Great treasure halls hath Zeus in heaven,
From whence to man strange dooms be given,
Past hope or fear.
And the end men looked for cometh not,
And a path is there where no man thought:
So hath it fallen here.
- Medea

She descends from the heavens, born aloft by a flight of cranes that hold her extended arms. The Thunderer descends a scene of carnage and ruin, and through the blood her family comes to her.

HADES
"O sister, see how I have been cut,
Through the throat by one I sought,
No life escapes these breathless lips
Heal my wounds with your tender gifts."

ZEUS
"I shall not."

APHRODITE
"O daughter-son, killer mine,
I spit on you and more besides,
But raise my spirit from stalking death
Else your kingdom shall draw no breath."

ZEUS
"Then let it fall."

[The gods of Love and Death cry out.]

ZEUS
"When the throne is silent and throne is still,
When strange gardens grow as they will,
When the Fisher King rots first from the head,
His power does not join him in the land of the dead.

And so it was with I, the king of the gods
Trapped by mercy and love and gambler's odds
No courage could bring me to the use of my throne
And so living power fled and left me alone.

Once I set a chain and bound all the stars,
And all of my siblings, Poseidon to Mars,
All of them hauled and could not lift my hand,
Now I will not either, it has crumbled to sand.

Power is living. It goes where it is used,
And your wicked strength has too long abused,
I did not stop you for that was my curse,
But neither will I raise you up from the Earth.

Rise Hermes."

[She rises]

"You have been dead as long as I,
Stagnant when you used to fly
Your throne, too, has rotted alone
But power has long since found a new home."

Rise Redana."

[She rises]

"In death you sought life,
In life you sought more,
In death you found your wife,
In life a galaxy to explore.

Rise Bella."

[She rises]

"Love and death. Death and love.
You are loved by the dead
And died here for love.

You were born of love
But knew only death
And yet forged new love
Amongst those of death.

Life, death and love.
Thrones vacant three
Take your crowns of death and life
And let love exist between."

APHRODITE
"And what of Vengeance, O King Divine?
Thy blood is still the same as mine
And late it has been spil't."

HADES
"Persephone has no guilt."

ZEUS
"I must answer one last time to my family
And pass sentence on Dolce of Beri
Aphrodite's last curse is his last decree
No more shall this sheep's eyes see."

APHRODITE
"I want more."

ZEUS
"You did not ask for more."

APHRODITE
"I wish to punish the child."

ZEUS
"Which child? Name her."

APHRODITE
"I cannot. She has no name."

ZEUS
"Then go to the House of Bella, and trouble us no longer."

[He departs]

ZEUS
"An absent father has many sins
And so much debt to pay
But a present one can be ever worse
When her shadow hides the day
Rage against my coward's heart
That let this ending pass
I only ask you play your part
And let the wheel turn.
And should this journey have been worth your time
Then I humbly bid you pray
I know already all the pain and tears
And suffering along the way.
This is the end of my kingdom that I could not write
I could not make it alone
And now, at last, where it began,
I break at last my throne."

It did no good to explain these things to the God of the Dead. Nuance was not nor had it ever been her strong suit: it was not a thing that had fallen into her domain, and so she had no use for it. And even to begin with the concepts of value and usefulness had stopped carrying much weight at all now that she had shed her mortal shell and become a thing of divinity.

"...For the last time Bella, it's not wine! It's called sake and it is different and I am begging you not to make an ass of yourself in front of the Goddess of the Hunt again!"

Bella lifted the small stone bottle between two fingers and stared at it with curiosity flickering in her golden eyes. She poured a small measure into the tiny saucer in her hand and swirled the clear liquid about, setting it down without touching it to her lips at all.

"It looks like wine to me, Beljani."

"Bhhh! You! Just 'cause you outrank me now doesn't mean you're an expert on treats! Does that smell like grapes to you? No! Does it look dark? N-"

"There are white wines, you know."

