Nemesis cracks.

Reality cracks with it. The perfect, endless blue sky above fractures like glass, huge channels running along it, separating the stars and refracting light along its bleeding edge. This planet should not be here and, as the orbital ring detonates and falls apart, the chains binding it here begin to snap one after another. Through holes in the sky, blackest night becomes visible.

And it is a huge letdown.

One of the galaxy's greatest explosions is happening and, despite your front row seats, you do not get to watch it. Its explosion is literally transforming the most fascinating skybox in history into a boring standard night sky viewable from anywhere in the galaxy. If there is any consolation to be had it is that you must be cool girls of the highest magnitude not to look at this explosion.

Speaking of explosions not happening, you cannot help but notice you are not being turned into mincemeat by the Avatar of War and her god-cutting blade. Given the sheer, hellish weight that the Shogun had drawn around herself the idea that it would not happen quickly already seemed like an impossibly long shot - it takes genuine mental effort to even float the idea that it might not happen at all.

But sure enough, there she is. Standing in one of the last cracks in the sky, silver blade in hand, mark of Mars upon her brow - looking at you with a predatory grin before she touches her index finger to the brim of her hat and turns her back. She abandons the chase and leaps into the sky to rejoin her war fleet, turning her back on a screaming Aphrodite. Her people are about to embark on the greatest military campaign in galactic history and there is literally nothing the Gods can offer her she would prefer to that. And if Artemis had happened to whisper in her ear and remind her that she had signed no oaths to finish this Hunt, who could blame her? Those were just the facts.

And so the sky slams shut. The Plousios hovers above a ruined battlefield and shattered palace. And all about, a dull roar starts to raise. A sound like the ocean, but arrhythmic, scattered. Cheers. Applause. The ragged, mud-streaked and bloodstained defenders of the first world to ever survive Nemesis are emerging from their bunkers and bastions, looking up at skies emptied of wolves. In disbelief and shock and relief they embrace each other and give praise to the Gods. You do not know these people or their stories, how every one of them had been destined to die on this battlefield and give their bodies to the Cycle of Demeter. The colours of their banners, their noble traditions and codes of honour that set them against a storm that had burned across the galaxy for two centuries - it would take a lifetime to immerse in this culture and learn just how much this impossible miracle meant to them.

But it is not to be. The stars call, one final time.

Once before in her life, she had reached what she thought had been the edge of the galaxy. At the time she'd been filled with many emotions, but the strongest among them was relief. One way or another, she'd been certain the ordeal was over. Maybe that's why she had responded to the Rift by throwing a party.

This time all she feels is tired. And all she wants to do is stand somewhere quiet and watch the stars as she passes them by. She's out of wine to hand out anyway, and the stuff she does have is pure swill. She can call herself a Praetor all she wants, but that crown stopped buying much a long time ago.

And when even was the last time she'd stopped? Done proper repairs, rested at all, or even just did anything that wasn't administration, paperwork, or nearly killing herself in a fight she had no business winning? Fuck, what a stupid thought. She's not even there, doesn't even know if what she's looking for is there, and even when they finally reach Gaia how stupid would she have to be to think the worst was behind her this time?

No, she's got this one moment in a sea of constant turmoil and terror and all she can do with it is try to catch her breath. Naturally, she's wasted that moment baking croissants.

The room is filled with warmth and the smells of melting butter and rising pastry. She's been at it for hours, to the point where even after washing her hands clean they feel caked in flour and every other sticky fucking nightmare ingredient. They're all that she can taste in the air despite having not eaten any of them herself, or they would be if she hadn't just put on a pot of coffee. It's not like she'd made any mistakes; every attempt was as perfect as she knew how to make it, now that she did. It's just that she needed something better than perfect for what she wanted.

Bella sniffs the air around her coffee beans. She snatches up a large handful and grinds them to powder in her palm, setting them in a filter before deftly pouring the just-boiling water through the brown-black mass of them. Also a taught skill, which annoyed her to no end. But then, at least Dolce was interested in teaching. She'd send the rest of this to him, by way of thanks. Everything that's left after what she needed was finished.

She pours the coffee into a plain white cup. Then she sets a small bowl of sugar and a saucer of cream at exact forty-five degree angles behind it. She runs her palm across her various attempts at baking and lifts the one with the flakiest surface up to inspect it. Did she get it sufficiently crescent shaped? She frowns and sets it aside, picking through the lot four more times until one satisfies her. Onto the plate it goes. She adjusts the knife and the fork until they are perfectly aligned with the empty seat, and steps back with a sigh.

A final touch: she places a handwritten form requesting an audience with a goddess carefully to one side of the place setting, and then sits down opposite the whole arrangement.

"I cooked for your brother once before. And for Hera, when I wound up on Olympus. It just... didn't feel right, leaving you out. And I don't know how many more impossible tasks I have left before one gets me. I'm stronger now, so what's left must be harder than the whole rest of the trip put together.

"That's why I... wanted to know if you knew anything about me. Or... no, never mind. More, whatever it was I'm supposed to be, I wanted to apologize again for being such a fuckup instead. I, uh, realize now why you had no faith in me. I won't ask if anything's changed. You should just... take a moment here. That's all."

When Redana shows up, she's wearing a cape. Well, the cape's built into the double breasted Ceronian jacket, but it's still a cape. She deserves one here at the end, after everything. There are things she could have lost - there are things she has lost - and she is not going to let a cape for a princess-heroine be one of them.

She has been everyone: little girls and dashing princes, flustered dancers and plucky scouts, the thief and the bride. And now she's here. Standing, with a little smile, looking the wisest she's looked on the whole trip - or at least the most grown-up. She's holding a feasting board. It's handmade, but done with an eye for the details: meats high in fat and salt to put a patient to sleep, mellow half-cheeses to balance them out, a warm loaf of bread with sailor's butter in a bowl. The sort of food that would help with the process, once the unguents were chugged.

"Hi," she says, simply. Her hair's loose, falling in waves down to her shoulders. There's a fresh scent to it, one that even non-Ceronians might be able to pick up on. She has passed through the Acheron and come out the other side - less rejuvenated than her wife, but cleansed, none the less. She is present, and she is in control of her selves. "I brought this for him," she says, obviously, offering it with a casual grace. "How is he?"

