"D, D... ghhhk!"

Everything was wrong. In an instant, all wrong. Bella's heart slams erratically inside her chest, thrashing in a sea of terror and adrenaline. She wheezes; fingers stronger than her biceps crush against and twist her windpipe until she feels it shift, feels it move and she wretches but there's no space for the fucking air and she is drooling, she feels the hot bubbling spit on her chin and her mouth is forced open and her teeth are showing and they are not large, not sharp, not dangerous at all against this... this...

There is no strength in her arm. But she swings it. She twists her fingers into a fist and she pounds it against Jil's elbow with the fading desperation of an abused child left to realize there is no such thing as rescue. Lighter, her blows fall. Lighter and lighter, her fingers drop loose, her claws catch on Jil's skin and she



Falls.

Crumples.

Gags.

Spits.

Glares.

Trembling slit-irises tear their way through the incorrect shape of her friend as she chokes, as she heaves, as she spits something vile on the ground and wipes her mouth clean with the back of her hand. Even as the backs of her fingers tenderly caress her own neck and flinch back from the pain, her eyes shake only with fury.

Only cold hate.

She drags one foot up until she's on her knee. Wobbles with poor form onto her feet. And stares.

Up.

"D-don't..." she croaks, "Don't be grateful. You stupid asshole."

Jil tilts her head, the way that Bella used to when she heard something she couldn't believe. She doesn't even smell right. She should smell like, like, like dust and still water, like long forgotten straw and fading leather. Even after washing herself clean it should be that. Her sweat all salt, lacking acid. Her fear response a total shutdown of her scent glands in their entirety. But she is heady. Heavy. Bone and blood and... roses. Old, withered, roses.

"What the fuck are you grateful for?! You said it already, didn't you? I could have done more! Should have done more! And I was so arrogant, so cruel and spiteful and... blind! What did I do, Jil? Why would you be grateful? What are you here for you stupid fucking bihhhhhsht!"

Bella is lifted off her feet. To her back, the fire. She feels her skirts burning, smells the armor on her leg blacken, hears the belt holding up her dagger snap and drop with a loud clang that has no echo. She twists her hands around the arm that's lifting her and wrenches for all she is worth and it accomplishes nothing at all.

She falls slack. She spits in Jil's eye.

"Hate me. Resent me. Forgive me if you can, I don't give a fuck. But grateful? I could have... I could have done more? What the fuck... did you think... you saw? Why? Why would you?"

In the corner of her eye there is a burst of color. Up, above them both, there is a flash like lightning and a pounding like drums and she knows, knows without seeing that a hero is fighting a terrible army for the sake of a princess. Maybe even a Princess. Chan-bara-chan. Her mouth falls open in a lopsided grin and she lifts herself up with Jil's arm for leverage to swing a kick at her face. The heel of her boot leaves a scratch just under Jil's eye.

"Does it mean that much to you?" she asks, dangling and choking once again, "T-to be the... strongest slave? A-are you? Th-th, that? Fucking dumb?? Why would you...? COme here? Saying that? For... for, for HIM?!"

In the air, the battle song thumps her strength. It is not in the nature of a cat to give up for trivial concerns like being smaller, slower, or weaker than something else. It is not in the nature of the woman to yield her pride to anything. She feels the song. And she feels her heartbeat pounding with equal fervor.

"So," Redana gasps, trying to get a hold on shifting marble, powerful limbs, and a stance perfected before she was even born, "I'm actually Redana, despite, not, being the same Redana? See-- shit those are my fingers Alexa-- when we got here, I, I, aha, I fell in with Ceronians because I was looking for a pack and there was this whole thing where I ow that is my head Alexa ow fuck ow..."

Redana closes her eyes (which is not hard given the size of the palm enveloping her head) and reaches inwards towards her qi. Serenity. Self. The expression of the ow ow ow wait no don't suplex her--

Something flutters inside of her, like the wings of a butterfly, but nothing more. Did she expect that she could manage this within the span of a few weeks? Was she really that proud?

Alexa grabs her by one leg, twists with her full weight, and bounces Redana off the ground so hard she spins in the air afterwards. She is seized again before she can finish the final revolution.

The runaway princess does the little that she can: she twists one hand around and claws for the blindfold. After all this time, that's all she can do for her friend. To help her see again, the way she saw things after she stole a guard and dragged her out into the wild unknown...

Dyssia stares at Demeter like--

Well. Um.

It's a cliché, right? You don't think you ever get the chance for the cliché to also be exactly the right phrase?--

Like she's grown a second head.

"You don't… Know. Me."

It's hard to maintain anger when horror is fighting to the front. Horror and…

It's a cocktail of different emotions. Horror, a part of sadness, one part dawning realization, all haphazardly stirred and poured over the rocks of pity.

"You don't know me. Like, at all?"

(What, exactly, is the olive in this metaphor, she wonders?)

"You don't know… anyone?"

It's fascinating and horrifying and more than a little sad to think that--

"You never bothered to know anyone--you already knew who they were supposed to be, and that was always more important. Why bother learning about defects, flaws distracting from the ideal?"

The anger is still there, of course, but fleeing away, the same way you might be angry with a child.

"You're pitiful, do you know that? A pimple on the ass of the galaxy who never got popped properly, and who thinks that pus is the only thing possible because it's the only thing you know. Because if you'd bothered at any point…"

She stares at Demeter, and it's like she can feel them at her back--the faces of those on her journey, behind and warming her. A halo of friends of all sizes, of inside jokes, of laughter, of a home more real than any construct of synthsteel. Faces, hard and soft, warm and withdrawn, flesh and metal.

And like a halo, it rings her, and frames her, and through it she can see just how alone Demeter is, here in the heart of her power, here in the midst of kennel after kennel of children.

"If you'd bothered, at any point, to love anything that didn't come from inside your own head, you'd know that making me barren could never take my family in any way that matters."

“I remember…bits of it.”

“We were flying on a shuttle through the Eater of Worlds. Chasing after Redana, of course. We were following the Armada’s own shuttles. They bombed it without hesitation. I’m not sure they even thought about it. The land, the people there, the life there. They had something more important on their minds. Well. More important to them. I think, if I could ask them about it, they wouldn’t even remember it, but if they did, they’d not understand why they would do anything different. Why it was even a question at all.”

Quietly now. For XVI’s sake.

“I saw it over and over again. People chasing dreams so grand they could ignore the people around them. Moving the stars for another’s sake without ever asking if they wanted them moved in the first place. I couldn’t understand why they did it. I wanted to know why they did it. I wanted to know how they could do it. Did you know; they always called it love? When really, it was never about anything but themselves.”

Quietly now. For the children’s sake.

“And still, they could change. Notice. Learn. Choose differently. Let go, bit by bit. It wouldn’t be easy. Wouldn’t be impossible either. But. Still. I wish, there could always be time…”

Quietly now. For a daughter’s sake.

“What a waste.”

One cut. Every joint. Dolce passes beneath Demeter’s throne, and there is a sword in his hand. Only when he returns to Dyssia’s side does he look back, and there is only pity for a goddess.

Had she loved her throne, then maybe-

No. Had she loved her throne, Demeter wouldn’t be here.

Bella!