"Yes but! Not the! This is clearly different! It's not white either, for one thing! It's clear, like water! And for another you're not supposed to chill this one! It needs to be warmed up or it won't release the aromatics right! Those are the best part, Bella!"

"Of wine?"

"Of! Sake!"

"You're getting really spun up about this," said Bella, "Does it even matter when Artemis doesn't drink?"

"She does, though! She does when she's bathing! And it matters a lot because your predecessor had a rad as hell Casino Fort - which you up and trashed I will remind you - and he knew the names of every libation he served and if you ever want to have company over again YOU HAVE TO KNOW THESE THINGS! I'm right, aren't I? Vesper, help me! I know you're up there! You always are!"

Lying on her back tucked into the rafters above, Vesper lazily turned the page of her new book. She'd been reading a lot, lately. Just for the pleasure of it. All trashy fiction; it was more fun to guess the silly twists and turns than it was to study any new facts. There weren't tests to take anymore. This wasn't poison anymore. She sighed, and rested her novel on her chin.

"You, uh, don't want my help on this one Gem."

"Beljani! When I'm down here it's-- sorry. Never mind. I would, though. I would like your help. Because this uncultured oaf won't listen to me and I am running out of slippers to throw at her!"

"...Sake is rice--"

"HA!" crowed Beljani, full of triumph.

"...Wine."

Bella's cackle echoed off of every stone and bit of flowing water winding its way into the baths.

It really did no good to tell her, after all.

*****

She felt hands around her neck. Beautiful, blue, and shimmering scales. Claws trace the outline of her jaw while talented fingers peeled back the layers of her silk robes and revealed her glory to the world. Bella stood there and let the tip of her tail curl in place of words. She closed her eyes and let the pressure all crash down on her.

The weight and warmth of another person. The softness of skin and fur and the sharpness of bone and joint intertwining, mixing, until the difference between them all became irrelevant. She felt Mynx trace her collarbone and did nothing. She felt the hands against her breasts and merely stiffened. But then the tip of a claw slid down her stomach and...

"Mynx." she snapped, "You do understand I'm technically a god now. Right?"

"Mmhmm. That's why I'm worshiping you~"

"Fuck's sake, Mynx. Knock it off."

In reply, Bella felt teeth sink into her neck.

"That still doesn't work, for the record."

"Awww, that's boring. But don't worry! I'm gonna figure you out yet! Then we'll have all kinds of fun <3"

Bella snarled. Mynx's hands obligingly (if slowly) worked their way back up Bella's body and busied themselves tying a blindfold made of white flowers in place. Lilies, chamomiles, a chrysanthemum... but not a single rose. She'd refused their presence ever since she returned home. It was a stupid thing to have a hangup over. Was somebody in her positioned even meant to have hangups?

Well, yeah. Obviously. How else do you explain Zeus if not...

"Ok Bels you're all dressed and ready. Go have fun! And remember, no peaking! God or not, you really don't wanna find out what she'll do if you try to watch."

****

The water was warm. The steam was waking up her blindfold; petals unfurled across her cloth wrap and turned her whole world white even as they buried her in their soft, clean scents. She took a deep breath and descended deeper into the spring. She liked this place a lot. Ever since it fell here from Above.

There was time now, nearly infinite time to indulge all of the hobbies she'd built up in death and in life but as importantly as that, she needed to wash it all away sometimes. To soak and to let the obsessions that clung to her seep away into the water and swirl around the many smooth stones that decorated the garden here. The bamboo in particular soothed her. It felt like... like she hadn't missed out.

But today she was not alone. She tried not to swallow her nerves. It shouldn't be unusual for a meeting like this to happen. No big deal at all. She'd even been the one to suggest it.

"...I appreciate your restraint," said Artemis, "Move no closer."

