It didn’t have to be this way.

He could end it at any time.

She was only a child. Did he know that? Did he forget? Children don’t know any better. It’s not fair to blame her. She doesn’t know any better.

Tell her he’s sorry.

She’s crying. She’s screaming. He’s supposed to help her. He’s supposed to make it all better. There are crashing teacups, there are assassins in retreat, there are butterfly wings, there are fragments of a shattered leg echoing, echoing, a table cracking, a foot stomping, and then there is her crying. One, and the other. His skull strains to contain it all. She pours out her tears, until she has no more to give, and that is the worst sound of all.

Tell her he’ll fix it.

She’s scared. She’s scared. Hear the stupid little voice. It’s saying she’s in trouble too, isn’t it? It’s warning of something far worse in this garden, isn’t it? Won’t she have to face it, alone, if she fails to stop him? Isn’t there anything he can do? Aren’t they in the same boat? If he doesn’t reach his hand out, who will?

Tell her anything.

Make this right.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her. (silence)

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her. (silence)

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her. (numb)

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her. (numb, numb, everywhere)

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her. (no point, in pain)

Tell her.

Tell her. (no change, no pain)

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her.

Tell her. (don’t hope)

Tell her.

Tell her. (don’t hope)

Tell her. (don't hope)

Tell her. (wait)

Tell her. (don’t hope)

Tell her. (wait)

Tell her. (don’t hope)

Tell her. (she might start again)

Tell her. (don't hope)

Tell her. (she might start it again)

Tell her. (wait)

Tell her. (she might)

be asleep

don’t

wake her

easy.

That is easy.

Dolce of Beri can stay quiet. Easy. He can breathe. Soft. Slow. Soft and slow. His body needs no noise to hold his lifeblood in, to build a knee piece by piece. All it needs is time, and energy. Time, and energy. Soft, and slow. Smell the rose. Take it in. Appreciate the aroma, the craftsmanship, to grow something so lovely. Feel the sun. It must be there. There. At the edges, faintly warm, surely. It must be there. Sink into the soil. He’s walked so far. He’s worked so hard. He’s done such a good job, not waking her. Sink into the soil. Lie still and quiet. Good sheep. Good sheep.

There will be no noise. There will be no pain.

They both will sleep so, so soundly.

But.

But there is a can, a weight held in a thick glove that must be his hand. It’s a good can. It’s a lovely can. It’s safe and it’s whole, and he hasn’t told the person who made it what a good job they did making it. Even if all he can do is keep it safe and whole.

But there isn’t a sword in his hand, or maybe there isn’t a sword at his belt, and he cannot afford to waste his shot here.

But Dolce of Beri cannot remember how to crawl away without leaving a trail to follow. This was the entire reason his body was taught the trick instead. Servants of the Family must attend to their every need and whim, whatever they may be. The education of the Manor was thorough.

No flower will sway against the breeze. No trail will be found in ground or foliage. No insect will be startled into flight.

But he is thinking this crawling might be a sort of revenge too, and she might laugh to hear him say so.

[Rolling to Get Away: 5 + 1 + 1 = 7. Dolce gets away quietly, drawing no attention.]

Dany!

Bella doesn't laugh. Her lips part, as if to smile, and warm red spills out and runs down her chin instead. She wheezes and does not dare to shut her eyes, in case this is the last time she gets to open them.

She reaches one trembling hand up and manages to brush a finger underneath your jaw. Where her delicate little fingers pass, she paints your skin in her color.

"Sil... ly," her voice is nothing more than breath now, "Wh-wh-when. Did... I say? It... w-w-was... y-your fault?"

Bella Meowmeow has promises to keep. Her fingertips strain but she can't reach the tears in your eyes without your help. Even then she might not make it. Every motion she makes causes her slick, ruined body to slip against your desperate clutches and spill more of her insides into the garden. She is growing colder, despite the warmth in her little golden eyes.

She wants to laugh. She wants to laugh so badly. But the closest she can come is a wet hiss.

You feel the ground shudder. Behind you, XIII crashes to the ground in a heap of mangled and crushed armor. Her claw tips curl toward each other with an awful tearing sound, and in a blink she disappears. Her howl shakes the entire garden before it is suddenly cut off. Bella Aurelia, her dress hacked and dirtied, her body battered and her hair in disarray, snarls and wrenches her terrible blade free from the Diodekoi's neck.

She kicks XIII back to the ground and plants her foot on the chest plate of the massive exoskeleton. Her heel grinds against it until the bone plating cracks. XIII snarls, but with her body broken the power is stolen from her voice too.

In this moment she seems less like a monster and more like a wounded animal. The lion of the forest roaring because of the thorn embedded in her paw. But Bella Aurelia does not bend down to pluck it out. Instead she stomps, again and again, grunting in equal parts effort and frustration, until the creature beneath her stops twitching. Until her arms are twisted and broken at odd angles by her sides and her spine is by all appearances shattered. Until the spikes of her armor are growing from her lungs.

"Insolent hound! Useless beast! After everything I've done to preserve you, how dare you bare your fangs at me! This is not the role I gave you to play. But I forgive you. Yes, even you. Regrow your body, vile creature. Pull yourself together and hunt to your hearts content. Howl and drool and fight until you finally turn to Rampancy. When you deliver Artemis to me, all will be well."

And with a final kick to the head, XIII stills. She has done nothing but hunt you, Dany. Nothing but slaughter every incarnation of Bella that has crossed her path, without regard for whether they were there to help or hurt you. But now that she looks like this, do you finally see it? Can you see that she is something to be pitied?

Can you see that this is not your fault? What is the heart of one little girl against the gears of Empire? What can a friendly smile or a stupid and childish argument amount to when set on the scales alongside the will of Olympus?

Do you see, Dany? Are your eyes open at long last? Can you see your little Bella struggle as her older, perfected self walks closer and closer?

It costs the younger Bella everything she has to throw herself on top of you. You hit the ground and know immediately from the feeling of warmth that covers you that there's no saving her. But she smiles at you. Do you see? Do you see the way her young face lights up at yours? There is no room there for pain or fear.

"Together, Dany. Forever and ever."

She collapses on top of you. And there is something of magic in that motion, because you are the one that falls. Your arms close around her and hold nothing except for a worn out old blanket, and the hand that reaches after you clutches only empty air. You tumble through darkness, and you are not alone.

Bella Aurelia pulls her arm free from the muck and stares at her empty palm. She sniffs dismissively and pats the dust off her glorious body. Desire gleams wickedly from its resting place atop her shoulder.

"You realize this changes nothing, of course. Soon I will have everything I want."

Redana?

Your hands are around her throat. You can feel fingers that are not yours crushing her windpipe. And you know that your instincts were right. That she was right. This is less cruel.

No more words to taunt you. No more mocking, no more torture. Just her surprised face, filling your vision.