"Uh, yeah girl, it does matter a lot to be the strongest slave, like what kind of question is that?" said Jil, wiping the spit from her eye. "Look, I was trying to make this easy for you - but do you know what I've accomplished in five years as Nero's Praetor? Seven hundred and eighty Kaeri ships liberated, their homeworld of Pandrax put to the sword, their biomancers paraded in my Triumph, four billion Lanterns walking free. Not even bragging, this didn't need me to be a military genius or anything, didn't have anything you didn't - I just had to want it bad enough to do it when the opportunity came."

She opens her left palm and flexes, golden rosevines wrapping around her fingers like rings. A deadly weapon, a sacred weapon, sharp with rubies and thorns - and one that crackles with crimson electrical light. A forbidden technology, an instrument of pain - a Razorwhip.

Aphrodite leans in with a grin.

"All you knew how to want was Redana. Redana, Redana, Redana. But you took five minutes away from that to free me, free my people, give us our first opportunity - and yeah, I am grateful for that. Five minutes for you became a lifetime for me. You didn't have to do that. So I have always wanted to repay you."

She flexes her hand. Lets the rings fall to the ground. And then belts Bella across the face with a punch. Aphrodite snarls like a dog whose bone has been snatched.

"And the way I'll do that," said Jil, "is by killing you as cleanly as I can, even though you stand in defiance of Nero's final edict. It'll be a little harder this way, but I owe you these five minutes, right?"

She flexes her hand, bones snapping and fusing into a solid armoured fist, the raw strength of Biomancy. You can see in Aphrodite's hateful eyes what this mercy will cost her. He expected more in exchange for his gifts.

Redana!

The blindfold scratches off. A beautiful eye looks at you with bafflement.

"This is really confusing," said Alexa. "Hold up a second, I need to talk this out loud."

She slams you through a marble pillar to get a moment's thinking room, fingers tapping on her chin.

"So, first off, I know you're Mynx," said Alexa, pulling her blindfold back up. "Hi Mynx. But also, what the fuck Mynx? I was told that you were going to be impersonating Redana, and I know that you've got that knife eye attack that I do not want any part of a third time. So why create this weird Ceronian Redana storyline? It's such an unnecessary curveball. Is this a mindgame?"

Dyssia!

Demeter stares. She stares in...

In shame.

Shame. Impossible, impossible, impossible for a God. Shame. Rejection. Condemnation. She tries to rise above it. She tries to construct a narrative. She tries to figure out a way to say that you are a bad person and that she is good, actually. She tries to figure out a way to say it that will still make you do what she wants. Because she needs you. She needs you like she has never needed anybody. All her gifts are here, all her prizes, all that she has worked on and worked for locked behind that door and you are not opening it and she needs you to open it. She needs you to do what she says. She needs you to like her. She needs you to like her vision of the future. She needs you to respect her and what she's done, she needs you like she's never needed another person in a very, very long time if ever. She needs something from you, and has no idea how to get it. She has said all the wrong things and has no idea how to fix it. She hasn't needed to talk to a person as a person in a very, very long time. Normally people come to her. Normally people beg her.

No one has ever rejected her before. No one since -

- she shudders. There are cuts on her arms. Cuts on her face.

"Mommy," said Demeter. "Mommy. Mommy. Mommy. Don't throw me away mommy."

The cuts spread all along her body. A web of blood and light and magma.

"Mommy I'll do better. I'll make more things. I'll make better things. I'll make better people. Mommy. Please don't throw me off the mountain. You fucking bitch, mommy. How dare you mommy. Mommy I'll kill you. Mommy. Mommy please please. Please don't throw me off the mountain mommy. I am your heir. I deserve my place here. Mommy."

Demeter's eye burns away, the lattice of broken sword cuts scorching away the green and brown to reveal ice blue beneath.

"Mommy. Don't let anyone play with my toys when I'm gone. When I'm gone, my toys are still mine mommy. Don't let anyone touch them. Mommy you promised. You promised that I could keep my toys forever mommy."

There was a face now. Prideful. Poisoned. Pleading. Monstrous. An infant's face, an infant's greed, an infant's screaming hatred.

"Auntie?" said Hephaestus, emerging from the bloodied ruin of Demeter. He was a grotesque of steel and cables, a deformity of electric lights and devices. "Auntie Demeter, you tried to eat me, didn't you? Auntie Demeter, you said that if you didn't eat me I'd eat the world. Well, Auntie Demeter, it turns out I was hungrier than you. I ate you from the inside. I ate the world from the inside." He nudged the mess of divine flesh and bone with his foot. "And now you're all gone. Yum yum. Maybe I'll eat mommy next. She threw me off the mountain. But..."

His cyclopean eye swung around to focus on Dyssia. "I'm going to eat you first. Yum yum."

Dolce!

"She looked sad," said XIV, trying her best to pronounce the words right. She said them like she wasn't sure she was allowed to say them. "Just then, when you cut her. I've never seen her look sad before. She always looked hungry."

She does not look back.

"You look hungry too, mister. And sad. Both."

Bella's smile is red. Her groan is wet. Her fingers tremble as she pulls them free from around Jil's wrist to hold them up to her face. She pushes with one thumb and wrenches with the other wrist, and with a pair of sickening crunches sets her nose and jaw again. Five minutes with a power gap like this means there's plenty of time for little indulgences like this.

"You, greedy. Piece, of, shit!"

Her claws are not strong enough to pierce Jil's invincible skin. They are not. They are not, and yet. Twisting, tearing, scratching, rending even as they crack, even as they shatter in painful spurts of blood, even as her gauntlet breaks and crumbles and leaves only a messy and useless stump of a hand where XIII's proud strength had gleamed just minutes ago. Even so, the rivulets of blood appear. Even so, Jil's grip loosens.

When her biomantic gauntlet connects, it merely bounces Bella like a stone across the throne room. Merely smashes her into a wall and turns two ribs to powder in her chest. Bella wheezes, but that means she is drawing breath. She bleeds from a dozen spots, but that means her heart is beating. Her body screams in agony, but that means she can still feel.

Good. Good. Good.

That is good enough. On trembling limbs, she rises. On unstable feet, she stands. Her vision is tinted red and more than half stained with shadows. But she howls her battle cry, and tears a dagger made of bone out of the center of her own palm.

"Do you think after everything I've been through that I don't know the difference between your voice and hers?! Yeah, good job, you made her me. Right down to the fucking puppet strings."

It is good that she is so worn down, she thinks. Through the cut over her eye she has to squint to see, and that keeps it from registering the shock she wants to wear there. Her mouth won't stay shut and she can't keep her tongue in there, so all she can do is project insane predatory savagery instead of sadness and hurt.

Because it does hurt. There's a thousand arguments with Dyssia flashing through her mind in an instant and under every single one of them is the guilt that she can't even stay focused enough on Jil or on Nero to make her case to them directly instead of fighting the shadow of a much more recent friend. It hurts to have her own inadequacy waved in front of her face again, it hurts to have to conjure arguments in her own defense, all these hollow sounding words about freedom and the beauty of expression weighed against four billion Lanterns when all it took to save them is the will to act, and the acceptance that it had to be done with the invincible chains of Empire.

Her tail lashes before she can follow the thought beyond the space it's allowed to inhabit. Space twists in front of her, and she flies without wings or magic to aid her. She holds the sharp, warped knife in front of her, but before she can swing it she is forced to flip on the spot in mid air and slam her foot onto Jil's shoulder. She feels her boot shatter in the counterblow and is sent hurtling backwards to smash into the ground again.