The world is warm, and soft, and dim.

“My little lamb.~ It’s time for you to wake up.”

There is a pressure. There was pressure. There is. The line between is blurry. The gentle circles drawn through his wool stir through him, through a woolly puddle, without leaving so much as a ripple.

“That’s it. That’s it, my darling. Let me see those pretty eyes. Just for a few minutes.”

The world is warm, and soft, and brightening.

Vasilia is there to greet him. She rises above him, her tummy stretching off into the distance, off to her chest, and beyond, and beyond! Her face. Her face. His very favorite face. A little smudged. A little cloudy. Him. He. His. Body, seems to still be a puddle. Hrm.

“Shhhh, lie still. Don’t try and get up. I’ve got you. You are safe, my dear. You are safe, and you are mine. All mine.~”

Ah. Well. When she put it like that, not moving sounded rather sensible, didn’t it? He’d said as such himself. Well. He tried. All that came out was a soft, inquisitive bleat.

“I know. I know, sweet heart. You’ll be able to sleep again soon. And oh, what lovely dreams you’ll have. Not a single nightmare will get past me. But I need you to stay with me, okay?”

Of course. Of course he’d stay with her. She just told him not to move, didn’t she?

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee

“There’s that smile. There’s my darling. There you are. Now, it’s time for a little snack. You may not feel very hungry, but it’s quite important we get some food in you. Just lie back, relax, and I’ll bring it to you. Can you open wide for me, sweetie?”

He can. Oh, he can. It takes a bit of doing. He’s not sure if he’s doing it quite right. It’s hard, keeping his eyes and mouth open, all at once. He’s rewarded with a bite of something flaky, buttery, spread over with something savory, so savory…

“Well done, good lamb.~”

A cup of something hot, herbal, and just a bit sweet is placed at his lips, and he sips dutifully. She must have worked hard, she must have, to get him such nice treats…

“This will make you feel so, so much better, love. That’s it. You’re doing wonderfully. Eat up, dear heart.”

Bite, sip, bite, sip, and so it went, until there were no more bites, and no more sips. A long, hard day’s work.

“You did so, so good for me, darling. You can rest again now. Sleep. Sleep, and heal.”

The world is warm, and soft, and sinking.

“I will watch over you. And when you wake, I will be here. Sleep, and rest.”

There is a pressure. There was pressure. There was. The line between is blurry. The gentle kisses on his brow silence him, sink him, engulf him in a wooly puddle, leaving hardly a ripple.

She wishes she'd made notes.

That was the whole problem, wasn't it, was that the birds had been relentless. Their ideas, their beauty, their standards, fuck you for thinking your pitiful little ship could compare to a perfect shade of blue.

But on the other hand, it'd been--

She couldn't even tell, right? Could be years, could be decades, spent in a frozen instant aboard two ships. She knew its corners with the familiarity of someone who'd slept-walked through it, the ease of someone born and raised in it--how it should purr, where it rumbled, whence its veins and how to take its pulse.

She'd pulled it from her head and doodled it on the cushions of the couch, every line precise and accompanied with the proper measurements. Her couch was gone, you see.

"But who gets to decide what it should look like? And how is that decided?

"This is the ship as it was, yes. It's the ship I remember. But it's your ship too, and Dolce's, and Redana's, and so on and so forth for everyone on board this ship. Different rooms mean different things to different people, and different areas are important for different reasons.

"And if we did decide to restore it to this, then why not make some improvements? And what are the best? And who decides that?

"If we succeed, the Azure Skies will fall. Disintegrate, fall to pieces, find that all the pieces that keep its many plates spinning will be absent. Servitors, everywhere, absent their masters and the threat of species-wide genocide."

She glares at the diagram as if daring it to answer.

"I have a preference, of course. And I could trumpet it to the sky, insist that my version is superior--speak to leaders and cults and priests, exhort the masses that here is a superior vision, abandon the old and in with the new, and anyone who takes up arms against it must therefore need perish.

"… but I don't want to do that."

She sags back, careful not to let her tail disturb the paint.

"I don't want to be the new king. Don't want to wage war, and coerce, and enforce, and politick. I don't want to raise a similar empire with a different flag.

"But at the same time, what else is there? To simply retire, and let whatever I build for my friends be demolished by the next Johnny-come-lately without my morals about death and destruction?"

She buries her face in her coils, and when she emerges she's both staring at the diagram and seeing none of it.

"I just want to build a world where violence not only isn't the default, but isn't even viable. Where 'do what I say or I will employ a man to hit you with a stick' isn't the underlying threat of every civilization. Where people can choose what to do, what to be, without biomancy or the gods or administrator species deciding for them.

"But there has to be a way to achieve that in a way that isn't just accepting its downfall in advance or becoming a bloody warlord myself, right?"

There has to be a way.

Together you enter the Solar System.

It is like coming home after a very long journey. As you approach the door all of that exhaustion starts to hit. Not just yours, the entire bloodline's from the moment it passed through that vast and intricate protogate into the far beyond. Ever since humanity left its cradle for the stars it invited upon itself a dream of infinite labour. Ever since then everything related to you spiraling back a million generations has sweated and struggled and fought to bring order to the cosmos. Adam was not cursed for leaving the Garden, he was cursed by leaving the Garden.

And in this moment you feel it. You feel it all, in the promise of an ending. You feel the people who you used to be down a spiraling double-helix staircase of reincarnation. You feel the weight only in the possibility of getting to lay it down. This impending relief is exquisitely painful; you feel the weight, and you feel too the anxiety. What if this is not as you have left it? What if it is dirty, or violent, or broken? What drove the people to leave this place in the first place? Has it grown worse? What if all of the outside world has somehow gotten inside and it isn't like your soul remembers it to be?

Nine planets. One small, yellow sun. Everywhere the infrastructure of a civilization that had outgrown its nest.

