[b]Bella and Redana![/b]

Empress Nero is not alone upon her throne. Before her stands the ranks of the Codexia. The Thirty Masters of War, the Chosen of Athena, those legendary warriors who internalized every lesson the Goddess of Strategy had to teach. Their glyphs are written upon their armour, tattooed upon their skin, waterfalls of symbols that spoke the full vocabulary of war, death, victory. Their quadranix armour was polished in metallic blue, great horsehair plumes rising up into the sky, eyes cast in shadow. Only the gleaming drips of sweat running down their chins indicates that they feel the heat, only the white knuckles around their spears indicates that they feel the fear. 

It is one thing to speak of duty unto death. It is another to watch the flames closing in.

Behind them came the soaring music of a zither. The Empress of the galaxy plays her swan song with all her burning passion - but cuts it short. The only sound she longs to hear more than her own music is applause.

"Triumph!" cried Empress Nero from atop her velvet throne, hands clapping above her head. "Spectacular! You have finished your journey and have won yourself a galaxy. Brava! Redana, my daughter, my champion, my chosen, you have achieved the task for which you were made! You have earned your place!"

The flames roared. Nero pulled her rosethorn crown from her head and gave it to her Codexia.

"Kneel, my daughter! Kneel and accept your reward: the Crown of Man!"

*

[b]Dyssia and Dolce![/b]

Black fingernails snap. A goddess whispers her advice. The collar pulls tight.

Sometimes they speak to you so: from within. It was their first language, before all this, before the rituals and the clarity. Sometimes they speak through hungers, through inspiration, through fury. The line between you and the Gods was never as clear as philosophers liked to hope it was.

You have come not before the Crown. You have come before the Imperial Kennels.

"Come, see the fruits of all this blood and semen," said Demeter from her throne in the basement of the world, the fat end of the pyramid. She sat and could not rise for her legs had been crippled and broken. What force had harmed a Goddess so? Or was this part of Hephaestus' fate mingled through with her own? Her throne stood upon clattering, crablike legs and carried her forwards and sideways. "Come and see what it is that you must rescue."

She paused by a door made of jagged bone. She trailed her fingers over it thoughtfully.

"Dear little Hermes locked all of my gifts away down here," said Demeter. "She ripped them out of the humans they were bound to. A painful, unnecessary surgery; a symbiotic ecosystem of mutual reliance, torn apart by a fascist sense of genetic purity. She taught them to live dull, grey little lives without their networked partners, forced them to bury their shovels with their fingernails, and held onto all those wonderful stolen gifts in case she needed to put her fingers on the scales. I did not object; I wanted my gifts to be used, after all. What mother would want anything else?"

Her crablike throne turned to face you. Claws extended from behind it, reaching out to measure skull and ribs and tails. "Synnefo, household variant. Pure design, unacceptable deviations. Not qualified for decision making," she said as it investigated Dolce. Then Vasilia, "Chimeric hybrid. Nonviable. Not qualified for decision making," she went on. She smiled when the crab crab claws performed their three point measurement of Dyssia. "Azura Administrator design. Qualified for the exercise of Authority. We may speak frankly, dear."

A terrible, earth-shaking roar came from behind that awful door. The fires were descending.

"This box contains everything that was stolen from humanity," said Demeter. "Its strength. Its beauty. Its biomancy. Symbotes and symbiote-species. You have seen one such in the person of Bella; a companion, guardian and lover. Innocent and eager to serve. There are many more like her; biotechnology designed to strengthen, to improve, to remake. Graft limbs, replacement bodies, genetic paradigms, hivemind constructs, viral degenerations, pheromantic compulsions - all the possibilities of what humanity sought to become crammed into this Pandora's box. Humanity had been altering itself as intensely as it had been altering its servitors, and all of that recursive self improvement is down here. And now, in her moment of ascension, Nero wants to burn it all to death, to force humanity to live without it. An atrocity, you no doubt agree. One that you can stop. Open the door."