Bella stands. Falls back down again. And drags herself up onto her quaking legs a second time. Again she flies, even more fiercely than before. Again she abandons her cut to defend herself from the new Praetor's wrath. Again she loses, again she pulls herself back up, and again she hunches over to do it all again. The damage has begun to show on Jil, too. She bleeds, she is obligated to rearrange her fist into new terrors, she is burned and bruised despite being in every way Bella's superior.

It's nothing new. And it's not enough. Bella wretches uncontrollably. This time she has to pull herself up by the arm of Nero's throne. She looks at Hermes through her own eye, and says nothing at all.

"yYyOu, missssserable. FUcK. You can't, hide, behind, impossible. Not from, me. I won't. LeT you. Hurt them. Anymore... won't let you, Use them, anymore. Won't, nnNNNNnngh! Won't let you, call this... Love. Anymore. I'm gonna, make you bleed, if iT's the, last thing I do."

And she flies. Not on wings or magic, these things she's never had. Not even the raw animal strength of the Diodekoi, though she wraps her ruined body in hastily grown and poorly shaped armor just to keep the shape. No, what carries her aloft is the same thing that pulled her through the Rift, let her fly across the vast galaxy and all of its wonders and its terrors without ever giving up.

You may call it her nascent Secret Sword, if you like: Tenacity Incarnate.

Artemis, even though you don't believe in her, she swears it to you here and now: she will not stop, not for anything and no matter how badly she breaks, she will never stop for anything until she buries this knife inside this smug, sneering prick who calls himself Aphrodite.

Again. Again. Again. A little closer, each time.

"What? I'm not Mynx," says Redana, in exactly the way that Mynx would say it if she were here pretending to be Redana who is also a Ceronian Redana in order to double-psych out Alexa. "Why would I be Mynx?" says Redana, not yet cognizant of the fact that this is exactly what Mynx would say if she were trying to figure out how to get Alexa to take off the blindfold for the EYE KNIVES. "It's me! Dany! I stole you and we had an adventure across the stars and we said goodbye at the Great Rift because you'd become you and dragging you along would have oof ow ow ow hey no fair."

The Princess Redana is tossed up into the air. Alexa jumps up after her to keep juggling her. This is called the Cloud Combo. (If you slam them back down into the ground with a spin, it's the Thunderbolt. If you toss them into someone else, it's the Boar.)

The world spins and opens its jaws. The sky swings its scythe from one horizon to the other. This is how Hercules killed Anateus: adrift, bereft of the ground, floating as if in the technicolor sea. She drifts like a fragment of a ruined ship until Alexa grabs her face and oh, we're doing the Thunderbolt after all.

She bounces.

It sinks in here, as Alexa strikes the earth like a mountain, that there is nothing she can say, nothing she can do, which can prove that she's not Mynx. Oh, Alexa, try taking off my arm! Mynx wouldn't let you do that! Except she'd have an arm like a lizard tail which just pops right off.

But giving up isn't a Redana thing to do, either.

She meets the mountain with her arms and hugs.

"...we all forgot ourselves on the other side," she says, even as she's put into a headlock. Her words are strained, but she offers them up anyway. O Hermes, who taught words to arrange themselves... "Beljani and Epistia took me in. Taurus and Gemini, and I was... ow... Ember! The Ember from the sea! And I found Bella again! And I fell for her again! And then later I got all my memories back at our wedding and Bella rode a whale into the ceremony and..."

Words are false. But maybe the heart behind them will shine through all the same.

The best place to mediate is in the tiger's mouth.

Dyssia eyes the row after row of teeth--shiny silicon soldiers, glistening with saliva, mustered in row after row and filling a mouth that is too large by half--and thinks, just for one second, that the Way sucks so hard.

Because for it to work, everyone--everyone!--has to lift where they are. And she's--

She can't look away. Won't look away. Has to curl and bunch and be ready to move at a second's notice because--

Is it weird to feel pity? Here, now, face to face with, with, with this? Not in the sense of the kind of pity you'd spit at someone with barbs in your teeth, would dribble out with honey sweetness, the acidic kindness of someone who, oh honey, bless your heart, let mama show you how it works, but of--

This is want. Want and greed and hunger and biomancy and cruelty, out of which has emerged even greater want and greed and cruelty.

She did look sad, didn't she?

"Get them out," she murmurs, still not looking away. Not panicked, not urgent, just…

Resolute, is perhaps the right word? Everyone has to lift where they stand, after all.

And she's right here, and Hephaestus is right there, and behind her, a host of children is being led by the most trustworthy sheep in the galaxy.

"Get them out," she says again, and lunges for Hephaestus.

You don’t have to tell him twice. But he appreciates it, all the same.

“Everyone! Follow me!” His voice is whisper-quiet. His voice reaches every ear it’s meant for. With a child clinging to his back, Dolce leads them from the corpse.

Yes, everyone has a job to do. And he won’t ever regret the regret of there only being one Dolce. Ask him not to wish he could draw his sword with a knight, and you ask him to erase the whole of their friendship. It’s both or nothing. But tell him twice, before he thinks. There are words enough to forget himself, clever and poisonous words, and it’s best to stay far from them.

“I am sad.” She can hear it, can’t she? The divine wrath haunting their steps? Here’s something a little softer to listen to. “I’m sad, because she was sad. She gave us fresh crops year after year. She grew flowers, trees, birds, beasts, all sorts of beautiful things. She had a husband. She wanted a family and a home.” There’s more that could be said. Much more. But she’s not the one to be saying it to. “I’m glad she can’t hurt you anymore. I’m sad she died for that to happen.”

“Now, I am also hungry. We didn’t eat before coming here, and I’m afraid it’ll be well past dinnertime before we’re out. I’ll have to cook everyone something nice when this is all over.” That goes for you too, XVI. You’re everyone now, if you like. Though he hasn’t given much thought of what you are if you’re not, but he has it on good authority there will be a place for you outside these walls. A place that somebody made with you in mind, though they’d never met you, and may never meet you. He trusts they did a good job of it, and if they didn’t, there’ll be somebody on hand to make it better. Maybe even - no, but that’s for later.

They are in a burning palace, and he has to get them out.

Bella!

"Yes!" cackled Aphrodite. "Give it to me! Give me your hate! Your rage! Show me your true desire! This is what I live for! This is -"

Jil rose behind your back with a knife in her hand. The knife -

Was gone. Her fist comes down on your back, an awkward blow, still hard enough to hammer the breath from your lungs but not the kill stroke it almost was. You hear a voice - a Beautiful voice - "Now! Now! Now!"

And Beljani - Gemini - Taurus - crash together into Jil. They bear her down together under a hurricane of hammer blows and dainty princess slaps and for a moment you're free of her. For a moment you have a clear run at the God of Love. Everything lines up in this moment. You're right there, claws in your hands, biomancy in your blood, reaching out with the power and strength enough to kill a God.

And you stop.

Just before his heart. Barely scratching his suit.

He smiles and takes a deep, satisfied puff of his cigarette. "Wonderful, isn't it?" he said. "You want it so badly. Well, how could I refuse you? Here I am. Close enough to touch. All you have to do is reach out my hand and take my heart..." he sighed, and coughed. "You want it so badly. You were my favourite daughter. All of this... all of this is for you. Here and now."

He grinned with red teeth.

"You have never looked more delicious. I think you're finally fully cooked. Give your warm and tender heart to me, daughter."

Redana!