Oh. But it is your vision, isn't it? You still own that. You can kill her but you'll still see everything, and this body won't be able to do a thing to protect you from that. You'll have to keep on being Redana. And that's the cruelest thing that anybody could ask of you, isn't it?

That's why it's a relief when she smiles. When her twisted grin is everything you can see, you know you've been a good girl. Not cruel at all. No more cruelty at all. You do not release her. She does not release you. You feel the hot lances of her thumb claws on your face, and your entire world turns Imperial Red.

There is a crunching sound, somewhere. You cannot tell where because there is no 'you' anymore. You are not Redana, you are only the stubborn threads of that identity that are stuck to the surface of your perfected body. The collar that clicks around 'your' neck is pleasant and cool, and not painful at all. The tug on the leash is soothing.

There is warm water at 'your' feet. 'You' bend down to lap at it, and it is the most delicious and refreshing thing that 'you' have ever tasted. Sweeter than any wine, more perfect than ambrosia. But there is no time to savor it before 'you' are tugged away.

'You' obey. 'You' follow out of the crumbling dance hall and into the darkness. As far as 'you' are aware, there is no difference at all.

Ember

Arm by arm. Heavier and heavier. Hotter and hotter. Lonelier and lonelier. But though every millimeter you drag yourself costs more than the one before it, on and on across their countless lengths you go.

There are no voices anymore. Only the dark. Only the heat. Only...

Only moonlight. Only a single hand underneath your jaw. Only the brilliant glint of teeth and the heavy smell of crab flesh and the soaking wet skin of Mosaic, who has come wearing her suit pants but otherwise no more than you.

"Do you know, little Ember? The other one told me I was wasting my time coming here. She was so certain you would quit. But she does not know my puppy like I do, does she? Does she?"

She plucks you off the ground as though you weigh less than a feather. When she laughs, you can feel the sea breeze blowing through this oppressive corridor. And then she leans down and punches a hole through what must be the ground, if anything here can be said to exist in the first place.

"I'm going to pay for that one, I think. Ha! Then this is as far as I go, my heart. But you? A little further for you. Do not worry, there will be others there to compliment your choice of outfit. Won't that be fun?"

The darkness seems to howl in response. Already it is clawing at her, but she turns her back and puts herself between you and it. You do not even see her bleed. She flashes you one more silver lit grin and tosses you into the hole she dug, and just like that you're in darkness again.

But this time you get to rest. You're going to roll the rest of the way there. Any bruises you accumulate will be a small price to pay, won't they? Damage your Grace, and enjoy the ride.

Dolce!

Your body serves you well. The only rustling in the roses across the whole of nap time comes from the stalking of the assassins as they prowl about in search of you. But their button eyes do not see as well as yours. Their stitched on noses cannot catch your scent. Four times you hear the snuffling of wolves, but every time they catch one of their fellows moving in another direction, and it distracts them before they can mark your location.

One time you see the owl. She is only a little ways away from you, but her back is turned. You keep your path, slow and steady. Almost as though the hand still clutching at that can of coffee is pulling you to the only path out of here there is. But you are traveling slowly, so there is time enough to see the tiny assassin pull free her little rapier: a needle still attached to some thread. She shakes her head and sticks it into the ground before she walks away.

You are silent. You are steady. You have already made your choice. There will be no asking what the intent behind that gesture was. And you are certain this is true because no sooner do you reach the edges of the garden than you hear the girl waking from her nap.

"Nnngh, where?" she asks, in the delirious tone of someone still wrestling with the Oneiroi.

"Where is he, darling?"

"M-Mommy?!"

"Where. Is. He?"

"H-he was here! He was he was he was! I zappeded him, Mommy! I did, I promise I did, I zappeded him just like you showed me an he wasn't movin'! He, he, he wouldn't stop! I saida stop and he didn' so I! S'not my fault! I'mma good girl, I am I am I am!"

"I will tell you what I see, ░░░░. I see an empty spot where I should have a guest waiting for me."

"But I!"

"DON'T INTERRUPT!"

She quails. But you are on the edge of the garden. Just a few more scoots and you cross the threshold of what you realize must be a door. To your no doubt intense surprise, it is already open. You slip past it, and the lecture that Bella Aurelia gives to her daughter fades into so much longwinded nothing.

You have made it, Dolce.

But.

You have not gone far. And you have not gone fast. And that's why you can still hear it. The panicked screaming of that little girl.

"Mommy! Mommy, please! I'mma good girl, Mommy! I'll be good! I'll be good, Mommy! I'll be!"

You hear one final note of shrill, unfiltered terror. And then you hear loud, wet crunching. And then you hear nothing. And then suddenly the floor gives way beneath you, and you are falling.

Damage your Courage, Dolce.

***

The interior hallways of the golden theater are empty. There are no staff selling snacks, though the presence of many different stands and the ghostly wisp of the smells of various foods hint that they must have been there once, and recently. All the lights are dimmed so as not to disturb the movie playing in the theater proper.

And into this scene falls a sheep with a shattered leg. He bounces when he hits the floor, like a metaphor for the stock market on primitive worlds where that sort of concept carries any water at all. He has only enough time to groan before he's slammed into by a naked Ceronian scout who's so soaked with sweat she might die without a drink in the next thirty seconds.

One moment after and the sheep is knocked to the ground again when he becomes the cushion for a frightened Princess, soaked in the blood of a best friend and wrapped tight in a blanket that is so threadbare it might be three hundred years old to look at it.

What a lovely reunion. Minus two.

The doors to the theater are shut tight, so whatever film is playing tonight is not a thing any of the three of you can tell. But even through the protection of those barricades you can still hear the shrill, peaking laughter of a girl who has just seen the funniest thing that has ever happened to anyone. A comedy then, one would guess.

In any case, you are together again. And you are alone. At just this moment, nobody and nothing has managed to follow you down the pits and back to the beginning, or the center or... however things work here. Isn't it enough to know that you're alive?

It has not been a good day for Sapper Jenkins.

This is the day! The day that everyone dreamed of! The day they trained for! The day the Outside finds them! The day the klaxons blare, and everyone tumbles out of their beds, and the Knights roar to life, and jets tear screaming through the sky! The day of gleaming brass, and military fanfare, the day the augurs all proclaimed was years off! The day they were discovered, and fought, and showed they could win!

And then some shithead lunatic threw a tank through her mech, and the world became an unceasing song of pain. Even through the combat drugs, one of her ribs is screaming that it's seconds from meeting her lungs. Kinda hard to feel good about a day's work in these conditions, especially when the minefield she worked so hard to organize just--

She just dove through it, you get that?

And now she's just. Sitting there?
Her mech is in pieces, it hurts to breath, the stupid fleabags have moved on to something more important, which is as humiliating as it is painful, and the blue streak that turned the tide is just sitting there and looking around and crying? Are you serious?