In response, Bella floated a tray of wine across the water and listened for the clink where it met the goddess' hand. The broken splashing of the waterfall told her everything she needed to know about what was happening. She could picture it, if she really wanted to. She took a sip from her own cup, instead. Smooth and slightly sweet, with no burn but a vaguely pleasant sour earth note on the back of it. She let it dance across her tongue, and set the saucer down again without turning her head to follow the motion.

"Thanks for letting me join you at all. I know you can't be particularly thrilled with me, so..."

"Why do you keep assuming that? Do you think that I, out of everyone, would mince my words with you?"

"I just... I always wanted this. With everyone. But especially with you."

"You have it." said Artemis. Her fingers slid through her hair like moonlight.

"And did I... earn that? I know I wasn't the arrow that you knocked. And I didn't land even if I was. Just, when you pushed me... what were you hoping for? It couldn't have been this?"

Once, this was an important place. Once, this was a place that the universe pivoted around. Once, this was a place touched by the gods.

Only, isn’t every place like that, given enough time?

Sunshards glitter like diamonds in the sky, like the stars scattered deliberately across the wine-dark void. Below, the waves crash together against the shore, a mirror. The breeze is cool and brings with it the rustle of cypress branches, the songs of morning birds, the prickle of goosebumps on skin. There will never be another breeze that is exactly the same. A butterfly, shockingly blue, rests with its wings spread on her knee.

She expands. She lets the experience of the butterfly pass through her, the shape of it, the meaning of it, the birth in pain and the death in chill and the beauty in between. The soft cypress needles rest on her tongue. The sunshards pass through her heart with a song. A string unspools and she hooks it with her little finger.

She sits down grinning next to herself, and when the butterfly shoots up, she breathes out and it finds a place to land in Dolce’s kitchen, resting on the back of his hand, where it will receive a plate of sugar water and sun to bask in, and when Vasilia comes in for breakfast, she’ll see it and, knowing Vasilly, knowing their love, she’ll find a way to describe its shade of blue that he’s never heard before.

“Here?”
“Here, in just a moment.” She beams. They’re wearing the same practical outfit, the kind of clothes that you don’t mind getting grass stains on when you’re chasing after sheep. She has a rod in her lap which looked at one way is a crook and another is a wand.
“Do I need to…?”
“I don’t think so? Sorry, I’m still, we’re still— we’ll figure it out as we go, I think. I’ve got a lot to do backwards, because…”
“Because this is impossible.” She lets it hang in the air like a shard. She nods in agreement. “We couldn’t have gotten here. We should have failed so many times. I should have failed.”
“But it’s right that we got here. Like a eur… a… um. Like the happy ending that you don’t see coming? Like the end of Batrachomyomachia VII.”
“Would the Nemean have gotten us here?”
“Why are you asking me? I haven’t figured it out in the past five minutes!”
“It’s five minutes from now?”
“I wasn’t counting…”
The urge to pout is strong. Instead, Redana closes her mismatched eyes and reaches out more until she can almost feel the strings vibrating.
“I think, with my wisdom of approximately five minutes and divine ascension, that she would have gotten here alone and then been crushed by Aphrodite like a bug. And then he would have tied her up as a trophy and dangled her from a comet to watch entropy.”
“And the only reason I beat her is because you were there.”
“I hope I’m ready for it by then.”
“You will be. Otherwise there’s no happily ever after, and that’s the world which has to exist: one where Bella is waiting for me with her sisters, where Dolce has his izakaya, where Dyssia and Alexa and everyone get to live in a universe which will never be perfect and blue and— oh.”

Dawn breaks. She reaches out and wraps her heart around it.

She gets up and spins and laughs and dances, and everything, every wonderful little mystery, every desire not to be alone, every wishing heart turns with her.

She sits down, beaming.

“Here?”
“Here, in just a moment.”

"Hope," said Artemis. "What an interesting word. Desire, in other words. Yearning, grasping, all those things that I have tried to kill but could not. This is a galaxy of animals. Men who are deer, girls who are cats, civilizations that are snakes. Animal hopes, animal fears, animal loves - all in service to the greatest Beast of all."