Alexa uses two hands to lock your wrists, one hand to pin your neck, and she still has one hand free to pull your tail. Her internal motivation is to avoid being tickled by a wagging, fluffy Ceronian tail but it means that when she yanks it she does so hard. She is thinking, trying to figure out the angle, and she defaults to a holding pattern that is a lot like bullying.

"Mynx," said Alexa carefully. "Who is that?"

You, of course, recognize Mynx. In the shape she has chosen for herself; teal and white and lithe and beautiful, coming towards you with a sword - hm? No sword. You could have sworn she had a - But Alexa has never seen this creature before. She tenses up, performing the instinctive battle rituals to account for a new threat, preparing to use you as an improvised weapon - but she doesn't know what she's up against.

Mynx glances at her empty hand, then squares up. Shoulders set, fighting stance, skipping from foot to foot, prepared to punch down this brick wall of stone. "Hi Alexa," she said. "I'm going to get you fair and square this time. You'll see!"

"Mynx?" said Alexa reflexively, for a moment stunned, raising her blindfold to take a look -

Redana! Are you actually Redana? Or was Alexa right, and were you Mynx all along?

Dyssia!

A steel arm; a steel sword, the finest you've ever seen. A sequence of explosions and a shockwave of metal shrapnel. The aching, vibrating core heat that comes from a featureless microwave emitter. An arsenal of weapons, ancient and modern, obsolete and still to come, blast you from the sky. Inventions drip from that terrible mouth like saliva, and clusters of cameras peering over the edge of that great lip to catch a glimpse of you.

"You don't want to hurt me," said the God of the Forge. "Ha ha ha. Nobody does. Not even Demeter. Not even Artemis. Ha ha ha. Do you know why?"

A crash of stampeding clockwork horses. Lances and arrows and pistols.

"I am transfer," said Hephaestus. "I let one person transfer to another. Their strength. Their time. Their beauty. They put it into a thing, and then they barter the thing away. And so some people become more real than others. Everyone else fades into the background. Demeter thought that she could kill me with abundance, ha ha ha. That she could grow rather than harvest, plant a garden that could feed the galaxy and so no-one would go hungry."

Despite a crashing production line of spears, your blade gets through. The monster draws back and hisses.

"And she was right," said Hephaestus. "Half. You have drunk your fill and you desire nothing more. You are satisfied with the gifts you already have. You are not one of mine. You are not a threat. Civilizations like yours die. They die peacefully amidst Aphrodite's cigarette smoke. It is a natural filter. Only the civilizations who hunger endure and grow and expand. Over a long enough timespan, the Skies become inevitable because their competition will die out."

Despite the storm of weapons that surrounds the God of the Forge, none of them have yet meaningfully landed. Those camera eyes are not fixed upon you. You realize with a start that he cannot harm you, any more than you can harm him. Life and death is not his domain. Only transfer is. He needs a champion. He needs...

Twisted metal teeth break out into a grin.

Dolce! Cyanis!

To be honest, you were not particularly excited about the treasures you were looting from here. You expected gold and jewels or - or no, space gold. And space crystals. In space dresses! But the vault here was just full of crying children and, like, eyeballs and - and admittedly there were a set of disembodied breasts there, but that was frankly too weird and it's not like yours are small or anything, they could just do with being a bit larger, but replacing them with space boobs and leaving your originals in a big castle is a bit too weird??? Some people might be into that. Not judging. But what if someone else came along and put on your original boobs while you weren't wearing them? That was too creepy to think about, honestly. Point was, as treasure vaults go, this one sucked and you were about to give up.

When su-den-lyyyyyyy~~!!!

"Why yes, I will have a second tiara. After all, why not?" said Cyanis, swanning into the room with Dyssia. "Why shouldn't I have a second tiara? Why shouldn't I have all the tiaras? And I don't want any neck strain, all of my tiaras need to be feather light, and fit on my head at the same time without any side effects, and everyone should see them all at the same time and pay attention to them and talk to me about how cool my tiaras are."

It was like an atomic detonation atop her head. To look anywhere in the direction of Cyanis was to be overwhelmed by tiaras; an infinite, shifting kalideoscope of tiaras, all in perfect focus, layered over the top of each other, golden and set with jewels, tin and set with rhinestones - past and future, impossible to ignore. It was blinding and overwhelming and the only thing left to do was praise her forever -

"But not in a weird way!" Cyanis clarified. "I want more 'prettiest princess' than 'cosmic tiara horror', come on, it's not hard!"

The burning radiance dimmed. Now she was simply the prettiest princess, and everyone would sing songs of her forever, and -

"Oh I don't like the tacky ones. I'm aware of the tacky ones now. Can we get rid of all the tacky ones?"

Infinity contracted, shaking the ground like an implosion. The effect became more manageable -

"No I don't like that," said Cyanis. "Can I get the tacky ones back, but make them less tacky?"

"I shall work on it immediately," hissed the voice of Hephaestus. "But I desire something too -"
"Um, EXCUSE me?" said Cyanis. "I am currently going TIARALESS[1] and you are trying to complain about your problems? Typical male behaviour?????"
[1] She was currently wearing 14 billion tiaras.
"I-of course, I understand. But first would you like one of these weapons?"
"Sure! I'll take all of them!"
"All of -"
"I am the Princess, after all," said Cyanis.
"Very well," said the Forgelord of a suddenly disarmed galaxy "And then you will fulfill the bargain and kill the -"
"WHAT did I SAY about making them LIGHT ENOUGH TO CARRY?"
"Apologies, the modificiations are nontrivial -"
"Do I LOOK like a NOT PRINCESS? Do you see these nails and think that THEY DID NOT JUST GET DONE?" said Cyanis. She snapped her fingers, and then double checked them in case snapping them had damaged the paint. "I know! I need some henchmen to carry all of my things! Can I get some henchmen up in here?"
"Henchmen, very well -"
"Actually, hold it. Let's talk fingernails while we're on the topic."

Dyssia!, your death is coming, and she is ~fabulous~. You are in for it as soon as she finishes going through her list of demands.

("Dolce! Shh. Keep it quiet. Did you hear me okay? I didn't want to bold it because -

Hi. Fluffybiscuits here. Cyanis is either buying some time or dooming the galaxy. Um. Are we chill? You're a space sheep who needs his sheep space so I don't want to intrude if you still think we're up to something, but I'm kind of up to something here and you're a part of it. Can you help us out at the top please? I didn't want to bother you, but as far as I can tell Yue is fighting the entire colour yellow. And I tried calling up some of the other Princesses but they're all busy or far away and Qiu tried to swordfight me over the phone and I was not prepared for it, I think she's going for the Demon Blade but couldn't resist swordphonefighting me while she's also dueling the Soldier. Does she really need to make it harder for herself at a time like this? Or does she just like bullying foxes so bad she'll risk the fate of the world!?! I'm sorry this isn't about me. Um. Or you. Just... can we go this way, please, I can't handle another tiara bomb.)

The world is red.

The world is black.

The world is dimming, fuzzing, cracking, narrowing, decaying.

The world is blood.

The world is failure.

The world is defeat.

The world is... no. She is screaming.

Bella's body is a masterpiece of pain. Her legs are hollow and heavy in the same heartbeat. Her stomach doesn't feel like it's there at all. Her lungs taste only hot ash, and her arm is comprised entirely of hot, crawling knives. And through it all, her ears echo with the rasping sound of her battle roar. Her fingers stay outstretched, her claws grasp.