Start with the first, your arrival point: the planet of Pluto. Once it had been a mere planetoid, but the vast network of refueling and interstellar launch stations that had been constructed around it nudged it up a category. A quantum catapult; a crude precursor to the Gateway Network that bound the galaxy together in the Age of Knights - but now its time has surprisingly come around again as it seamlessly plugs into the modern network of Slipgates that holds together the Endless Azure Skies. As old and wan as its beacon might be, the Plousios slides in through it smoothly and frictionlessly. The former planetoid below is a nightmare pipe junction, refinery spaghetti of endless liquid and chemical flows built in real time by engineers trying to debug their mad machinery.

Once, long ago, enormous fleets had passed through this gateway, carrying the ambitious explorers of humanity with them. They never came back. They spread their civilization across a million stars but they never looked back here. There were no resources to exploit after all. There was no art or history; what little had survived the aeons had been piled aboard the journeying fleets and secured in the vaults of the Tunguska. What use had humanity for its own eggshells at a time when the galaxy lay at its feet?

And so the wreckage of civilization drifts silently around Pluto. Nobody has disturbed this gateway since. It passed into memory, and then into dream, and then into oblivion aeons ago. That was how it met Hades who had cast a funeral shroud over this living corpse and tried to take it into himself. You can feel that knowledge, that yearning alongside your own; the box deep within the Plousios, the message for this place untouched by the Skies, starts to call out as you draw close. Down through this museum and graveyard and forgotten world. Counting down to three.

At any other moment of her journey, Bella would have called this place a twisted nightmare shitheap. It would be easy to look at a primitive and abandoned scrapyard like this and see exactly what she just tried to frame it as.

But instead, her hand presses up against the window. Her face follows soon after. Her eyes dance to follow every pipe to the end of its chaotic pathway and guess where it might pop out from a tangle of the other ones. Her ears twitch with delight when she thinks about the design of this place, this incredibly ancient monument to forgotten dreams and how it might have accidentally lent itself just so to welcoming her ship here today and the idea of it makes her want to double over with laughter.

"This!" she cries out to Dyssia as if to answer her, "This is what I saw on the Tunguska! These are the toils of people who painted their movies in flowing crystals! The same hands that built this gate must have danced across their festival halls in search of shark effigies to please the gods! Oh, Dyssia! Wonders like you've never known! I didn't think I'd see them here on the other side! I can't believe how... beautiful everything they made was!"

She has to pry herself away from the view. It is surely one of Artemis' impossible labors for her that she must focus her attention now on this diagram of the Plousios and a conversation about Empires. She stretches out her gauntleted hand and watches the claws curl like daggers from her fingertips.

"You know I... spent a lot of my life thinking I was meant to be a slave. Though I didn't use that word. It was always 'pet'. Imperial Pet. I was proud of that, until Redana left when I couldn't bring myself to follow. I didn't know whose orders to obey. And then I got kicked out anyway and learned about all sorts of shit that made the idea of being that thing I was disgusting.

"Do you know what it's like? To not know who you are? I thought I was following instincts hard coded into me like everyone else, but then my situation shifted just a little and I had to accept the fact that I wasn't following shit."

She smiles, and sticks her talons into the couch. The sound of tearing fabric is soothing in the same way that all the wounds she used to inflict on her own hands had been. She flexes her fingers, in and out, in and out, and watches small chunks of cushion fall away.

"So then I poured over my memories for a while, and I thought about some conversations I'd had with the Empress. I didn't realize we were talking at the time, but with all this new knowledge I had suddenly it clicked that she'd been looking right at me the whole time. That Her Majesty Nero had hopes for me! And after that I thought I was meant to be in charge. Destined for a crown. Tch. Gods damned moron."

Bella lifts her hand up and turns her gaze away to watch Pluto some more. The expression in her eyes softens once again, and she turns those pools of liquid gold onto the woman caught in permanent existential crisis in front of her. Hello there, kindred spirit.

"Every time I reach a new point in my life, I look back over what I've done. What I've been. What I've said and thought. And those are exactly the words that come to mind. Gods damned moron, shit for brains, fucking idiot. I'll tell you this Dyssia, if you go on to try and found a new civilization after the collapse of the one we've got, I'm not going to be a part of running it. Because I..."

She lifts her head and looks around. Looks at the depths of space outside, at the thing the Plousios has become, and then back down at the memory of what it had been before a flock of birds had come along and delivered orders that clearly knew better. She sighs.

"I've been thinking about it. This isn't an answer or anything, but I've been wondering if it's necessary to build anything at all. Do you know what I mean? Just look at this ship. We could put it back the way it was, or we could make it better, or we could... not. Eventually, all of the stuff in here that annoys people is gonna get pulled apart and put back together in some way they like better. Does that scale? Fuck no! But who gives a shit? What do any of us need with more than one planet?"

She steps away to press her face against the window again. She wants to watch. Wants to see. Wants to wonder. It's so peaceful, it's a promise like nothing she's ever felt.

"I want to see Gaia. I want to see what got left behind, even more than I want to be done with all of this. I know that something horrible is waiting for me there. Maybe it's what finally kills me. But even so, I want the answer. If hands like mine are meant to build things. And if there's something more to life that could make me look at the person talking to you here and think, 'oh you fucking idiot'. I think I can live with any new world. If I can just have that."

You’d think Redana would be unstoppable right now, wouldn’t you? Charging about hither and yon, getting everything shipshape, asking people seven times a day if they’re excited about reaching Gaia, making a list of everything she’s going to do once she’s wished for the freedom of all humanity, and then dragging her pack to a tea party?

Sure, you’d think that. But while she is throwing herself into the work of getting everything shipshape, it’s a return to being an engineer. Everything in the ship got taken apart and put back together, and someone’s got to make sure everything got put back together the right way, map out where everything is, and start dimming the engine’s output so that they don’t slam heartily into Gaia at the other side of the system. There are more Silver Divers following her than you might expect.

Stories spread about our Redana, after all. What she did on Portugal. What she did in the heart of her wife. How they slew a monstrous hydra of the underworld together. How she stole her own guard and the heart of her own maid and sailed across the stars accompanied by pirates and songbirds.

