The wave of Molech’s presence washed over them, a mighty command of awe from even this shadow of an Emperor. These caves, big enough to house a mind to weight the universe, could not hope to contain the whole of his spirit. Vasilia took a step back, and only a step. Her shoulders straightened, turned, as her weight settled on her back foot. Poised, posed, coiled like a spring, and yet ready to indulge in every step. Her tail flicked. Her eyes flashed, defiant and thrilled. Oh, it had been some time, hadn’t it? Long enough that she might think the universe full of nothing but the likes of Jas'o; dullards and braggarts all. Who was it, who had last stepped into the ring against an equal? What other face, what younger soul? If only the circumstances weren’t so poor...

In the silence following his decree, Vasilia put a hand to her chest, and gasped loudly. “I say! The darkness has not dulled your eyes, Liu Ban. The subtle machinations of the Thundercrasher, the Heaven-splitter, cannot hide from you!”

Beside her, Galnius bit back an oath, eyes darting to the skies as if to catch the thunderheads gathering. She paid him no mind. If one wished to sift her words with Zeus’ many titles - few of which were what one might call compatible with subtlety - and fret over how near a deadly line she danced, then let them sift away. It was technically a compliment, she wouldn’t say otherwise, and that’s all that mattered, really.

“Of course, I cannot lay claim to such titles,” there went Galnius again, making undignified noises. “Today, your gracious guest is Captain Vasilia, of the Starsong Privateers.” She doffed her hat in an elegant bow. “Here is the Princess Epistia, fearless in battle and peerless of sythe. And let us not forget Galnius and his hoplites, whose loyalty is beyond compare.” Let him sift that one, if he liked. “I surely speak for us all when I thank you for your honorable hospitality. But would such a visit be complete with a humble meal and a swift departure? No more complete than our company without a suitable welcome-gift. What say you, Dolce?”

Dolce stepped out from behind her, where he had surely been standing the entire time. “I think I would rather not eat lice, ma’am.”

“Nor would our host, my dear. Come! May we bestow upon you a first blessing, Liu Ban! For from these barren caves, we shall produce a meal worthy of song! Do us the honor of sharing in the first feast upon Baraddissar in centuries! Let our hearts and spirits be refreshed in this most miraculous company!”

“...also, if you could do us the favor of providing a more private venue for such refreshment, we would be most obliged. A wing of Kaeri hound us, and I daresay they may not find as much hospitality in these halls.” A jest, a fine tactical assessment, and an honorable route of deescalation for the good Liu Ban. Laugh, agree, and carry on without losing face. They had each taken the other’s measure, and what good would come of further boasting here?

”But it’s not like I’m going to die.”

Redana’s leg is the color of dying nebulas. The pillow underneath is the color of the night sky at dusk. The musty, ornate sheets are the color of deadly orchids blooming in the heart of a far-off jungle. Hades pauses his shuffling and raises an expressive eyebrow.

“You know what I mean,” Redana huffs, leaning her head back against the headboard, arms crossed, precious Paragon pill[1] in one loose fist. “It’s stopping me from healing, but... it’s not like it’s permanent, and I’m not going to die. Once we reach a planet with a medical suite, or even a doctor, we can do a reading. But nobody else on board is like me. Dolce is so soft, and Vasilia’s so reckless, and Galnius wouldn’t complain if we ordered her to march into a dragon’s mouth, and Bella...”

There’s a table in the lavishly appointed[2] cabin. There’s always empty chairs pulled up, and a bottle of something sweet on hand, in case the gods wish to have a word with the ship’s champion. Dolce might be in charge of placating them, but Redana is, in some ways, their lightning rod. When those so, so white cards are rapped against the table, the sound is that of knucklebones scattered on dry earth.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine, I really will.” She doesn’t get up. But she does take that pill (as precious as the heart of a star) and slip it back into her belt. “Even one might be the difference between life and death for a member of my crew, and doesn’t a princess know her responsibilities to her subjects? Besides, it’s not like I can go home and ask Mom for more.”

***

“Bella, no, stop, don’t you dare—!!”

Redana fights back like a wildcat, throwing her head back and forth, forcing Bella to exert more and more strength to hold her still. Maybe, maybe if she wrenched her head away and spat the pills out, they’d be salvageable, and both pills (both pills Bella what are you doing) wouldn’t be wasted on her leg, pills that could cheat Thanatos, literal miracles of technology primed and ready to burn through her and shine light in a dark place, she could save them for her friends, her crew, even her...