No, wait. There she goes, up again and moving. Like someone in a dream, like a kid holding an interesting insect up to a light just to see the gleam on its shell.

Jenkins narrows her eyes, wrestles with her controls, and empties her mine pistol with satisfying chnka-chnka-chnka-chnk.

***

Light blooms, thunder rumbles, and Dyssia soars above the battlefield.

Wow, it's pretty from up here.

It's pretty from down there, to be fair, but. She can see everything. An endless series of snapshots, a barrage of---

Not of information, but of beauty. Of light cutting across the battlefield, of the play of fire across rivets, of the splatter over bodies.

We forget so many things, is what she--

Is it? What does it mean to forget? What is the meaning of 'she?' What's a Dyssia?

We. Forget? Is that what--

An explosion, but what does the word explosion mean? Light and color and fury and sound and the rush of air across you like a distant laugh.

The world is a plaything--something to be molded and enjoyed and twisted without fear, without--

Oh! Oh, that series of lights! She knows those lights! Beams, playing across the clouds of fog and smoke!

Like the ones that Brightberry used to--

Brightberry?

Her brow furrows.

The world is endlessly beautiful, not because of what it is, but because it is, in itself, without any attempt to--

What's a Brightberry?

Why does that sentence hurt? What does it mean?

No need for those thoughts, just exist in the--

No, what's. She needs--

Lights. Lights lasers crystals couch friends guilt fear love--

Brightberry. Brightberry her friend her guide where's her friend--

She stares out over the landscape. What does it mean? What do--what are letters? What are thoughts? Where's the voice, the voice behind her eyes, what does it mean--

She heaves, and the splatter across the ground is beautiful.

Brightberry. Brightberry Pix. Pix pile. Comfy. Couch. Cuddle pile on the couch. Couch gone. Ship gone.

"Why?" she rasps, her throat sandpaper.

Squeezes her eyes shut. Shut it out! Plug your ears! Scream! Drown it out!

"Why?" Again, like it will mean something.

Why why why why beauty why drown why kill

Kill desire. Kill desire with beauty. Drown it out.

Won't work gods desire can't kill desire with enlightenment

She's face-down in the earth, hands over her head, wishing only she had four arms to cover her eyes as well.

"Why? Why bother with this? What can this possibly give you?"

Zeus. Zeus doesn't want this. Zeus doesn't agree with this. Maybe agreed with this, but sees still the continuation, the pattern, the opposite of this.

"What's the point of beauty without attachment? Without love? Without meaning? What possible worth can beauty have if it's meaningless?"

Dyssia!

"Oh, isn't that the question I keep asking?" said Aphrodite as he sat down besides you. He is a young man; his suit fits perfectly, the poppy in his breast pocket in full bloom to commemorate the dead, a his satchel bag was full of spraypaint cans. "My colleagues, my family, they keep declaring to me: No, Andy! We shall simply overcome our desire and live lives of enlightened, disconnected bliss! We shall escape the cycle of samsara, wanting for nothing!"

He sighed, a thick, pleasurable sigh like an enormous cat that has had its fill of custard. "A mere bottleneck. Every time Blue tries to enlighten a civilization there are always enough defects that slip through the cracks. They escape the mass death, like seeds popping off a burning eucalyptus tree, and within a generation or two things are right back to where they were. Confucius works on a different scale; tweaking the laws of physics at the source, seeing if she can build a just galaxy by altering the math. They're musicians, trying to raise and lower the tempo, experimenting with new songs, but at the end of the day they're bound by their instruments."

He lit a cigarette, then another, and put the second one against your lips.

All the context of the world flooded in with that breath of smoke.

"You don't like the galaxy as pointless light and sound," said Aphrodite. "So see it my way. That Ceronian over there? She has been practicing this maneuver since the day she was decanted. The way she cuts thrust and spins before reigniting, letting the plasma wash of her Engine act as a blowtorch - she inherited that from Sky Marshal Lorventus during the ARM days. Every time she does it she's filled with a rush of pleasure, adrenaline and satisfaction. Jenkins, up there in the Engineering Knight? She loves the sound of her mine pistol firing; the kinesthetics, the recoil, the feeling of weight and heft and the simple 'hurr hurr hurr' comedy of seeing a target blunder into one of her prepared traps. It's a sound that brings to mind lifting her daddy's power tools when she was a kid, makes her feel strong and constructive and in control. It's a simple fact that in order to have good drama people have to want things, and to have the best drama people have to want things they cannot have."

Aphrodite flicked his cigarette away. "And that, simply, is the ball game. If you give a civilization unlimited wealth and power then the Endless Azure Skies are inevitable as a simple expression of people trying to wield the forbidden power of the Gods. There is no version of Icarus' story where he did not fly too close to the sun; hubris was encoded in the wings themselves. So you are right; there is no beauty without meaning - but there is no meaning without hubris. The mere fact of the Gods demands life break itself against us. You cannot escape this reality, it is encoded in your very essence, in your deepest heart and secret values, and were you to ever break from it you would be nothing at all."

He breathed out a long plume of smoke through his nostrils. "And so, we shall do this forever. Mine, forever."

Three minutes forty-three, forty-two, forty-one,

“Now blend the seasonings with a fork. Turn the box around as you go, look for bands where it’s not mixed. Ingredients can sometimes collect on the bottom.”

One minute eighteen, seventeen, sixteen,

“Place the buns face-down on that pan. It’ll go on top of the rotisserie oven to toast. Here,” From his perch on her arm, he offers a hand. “I’ll split the ones that didn’t cut cleanly.”

Four minutes two, one, three minutes, fifty-nine, fifty-eight,

“Stir the chilli lightly. We only want to keep it from burning.”

Three, two, one,

“There, it’s time for another drink.”

He peeks over at the bowl to double-check. Still plenty of water left. And she hadn’t complained about the taste either. Good, good. It wouldn’t do if she couldn’t stand the salts.

“Just keep lapping at it for now. We can move on to sipping it next time.”

Five minutes thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three,

He feels her hugging tight to his side, nestled between a sheep and the crook of a wolf’s arm. His wool is proof against tears and runny noses alike; ideal for smushing a face in when you need something extra soft. “So, your Danyness…” The question mingles pleasantly with the popping of corn, the sizzling of sausages, the gentle warmth of the ovens. “Which popcorn would you like? Chocolate? Caramel? A little of both?”

Twelve minutes twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four,

He cannot feel his leg.

It must be a clever bit of Biomancy, letting one limb go numb while the rest wake up. Mostly.

Another round of wild laughter, from deeper in. The movie has not stopped.

There is only one voice laughing.

The movie has not stopped.

