in time to ensure it will occur. As I shall rewrite history, so history shall empower me. There will be no Dark Age; only an early Enlightenment. There will be no fall of Rome; instead it shall continue uninterrupted and glorious all the way into the heavens. There shall be no," she sneers at Berserker, who - shockingly - flinches, "feudal warlords and their ugly little castles squatting in the ruins of my Empire. Northern raiders will be met by the fury of the Legions and driven back to their rocks," in this moment she turns her gaze on Ivar and -

[i]drifting alone on an iceberg, cut off from human history. julia's ascent means the destruction of your legend, your history, your destiny, everything you fought and died for. she can feel the cold mechanical gaze of the moon pressing down on her, the cutting scissors of the norns as they sever her from the tapestry of fate[/i]

Berserker was right to flinch. 

"You face Julia the Philosopher," said Lancer. "And I am here to condemn your entire timeline. Your lives will become as meager and pathetic as mine once was, and you will drift away like sand through an hourglass."