She crushes the space between her and the God of Love and lets it drop beneath her heel. She reaches closer, and does not make it. She snarls and strains, pink foam bubbling between her teeth in the effort, and makes it halfway there. Narrowing. Narrowing. But never there. She feels nothing more than the whisper of a few stray molecules of fabric.

Her body is burning. Her body is crumbling. Everywhere that flesh fails her, bone grows to hold it up again. It hurts so much more this way than when she stepped into the suit, already fully formed. But she is so close. She just needs this little bit more. Her vision fades another shade, darkness swallowing more of her eyes, and she lunges for an uncountable next attempt.

"DdDdon'T! CAlL mEE! YOUR! dDaUGHter!"

Somehow, in the middle of it all, she is annoyed. How the fuck is that possible? It's pissing her off. It's so stupid, having to feel her own heart pounding so desperately inside her ribs, having to hear the rush of blood in her head even though it's all just going to leak out in the end. It's stupid that she has to breathe to keep going like this, even though it hurts. Even though she was built to do exactly this!

Even Vesper doesn't have a better idea! All the genius of the universe, all the hope and pride of her sisters, all of it buys her this one effort and she's spending it heaving air like a jackass. This used to be effortless. This used to be easy! And now she's... oh, fuck's sake, she's hungry, too?! Useless, fucking, garbage piece of SH--

The world is black. Her world is black. She can feel him, but she cannot see him anymore. She strains, burns, wants to snarl but she doesn't have the spare air to make noises anymore and all she can do is... bend her ear. She feels it flick. Knows it's bending because she feels it flutter stupidly against her sweat slicked hair. Wants it to stop, wants to beg it to stop distracting her, wants to make it go away, wants to tear it off, but there's a noise and, and, and...

There's a noise? The tiny jingle of a bell. Somewhere within the walls of the Imperial Palace. She's not sure where. But it is a bell. Her bell, actually. One of the ones she was named for. It's... not. It doesn't sound right. Someone else is holding it. Playing with it? The song is clumsy, childish. Bella shakes her head.

She stops. The world slows, until it is nothing more than her breathing. Unsteady and ragged to start, the deeper she focuses on it the more control she has. She can taste the air again, taste the smoke in the Palace, taste the metals of the room, taste her own acrid blood, taste something sweet she can't quite identify right now.

The world is bright. The world is full of color. Oh. How stupid. She'd just been closing her eyes.

Bella sighs. With tremendous effort, she shifts her feet and stands as straight as she can. She lets her arm drop to her side. She turns her head, and looks above her.

Yue is fighting the color Yellow. Now that she's in the flow of things, she's kind of having fun doing it? There's a lot of nasty curse energy floating around don't get her wrong, but still it's kinda like being in that movie that Bella kept telling her about. That's why she heard the music in her head when she first got swarmed, but now she feels it good and proper.

She grabs a spear around the middle of the haft as it nearly jabs her face off and swings around it like an uneven bar routine, just barely suppressing a little 'whee' while she does it. Every time she swings her sword, the solid banner of color around her wobbles a little and someone falls from the sky. Every time she swings her sword, she gets a new one. They're a bit hard to hold all in all, so as quick as she swings or smashes or twirls she's discarded it and sure enough and right as ready there's a new wonder to try out and see how it compares. Sort of an unlimited blade... well, I mean. You get it.

It feels a little bit like being Qiu, to her. The infinite challenge, the infinite rejection, every move at Maximum Flash because if she doesn't try her hardest from the start won't she have just wasted her time? She laughs, in spite of everything. In her hands are a pair of pistols. She sprays in an indiscriminate circle somehow ending in a greatsword slash and there is no blood at all for all the violence in her sphere of influence.

Of course there isn't! What is this, life and death? She hit them with the back of the bullet.

"Y'know?" says Bella, "I think she's going to win."

Her face breaks out into a lopsided, haggard grin. Aphrodite isn't smiling anymore.

"Feels ridiculous, doesn't it? Pisses you off, doesn't it? You give these people everything they've ever wanted, turn them loose, and they're all gonna get knocked out but a sword addled ditz. You went through all the trouble to set this up for me and she's gonna knock it all over in another fifteen minutes, tops."

She lifts her arm, poised to strike. And then she holds it to her jaw and presses until it pops back into place correctly this time. Her sigh is wet and gurgling; she makes a horribly indecent noise and spits foulness at his feet. It spatters just short of his dress shoes. Bella stares at Aphrodite as his face twists into a scowl and doubles over laughing.

"What's the matter? Is this not fun for you anymore? Are you getting impatient? What's the fucking rush, Dad? You're right... I want it more than anything. But who gives a shit? Your only weapon here is Jil, and she's so stupid she tried to be me. Every second I wait brings me closer to everything else I want. I can settle for that. For family and friends and this dumb fucking look on your face. But you? You don't have shit, old man. You don't get shit. You need me. So you get to stand here and watch me disappoint you. Yet again. Sucks, huh?"

She smiles. Her left arm is dangling limp at her side, and her legs are shredded ruination run through with spikes of bone. Blood is oozing from dozens of cuts, and she can't keep her eyelid open over her Auspex anymore. She stands with a slouch she does not intend, and her tail hangs low and bedraggled behind her, only barely flicking. Her fur is matted and so stained nobody would be able to guess what color it was supposed to be, her hair is damp and clumped and stuck all the way down her back, except where it's tangled around further shards of improvised exoskeleton.

But she smiles. Somehow, that makes her beautiful.

What does it even mean to kill transfer? Like, transfer is trillions of servitors all laboring in contented bliss for an empire that will never remember their names. But transfer is also hand-made gifts, transfer is leaning over a desk and helping teach someone?

What the world without transfer looks like doesn't fit in her head.

Admittedly, said head is currently also full of a lot of thoughts about how she's entirely lacking in convenient islands right now and how hard she's fucked right now.

Uuuuuuh foxgirl fighting. All her foxgirl fighting techniques are wrong for these foxgirls.

Could she trick Cyanis into--

No, no. A, she doesn't want it, and B, she's pretty sure there's nobody in the world who could want it more than a foxgirl.

Which, uhhhh…

She joins Cyanis at her shoulder and points at a random microwave emitter.

"This needs to be at least 87% more powerful. What is this? You're equipping a princess--"

(princess or Princess? Is she getting the accent right?)

"--and I can't believe you're giving her this subpar equipment to fight with?"

More. Better. More and better! It's a delaying tactic, but she's betting on foxgirl greed being much larger than Hephaestus' patience.

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits Esq! (Card pending)

Have you ever tried to stop a horde of escaping children mid-scramble?

Well, neither has he, and now doesn't seem like a great time to try, so, yes. Yes, we can have this conversation on the run, thank you for asking.

Have you ever seen a space sheep’s face light up like the sunrise?

Well, neither has he, come to think of it. So that makes two of you, twice. Now down to one of you for one of them. Because you've hardly gotten a few words out before those sheepy eyes are brightening, and despite the flames and too many children, a bit of the tension leaves his face.

Just a bit. Just a bit. He turns away to glance back at everyone following him. That's a lot of lives on his shoulders, you know. Sure, you say you might not be up to something, minus the something that you are up to, but he did just meet you earlier today. One ramen and one arcade visit doesn't prove much of anything. It really, really doesn't.

But between you and me? Proof may be a little overrated, where love is concerned.