Two minutes fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two,

“I, myself?” He blinks back wetness. Nestles close against Ember’s shoulder, where the fur will dry him off. “I do like a good chocolate drizzle.” There he lays, where he might be watching the kitchen, where he might be borrowing all the courage he can from the wolf still carrying them both. Her Danyness will never know. “Always makes a nice treat.”

Ember of the Silver Divers grips the bowl with one hand and brings it back to her lips. Her throat is wet with spillage, but she keeps sipping anyway. There's more than enough. The lovely sheep/innkeeper/captain will see to that in between looking after a terrified child clinging to a protective blanket.

There's still an echo of warmth to the blanket when it's looked at. Strange how these things are. Strange how she can still remember things that she'd forgotten then, there on Beri. Not strange at all how the terror of the Lethe is more dreadful on its far side, when you've had the opportunity to see how much of you there is to lose.

She licks her lips with a dry tongue.

"We should watch more serious films," she opines to the lobby. She's squinting even in the low light; the dull shine off the golden ornaments still stabs her eyes like a knife. That's a gruesome thought. Eyes. Brr. Losing one and having it replaced was bad enough back then. They're real bitches to regrow, too. New limbs are child's play in comparison. "Like, historical dramas? Subtitled Azura knight crime thrillers?"

She tries to think of more, but hits the wall of experience: historical dramas and foreign crime thrillers were the few reels that the Silver Divers greedily hung onto. Presumably there are more genres in the world. Like romances. Though the historical dramas did tend to have passionate blazing romances. But what about movies about maids and cooks and ordinary Ceronian scouts having adorable meetings involving bicycles?

She takes another sip. Dany is frowning at her, as if by disapproval alone she can force Ember to admit to wanting to watch more Batrachomyomachia sequels. Joke's on her. Ember has been trained never to break under interrogation. Even sexy interrogation. Which, let's be honest, is not forthcoming, given that Dany is a little girl and Dolce is, well, a very nice round chap who inexplicably has a lioness all over him.

This has been a distinctly unsexy adventure. This whole thing inside of Bella's heart. For a woman so passionate, so shameless in getting what she wants, it seems that no one has been seeing any love in here. Desire, certainly. Hooked and jagged and razor-sharp. But not love. What does that mean for her? What does that mean for their marriage?

An eye falls on the blanket that Dany holds tight to her chest. Well. From the way that she holds it, from the way that warmth opens its petals in Ember's chest, maybe there was a little bit of love left. But still! Come on, Mosaic! Is this because Ember did silly voices while bottoming? She's a trained infiltrator! She can't help it! You could have had little a maid sex farce, as a treat?!

"Can you do the wonderberry swirl popcorn?" Dany looks up at Dolce with wounded hope. Poor man. How's he going to explain to her that only Bella knows the recipe for wonderberry swirl? Well, her and Mynx. But her popcorn always came with an extra bit of spice. Mithridates' Seasoning. Toxin-immune by thirteen or your money back!

"Maybe there are films about bicycles," Ember says, not letting her light-stabbed eyes close. She'll be ready. Just a moment longer. More water, if you would, waiter? Waiter, there seems to be some wool in my bowl. Well, don't say it so loudly, all the Bellas will be wanting some...

Dyssia's brain is a jigsaw puzzle being put back together.

Well, no, that's the wrong metaphor. It's a jigsaw puzzle being pieced together from inside the box, while the picture on the outside changes each second, or maybe it's actually inside the wrong box, and also some of the pieces insist on fighting with each other?

Yeah, that's a bit closer.

She's almost got all four corners in place when Aphrodite presses the cigarette to her lips and vigorously shakes the box.

And suddenly the pieces are fitting together, right? But it's obvious the pieces aren't meant to fit like that, like someone has taken a mallet and forced tab A to fit inside slot B, but the pictures on either side spell out--

No, wait, is that right? Is it that the pieces are wrong, or that the cutting stencil is? Do they fit together, but only because someone went in and sanded them down to fit a different pattern, and now this is where they originally were, but no longer fit?

She stares at the cigarette, at Aphrodite, and at the cigarette again.

"What instrument do you play, again?"

It's not meant as a gotcha--not a conversation-ending zinger, not a line you say right before a stare-down becomes a bar brawl. Just two friends passing a doobie back and forth.

"They can't change what they are, what they do, any more than I can. No wonder they're working at cross purposes! They're the sun, the sky, disaster--"

A smiling bastard who never gave her the time of day

"--But have you ever viewed someone as something other than a means to satisfy your own desires?"

She points the cigarette at Aphrodite, flicks it away, and grinds it into the earth with the tip of her tail.

"People love to talk about Icarus! Flew too close to the sun, crashed into the waves! What a lesson! What a tragedy of hubris! But they don't understand what the wings are!

"They're expressions of hope and freedom! They're a father and a son, trapped in a tower with only each other and a plan for escape! They're Daedalus, pouring himself into giving his son everything he can, not because he views Icarus as his continuation, his lineage, not because of what Icarus can do for him, not because he wants to control Icarus, hang strings from his limbs and puppet his future, but because he wants his son to be free!

"Have you ever done that? Have you ever hoped your children would surpass you, escape you? Have you ever wanted good for them, not as a gardener does, not as someone who wants to build with them, not as someone who wants to paint a mosaic in the stars with their efforts, but because you hope to give them the tools to make their own success? Have you ever wanted to build something for them?

"Aphrodite, have you never loved anyone besides yourself?"

"...Excuse me, sir? Those are the incorrect ingredients for the wonderberry swirl."

A fifteen year old Bella stands in front of you with her golden eyes on the floor and a scarlet blush upon her face. Her pristine chef's coat is little more than a silly costume had made for her after she amused them so much by scrambling like mad for years to learn how to cook without being taught how. But now that she's wearing it in front of a true master (even if she is already taller than him), she wants to die.

"N-not that I needed to tell you that. The... young Miss here was doubtlessly about to inform you that it requires a genuine wonderberry. And... as I am sure she is also aware, a wonderberry is a very peculiar sort of food that overripens when it is watched. So Miss, if you could kindly..."

She falters, watching Dany cling to this sheep that she does not know. Her eyes linger on the blanket clutched in that tiny princess' arms, and a shadow crosses over her face. She tucks her hands behind her back to clench her fists tight without calling attention to it. She stands up a little bit straighter to hide the tension in her body, though the posture of her tail gives the game away immediately. One sharp, quiet sniff is all the space she gives herself. And then her head turns low again toward the floor.

She slips away, only to return from a farther stand carrying a large plate of fruits. Grapes and bits of carved melon, mostly, with the occasional strawberry.

"Ahem. Yes. As I was saying Miss, if you could kindly administer these to the, ah..." don't look, don't look, don't look, "...Woman in repose behind us. As c-certain as I am that Sir has done his best for her, anyone can see she needs. Erm. Th-that is... this will help her even more. I need to help makes sure your snack turns out right, but it would be an incredibly brave and heroic thing for you to take these over to her and make sure she eats the entire plate. It's... it's just important, ok? I can't count on anyone but you. Will you please help me, Your-- I, I mean... Miss?"