Can you blame her for trying to learn something new?

Well, partially new. The Silver Divers had taught her how to make quick sketches of enemy-held positions from memory, how to erase those sketches just as quickly, how to make a topographical map by eyeballing it. They didn’t teach her this thing which she is trying to do.

She draws.

Not well. She makes faces at the gulf between what she is trying to depict and the reality of it outside. She has to take rides on her horse, to look down at the tangled nightmare maze of what humanity once made of this comaratively far-flung rock, and then she must return and in her chambers put down onto the page what she remembers. Sometimes the lines are quick, an impression of the clutter, jagged lines implying the great press of weight upon itself. And sometimes the lines are not anywhere near what she wants, and she makes a face, and she tries again.

And she tries again.

And she tries again.

She should have been doing this the whole trip, something whispers in the back of her head. It’s too late to start now. One day she’ll have forgotten half of what’s happened to her. Maybe it’s already started. How would she know if it started?

That’s when new subjects start being incorporated. Sketchier, because she’s drawing from memory – from an impression. From what she remembers. The first person who comes out is blocky, mighty-armed, and has the kindest face she can put down onto the paper. The next has a beautiful shock of plumage and round cheeks. The heroines at the end of the world, with more attention lavished on their teaset rather than the reality of those daring pilots. A film reel. Owls and mice. Monsters. Broken and vivid robots.

None of them real. None of them accurate. All of them drawn from what she’s pulling out of herself as the Plousios drifts towards an ending, as an apology for not saving them all earlier, for leaving people in her wake, for having her eyes on Gaia – which must be out there, somewhere, ahead of them all.

Brightberry has coached her on this.

It's bad to not listen to your conversation partner--to skim through the sounds, listening for keywords while spending most of your brain cycles on planning a response, or--hold on, hold on, you asked a question, I have an answer, come on, stop talking and let me answer, and--

But on the other hand, it's unsettling to receive her full attention--to suck words and sound and meaning from the air and absorb it like a sponge, all while unblinkingly staring at your conversational partner.
The trick, see, is to find something else to look at while not also getting distracted by the thing you're looking at.

It feels so lonely here. Hopeful, too. This is where the map used to read Here There Be Dragons, and then humanity built, and spread, and stepped out into the skies. She can almost envision the ships, flitting between the fueling pipes, plovers dancing and welding.

She's silent, too, after Bella stops talking. Not thinking about the conversation means absorbing it and trying to understand it and then assemble the flotilla of words.

"I don't want to build an empire."

And that's a true statement, she decides, turning it over from each angle and inspecting the words for faulty rivets.

"I'd be happier with just the one planet, just my planet, just our planet."

She takes a deep breath as if about to jump into a pool of water where, knocking around the edges, she can see the floes of ice.

"And when I first met you, a knight had rocked up to your one planet and was in the process of strip-mining it, just because it was the most convenient source. When first I left my home, it was because the Pix showed up and threatened to glass the planet if they didn't get a sacrificial maiden. When we went to the Portuguese, we were coming to their just our planet, along with two other factions. Thank the gods that Nemesis is gone, because that was an entire megastructure designed entirely to import and fuck up any random someone's just our planet.

"And none of those people were even doing it because they particularly hated us! They barely knew we existed until we ruined their plans, and then we had to hide inside a star to avoid them until the heat died down!"

She stares out at the wreckage of pipes.

"It almost makes me want to change my wish--that, instead of the fall of the empire, instead of disassembling the whole assembly and letting the pieces fall where they may, I should wish for.. You know, a way for people to remain hidden. To have just one planet, outside the reach of anyone else. To remain outside the sight of even the gods. A casque of invisibility the size of a planet, where those tired of their designated places can find the themselves that can look back on the idiots they were without worrying about needing to constantly be on the run."

She pauses, reviews the sentence, and decides, "The wording will need some work, obviously."

Vasilia isn’t here, and that took some doing. By oratorical flourish, direct orders, and some bribery, she admitted that the care her husband deserved required her to take the occasional break. There are no shortage of volunteers to cover for her.

He sleeps well in Redana’s presence. He watches her rides through the viewports, following the fastest star in the sea. He watches her draw. He listens to the stories behind every sketch. He eats from her hand. He rests by her side.

He is quieter these days. Odd, isn’t it? That you could expect noise from Dolce, and stumble on the silence. But there it is. He is fine. He is well, considering the circumstances. He is not upset. He is not in pain. Just. Quiet.

“We could have never left.”

The observation comes unprompted. It has nothing to do with the intricacies of heroic tea parties. Maybe.

“The Starsong didn’t have to arrive when they did. Tellus didn’t have to have a ship you could commandeer. We wanted to go. We were blessed with the choice.”

His gaze stretches far. He sees the platforms. He sees the pipes. He sees the scraps, the only ones with orbits stable enough to remain. He sees the tiny sheds, tucked away in the tangle, where ancient tools still wait for their owners’ return. He sees a yellow dot, and he sees planets in the distance, so few of them left, and he sees, he sees, he sees. His mouth works, silently, as he struggles to put words together. His little chest heaves.

“That was my wish. Starting out. That everyone would have the same chance we did. Leave. Go. Find someplace, find people, get away. Get away, if they needed to. That was my wish. But I had to let it go, along the way.”

He finds Redana. It takes some doing.

“I don’t think it should get lost. I don’t know if somebody ought to find it. Don’t, don’t forget. Please. Don’t forget…”

Jupiter - the old name for the King of the Gods. It is surrounded by moons and drenched in meaning. Not only does every one of the eighty eight surviving moons have a name, it has a legend; a story of one of Zeus' many lovers, still orbiting her celestial form. And it is at war.

Not a war as any of the Tellurians might recognize it, but one that makes an instinctive sense to Dyssia. This is a pretend war. Across the surface of many moons robotic crawlers move, recycling fields of debris and setting up factories, command nodes and fortresses. They orbit clockwise, because on the other side of the moons is a constantly shifting front line as heroic individuals tear through endless mechanical hordes. Your lenses cannot make out specifics at this distance, other than that it is few against many.