Bella’s hand is almost feverishly warm clamped over her face, fingers digging into her cheek, and the world smells like rotting grapes and the tang of sweat that wrestling oil was designed to hide. Every time she thinks she has leverage Bella rips it away, pushes her down harder, and she can’t do everything, she can’t fight back and stop herself from— there. It’s done. She swallowed them.

Then she arches, and buttons come undone in a shower.

The nanites spark in her blood. It starts in her heart and travels through her, electric, furious, almost too much (two pills, she shouldn’t have used both), hot and wet. She begins to sweat, uncontrollably, eyes shut as tight as she can manage. It drips from her leg, and hisses where it meets the marble tile. It pools beneath her, steaming, purple so dark it might as well be black, as Redana shakes and moans into Bella’s crushing grip, until she melts into whimpers, quick and high, through her nose. Shivers run through her like aftershocks, goosebumps rising on her clammy skin.

Light rises from her breastbone and passes through Bella. Above the servitor’s shoulderbones (it passed like a cool breeze on a balmy day and left shivers behind) the light unfolds into a perfect lotus. Then it fades until there is nothing left.

When Redana opens her eyes again, there is a surfacing fury there alien to the both of them. Redana has rarely been prompted to this sort of anger[3], and Bella...

Bella has never had this kind of anger directed at her.

Not even when they fought on Tellus and Bella was left behind. Not even when she killed Jas’o. Not even then.

[Princess Redana Claudius rolls a 6 trying to Overcome this peril.]

***

[1]: Paragon comes in a little grey pill
(a little grey pill? a little grey pill?)
and the little grey pill goes into your mouth like an offering
(offering~)
Then the little grey pill melts in your mouth without suffering
(suffering~)
and when the nanites spark, Apollo is ready to heal you, heal you.
(paragon, paragon)

[2]: by the standards of spacers. By Redana’s standards, this was Roughing It. The lamps were blackened with age, the bed was only large enough for two, and there was only one wardrobe!

[3]: barring the occasional argument-turned-screaming-match with her mother.

Oh. That's. Yeah.

Alexa lays one head against Caval's shoulder, feels the engravings against one cheek, breathes in the aseptic scent, and lets out a bitter little huff of laughter.

Yeah, that's just about what she expected.

"If that's what you want."

***

This isn't what she wants.

There are a dozen thoughts running through her head right now, but they keep coming back to that.

Which makes no sense, she keeps telling herself. What does it matter if she's married? She only just found out that Aphrodite is actually taking an interest in her, which, wow, mindblowing. Is it really wise to try to turn away from Aphrodite again?

Which she'd very much like to do, honestly. Wants to stomp out of here, demand an audience with Caval, or run away, or something. Wants to rage that no, this isn't how love happens, this isn't right, how dare you?

But... what would be the point? You can't fight the gods. This is not a problem that can be stabbed, and she doesn't have the materials to do a proper augury to Aphrodite.

Alexa picks at the dress she's been given. It's not surprising that they have her measurements--she's pretty sure there must be a closet somewhere in the palace full of ceremonial garb designed to fit her. Can you imagine the shame of the Pallas Rex violating the norms?

"There must be a reason for this," she decides under her breath. Because it can't be the one that's being presented.

Vasilia!

Liu Ban leaned back, thick hand coming up to stroke his beard in an exaggerated gesture of thought. "Ah, the gods!" he said. "If there is one thing that does not change it is that their gifts do not come without consequence. In exchange for your company I must contend with a unit of the most deadly stealth operatives in the galaxy - a frightful bargain, because it seems too good to be true!"

There is a disaffected air to his oratory. His eyes are not sharp, his gaze is not searching, his mind is clearly not calculating. That itself is an act of profound self control, and that itself portrays some manner of his true feelings. To show such an utter lack of desperation, such an emotional detachment from his circumstances - one must care with searing intensity to seem so careless.