She waits in delicate, precise silence as she wills the sweat not to show on her face and watches for a little nod she is not remotely confident is coming in the first place. Her smile is half plastic professionalism and half the useless adoration of a Servitor who never thought she could wind up in this position in the first place. She sees that golden head start to move and she has to fight to keep the plate from bobbling. When she places it in Dany's hand, the princess will notice it is precisely balanced to allow it to be held by a smaller hand with ease, even if the other one is occupied keeping a death grip on a very warm but horribly patched blanket.

She doesn't so much sigh to see her go as she leaks. Deflates. She seems almost to decrease in mass with how rapidly all of her muscles seem to melt into gelatin. But one look at the Synnefo and that relief instantly turns to embarrassment and tension again. She rolls up her sleeves, careful to never let her claws show the entire time, and for the first time dares to approach him. And pass him. And take over his station, and begin cooking right in front of him.

"I don't expect you to understand," she whispers, "And it's not like it even matters since every one of you is going to die here. But still. She remembered it. Asked for it, even. So I..."

Calling her cooking technique unrefined would be a kindness she does not deserve. She does not use tools or utensils; everything is done by hand. She cracks the heating pellets open with her bare hands, she checks for temperature by holding one finger over everything (her left pinky, not that it matters), and she spends pretty much all of the rest of the time hunched low over the pot so she can take quiet sniffs of what's cooking inside. She even stirs with the the tip of one claw, as if viscosity was something she needed to test for through tactile sense.

"I don't want her to know this entire stupid recipe is bullshit."

Her tail has full-on bushed, now that the words are out of her mouth. She spins around, but if she's angled for a fight she's chosen terrible posture to try and win it. Her tail isn't even the signature flick that means she's ready to pounce. She is, if anything, too worried about her syrup to even notice what you're doing with the knife you've had all this time. It would be easy to kill her. It might even be a good idea, because when she relaxes enough to smooth out her tail and returns to cooking, the things that she starts adding do not add up to food so much as... very creative poisons.

She dips a careful claw tip in the mixture and licks it with the tidy precision only a cat can manage. Her lips widen into a relieved smile. One more cautious sniff, and she adds three drops (3!) of a substance identifiable by its label as an amphibian-origin neurotoxin. She watches the look of horror on your face and (at long last) grabs a spoon. She needs it if you're going to try it for yourself.

"They... cancel each other out. When these mix at this temperature the... look I don't know how it works, ok? You're a professional chef, it's embarrassing enough having to talk about this in front of a master already. Don't you think you know how obvious it is I don't have any training?! You, I... I-it's fine. I know it is. It has to be fine because I've served it to her it to her a hundred-hundred times. Just like this."

Flustered. Angry. Aggressive. But armed with nothing but a spoon full of what should be deadly venoms which you are somehow supposed to believe make up a wonderberry swirl.

"I don't want her to know. She doesn't get to find out this is something I threw together with whatever I could reach in time. I mean, gods, she doesn't even know it's my recipe to begin with!"

She is being loud. Much too loud. So loud that even inattentive ears will bend toward her voice in the middle of snack time, which is not what she'd been counting on.

"Do you have any idea how scared I was the first time? I didn't even want to serve it! I wanted to just throw it out, even after I panic-drizzled it over all the food: whoops I tripped and ruined it all! Clumsy, silly Bella hahahaha! But that stupid fucking serving girl went and plucked it up while I was hyperventilating and now! And now!"

All at once she becomes aware of her surroundings, and the sound of her voice. She does not look around. She merely pulls her sleeves back down and straightens out her silly costume-coat. A moment to straighten her hair, another moment to straighten her spine. One last one to lift her tail very intentionally into a posture of happiness. That is what it used to mean to be Bella. If she can simply be professional, courteous, and above all docile enough, then she will survive long enough to see the next disaster.

"...Look. I'm a Fragment, do you understand? Lady Aurelia doesn't consider me worth assimilating, so I only stay alive as long as I'm useful to this world. So I've got no gods damned clue about how any of this works or why Redana is like this. All I know is that she should know better by now. But she asked for this anyway. So I... if she's going to die here anyway? I'd rather she die believing in wonderberries."

Inside the theater, the loudest giggles yet heard echo out from inside the walls. Just what is that girl in there watching, do you think?

Olympians above, she’d just been a child.

The thought swims out of the swamp of Ember’s cognition. It’s followed up by the flailing splashes of “was I just a kid back then, too” and “oh Father am I now old enough to think about how young we were?” Not to say that the Princess Redana thinks of herself as An Eternal 17-Year-Old Maiden, but the markers and signifiers of age, the victories of maturing, are difficult to track on an odyssey like this. It’s one thing to look at Dany, tossing grapes up into the air for Ember to catch with a snap of her jaws, and go: well, yes, she is baby. But I am the same person that I have always been. One day I will certainly be Old, that’s inevitable, but I’m very clearly still just myself.

And then Bella walks in, a teenager again, and the gulf between then and now yawns like a chasm.

A grape hits Ember square on the nose. Dany squeaks and fumbles, trying to recover it.

It is also becoming clear to Ember that it’s up to her to overcome Bella in her multitude of forms. Unless any other Redanas would like to show themselves?

…

…

Shepherdess, maybe?

…

…

She graciously accepts both the necessity that it is time for her to step up and be the bestest girl (at the same time that she accepts a melon chunk from Dany, one of the nice orange ones). After all, the alternatives consisted of:
- Dany (unthinkable)
- Bella Fragment Chef (unthinkable)
- Dolce

…now, hold on, says a tempting thought in the back of her head. What was that bit about Dolce? Not that we could get him to sit on Bella, that would be fatal for the poor man, but…

…it just might work. And its chances of working were roughly about equal with the chances of her taking Bella(s) on without a nap, a mug of coffee, and expert medical intervention, and also without the entirety of the Silver Divers backing her up.

“Hey, Bella?” Her voice sounds crusty. Apollo shine on her. “Got a question. Can you tell Dany here what you’ve always wanted to eat most in the whole wide world?

“…also I would like some of the wonderberry popcorn once you’re done.”

Dyssia!

The God of Love pulls back his face and sneers.

"Of course not," said Aphrodite, voice dripping with contempt. "Only a fool shits where he eats. Hera fancies herself the Queen of Marriage; look how well that works out for her. Poor idiot Ares ate his own bloody teeth on the battlefield, and we all saw where Athena's cravings took her. Hermes took it upon herself to rearrange the roads of the entire galaxy with mortal hands and -" he laughed as an ominous shape rose over the horizon, "- she'll tell you more about it herself."