There is a network of long distance beacons surrounding the warzone with a rosetta stone worth of warning messages. The scribes and analysts aboard the Plousios make extremely rapid work decoding this archaic series of languages, and once a Plover is dispatched to investigate they find a series of large synthpaper instruction manuals attached to the outside of the beacons. Bringing one back and working through the language sequences, a message is uncovered:

THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOUR.
NO HIGHLY ESTEEMED DEED IS COMMEMORATED HERE.
THERE ARE NO DANGERS THAT MIGHT SPREAD, AND NO TREASURES WORTH SEIZING.
THIS IS A MEDICAL FACILITY AND THE PEOPLE HERE ARE ILL.
THE SICKNESS IS OF THE MIND.
THESE PEOPLE REQUIRE AN ENEMY TO FIGHT AGAINST.
IF AN ENEMY IS NOT PROVIDED, THEY WILL INVENT ONE.
WE OBSERVE THESE PEOPLE CLOSELY.
SOME RECOVER FROM THEIR ILLNESS AND ARE RETURNED TO SOCIETY.

From there, the text goes into details about the specifics of the game. It is a dizzyingly complicated situation, overseen by a powerful digital intelligence. The open war is only a small part of it; there is also a transcendentally complex civilian side based around investigation and paranoia. Symbolism is encoded everywhere, chains of meanings that reveal reptilian infiltrators shape-shifted into human form. Some are given powerful combat armour and placed in a hostile alien environment behind Enemy lines where their full attention can be given to survival, others train and lead swarms of perfectly obedient robots to expand their territory and claim further resources, others act as inquisitors searching for the wicked infiltrators amongst the civilian population (which is itself 99% comprised of infiltrators).

There is a second layer to the game. Though the Enemy is designed to appear faceless and mindless, if carefully observed an observer might notice clues that they are capable of intelligence, kindness, empathy, romance and peace. A patient who pursues these clues and begins to seek rapprochement with the Enemy is placed on a story path where this empathy is validated and developed further. Notably, simply switching binaries - the Enemy is good and Society is bad - is not sufficient to 'win'. An inmate is to develop an appreciation for complexity and nuance before being allowed to graduate.

In all, the disease the moons of Jupiter seem to be attempting to cure is evil. Across eighty eight moons, paranoia, greed and violence is controlled and channeled while subtle lessons about empathy and virtue are taught to those with ears to listen. It is not quite the Kingdom of Hades, or the Thousand Hells of ancient folklore, but it represents a genuine effort from the people of the Solar System to build one of their own. And...

There is a shadow there. A chill. A memory of home. Those of you born of the Underworld instinctively recognize that this is a temple and a prayer, and for the first time since you came into the burning hot summer of this galaxy you can feel the touch of home. This edifice has made a link with the Underworld and driven back the eternal blessing of Demeter's summer. Beneath the gaze of Jupiter any death will be final, sending your souls to the underworld rather than transfigured into vibrant new life. You did not realize how hot the stars had been until you stepped into this cool shade.

She has never seen anything more beautiful in her life.

It is not the colors of this place, which are muted and unremarkable next to the glittering perfection of the galaxy she has passed through. It is not the kindness of this place, or even the fact that there are people here of some sort and signs of a wider civilization when all that she'd expected to see was barren rock and ancient ruins.

It is the quiet. When she bends her ears toward Jupiter, she cannot hear anything over the hum and bustle of the Plousios no matter how hard she focuses on it. She can tell, less as a matter of instinct and more the simple singing of her heart, that even if she were to go outside and return the scripts to those beacons she would still hear little besides her own ship. All of this in spite of the motion and violence she can plainly see washing like the tides back and forth across the surface of the planet. The pointlessness of the violence is not something is equipped to understand, but the intimacy and silence of it is a message just for her.

Bella fills her mind with flashes of darkness, merciless prowling owls, and mice scurrying about without the luxury of making a sound. She feels the touch of gentle hands tapping deep and connective messages against her wrist, and the reassuring squeeze of a subordinate she had never had the courage to call her friend. Jil's name is on her lips before she chokes it back with a wet sob.

It is the cold. How could she have gone so long and so far and not realized how hot it had been? Had she simply grown so used to sweating that she forgot it hadn't been normal? Even the extreme heat of XIII only felt so because of the general coolness of the realm of Hades. The difference between a fire and a star. But in this place there is Death. In this place there is shade. Which means that in this place there is a place for her and for her sisters, and for the goddess who could not love any of them the way they wanted her to. She feels it on her fur and it soothes her. She presses her palm against the window as she drifts past and it almost hurts to keep it there. When she laughs, when she gasps, when she shivers it all fogs the pane with the heat of her own breath and the contrast is more magical, more wondrous, more beautiful than the entire edifice of the Endless Azure Skies at the peak of its splendor.

Bella drifts into the sea of memories again: empty palace halls and the claustrophobic city streets that lay beyond them. Cloudcuckooland playing in a (nearly) empty theater and the little snores of a sleepy friend who couldn't quite make it to the climax. A glass of wine filled to the brim with sweet majesties enjoyed from her perch on an old emperor's throne, watching the mad dance of machines that could not be told to stop their war. An empty kitchen, devoid of order yet filled to bursting with fields of the sweetest grains and seeds her imagination had yet learned to tantalize her with. And then, another film reel, clattering as it strikes the floor, rolling in smaller and smaller and smaller circles until someone--

Her tears sting as sweetly as crying is meant to. The soothing tones of remorse, felt fully at last, and the hiccups of breath that means she is alive and capable of love. She has never felt like this before, and so until this moment had no language or sense to be able to describe what it was that she was missing. But now the warm drips sting against cold cheeks. Now she presses her hand close against her mouth to hide the sounds of her wails from this sacred place, and she sees the truth of her emotions mist outwards from between her fingers.

"I," she chokes, "I! I've..."

Silence. It presses against her body like a dagger in the night sky. A sight she loves. A sight she misses. And yet a sight she feels no call to return to now that they have forever passed beyond one another's reach.

"I've come so far. I've done so much. And I, I'm," her fingers tremble and tap staccato against her jaw with the fear of even saying it, "I'm still alive."