"So, I set hope aside," she said. "And I became a weapon. Unquestioning. Unhesitating. An instrument of slaughter. A mother of monsters. Butchery codified into laws, laws refined into sciences, power there for anyone who reached for it. And they did. Power was there for taking, and the powerful could not help but reach for it. They brought more and more of me into the world. More and more perfect science, more and more perfect death, more and more of the Hunt. Every time it worked they grew more comfortable with it. Every time they became comfortable they set their sights a little bit higher. Until you. Until her. Until they'd made a machine for killing gods, and still they did not have the capability to stop."

Silver fingers on your claws. "One gun in the house. Two guns in the house. A dozen guns in the house. Hidden in drawers and cabinets. In pockets and shoes. More and more weapons. Each individually obedient, controlled, prepared, loyal. Each a weapon of terror, domination, control. But keep adding guns. The risk of an accident increases. Nobody intended anything. Everyone obeyed the rules. Everyone obeyed the rules, except for the one buying the guns - the rules didn't apply to him, after all."

A breath against your ear.

"It was an easy shot, once I saw it. Just a matter of time enough for the arrogance to play out. If not you, then her. If not her, then the next one. He was never going to put the genie back in the bottle. That's the problem with wanting more all the time."

A breath even closer, against your neck. Playful. Dangerous. Impossible to tell if she's teasing or not.

"You should see what I've got in stock for the rest of my family~."

"GHKKK!!!"

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck? What is she supposed to do with her hands? Her body?! Does she look, does she not? What the fuck is happening right now?

Bella hisses and vanishes in a flash to the other side of the spring. Her hands are shaking and her tail is fully bushed even soaked with water, and the reddish color on her cheeks has nothing to do with the heat of the water or the rocks.

"S-s-so this is why no one's allowed to see you bathe. You're a, a, a Mi--"

She claps her hand over her mouth to keep from finishing the thought. Is it really that strange? All her life, Bella had envisioned Artemis as a perfect being, something whole and separate from all things of the universe. The Hunt, wrapped in a moonlight suit and snappy gloves for pushing papers. The teeth hidden inside of ever system. But wasn't the whole made up of the parts all along? Each temple had an Assassin, and each Assassin was made in Her image.

Vesper was the easiest one to see. But there was Bella in Artemis, too. And Beljani also. So why should it shock her that there was something of Mynx inside her, too? The mistake had always been assuming that the gods were perfect. They were not. She was not. Bella startles when something bumps her elbows, but it's only her wine tray. She plucks the cup up again without looking, fills it to the brim, and brings it to her lips for a long, slow swallow.

All the while her ear bends to follow the motions of the spring. She is not alone, in spite of everything. She is still joined by moonlight, dangerous in repose. Black and silver splashing in the little crests churned up by the waterfall, reaching for the same wine that the new caretaker of the dead was crutching on. Bella sniffs at the air, but it isn't really the same as it used to be. Hers are not a huntress' instincts anymore. What she smells is just The World, and her place in it besides. She has a right to walk Olympus. One given, one earned, and one taken. Slowly, she lets herself float back to where she'd been. Her back bumps into the Goddess of the Hunt's, but all she does is lift her cup again to drain what's left before she throws it away. And then she laughs.

"Right, yeah, of course. Thanks for being honest. I had this fear inside of me, that I was shackled by some destiny I couldn't live up to because I didn't earn it. But, ha! I actually didn't! And it doesn't even matter, because you're all kind of... dumb? Like you're all a bunch of stupid fuck ups, aren't you? That's great! I'll fit right in."

The grin falls off of her face. Bella flexes her claws, and then brings them up to her blindfold. The sharp tip slices through the holy shroud and the world explodes in color for her: the gray and green of the rocks, the clear black of the pool and the white of the mist, the pink of the tree blossoms drifting down to settle on the water with her. She does not turn around to behold Artemis. This is the furthest step she is willing to take.