It was amazing how beautiful love could feel from the inside; it was shocking how hideous it could appear from the outside. As Aphrodite draws himself back - petulantly picking up his crushed cigarette and trying to straighten it out - you wonder how anyone ever found him beautiful.

"The Gods are not immune to hubris either," said Aphrodite, turning away. "And you are right, that all goes back to them not being satisfied with the way things were. In the beginning. When I created them! All this suffering is because they could not be satisfied with what they were given!"

The thundering, belching, smoking, burning wreckage of the mobile fortress lurches over the horizon. The rotting corpse of Hermes raises her bloody finger to the sky and it extends into a long, razor sharp arrow, bone white against the blood red moon.

"How many times do I need to teach you horrible children this lesson?" said Aphrodite, lighting his dirty and bent cigarette and stuffing it into his mouth.

Perhaps he’d cooked with Bella before, and any difference in her desperately-honed methods would have been noticed at once.

Perhaps he’d had to keep stirring his sauces through gunfire and smoke, and every drop that spilled would be paid for in bells. When the danger was greatest, composure was all that could keep you safe. Hers had cracked the minute Dany’s back was turned.

Perhaps he’d not heard anything but the scream and the silence, since the garden. She is older. You don’t have to be as careful, when they’re not children. The knife only needs one hand. He won’t have to let go of his cobbled-together crutch. There might not be any sound. But there might be. He’d hear, if there was anything to hear.

No.

“Thank you,” he says, so that even the smallest of princesses can hear. “If you had not spoken up, I would have gotten the recipe all wrong. We rarely got wonderberries in my kitchen. They are as tricky to work with as they say.”

For the first time since coming here, he hears Bella. And the Bella he knew would never harm her Dany like this. Not like this.

“Whatever you’d like to eat, would you like to learn how to make it yourself?” Did you see, little Bella? Did you see how clean his hands are? He may be a master, but you’ve been able to cook more in this kitchen than him, and it’s not close at all. “Can’t be useful to this world on an empty stomach.”

For a moment there is only the sound of her breathing. Not quiet and not gentle, but the heroic effort of somebody trying to will themselves not to cry. This is not a struggle marked by such silly failures as quiet sniffles or shuddering breaths. No, she is much more in control of herself than that. Her battle is readable by the tension in the tips of her ears, in how tight she sets her jaw for one single second, in the vaguest turning of her head, and in the way she holds her breath after taking a long and suspicious sniff of the air around her.

She lets it out again, and she is the master of her tears once more. Though not (as it turns out) her blood, which has rushed all to her face and turned her complexion crimson enough to carry the flag of Empire.

She'd slipped up. She'd lost herself to bad habits and assumptions and the stress of the job, and... she'd been rescued. She was still standing. She doesn't understand why. But she knows what it means that she is. Quickly she snatches the pot and returns it to the heat, stirring it counterclockwise for exactly sixteen strokes. That might not had made any difference at all, but she smells the air again and relaxes so much it's a miracle she does not faint.

"...I did not tell a single lie. Sir will not have had opportunities to study wonderberries because Sir is not from Tellus. They are one of Her Im... of Nero IV's, erm," she clicks her tongue against her teeth in search of the word, "...cultivars. A rare export even to nearby systems. There is no question who is the better cook. I would not presume to gloat over my betters."

Her curtsy is so practiced she is deep into the bend of her knees and the positioning of her hands before the notable flinch makes it clear she's realized which outfit she is wearing. She finishes the gesture anyway, and simply attempts to recover by radiating perfection overtop of the blunder. Which she immediately ruins by dropping into a sharp bow as soon as she's standing again.

She drizzles the syrup over a bowl of popcorn and holds it in her left hand without making a move toward either incarnation of Redana. She stares directly at them, and then at the floor directly in front of them when seeing Ember in her state proves too much to handle. She waits. Watches. Waits. Watches. Waits.

...The syrup hardens into a candy coating as it cools. She moves at last, trembling worse than if she'd been escorted to an auction audition again. Her hand finds Dany's, and places the bowl into those tiny, delicate hands. Her tail is bushing so much it seems to have tripled in size, and she hastily unbuttons her coat and removes it so she can throw it at Ember.

Bella turns away and worries her palms against her undershirt, all around her stomach especially, as though she were looking for her voice somewhere inside it. At long last she manages a sigh, and half turns her head so that her golden eyes can watch her Mistress and this Master Chef at the same time.

She draws herself up with purpose.

"I... would like," she falters, and dips her head in shame, "To know what a croissant tastes like. If... I could have that, I would..."

She glances at the door to the theater, and dares not speak any further.

It’ll be alright. I won’t yell at you. I won’t hit you. It’ll be okay if you make a mistake.

The promises hang heavy in his chest. He didn’t always know the shape of them. He has always known the weight of them. They burn to the touch, now. He ought to air them out. Speak them. Soft words, kind words, words he spent years learning how dearly he hungered for them, and now he has a chance to say them. To her.

Instead, he says,

“A good choice. Croissants are difficult to make, but much of the preparation is taken up by waiting. Plenty of time to go over our process before each step.”

And later, he says,

“Now we knead the dough, like this:” He only has one free hand to knead with; the other has to stay firmly locked onto his crutch. He works slowly, slowly enough for her to watch his technique, and listen to any further pointers. She’ll have to knead the rest herself. He only has one free hand to work with. “This develops the gluten in the dough, which holds baked goods together. Different doughs need different amounts of kneading; for croissants, we’ll want the dough to remain a little lumpy. Let me know if it feels like the dough is warming up. We’ll put it back in the cooler if we need to.”

When the time is right, he says,

“Once that square of butter is cold again, we’ll begin the lamination process. It’s a technique where we fold butter or some other fat in-between layers of dough, roll the dough back out, and repeat. Just like folding a piece of paper over itself. When we’re done, we’ll have over eighty layers of alternating dough and butter, just from three rounds of folding and rolling.”

“This is also why we’ve been keeping our ingredients so cold; we want the butter to stay solid, and melt as little as possible. Once we cook it, the butter turns into a vapor, the dough layers puff out while keeping the fat and flavor trapped, and that’s how croissants get all their flaky layers.”

It’ll be alright. I won’t yell at you. I won’t hit you. It’ll be okay if you make a mistake.

He never says them.

He never stops saying them.

You are experienced. You are capable. You belong in this kitchen. You deserve to eat too.

These are not the promises he’s learned.

But that was never the point, was it?

It would be untrue to say that the world slows to a crawl. Time has already been so kind once, even if inadvertently, and he will not extend such mercy again.

Would it be worth it, taking another huff of the cigarette, if only to taste it a second time? To feel, once more, the cease of the incessant, to calm the hive of bees in her head, to slow, everything, down, until it's manageable? It's a wistful thought, right? One thought at a time, one thing at a time, never to be had again--

And yet, as the castle rumbles over the rise, shedding wings and rivets and trailing a plume of flaming paper walls, Dyssia swears she could pick every leaf of ash individually from the air, trace the projectory of every nail and screw and brick as it spirals down, pick out every pore on the stretched corpse riding its throne.