A miracle. It is a miracle. She is a miracle. For the first time in this long journey, she understands the impossibility of herself from every angle and across every line of thought. For the first time she can see how impossibly long the journey really was; these years and years of single-minded pursuit of a goal she did not quite understand. And yet, for all the miracles of first Imperial and then Azura engineering, for all the work that had been trivialized it had still been a journey she could measure most of her life against. Every moment that had threatened to cut her path short. Every scrap of luck that had seen her slip just past it, instead. Every cry in her heart to give up and accept that she had failed which she had somehow in spite of all the weakness inside of her never once quite committed to. The blessing of every kiss she'd stolen from destiny's ugly jaws and the white hot lance of every betrayal and hurt she'd turned on all the people that she loved.

And then, like lightning from Olympus, the full weight of the lesson strikes her.

What was it she'd said? That nobody could possibly need more than a planet? A planet?! What the fuck was she thinking? Mosaic had never had a planet! Beri was not Bitemark, and Bitemark was certainly not Beri! A village! The beach! And a mountain nearby which had belonged to an entirely different people! More beyond she'd never even taken the time to see! What was... how could she have been this blind? In crossing a galaxy, had she really not noticed just how stupendously gigantic everything she passed by really was? It was just like the heat and the cold. It was just like breathing, and pretending to. It was just like...

"Fuck." she concludes.

No more trembling. No more tears. She wipes the signs of her struggles and revelations off her face with the back of her hand and vanishes from the room in an eye blink in search of something she can write this idea down on. It has to be perfect, so she can pass it on. The wish that Dyssia had danced around, but hadn't quite been able to express. Wasn't this the answer? How could Empire stand to be, how could knights stand to work at their ridiculous and opulent bullshit little projects if they could only feel the weight of what Bella understood just now?

There was one other thing she'd said, once. That things could never be even between her and Redana. And she'd had that completely backwards, too. The stars! The stars! How in the fuck could Bella ever be worthy of a gift like that?! All at once she starts to laugh, and the sounds of her delighted cackling echo through the entire ship.

"Is it weird that I don't hate this?"

Dyssia's face doesn't quite know which expression it's trying to make, and the way it's being pressed against the glass isn't helping any.

"Because on the one hand, I've spent my whole life raging against anyone being put into a place, right? Into a slot, into a role, against their will. Being told by someone else, thus far and no further. And this looks like that, but on a massive scale.

"But it doesn't feel like it."

Binoculars. Telescopes. Something better than the ship has. She has to see closer, her mind can't rest until she sees closer.

Almost without thinking, she peels the metal rim off a pot-lid and starts polishing the lid into the shape of a parabola.

"What it feels like is--

"See, this is pre-everything, right? Pre-Atlas, Pre-Knights, Pre-ELF. A nascent culture, reaching for the stars, and thinking, even now, of how to perfect society."

She considers herself in the mirror of the potlid.

"No, no, that's wrong. How to perfect people. How to coax them away from greed and ambition and power, and towards kindness, caring, not because they have a role to fit into to make some magos' project work, but because they're. They are society, and society is worse off for having people who are not kind, are not generous, are evil selfish little shits."

She looks up, seemingly remembering.

"Sorry, we were. We were discussing something else, I think, and I've gone and derailed the conversation. What were you saying?"

It's harder to draw here. The energy of the planet below... no, it's not that. Even if she can't capture it, can only get across squiggles that become angles that she adds little dots between, trying to convey what's going on down there: the final glorious battle of people who need dragons, or people who are trying to become dragons, who can't stop themselves from fighting, who...

Who are very Ceronian.

If an enemy is not provided, they will invent one. Isn't that the way of Ceron? To always be looking for a new challenge. Always pitting yourself against someone, and discovering whether they are weaker or stronger than you. If weaker, then good, bully and tease and steal. And if stronger, then use them to sharpen yourself, to become better, to become worthy.

Maybe that's why she's tempted to go down there. To challenge herself again. To learn what inside her isn't good enough, still - or was that sufficient, being reflected against herself so many times inside of Bella? To lose at infiltrating. To win at teaching them how to be a little kinder, a little better, a lesson she never truly noticed.

Or maybe it's the chill. The familiar feeling settling into her bones. Comfort and safety, in their own ways. She's never let either hold her back for long, but... would it be such a bad thing to linger here a little, Bella? Where it's easier to hear your heartbeat and feel your breath? Where things feel...

Right.

Another itch. It's harder to draw here. Sometimes she catches herself in reverie, and sometimes she has to get up and pace, and the pacing turns into running, and the air is cool on her skin, and she talks herself out of descending and helping, as best as she can, to contribute to the work of Jupiter. This isn't quite right. But Gaia's getting closer by the hour, by the minute, by the second slipping past her, and Jupiter's another part of it.

They aren't ready for the stars yet. But one day they will be.

What if they needed a guide?

What if they all need...

Somewhere, a beloved bride is writing. And Dany sits nearby and draws stars. Draws hands. Draws her wedding ring.

Isn't it funny how this whole time she thought she knew what she was going to wish for?

Eventually, the pens get put down, rather mutually. Bella always was good at sniffing secrets out. Maybe they linger a while on certain sketches, and then the sketchbook gets set neatly on the desk next to Bella's journaling.

In the cool of the underworld, there are secrets which can only be learned in the dark. And one of them is: You were following me and now I'm following you. And another is: We both want to help, deep down. And another is: I love you, and I love you, and I love you. I have seen your weakness and your strength, and I still want you.

And I'll say it over and over again.

Dyssia!

There is a stirring, deep in your coils.

“It’s okay. It helped me put my thoughts in order.”

Scales sensitive to heat, to pressure, to vibration, to moisture, all work in concert to paint you a picture of whatever little creature you’ve got wrapped up tight. He’s drawing full breaths now. His throat’s a bit scratchy. His face is dry. His arms are wrapped tight around a book, his copy of the ancient instructions, hugging it to his chest with what strength he’s got. All the rest of him is obediently limp.

“I wish I could stay here.”

