Dyssia does her best not to wince at the claws.

It's not the touch, you understand. Metal and claws and limbs out of an abyssal catalog are part and parcel of dealing with many of the servitor races, and she's eaten enough crabmeat to grow sick of it.

No, it's the. Intimacy is perhaps the wrong word? Intimacy, but in a way that is not deserved. Intimate, in the way that a knife pressed slowly between your ribs is intimate. Overly personal, like finding a tongue unexpectedly shoved in your mouth.

Biomancy! The curse of her existence, the tool of her childhood, not exactly her greatest mistake because it was not hers alone, but one that years as a Knight taught her to loathe!

The Kennels burn, door firmly locked, and she does nothing to stop it. 

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Dyssia hauls open the door, barely pausing to notice Demeter. There are roars behind that door, and she's never been one to wait when someone is crying.

She strides--soars? Slithers?--with purpose through the Kennels, ignoring the way her nose rebels at the scents of viscera and blood. Strides through, beats the Biomancers bloody, tips the vats of acid, pspspst's the servitors from their boxes, breaks the chains, and leads the prisoners, blinking, into the light.

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There [i]are[/i] blessings here, even if they come from a poisoned source! Long life, great strength, the ability to change and define as you like!

Nuggets of good, trapped in a fine cesspool of the kind of shit that made the Skies--that trapped endless generations in only being happy while devouring mountains into processed minerals, that imprisoned billions of souls in obsidian crystals to maintain the network of megastructures all for--for what? To make a face in the sky? To let some king have in high definition the same thing that people have been doing for aeons with two dots and a line?

Are long life, iron skin, and lungs that can breathe in space worth… 

Somewhere, the Pix are conquering. She knows it, distantly, in the back of her mind. They're an administrator species now, thank you so very much. 

There [i]are[/i] blessings here. She can do it [i]better[/i] than those that came before. Kinder, smarter, with freedom for everyone to choose as they will what they will be. Dyssia throws open the door. 

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Dyssia stares at Demeter and does her level best not to hyperventilate at the futures in her head.

She hates making decisions. Hates, rather, making the kind of decisions that entire futures hinge on. Hates Demeter, in this moment, for deciding that she, of all people, is the [i]only[/i] person in the room capable of making this decision. Hates the claws, hates the gall, flirts with a future that involves stomping on the legs of the throne, one at a time.

"What one god does," she says pensively, mulling over the thoughts as she says them, "no other god may undo. So if Hermes [i]does[/i] destroy biomancy here, it's gone. 

"…For good. Everywhere."

She's realizing, now, that she's not going to get her wish. Not directly, anyway. 

Thoughts flit across the screen of her mind--thoughts of girls with swords, a crowd rising up in support of one another. 

"And for what it's worth, that seems like a good thing?"

She's watching Demeter now--not in the way of a dog, watching for a raised hand, but in the way of a crow baiting an animal.

"We don't need it. It's outmoded. Obsolete. Harmful. Everything it does can be had elsewhere. Why [i]wouldn't[/i] I let, how did you say it? Oh yes. Why wouldn't I let 'dear little Hermes' continue? Why would I listen to you when these people have shown, very well, that they're better off without all of this?"

There are roars behind that door, is why. But if she can keep Demeter focused here…