Dyssia shatters like ceramic dropped from a kiln into a bed of ice.

That's it? Well done, have a cookie?

She should be panicking. She should be scrambling to hold this in, learn about this state, to figure out how it works. There should be a million voices in her head, only most of which were her own, thinking and examining and turning things over and looking for buttons to press.

It's quiet in here. It shouldn't be quiet in here.

She claws herself back up from the dirt, hauling on the crossguard of the sword as if it were a ladder, a piton, a crutch, as if the next step is not going to send her faceplanting back into the field of flowers spreading around her. 

Behind her, there's a quiet [i]ploof[/i] as part of Kronus's arm, inadequately secured by roots, falls to earth and sends up a plume of dust.

There should be thoughts about that--about whether the Titan is loose now to terrorize the underworld, and whether that was inevitable. 

She shakes her head as if to listen for loose change, and finds it eerily empty.

She should be. Should be iron, surely. Dropped glowing from the forge into the oil and finding hardness in it. 

But reds were always hard to judge, and temper and tempering were never her strengths, and being hard is. Is not the same as being strong, and.

She can't collapse. There are things to do. There are people to care for.

Propping herself up on her sword, Dyssia goes in search of her errant thoughts.