All of him burns. Or has been burning. Or has burnt. It’s difficult to tell.

“I wish I’d found this place and these people sooner.”

He will not run. He cannot struggle. If released, he would stay where he fell. This is a creature run down to exhaustion. This is a creature who knows their place.

“All of this is for the sake of the prisoners here. All of it is for them. But they’re not supposed to stay here forever. They get to leave. It wouldn’t be right, otherwise.”

“Not everybody can leave, or run away to someplace better. Not everybody can build a home where they’ve been born. Please, if you can, could your wish account for those people too?”

He is remembering.

He is wishing.

He is burning.

The conclusion is so obvious, perhaps your tail is already at work. A coil or two around sheep and book to take the strain off his arms. Gentle squeezes all over, slowly working up and down. He must be kept here. He must be held tight. He must never think he is alone.

Mars. The Red Planet. Physical manifestation of the God of War - a traditionally masculine figure in human conception. So when humanity took that cold, lifeless, sterile desert and forced it become beautiful, verdant and fertile, just like its big sister Terra, one might consider that to be planetary-scale force feminization. The theological implications are almost too much to consider.

The original business case for the colonization of Mars was always incoherent. There was nothing there except for the idea that it was not Earth. Early colonization processes were initiated out of ideology; the mass of solar mirrors were constructed over the shouts of the starving, water-comets were diverted to impact the surface in a clear defiance of market pricing signals. It was not done as a thing of reality, it was done as a matter of pride, ideology, and fantasy. The first great arcologies where all currency was decentralized and all potential migrants were tested for IQ, agreeability and cultural backgrounds erupted from crimson soil like a tumor on the flag of the workers. Great banners went up declaring the success of the mission. A parade was held. They had finally made Mars Great.

It wasn't even one generation later before they had begun plans to colonize Alpha Centauri. They were going to do it better this time, after all - with none of the mistakes that had ruined Mars.

But the thing about the follies of the wealthy is that given enough time and distance from the whip, they can become beautiful in their own right. Once the dust has set in and the flowers have grown and the palace is annexed by the state and opened to the public, the selfishness and cruelty fades away and it can stand revealed for what it is: an unreal place. A dreaming place. A place not and never of this world, made with tools utterly insufficient for the task. And so it is with Mars. It stands today as a unique achievement: A Second Earth.

With the landscape rendered into an exact climatological copy of pre-Industrialization Earth, seeded with animals resurrected from digital vaults, and then left abandoned, unobserved and unshaped, Mars is one big ecological sanctuary and natural park. Here evolution works red in tooth and claw as it did before it stumbled on the final miracles of opposable thumbs and crab pincers. Zebras walk the plains. Elephants tear down trees. Species populations spread and collapse. Mass extinction events pass unremarked upon. Someday, perhaps, humanity will evolve again from first principles - all the conditions that allowed it to happen the first time are still in place. But Mars itself is indifferent to its future; it simply plays the hand the cosmos has dealt it, a blind watchmaker left unemployed by the recession.

And there's something grand about that. A whole second Earth; a do over for every species wiped out by human hands - not as pets, not as zoo animals, as heirs to their own world. It's something out of a dream; that time humanity mortgaged its present to give uncomprehending and ungrateful animals a world of their own.

And in the thousands of years since, they've never come back for what they were owed. There are no tourist shuttles, or safari adventures, or even observation satellites. Mars simply continues on her way, no more and no less than the final stop before Earth.

"What..." Bella's voice is barely more than a whisper, "...Was that?"

It has been an eventful afternoon.

The very moment the dropship opened up, Bella's mouth had fallen open in wonder. Only one other time in her life had she beheld a field of grasses and flowers this vibrant or fragrant, and it had fallen utterly short of the magnificence of this day. To call it perfumed would be a lie, to call it a portrait would be an insult. The myriad dotted reds and purples and yellows popping out of the green-brown-orange grasses had no discernible pattern to them, because nobody had arranged them. It could not be called a garden because it served no master to begin with. And when she'd seen the first butterfly, Bella had thrown herself on the ground with delight and refused to move from the spot until she was certain she'd counted every kind in the field.

When they found a waterfall it was another moment where everything had fallen still to appreciate the rush of the current more. Watching fish breach the surface at the bottom where the foam gave way to clearer waters, Bella's tail twitched with ancient instincts she did not know she possessed. It took every part of her willpower not to pounce on them from a hundred meters up. The last time she had seen anything like this she'd only been able to view it in comparison to Nero's Tellus, but the presence of life here shook even her oldest memories free from her thoughts. It could no longer be looked at through the lens of what was 'allowed'. As if existence were a question of legality or political influence.

She could hardly move through the forest for all of her twirling and leaping. To the top of what seemed like every tree; to peer at the leaves in their hundred patterns with wonder and curiosity and to laugh at the top of her lungs every time she startled another bird. To sniff at the many kinds of bark and learn the scents of sap and how it compared to the nectar of a flower, and to bend her ears to catch every paw and talon as it stalked them through the foliage. This, she told Redana, was a world she had dreamed of. In her worst moments it would come to her, this place of a trillion noises that still felt like silence, and when it filled her mind it was the only time she could steal real rest from the Palace. She spoke of it without even grimacing or glaring at anything.

But now, her finger points at empty space ahead of a plain of chest high grasses. There not moments ago was a creature she had never seen. A magnificent beast and proud, covered from tip to tail in soft, spotted fur and walking on four legs. Its head had sported a pair of sensitive, triangle shaped ears that had lifted to comical height when it sensed the pair of them. She had stared into its slitted, jewel-green eyes, watched its back hunch and its long tail lower as it dug its claws into the earth. At once predator and prey. At once majestic and delightful. Equally ready to spring forward or backward, equally likely in its demeanor to welcome or repel. It felt so far above the pair of them in its attitude, and then it had vanished without a sound as if it too could will itself across distances without the need for motion.

"What was that?" she says again, "Do you think it has a name?"

Bella looks at Redana, her eyes full of awe.

"They could try for a thousand years to engineer a Servitor that would rival that... creature and never come close to it. Dany, I can't - what was - can you even - without..."

