[b]Dyssia![/b]

The wicked have long known that if you can't beat the argument, beat the table. As it turns out, this is just as effective a weapon in righteous hands.

Demeter is an old lady. She is patient, a creature of seasons and cycles, so hand in hand with Death that it took her daughter. You are beneath her and your outburst has no effect. But Demeter is not Demeter alone, and now it is a different voice speaking, different eyes looking out - no thing of pure nature, red in tooth and claw, but the high pitched whining snarl of someone with too much to prove.

"How dare you talk to me that way!" said Hephaestus-as-Demeter. "You are nothing more than a genetic defect, the product of broken biochemistry, part of the unlovely and unblue Azura slave race! Statistically lower in intellect than those of bright blue, ancestors forced to the lightless depths where they were forced to dedicate biological resources to camouflage rather than social intelligence, only given delusions of equality because my gifts have so long allowed for the correction of your ilk that mainline society has forgotten how to deal with you! Well I have not! I curse you, wretched mortal, as the Lord of Life: your genetic line ends with you! You will [i]never [/i]have a family!"

[b]Dolce![/b]

Artemis holds the door open for the service entry.

"The choice of doors is, itself, sufficient," she said quietly. "That is what keeps this strange world alive. Its rulers imagine themselves servants, and so they serve. It would take a very simple twist of perception to alter that, to turn utopia into nightmare. Have faith that it can happen the other way around as well."

Wretched things, scared and shivering, leave through an invisible door, huddled together for warmth and support. They do not walk through the Master's Gate, are not saved, are not unleashed. This is an [i]escape[/i], and the gentle pressure of Artemis' fingers on the metal of the doorknob ensure that no other God can undo its framing.

"How many times have you seen it done?" she asked. "Good turn to evil, and evil to good? Do you remember the village in the belly of the Eater of Worlds? Do you remember the machines dancing on the ruins of their irradiated homeworld? Do you remember the beauty of the Skies turning to ash in your mouth? You who have seen so much, can you see the shape of Hell? Do you hear it shout its name?"

[b]Aphrodite![/b]

And here, at the close, you stand. You raise your hands, withered and frail, a conductor in the moment before the symphony. These beautiful, doomed creatures thought they could overcome you? They thought they could defy you? They thought they could use secret swords and the power of love to undo what you had done? They think that this moment was one of redemption, one of glory, heaven reached through violence?

Hell could be reached through violence too.

"I see your love," said Aphrodite. "I see it is Persephone's. She has broken my hold on you. You are her creatures now, open palms letting the galaxy slip through your fingers. But you have not begun to see mine. Behold!"

Above the Imperial Palace, the sky fragmented as a new dimension shift ripped into place. Out of it came a ship, burning and terrible and broken, spilling an avalanche of saffron warriors. They descend upon Yue, magnificent bodies flashing forth from beneath saffron robes, ten thousand and more. "The Coherent!" said Aphrodite. "The craven mercenary transhumans! You did not have the coin to pay their way across the Rift - [i]but I do."[/i]

Old comrades. Old shipmates. Seekers on a path of transformation - here at last, transformed. Each of them is perfection in flesh, every barrier between desire and reality broken down, strong and fast and beautiful and terrible in so many different ways. Their robes are open now, revealing the perfection of their completion. Revealed too is the rot - the black lines already rippling through, a ticking timer until this dream of divinity fades. Each of them knows that the price for this eternity. 

And then Redana is struck by an avalanche of marble and gold. 

"And of course you know Alexa!" gloated Aphrodite, as that old familiar wrestler's grips locked into place after place after place. A golden blindfold was wrapped around her eyes. "You know how long she craved friendship, community, selfhood. After so long struggling alone, you expected her to give it up the moment she found it? [i]I did not.[/i] So here she is, still fulfilling her function - teaching the Princess one last lesson."

And for Bella...

Her reach was wrong. [i]Wrong[/i]! She had been slight - she was slight - tips of her ears barely reaching your nose. But now everything's backwards; you feel small, feel like a child, caught in the grip of a predator that was larger and stronger and had authority over everything you were allowed to do. 

"Do you know how much she envied you?" said Aphrodite. "Your strength? Your authority? How you lifted her species out of bondage on a whim? She wanted you. She wanted to be you. She wanted everything you had, everything that you let carelessly spill from your fingers. You think it is easy to give up Imperial authority and assassin's strength? You think that powerlessness is desirable? [i]She does not[/i]."

Jil's teeth flash, and her eyes shine like lanterns. She is so strong. As strong to you as you were to her.

"Don't get it twisted, I am grateful," said Jil. "But you could have done so much [i]more[/i]."