"You must have a great many tales," he said, gesturing for Vasilia to walk besides him as he lead deeper into the pit of his dying machine, "whereas I have but one. I was vanquished in strategy, vanquished in oratory, vanquished in personal combat. My life's work collapses all about me as my life's blood escapes me. This fiery pit in which you find me is but a twelfth-part of what I had built when I was whole, and now even it is upon the brink of ruin. Weep not for me, for this is all a comedy - a man who out of stubbornness and pride denied the reality of the most comprehensive defeat ever inflicted upon a human soul and threw centuries away in a vain attempt to undo it. It is only now that I realize the magnitude of my hubris, the extent of my narcissism - and that my years of torment were entirely self inflicted. Laugh! It takes an Emperor to make such an example!"

Alexa!

Death writhes before you with a wolf's skull grin. A miracle crawls before you, dragging behind shattered golden limbs behind it.

It once posed as a Ceronian but that disguise is long shattered. The skin is torn open with blades and the fur a mange of bloodless rents and where bones should be there is treasure. Underneath the fraying fur-cloak disguise is a marvel - glowing emeralds in gentle orbits, cascading a wave of energy out to aurite bones and wires as sweet and clean and striped as candy. A Thunderbolt still pierces its body, still live after blowing out its left arm from the wrist down and left leg from the thigh. This broken wreck that drags itself towards you, hand over hand. It is so worn and weathered you know it must have been waiting for this for two hundred years, it is so new and clean you know a God wrought it to do all this and more if required. Upon its crystal skull is an insignia in gold - the caduceus of Hermes.

It holds a letter in its machine steady grip. Upon the letter is written your name in gentle calligraphy. The divine messenger reaches up from the ground to press it to your hands. Then it shudders, the orbiting crystals still, and it goes to its long-deferred end at last.

The handwriting is familiar. Only one person ever wrote you letters. Only Minerva.

There are no defenses against the fury building in Redana's eyes. It pierces Bella like a spear and turns her intestines to ice and writhing serpents somehow at the same time. All of her senses go numb one by one: her ears press flat against her skull and refuse even to listen to the sound of her own beating heart, her fingers tingle curiously and deny her the sensation of Redana's skin against her own. Her lungs are so startled they won't take in air, denying her the world of scents that's always given her the secret leg up in any room she's entered. The lingering taste of wine is nothing but ash in her mouth. Her eyes shrink to unseeing, frightened slits.

For the first time, Bella knows fear in a way that whips and beatings could never teach her. Zeus herself couldn't freeze her heart like this. Her hand recoils from Redana's face as though she'd been burned as she jerks away with her entire body to put as much distance between herself and the source of her fear as she can. If her legs hadn't turned to quivering, useless jelly that single look might have been enough to send her racing to the shadows by itself.

But she's held fast. Her body betrays her desires as surely as her face betrays her emotions. The look of shock draws itself across her face in an instant. It's not disappointment in her eyes, neither disbelief, but primal terror. Inside her heart, she's suddenly half the size of the princess on the floor beneath her. The titan named Redana has only to sit up and in the space of that motion she'll shatter Bella into a thousand tiny pieces that can never be put together again.

It's Hera who saves her. Hera who turns the quivering of her legs into the trembling of hot fury. Fingers ensconced with rings the colors of nebulae and wrapped in peacock feathers gently take her jaw and twist it to a sharp and powerful snarl. She lights the fire in Bella's heart that burns through her with a power that could rival the core of Tellus itself. The world fills with colors, sounds, and smells all at once, and chasing after them comes the effortless sense of invincibility that anger brings.

She was never recoiling in fear, after all. She was merely drawing back to make sure her strike had the power to contain a child of Zeus. Bella lunges forward again with astonishing swiftness and power. Her claw tips pierce the ground on either side of Redana's throat as she squeezes and leans close enough to touch their foreheads together. The stench of her breath washes over the princess like poison, but all she does is sneer with feral glee.

"You think I give a single fuck if you're upset? Don't make me laugh, Your Highness." even as she says it she's shaking with the effort of not melting into cruel guffaws, "It doesn't matter what you want. I'm here to do a job and there's not a damn thing I'm gonna let you do to stop me."

The rush of blood through her veins is euphoria. There! There, there, there! Hera points to a spark of hesitation creeping into Redana's heart, and Bella pounces on it to lap it up with savage hunger. She can't keep the deranged giggles out of her throat anymore. Her tail wags luxuriously as she presses her weight down, down, down and crushes the princess against the floor.