"I have no idea what you think about it," she says, "But you and I are partners now. The Hunt and the Underworld are meant to work with one another."

A shrug. She sinks into the water up to her neck and stares at the endless stars. Completely absent everywhere she looks is the ugly pink gash across the sky that had dominated so much of her life. Just the moon, or... a moon or, however it worked now. It was a lot better than the sun, as far as company was concerned.

She braces herself against the stones and find her courage to finish the thought.

"So I'll tell you this much for free. If you think you dropped Hope, then pick it back up. Dust it off. Desire, you called it. Yearning, grasping... no. You're confusing the only good thing in the universe for one of his toys. Hope is how I let go, in the end. Hope is why the gun finally went off when he was standing in front of it. I'm sure with enough time I'll forget I ever saw it this way, but...

"I made it all the way to the end of that plan because I was clinging to your words. You promised me 'peace', do you remember? All I had was the hope that, if I just shattered myself enough times and managed to pull myself together just enough, that I'd... fuck, I don't know. I didn't know if that meant I'd get to die, or what. But the idea of not made it so much easier to do. Then I thought peace would actually be Gaia, and I clung even harder. And if that'd all been the old bastard's thread then all you'd have to show for it is more waiting for your easy fucking shot. Like, come on. You don't even believe it yourself, do you?

"I won't take credit for any of it. I mean, all I did was die. But I couldn't even have done that right if I didn't believe that kid was following in behind me. I had faith. I hoped. That was the death of yearning. And that's why I'm telling you now, don't give up on it. Whether we agree on what a better world is, I don't really give a shit, but if your shot ever goes off and there's no vision behind it? I will be there. And I'll be the one to pluck the next idiot up from the ground to replace you. Looking forward to the show, sister."

"Don't disappoint me."

****

The air grew warmer with every passing day. The snow had long since melted, and grasses had begun to sprout up everywhere. The wind was alive with the scents of a thousand different unfurling blooms. Light came more easily in this season to the Land of the Dead than it had in an uncountable while.

And Bella ignored it all, so she could watch the horizon. Her sandals alight on the tips of flowers without crushing a single one down. Her fur is whiter than the light now flooding her kingdom, before it disappears underneath the black skirt which rests at her knees. Three swords rattle in the belt around her waist, while glistening jeweled talons cover every one of her claws with wonder that would make a passerby wonder what she needed the blades for in the first place. Her belly too, is robed in white bound together with delicate golden buttons running up to her chest where a tight black halt top covers her breasts and hides her neck. Two long, black detached sleeves flutter in the wind and fill her world with the sounds of the bells she's woven through the decorative ribbons that helix up and down the fabric.

Her blue-black hair dances behind her, though all the rest of her is still. Her ears bend forward, chasing the stars in place of her feet. She can hear plates being set and dishes hastily finished, with the cries of battle that can only belong to a kitchen mixed in for good measure. She can hear singing and laughter and dozens of stomping feet, either running or dancing or both. She hears another dance too, one with no feet at all. She can even hear a light clash of blades and a single, flustered 'goshies' drift across her favorite meadow.

But none of that matters to her. All of it is for later. There are other sounds she is waiting to hear, and other sights she is waiting to see. It had been long. Difficult. Weird. She'd clashed with every god and goddess in creation, and apologized to every single one. Sometimes she'd been apologized to, in turn. There had been adventures. So many more than she could have anticipated. So many pointless, mundane stories. Baubles to show off. Faces to reintroduce.

The time was easy to fill, because there had been so much of it. But it was shrinking now, smaller and smaller, and all that Bella can do is stand and watch. To bend each of her senses toward that single spot on the edge of nothing and feel her heart grow warmer in her chest. All that time. All for this.

The light has come. The spring has come. And love has come, as well. Bella's face melts into a smile.

"Redana..."