Words fail her, and she takes the woman next to her into her arms and starts to cry. Redana feels both warmer and cooler, softer and firmer, but above all more real to her than she ever has before. She squeezes, teases out the shape of muscles with her fingers and takes deep breaths of that rich golden hair, more soothing than its ever been even with the scent of roses washed out of it forever. She feels hands against her back, and releases a purr from deep inside her throat.

She has never felt more Human in her life.

Dyssia hauls herself from the surf like a kaiju that's just heard about sushi and is in a hurry to try it.

"Dolce there's so muczhfack!--"

Cursing and laughing and splashing at the waves, she hauls herself just far enough that she won't get slapped with the spray again, and tumbles, giggling like a lunatic, to sprawl on the sand.

"There's so much down there!"

The words burble out like an excited stream--about how the light disappears the further down you go, about how your senses turn to nothing but heat and scent and electricity and actually do you have the electricity sense or not, she's never sure who has the electricity sense, and the pressure! Like being squeezed from all directions by the world's biggest weighted blanket, or the better kind of vacbed, and--And the tubes, at the very bottom! Plumes of smoke! There was this thing that was all eyes and tentacles and it was very handsy, and the reefs! Like a rainbow dancing with a million smaller rainbows! There's a fish like a plate down there that's just the chillest thing ever and--

She stares up at the sky, focusing on nothing at all.

"There's too much, Dolce. I could spend a decade exploring one reef, and till not know a tenth of everything there is to know. About that one area! There's an entire planet!"

Her face is a novel in large print. She's…

She's just one person. Very small in the face of all of this--less than a drop in the ocean.

"Bella's right, I'm realizing. Just one planet--who could use all of one planet? Who needs all of one planet? Who can even understand just the one planet--hold it in their head, understand everything about it, truly claim it as their own to be their homestead? Can hold billions of people and say 'these are mine, now and forever'?"

It's a very large wish for such a small person.

She keeps staring at the sky for a few more seconds, and then rolls onto her tummy to stare up at Dolce. The process is extensive and takes a few long seconds to fully reach the outlying regions of the tail.

"Have you figured out your wish already? We're nearly there, after all."

Don’t be fooled by how Redana can’t hold still, not until she’s weighed down by her wife in her arms. It’s not that she’s impatient, you must understand, and it’s not that she’s bored— it’s just that this is her paradise, too. If she can’t keep her eye on one butterfly in particular, it’s because she’s noticed all of them, and if she can’t hold still to count them all, it’s because she’s noticed the flowers they spring lightly on, and the birds which prey upon them, and the rustles of the grass in the wind.

Also, she’s Ceronian. She is doing a very good job stifling the urge to run feckless and wild and free until she’s tuckered out, and she doesn’t even eat any weird bugs, which is— well. Let us not besmirch Ceronian honor. It would be quite beneath them. Even if the bug was particularly weird and interesting. She’s not going to do it.

“This must be the last test,” she muses aloud at one point, one specific point, as Bella follows small squeaking creatures from hole to hole, whipping her head around as they continue to taunt her from just out of reach. “A place no one would ever want to leave.”

But she does. She wants to go and get her sketchbook and fail at drawing for another hundred years. She wants to punch a tree in order to get wood enough to build a shelter. But even that might be too much to bring here, a terrible curse which would inevitably bring cities and farms and nature preserves and extinctions. Not that she thinks in those terms precisely, but that is the shape of the shudder that runs through her as she rests her knuckles against a tree which droops its long hair over the water.

Maybe just a tent would work. Or a pack and a blanket and willingness to sleep out under the stars.

These are the sorts of things she considers while she fights to maintain her self-control and not run up the nearest mountain just for the satisfaction of making it to the top and seeing what sort of creatures might be up there[1].

When the creature— the noble beast— the Questing Beast itself— emerges, she takes Bella’s hand[2]. She feels the awe, lets Bella’s transcendence spill into her own cup, which is ready to be filled. Somehow, the two of them find it in themselves not to bolt after the Questing Beast.

For a long while, she just holds her Bella close. The sky is nothing like a box. She tries to find ways to explain, but none of them can withstand the full, searing light of Bella’s ecstasy. Eventually, Redana gives up and focuses on the things which are important: running a hand over the back of Bella’s head, subvocalizing at a supportive resonance, and not chasing any, any rabbits at all.

“…let’s spend our honeymoon here,” she eventually manages. “Once we save the universe and all.”

If there is any sense or reason in Bella’s love, maybe it is found in the calm, happy certainty of those words.

---

[1]: she has a vague memory of a picture book which informed her that goats live on mountains. And lammergeiers, too.

[2]: her wife’s hand is an anchor that keeps her from running up and excitedly asking if it wants to be her friend, as per long-dormant genetic protocols.

Dolce enjoys a simple day at the beach. It’s a complicated technique.

Step one: Dig a hole.

Step two: Sit in the hole.

Step three: Enjoy the company.

It is a good vacation. Much-needed, for a body recently put back together. Gives the rest of him a chance to do the same.

“Almost.” The birds perched in his wool don’t so much as ruffle a feather as he speaks. This, too, is a complicated technique. For experts only. “The wording is the tricky part, yes? With all the stories of wishes gone wrong, and with all the time we’ve had, there’d be no excuse if we fumbled it here. There’s a few little details I have to iron out too. Prayers to make. Work to double-check. That sort of thing.”

Before them, the sea stretches to the horizon, stretches to meet fluffy clouds lazily drifting across the sky. Gentle waves lap at the shore, keeping silence at bay.

“Though, there’s a risk of making it too perfect, isn’t there? A temptation? You have the opportunity to ask something of a god, and it may not be hubris, because a god is doing it on your behalf. That’s an awful lot of power. An awful lot of things you could ask for. Things you could set right. It makes it…tricky, to see where the line is.”

Before him, infinite possibilities teem in the depths. Beyond him, the stars, the Skies.

Below him, a pair of kindly eyes and a curious tongue.

“Perhaps that’s why the gods don’t give out wishes very often.”

Dolce smiles with his whole face.

“Aren’t we lucky?”