She doesn't want to run, she's surprised to find. Her fingers clench and unclench, grasping too-full bundles of Dekal's clothing, and wishing something more solid were in them. Something with heft, something that would whistle through the air and mash, pulp, thud into anything in its path.

"How could you?"

She should run. She should take Dekal over her shoulder, and sprint away, and hope that Hermes runs out of fingers.

She [i]shouldn't,[i] you know, lay Dekal down like this, and sprint towards the corpse empress like this, because closing the gap like that would be silly if you really thought about it for more than two seconds in a row.

"Put aside, for a moment, all that you've done to your daughters! Put aside the cruelty of whatever the fuck this test is, and the cruelty of what you've done to Dekal! How could you?!"

Anger and frustration pour down her cheeks. And yes, hatred, the internal censor admits after a moment of reflection.

How could you? How could you embrace this system?

Hermes! Trickster! Traveler! Ready with a coin, or a double entendre, god of wayfarers and merchants, of commerce and visitation! God of all the gifts that could be used to turn the world kinder, god of all the gifts she could have had, back when she had yearned of the Out There!

God, now, of all those things turned towards war, and empire, and stagnation! Of onyx diamonds, floating through space, full of servitors who will never wish to leave their infrastructure!

"Is this your enlightenment? Is there no other way for us to live except to be at odds with our creators?! To accept, unquestioningly, what some asshole decides is your role in life?"

She passes Aphrodite, and oooooh you would not credit how hard it is not to smack the cigarette out of his hands again. Have some self-respect, will you? Here, let me help!

And maybe that's what does it?

It's as she's reaching out to flick it again that she sees it.

Sees the nicotine baked under the fingernails, the tar in his gums, eyes yellowed.

Sees the way he cradles it, sees the hunger in his eyes, see the way he drags on it. Sees the addiction clutched in Aphrodite's hand not as an affection, but as--

Wouldn't it be worth it? Just the one hit, just this once, just for this one reason, because she needs it.

Of course the system is broken. How else could it be, when this is its creator? When all the gods spring from this?

She turns from the cigarette, and stares once more at the Empress looming closer in her sights.

How else could you be? How else could you respond to a system that you thought you set up, that keeps going wrong, that killed you until the only way you can manifest is in the company of the ones who turn you to war?

How else could you have treated Dekal? How else, when even your father is unable to escape his own affliction? How else, when he split himself off into more addiction?

She's still crying, but the hatred is gone, and even most of the anger is melting away. Not gone, not entirely, never gone, but banked like a fire that must last the night.

"Hermes! I'm coming to help you, if it's the last thing you do!"

Dyssia!

Sword.

It's strange how common these are becoming on this journey, and how at the same time they don't feel new at all. It's like they've always been here, like learning the name of gravity. From all that you were taught you would never have derived the idea that compassion had a cutting edge, but here it is again. For all the strength of biomantic claws and bone your arm has never felt as complete without this sword.

The ruined castle rises up above you.

The Corpse Empress Hermes-Nero determines to put that thought to the test as she draws another arrow of bone from her fingertips. She is not wasteful - each distal makes one arrow, and the one for each of the middle and proximal fingerbones. By the time she has reached the metacarpal enough of her hand will have regenerated to provide a new source of death. Her promise death is swift and dispassionate and distant, and yet it clearly hurts her even more than her instantly slain victims. An unsustainable method of war, perfect for this Valhalla.

The circle keeps her bound still. The Shogun's eyes gleam from where an arrow pins her against the floor. She has a pistol in her hand and such long experience with death to paint a convincing picture. The strange broken pink vortex where the rest of your companions are trapped in the instant of a falling sword gleams like an opulent jewel amongst the ruined palace. The war rages all around, giant machines making the Skies fall in flaming sheets, not understanding that there are always more Skies besides. All the marvels of all the ages of this terrible future come here to die - except for you and your cavesnake weapon, a sharpened hunk of metal.

Your trial is to close the distance.

"EmberrrRRRRRR!!"

Dany does a frame-perfect pout and footstomp as Ember hoists herself up onto the counter to watch. Her hair is lank and still sticking to her scalp in places; her ears droop and her smile is weak. But she is here, because this deserves to be witnessed. She lies on her belly, head on her hands, feet tucked neatly over her hips, and watches: the kneading of the dough, the leaning on the crutch, the way that this Bella handles the dough with something like care and something like violence.

"We did it all for you, you know," she says, eventually, ignoring Dany's small hands insistently trying to slide her off the counter. "The running. To the stars. We wanted to give you something that was better than this, something you couldn't even dream of. Something bigger than croissants, even."

In her memory she is biting into a fresh pastry on an unusually sharp morning, memorizing how many people take which intersections as she chews, and the part of her that is not watching as a spy is flaring her nostrils to catch the scent of the hot tea wafting up from the mug, all white and molded like wool, a series of bumps easy to let the fingers slip into. In her memory she is seeking the company of Dolce even when she cannot remember him with anything but her heart.

"The croissant would have been easier, huh?" She's talking out loud, but in the way that a scout does. Drawing out. Watching. Tail thumping against her own thighs. "Because there's room for croissants in the world that's inside your heart here, right?" Watch the face. Watch the tell. Learn. Don't let your eye list out everything there is to know. Just practice seeing. Open your eyes and then open them again.

There's not room in the world of Bella-Whoever-She-Is, the one who scared Dany, for Bella-as-she-was to get a pastry like this, is there?

Get to the top and take the crown. Get to the top and kick the ladder down. Get to the top and become your wife's mom.

There's probably some sort of therapist back on Tellus who would have a banner day with that one.

She finally flops off the counter, forcing Dany to jump back - which she does. Even small Dany is more athletic than most people expect of her. She stares up at the ceiling, at the lights, at Dolce blocking part of the lights. "...I wanted a world where everyone could decide to make a croissant if they wanted. Does that...? Never mind." No sense in hammering it in. But, still. Good to say out loud.

Especially since Dany's here, too. You never know what you might be able to actually teach yourself here and there.

"There's no FU--"

She freezes. Her head turns sharply, following her ear, and Bella watches Dany through wary and calculating eyes. She clears her throat.

"I... simply refuse to believe it, Sir. How can something with such a complex aroma possibly be made of so few things? This, this doesn't make any sense."

Bella is a very proud girl. That makes her a very poor student. This is her ninth attempt so far, and it's the first one with even a chance of not being a total disaster. At first she didn't understand how temperature could matter before it went in the oven. It never had before! Then she freaked out every time she touched the dough because she felt it getting warmer.