"Oh? You thought I was doing this for you? Poor, stupid princess! Didn't anybody tell you? This is nothing but a mission for me. HA! Who the fuck would chase a worthless traitor like you into this barren shitheap unless they were getting paid?"

Bella's heartbeats quicken. Her smile spreads wider with every word, growing nastier and uglier the further it splits her face. Her teeth glint like daggers. More, cries the rush of power in her veins! Give me more! Her fingers stop squeezing Redana so that she can stroke her cheek instead.

"You thought I was useless. You thought I was stupid! I'm so much more than your dumb little pet, Redana! I'm a praetor, you moron! I shot you down, I brought you here! And now I'm going to bring you home because those are my orders, and there is not a fucking thing you can do to stop me!"

“You do the telling an injustice, I fear. One story you may have, but how many more hide within it? Every choice we make and every choice we let pass, do these not make stories in their own right?” She glanced to Dolce, meeting his eyes, and delighted to see the same caution she felt in her bones. He’d noticed the desperation too. And that he’d wasted no time in recounting his own tale. “I do not laugh, and you must pardon my restraint, for these tales untold catch hold of my thoughts. The Defeated Emperor Who Retained a Sword. The Fallen Sage Who Realized Defeat. The Loss of All, The Choice to Laugh.”

[Rolling to Speak Softly: 4 + 2 + 0 = 6 I was going to ask What does he want, and how could we help him get to it?]

Had she truly seen the company she walked with and the halls where they trod, she would not have committed such indiscretions. But her eyes were distant, and her sight was filled with a time long past and ever-present. “There are many ways such tales can go, Liu Ban. But here is where they have brought you, and here is how they have left you.” Her voice softened with unmistakable familiarity. “Will you do us the honor of sharing them?”

Alexa rushes forward, hands reaching and grasping--not for the letter, but for the messenger. She's all gentleness and tenderness as she props it up, cradles it against her. Come, sit, relax against her. You've waited so long, you've done such a good job, and she's proud of you. Rest your head against her shoulder, sit, don't close your eyes just yet. We'll open the letter together, won't that be nice? I'm sure that, after so long, you want to know what's inside it too, right?

She knows it's useless. This messenger had its purpose and, now that its message is delivered, its mission fulfilled, the purpose keeping it going has fled. Already, the various subtle pumps and whirs have gone silent and the metal begins to cool under her touch. Still, long she sits, holding the dead robot close. You did well. You had a task, you fulfilled it admirably. Well done, thou faithful servant. You were magnificent. You were important. You mattered.

She's trembling, she realizes. Her first real clue in two hundred years. And for once, she's desperately thankful that Minerva never paid attention to her when Alexa told her not to write letters to her. It's a paper trail, she'd said. Alexa receiving mail of her own would be logged in every celestial bureaucracy imaginable. It might tip Molech off as to what they were doing. It's too risky, Minerva.

Thank the stars she didn't listen.

Alexa's hand lingers on the wax seal for too long. She's stalling, she knows. Putting it off. It's... What if it's bad news? If the last letter she ever received from Minerva was a breakup note? If the reason she never saw Minerva again was because Minerva didn't want to see her? She's better equipped to handle it now than she was two hundred years ago, but she's sure that the heartbreak would still destroy her.

But... What if it's not? If it's a message telling her where she went? What to expect? If there's word of what heppened to her? Could she live with herself if she didn't at least read it?

Alexa shudders, and breaks the seal.

She wakes up early, for once. Maybe it’s a dart from some mischievous spirit that wakes her up before dawn. Maybe it’s just her hot stomach complaining about last night’s fish. But she wakes up into a world of broken stillness.

Bella’s still here.

She’s curled up around a pillow, back to Redana, hair loose and messy. (The bun last night had been so precious. She should wear it more.) She’s having some sort of dream; her tail twitches, its tip smacking the lavender sheets, and little clogged growls escape her lips. Her precious fluffy triangles lie flat on her head.

Not knowing what she’s doing, almost dreaming herself, Redana scoots closer and drapes one arm around Bella, pulling her in closer. The growls diminish until they become little nasal purrs, and that ticklish little tail drapes itself over her ankle. And Redana lies there until her stomach settles and she falls asleep to the sound of ragged, soothing snores.

***

“GET OFF!”