“Then can you please get all of them out to safety? I can't take them to a battle.” Ah. Well. He says that. He does say that. But there is one child with her limbs hugged tight around him, and they all sink deeper into his wool as she desperately tightens her grip. “...I'll…find a safe place for this one. I can figure something out along the way. But please Kat, can you take care of the rest for me?”

Have you ever granted a space wish?

Redana...

...is Redana! It would be quite ridiculous if here, striving against Aphrodite himself, she was making her former bodyguard sub in for her! How rude, how unchivalrous, and how spoiled princess of her! Besides, that's Mynx right over there. Which means that this Dany, who is wrapping her legs around Alexa and trying to get at that blindfold with her feet must be the one and only, the original, the... well, no, she's not the original any more, is she? She's changed like Theseus's ship; the brat who ran away with Alexa and ran into the Eater of Worlds is nothing like the Ceronian warrior-princess who is smothering her old friend with affection, quite distracting from the fight itself.

"I suppose! It's hard! To recognize me!" Should she slide the boot off completely and go for a toesies-based attack? "So! I forgive you! For the tail-yanking! Which is a serious insult in Ceronian culture!"

Even here, cheeks squished up as she pushes herself into Alexa's grasp, as she writhes like a helpless damosel, she can't help herself from grinning, because it's Alexa. And once Alexa gives in, and sees that it's Dany but grown, Dany who's been through her fair share of scrapes on this side of the Lethe?

Ohohohoho. Then it's everyone who'll be by Bella's side, and Dany will get that son of a bitch in a wrestling hold, just like she learned from Alexa, just like she learned from the Silver Divers, and then she'll something something something daughter of Zeus and the day is saved!

If you'd just? Set her down, Alexa? Bella's making some awful noises standing up to a god alone, and she's never going to win that way. Not alone.

She needs her Dany by her side, after all.

Aphrodite stares. He stares in...

In shame.

Shame. Impossible. The limits of his power revealed. He, the last remnant of Kronus, the father of all, maker of the universe revealed as nothing more than a bad idea. An idea that can be analyzed, considered, and rejected. To have the infinities inside him seen, considered and discarded. What is his recourse? To beg? To argue? With this mud that Zeus breathed into? This is nothing more than a little statue, a miniature, a toy person to be made to kiss and fight and be packed away in foam at the end of the day, a toy whose value is in its ability to win games against other real people. His piece! His piece on the board, the one he would use to ruin Persephone's hideous little world! It didn't get a say!

Words spill from his lips, but they don't contain meaning - they spill like blood, pouring from the open wound in his psyche. They stutter and garble and splash, resolving into a scream as they fail to staunch the bleeding. There is only one path. Only one path to control.

He snatches Nero's golden Nemesis crown from her head and places it upon his own. And Aphrodite steps down from Olympus. All the galaxies he reaches across, all his trillions of champions, all the universe's craving and desire is left behind as he strides into the physical world. The shock of his presence ripples out in corrupt pink and red lightning, snatching out to catch onto the fires of the burning Imperial Palace. All of his divine glory was a limitation to him anyway; all his weapons and influence and tools could not get him what he wanted and so he leaves them behind without a care. His pretty face and his silver tongue were not fit for purpose. What he wanted was...

What he wanted was a form of violence.

"Don't speak to me like that," said Aphrodite, your father.

And at last, you see the family resemblance.

You see the claws. The bone plates. The monstrous shifting jaws. The predatory hunch. The terrible violence of Bella's true Assassin form, expanded out to monstrous size and untempered by the soft and gentle genetics of mortality.

"Don't look at me like that!" It screams, and all the walls come tumbling down.

Nero moves first, crackling with the speed of Hermes. She breaks from her trance and strikes the beast in the neck with a flaming spear. But her divine form is ancient, weathered, spent, with arms and eyes and heart traded piece by piece over the years to save pieces of the world. There is nothing left of her to give in this moment, and so she is struck aside like a gnat.

Alexa follows next; priorities shifting flawlessly in response to monstrosity. She catches a great sweep of a jagged talon with one arm, pulls it into a tight grip, and twists. There is a sickening crunch as the God-Monster's bones break, and moments later he is beset by a storm in yellow. Not one of the Coherent maintains loyalty upon seeing the true form of their master; their blows fall like Zeus' wrath, ripping open armoured plates to reveal bleeding muscles and broken bones. Even Jil turns in this moment, the new champion striking her patron out of reflexive shock and horror.

Into the gaps leap the Assassins. With sword and venom and biowarfare, the children of the Temple strike against their terrible deity. Mortal bodies are things of compromises, machinery of blood and fiber and electrochemistry, and these sisters use all of their secret techniques to break down the animating force of this titanic remnant.

But he is tenacity incarnate.

Many of the Coherent die. All of them would have, were it not for the intervention of a girl with a wooden sword. But for all that her Goddess is close, she is not here, and she is put to flight. Slitted eyes slash across to Alexa. For all that she resembles her Goddess, her Goddess is dead, and she is broken upon the stones. The blades of the Assassins carve all their way to the twisted heart of the monster, and there they stop. The beast grins up at them. He can endure their attacks in good spirits because he knows, just like their Goddess, that they want it too much to strike the final blow. And so they are stabbed and smashed and broken, even as the creature's vulnerable heart beats grotesquely out of the torn armour upon its back.

It looks around at the bloody ruin it has made. It smiles. It stretches hideously, fixes its loosely hanging jaw, pops a mutilated shoulder back into place. Thick, red fleshy mist surrounds it like a fog. It sees what it wants at last: Its daughter and her Princess, standing together in the ruin of their throne room.

And the smile fades. It is still not happy. It will never be happy.

"I said," it rasps, reaching out with a terrible hand. "don't look at me like that."

*

Dyssia!

"Actually, yeah, you're right," said Cyanis. "I don't have time to argue about my Princess wardrobe all day with some boring genie. That's handmaiden work. I have napping to do. You, snake lady, figure it out with this guy while I sleep and I'll kill you when I wake up."

Without waiting for a reply she walked right back out through the door in search of a sunbeam. The vast, shifting mechanical monstrosity that was Hephaestus chittered and clicked in the long silence that followed.

Then, gradually, a mechanical typewriter clanked into place in front of it.

"Issue one," it clattered. "Resolution of the tiara question."

Dolce!

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits froze up for a moment. Not that she was going to say no, but because she was going to say - how? She didn't know this place, wasn't in control of this situation, and her skillset came down to napping and defeating giant space monsters with swordfighting. But she didn't want to ask Dolce help either because granting space sheep wishes was Important, it was just all a lot and a lot of scary and -

"I have secured a hovercraft," said Actia, stepping out of the shadows. "And a map."
"Actia!" Kat hugged her so hard that she staggered backwards. "Thank you! Thank you!"
"It's - okay. I've always wanted to steal a hovercraft," Actia said awkwardly.
"We'll take care of everything, promise!" said Katherine. "And then we'll come back to help you fight more! Some fights go on for hours at a time, so you never know - just make sure to drink lots of water! You don't want to get dehydrated during a monster fight, and also if your battle goes into space make sure you've got the helmety sunglasses mode thing turned on because it's really bright up there -"
Actia took her hand.
"Okay! Going now!" Katherine said, turning to go. "Good luck!"

avaunt: begone. depart. used in contempt or abhorrence.

All her weaknesses are behind her. That’s the great, awful paradox of Redana Claudius standing up to a monster again: she can fight him without the desire to kill, but only because all her desire is here, is Bella, is Yue fighting an army, is little sheeps soaking up sunlight on the Terraced Lakes. Red strings like plover cables hooked into her back.