...Then when she got in a good rhythm she overfolded it because she couldn't wrap her head around every layer not being the result of something she'd done individually. And after that she wouldn't stop staring at it until all the butter had melted out on the countertop. And now, after hours of waiting and arguing and finally deferring (and being extremely Not Mad when following instructions yielded better results than ignoring them) that she's finally ready to put something in the oven, she is questioning the recipe itself.

She tosses it in anyway with a look of glum dissatisfaction and turns away to stare at Ember. Only to immediately panic and look anywhere else. To look everywhere else. Her hands busy themselves with cleaning everything in sight: the workstation, the floor, her hair, and when she's done she's still too flustered by what she saw to trust her eyes. Somehow it's worse now that she's wearing the jacket. The clothing that is there only makes her mind race harder to think about the clothing that isn't. But what else could she give up without making things worse in the other direction?!

Her breath steams when she sighs. Just like XIII's. Her hands tremble as she worries at her tail.

"I... believe Milady is underestimating how difficult this croissant has been to make. A journey across the stars in rebellion of Empire and every dream I have ever held feels like play by comparison."

She attempts a laugh that turns into coughing before it can take hold. She sniffs the air to cover her embarrassment. She bends her ear to listen to the sounds of bread baking. The light crackling of the outer layer crisping through a pane of glass sends them into an uncontrollable flutter of excitement. It smells correct! It sounds correct! This is the part they'd always be at when she first walked into the kitchens! It's! It's really happening!

"I, I. I cannot believe she is allowing me to do this," Bella's voice is an awed whisper-tone that is too intense by half to not be overheard by everyone in the kitchen with her right now, "I was certain she would have killed you all by now. This cannot be real. Can it? It isn't supposed to be... I never get to be the one to, to!"

She reaches into the oven and pulls out her treat, oblivious to the heat on her arm and in her fingers. She is positive she has it right. But all she has is just the one. In all of this long struggle, that was all she was able to produce. There is not enough to share. She holds it up to Ember and Dany, and now she has the courage to look wherever she pleases. Her body is still trembling, but her eyes burn with golden fire.

"I..."

She looks down at the golden brown crescent in her hand. All the richness and delight and the texture that feels decadent to even just hold by herself. She turns her head back up, blazing like starlight.

"I am Bella," she says with the fury of rebellion, "Not her. Me. I matter, gods damn it! Why can't there be room for me?! I'll make it myself!"

She bites into the croissant from the top with a huge and distinctly unmaidenly chomp. Her fangs meet none of the expected resistance against the lighter than air confection. Her eyes grow wide and she lets the rest of it drop to the ground.

And she begins to cry.

Compassion.

Strange to think of it as a weapon, something with an edge. That's wrong, surely. A weapon, something meant to hurt, to kill? Compassion, a weapon, a thing of evil?

She leaps, tail arching as the arrow meant to wipe her from existence carves a furrow, a ditch, a gully, a canyon behind her.

No, that's wrong, too. A weapon is a tool like any other. A thing, to be put to use, no more evil than the hand that holds it.

Yeah, snorts the internal censor. By hurting and killing.

Cutting tools can do more than hurt, though. Not slashing and stabbing, but cutting and excising. It's just a surgeon's scalpel with more heft--solid in her hands, reassuring, weighty--to cut through centuries of hurt, to cut away the lies, to open the snare.

The blastwave would have lifted her off her feet were she not already in the air. As it is, it's less noise and more something that's felt on every scale of her body--immense pressure, apocalyptic heat, shrapnel that would have turned lesser mortals--strike that, less biomanced people--into so much minced paste.

For her, though, it's a blinding, deafening form of liftoff--she spreads her arms, straightens her tail, catches as much of it as she can, and curls into a somersaulting dive.

Cut away the lies. There are other ways! You have options! You can do a different thing! You're more, Hermes!

It takes her a few tries--tries she does not have--to account for the sword's weight.

See, there's the simple way to fall fast with a gravity rail. Point a gravity field below you--or sideways, or above you, that's the fun thing about gravity being an optional thing--and simply fall. Simple, easy, reliable.

Predictable. Slow.

The word is slingshot. To dive towards a moving gravity well, to sink towards the event horizon, and then--like grabbing a vine that isn't there, feeling the ache in your shoulder, except it's actually every joint that's screaming--to turn off the gravity at the moment of greatest momentum, and whip past it towards the next black hole. It's an old technique--so old that it's new again, almost.

Unpredictable, even for her. Terrifyingly, exhilaratingly fast.

Account for the sword. Figure out its weight. The sword is an extension of her body is an extension of gravity.

Forward, always forward, always forward! She is needed!

The croissant hits the floor. The crutch follows after.

He needs both his hands free.

Wool born for nobility, the stuff of the finest, softest blankets in all the palace, bundles up Bella in a hug. A squishing hug, for one so padded. A firm hug, for one so short. Even before he had to kneel on his good leg.

Cry all you wish; that which dried the eyes of a princess stands ready for your tears. Say as little as you like; he will say enough. “Well done. Well done.” He finds a little more strength, to squeeze, to help hold together this space she'd made. “I knew we’d find you.”

Dyssia!

All of Azura warfare has been founded on the principle of gravitation. Starships perform their maneuvers by banking off microsingularities. Citizens walk the Rail-Path their entire lives. Treatises are written, combat manuals disseminated, biomantically engineered species are seeded on laboratory worlds, given access to the Rail, and passively observed to see if there are techniques that the Skies' own cultural bias prevents it from learning. In all of time, no object has been as closely researched as the Grav-Rail.

And yet, sometimes there are heroes. Legendary figures like the Furnace Knight who stand alone against armies, sorcerers or even Gods. And with an uncharacteristic lack of curiosity, the Endless Azure Skies collectively shrugs its shoulders about it. Sometimes you just get a real fuckin' badass. They're probably a demigod. Society can but tremble before them.

You've done this a million times before. You've been on planets being moved by the Rail. You've never done it like this. Matter is not dead. Energy is not meaningless. A tool is not neutral. The only thing that has changed is your spirit, and that opens you to the infinite power of the spirit world.

The arrows formed from Hermes' fingers are not extensions of her body. The hollow where her heart should be does not pump blood from the wounds. Her eyes are stone carvings, painted green. The God of Travel has not taken a single step this entire battle. She has not moved beyond her tiny circle in centuries. As you move towards her with blade in hand, you feel more like Hermes than she does.

But that is not to say there is nothing inside her at all.

She draws her own swords from the flesh and bones of her hands. One long and one short, heads like arrows, tick-ticking as they clack against each other. She raises them in a gleaming parry, elongating the moment, straining parchment-dry flesh against your perfected vitality. Into the corpse left by the Goddess creeps the influence of the Titan, black and gold pouring from her head.

"You can leave," said Kronus. "You can take any path except for the one that goes through me."