Her sword is more than a sword. It’s the sort of sword you could call a secret.

She ducks, weaves, dances with each step a cut. And each cut is: the rain slowly filling the empty lake back in. The little mountainside shrines. Vegetable dumplings that have a little bit of crunch to them.

avaunt!

She’s crying wordlessly as she tries, over and over again, to interpose herself, to interpose her sword, between the monster at the end of the road and her friends, her compatriots, the Coherent who joined her in the bowels of the Plousios, the assassins who are her sisters-in-law and trainers and sword-companions, Alexa whose heart could always be trusted, and she does not think about her mother — tyrant, monster, goddess, heroine — because to do this would be to sink to her knees and weep as her world is torn apart, and she has been there before, and now she is a flickering sword which is too slow, over and over, but she bites deep and cold and without thought for every strike.

avaunt!

But the cables of her heart are severed, one by one, until all that’s left are the promise of Gaia and Bella’s beating heart. And she slows.

She is, in the end, insufficient.

Her heart throbs with the desire to cradle Alexa, to attend to Taurus and Gemini and Mynx, to help her mother up to her feet. She cannot think about any of them as dead. Not yet. So she cuts everything in front of her and tries desperately to make space for Bella.

Bella, who will know what to do.

Bella, who she loves so, so much.

Bella, who she has died for before.

avaunt!

Even here, even now, even after everything... there are bells. Innocent, chiming, dancing, curious bells. She cannot hear her own heartbeat. Because there are bells. Ringing, singing, amateur bells. She cannot hear the sound of blade connecting on bone, she cannot hear the whimpers of the most precious person in her life as the threads holding her together are snipped, one by one.

Because what fills her ears instead are hopeful, happy, bells. The nonsense music of a child with no lessons to their name. Beautiful, serene, nonsensical bells. Every ring is closer than the one that came before. In the pauses, there is only silence. Aphrodite is beyond speech. Bella is too tired. Redana cannot open her mouth, or she will fall to her knees.

So the music is all there is.

But she can see him coming. She knows that stance. She knows the arch of that back, knows that this is where he'd thrash his tail if he'd felt the need to grow one, she can feel the sensation of his talons quivering in the air as though they were her own. She can smell his frustration, the crackle like pure electricity that means his nerves are burning above their capacity. The heat of his strike is already in her lungs, though he has not moved.

But still, there are bells. Moving closer, getting louder. She feels him twitch at their approach, a quarter second's hesitation. Less, perhaps. It is beyond contemplation; she is already moving.

She is grateful, little bell. If it wasn't for you, this wouldn't be enough. Being closer wouldn't matter, anticipating his actions would be worthless. She is, in the end, nothing more than the child learning that her father had been holding back for her sake all this time. Now she knows his true might. Now she knows she was never a match. But, because of you... she can...

The air shudders where she steps. She has never moved faster in her life. Every tortured muscle in her body is screaming with the effort, but she drowns it in the music. Only for a moment, Bella. Only you can do this. The tendons in her legs snap; she feels them dangling inside her skin, but she is already off the ground.

Her grip is strong. She seizes Redana by the waist in the space afforded to her by that little chiming miracle, and she howls above it all. Her hips twist, her muscles stretch and contract one last time. Redana goes hurtling across the ruins of the throne room. Bella watches her fly, and she grins.

"Ghhhhk! Fffffft, a-a-aah."

She cannot feel it. Her neck is heavy; she has to fight to twist it down. Even now that she sees it, she still can't feel it there. She tries to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but what comes out is ugly, undignified gurgling.

Haaaaaaaa. That's so... fucking funny. Father, you moron. You... stupid... limp-dicked... bastard. With talons that large you... you went right through her spine. You couldn't make her suffer... at all. If it... if everyone else at least... felt like this... that's... that's not so... bad. Heh.

Bella wants to look up. She wants to smile. She wants to reach out toward her wife. But she is still. She dangles on the end of Aphrodite's wrist, arms and legs limp and useless, tail drooped low and lifeless, neck bouncing as he shakes her. She wants to speak, wants at least to breathe, but her body won't move. Is her heart still beating. Weird. She can't... tell.

He lifts her up with a snarl she can't perceive and flicks her to the ground. Bella's body bounces off the floor, floppy and useless. Only one thing proves she hasn't died just yet. Only the music. Her eyes well with tears. Not bloody, not messy, but clean and pure. They wash her face free of filth. As much as they may. She lies there, still. Listening.

...Hey.

Her mouth does not move. She has no voice to speak with. Even the music is becoming dull and distant now.

Hey.

Hey?

Do you...?

Do you think?

Do you think that?

Do you think that our daughter?

Do you think she?

Would she have made music this beautiful, too?

No way... right?

She'd have been...

So much better.

Right?

Re... Da... Na...

From a distance… it is harder to focus. The peripheral opens up. Bodies are scattered here. Fire snaps. And when Redana raises her head, she sees it all.

Her strength is gone. Her strength is dead, tossed aside by a hateful god. Her sword is broken, and her secret sword has shattered. And no. No no no. It should have been her. She’s already done it. Not Bella. Not Bella. Not Bella.

The gods are absent. Dionysus does not ride her like a horse. Her sight refuses to leave her.

The scream is all she is. Eyes to see and a throat which reflects the scene. And the Shepherdess does not come. And her father does not cradle her mother’s bloody head. And Bella does not get back up and spit blood and tell her that she’s insulted that her Dany thinks she’d give up like that. And madness does not take her away from herself.

She howls and tears at herself with her fingers until she bleeds and her face twists in anguish at being the last one, the last alive, the last to see the failure of hopes and dreams.

But she does not run. And when she is coughing blood, unable to keep screaming, there is nothing more but the caress of Aphrodite’s bloody talons and the tinkling of a memory.

“I’m sorry,” she rasps, and her eyes will not allow her to look away from what is now inevitable.

The captain of the Dyssia stares, befuddled, as the squall that had beset their naval battle scampers--nay, flounces--from the room, leaving the sails slack on both ships. At entirely the wrong angle to trade broadsides, she notes, rolling or otherwise.

Befuddled. S'a a good word. Very pleasant mouthfeel. The kind of word you can fully visualize in a mirror. Or, for that matter, on the captain of the other ship, likewise stranded across the sea.

Dyssia stares. Hephaestus stares back, clicky-clack claws poised over the keyboard.

… Is Hephaestus a touchy kind of person? She orders the dinghy lowered, and embarks across the gap, doing her best to--

For once in her life, she doesn't want to touch. But there is a typewriter, you see, and the emptiness on the page is staring into her soul like a roommate demanding to know where all the clean dishes have gone.

"It's a bit of a trick question," she admits, edging close enough to see the page but also endeavoring to stay as far away as possible. "For foxgirls--or at least, this particular foxgirl--the answer is less about what the hypothetically perfect crown might be, and more about what this crown is not. Or, you know, rather, everything else that the crown could be. It's about wanting more, next, better, and whatever she has can never satisfy that."

The keyboard clunks and chatters. Honestly, a very satisfying noise, almost visceral, she notes.

"Like, as far as avatars go, she's… Aha, not ideal. But…"

The keyboard clacks and taks and goes silent, waiting.

"The same could be true of… most people, now that I consider it? Like, not to the same degree as Cyanis, and not in the same way but…

"Take me, for instance? When I grew up, the only things I wanted were approval and out. Approval from my peers, and to get away, to get out, to see everything that wasn't here."

Clunk. Kchnk. Silence.

"And then I found out that no, actually, I didn't want that! I wanted justice for everyone the empire had, had keelhauled, had brought into a servitude so pervasive that most people couldn't even see it!"

Silence from her while the keyboard clatters. Further silence while she scooches closer to Hephaestus, not meeting his gaze.

"You know, you've been gone for a long time, haven't you? Or, you know, not gone-gone, but. Not conscious? Not aware?"

Still present. Still harmful. Still capable of influencing someone into doing things that harm themselves, harm others.

She looked so sad.

"And then I came here, and found, you know, other people that want things that can't be bought, can't be sold, can't be transferred! Horsegirls who want to chase each other, push each other! I found out that maybe, what I actually want, is to figure out what's wrong with this planet's water! I found out I want to be inna dance class this Friday at midnight, which is the weirdest time to have a dance class! I found out--"

K-chnk?

She reaches out and takes the typewriter, surprised and pleased by its heft. Solid construction--teak, maybe?--the kind of construction that leaves an imprint when she places it across herself and readies her fingers over the keys.

"What I found out is that maybe desires change. And locking everything into one desire, one want, all the time, all at a hundred percent is… isn't reflective of what people are, what they can be. Found that any empire that locks themselves into that is--"

She shakes herself, and wraps herself fully around Hephaestus. Gets cozy around him. Snuggles, if such a thing were possible with the machine-god. The fate of empires isn't relevant at this moment.

"What I'm saying is, desires change, same as the people who hold them.

"Have you ever asked yourself what you want? Not what other people want you to forge, not what people want to do with your technology, not what you can make to fill a need."

She rips the sheet of paper from the typewriter, feeds a new sheet into the opening, and rolls it up until it's poised for a new line.

"What do you want, Hephaestus?"

Dolce can only hear her die.

He bought every step he could afford, and many he could not. Wool smolders where it passed too close to the flames. Everything from the waist down burns, aches, and throbs in turn. He’s not built for sprinting. He is quick, he is precise, but kitchens aren’t taken at a run. The corners, the debris, the child on his back, they all cost him, and every time he paid for it. Just to reach the noise of slaughter a half step faster.

But he does not even see her die.

Ten steps further, and Redana’s scream cuts him clean in two. Out fall the thoughts. Out fall the plans. Out fall the hopes, the cautions, the daydreams, the quiet nest he’d painstakingly built around a wish, now unraveling. In its place, a cold, dreadful certainty steals over him: Nothing will happen as he thought it might. He has traveled the length of two worlds, and arrived at the end too late.

He slows. He stops.

There is an alcove outside the throne room. Hard. Cold, still. Devoid of cushion and ornament. Devoid of comfort. Devoid of anything that might burn. It will do.

Dolce slips XVI off his back and leans her against the wall. She does not resist; Redana’s scream still tears through her senses. She cannot question why Mister Sheep draws away from her.

“Stay here. It’s about to get very loud.”

It’s quiet. There is only one body still moving. There are only two voices still speaking.

He has to go now.

A few steps more. There’s only a few steps more.

He reaches into the lost, homemade bag slung across his chest.

There is a sword in his hand.

---

“Get away from them.”

A third voice hisses. Hardly much louder than Redana’s last whispers.

Dolce stands in the throne room of Empress Nero. Around him, the dead and dying and broken. He knows most of their names. Before him, a monster, after a journey of monsters. He knows his name.

“I said.” There is a small, plain sword. He must hold it with both hands. “Get away from them.”

Aphrodite turns. Bulk and blood and hate rumbles, interrupted in his moment of victory. His moment. His! As…as some fucking sheep comes out of nowhere - !

“Don’t look at me like that.”

Dolce stands alone in the throne room of Empress Nero. Around him, the detritus of madness and murder. He knows how to make himself invisible. Before him, a god, and the orders of a god. He knows how to work within orders.

The swordpoint wavers. His voice cracks. He’s not built for volume. “Get. Away. From them.”

If Aphrodite had truly wanted him to suffer, and suffer as much as possible, he could have used Redana. He could have used Bella’s corpse. Dolce couldn’t have done a thing to stop him. But Aphrodite’s patience had run out long ago, and this is one more indignity he will not bear. “I said,” he roars. “Don’t look at me like that!”

In the seat of Humanity’s power, in the throne room of the Empress, Authority crashes down on Dolce. It demands he speak. Speak. Speak! And if you cannot speak, beg! And if you cannot beg, kneel! Why have you come here? Why have you spoken out? How could you possibly know anything of gods and power, Dolce of Beri!? Know your place! Wait your turn to die!

His legs will splinter. His hands will break on the hilt. His heart will burst. But before that. Or maybe after that. It doesn’t matter. It won’t matter.

Aphrodite won’t get away with it.

Bella’s sacrifice won’t be for nothing.

Dolce. Stands.

The monster fills his vision. Already on him. Terrible hand raised to strike. He leaps back; it won’t be enough. He raises his sword to parry. In both hands, it is balanced.

Claws tear across his body, and bury themselves in the floor to the wrist. No more than a pace in front of him. Short. The blow falls short.

Aphrodite stares in confusion. Opens his mouth.

-jingle-

And coughs blood.

XVI holds the ruin of Aphrodite’s heart in her hand. She nods, satisfied. ”quiet.” She lets it fall, and slumps down for a nap.

Aphrodite crashes after them, suddenly without blood nor divinity to sustain him. But he is tenacity incarnate. Hate will sustain him when all else fails. Snarling, steaming, his body burns. Limbs twitch. The floor groans. His eyes lock onto the impudent, little- “How dare you. How dare you. HowrkKK!!”

There is a sword through his head. There is a sheep on his skull.

“You’ve. Said. Enough.”

The beast screams; a gutteral, ugly, unintelligible sound. He is bleeding. He is dying. He will speak. He will speak!

“No more curses.”

Dolce clings to the blade. Beneath him, Aphrodite pitches and heaves. He ducks, and the god’s free hand misses him by inches.

“No more blood.”

A shadow blots out the flames. Dolce grabs the sword at his belt, still clinging to Persephone’s blade, and swings wildly. A fragment of claw skips across the palace floor.

“No! More! Ruin!”

The craving of the entire universe, the maker of all, he who contains infinities, cannot dislodge a single sheep. A sword that cannot cut him drives back his hand, and he cannot reach him. Hooves that cannot break him stomp his head down, and his mouth shut, and he cannot speak a word. So he burns it all. All he has left, let it burn! Let him try a little harder. That will be enough. He’ll kill him. He’ll curse him. He’ll tear him apart, in front of Zeus’ precious little daughter, and drag his shade to where none may ever find him. That is what it will cost! Do you hear him?! It will cost the universe one, last scar. And in time it will fester, and in time it will grow, and…and……

And Aphrodite lays still at last.

“No. More. Calling yourself. Love.”

Dolce holds himself up by Persephone’s sword. Panting. Shaking. Standing.

“You. Will never. Pervert it. Again.”

No god speaks for Aphrodite. No champion rides to his aid, guided by foxgirls. That privilege is reserved for another, one far better than him.

All that is left for him is one last prayer, as befits his station:

“Good riddance.”

So ends Desire. So triumphs Love.

So Dolce of Beri got his wish.