Redana pushes back against the crushing weight of her... of Bella. It’s funny, isn’t it? She can’t do it. She can’t get the leverage to get Bella off. She’s weak and useless and stupid and— there. Bella arches her back for a moment, redistributing weight on Redana’s wrist, and Redana acts on instinct. Knees go up, ramming into Bella’s stomach; legs go out, and up, flipping her over. Pain sparks at her wrist and cheek where claws try to dig in.

Up on her feet, turn, back away. Bella’s going to pounce. Bella, the predator. Bella, the liar. Bella, who never really cared. Dany’s face is hot. It’s the sting of pain from those narrow scratches. That’s why her eyes are so hot. That’s why.

(I trusted you. From the first moment I saw you. I just wanted a friend. That’s all I ever wanted.)

“Wuh-watch me,” Dany stammers, almost naked, flushed, crying (stop it stop it stop it). And she flings herself away, because Bella can’t look at her any more, Bella isn’t allowed to be with her anymore, she shoves aside a fluttering of owls and forces open a door.

She does not know what is on the other side. But even if it flings her into Tartarus, it would be better than staying here. Let the Furies take her; they would be kinder.

[Princess Redana Claudius rolls snake eyes to Get Away.]

Vasilia!

You are a fool for even imagining you can know the mind of an Emperor.

You play your game of posture and bombast. You play your game of bargains and exchange. You play your games as the hound believes earnestly that the master cares as much about the stick as it does. He is playing a game too, but a very different one: he is pretending that he is a human. A peer. Someone who can experience character growth and come to grips with mortality, weakness, mundanity.

He tears at his breast and laments his loss. He speaks of himself as a human with human flaws and human ambitions. And, fool, you believe him. You look upon that angler-lantern and believe it to have warmth. You believe that this is a mere man with a mere office, and now that the office is removed he can be a man again.

You do not understand what it is to be Emperor. What it is to look down upon the galaxy and call it yours. To stand before the gods and negotiate on behalf of life itself. To see the cravings of billions reduced to a flicker of unrest calculations on a cosmic spreadsheet.

If you truly understood he would not be able to trick you like this. If you truly understood you would have seen through his jovial lies and pretensions of humanity and pressed your forehead to the ground and prayed that would be enough. But then, if you truly understood you never would have let Redana aboard your ship either. Her illusion of humanity is just as deadly as his.

But, you do not.

So he is as he appears to you: a mere man. Broken and wretched and tired of fighting. A man who has been a prisoner and craves to see the stars. A man who was Emperor for forty years and Sisyphus for three hundred. Exhausted. Malleable. Looking for a new start.

"Of course," he said, "for cautionary tales and abject examples are my final Imperial duty. But a captain and a princess do not seek out an emperor for tales and advice. Tell me, what humble service might I do for you?"

Alexa!

Dear Alexa

That is all there is time to read before the constructs burst through the door, polychromatic eyes and salmon bridesmades dresses carefully tailored to render boxy infrastructure even less flattering than it was to begin with. This is all for the service of Aphrodite, after all, and it he is known to level particular unkindnesses at the bridesmaid who outdoes the bride.

"It is time. The ritual shall be conducted," said one, a towering giraffe-like gardener with blades and saws. "A day of war shall be concluded with a night of wedding celebrations, that tomorrow the war might resume. Before Apollo, battle. Before Artemis, revelry. In each, joy. So shall Elysium be built. Come."

The shadows cast their mask over Bella's face. Her eyes glow like torches as she watches Redana back toward the door and finally find the courage to spin around and run through it in earnest. Even after Redana disappears, she doesn't move a muscle. She sits there on the ground, legs sprawled in front of her, one hand on her stomach, as rigid as steel.

When she finally moves, it's to turn her head a quarter and check Omn. The machine glitters as brightly as ever, as if it didn't care how completely it had just been ignored and spared no thought toward what might happen now that its use as a gift had been wasted. It simply shines on and whirs with the inscrutable logic of a machine intelligence, readying a map of the area before its praetor can even ask for it. Bella glares in silence, and slowly nods her head.

Her tongue darts out across her lips; she brings her thumb up to flick it dry a moment after. Moron. Absolute dumbass, what do you think you're trying to pull? Bella chuckles darkly as her face splits into a manic grin. She stands and makes a show of dusting herself off before she slowly and deliberately reapplies her talons.

"...It is not blasphemy what we do here today."

She's not asking a question. Bella reaches behind her and slices the ties in her hair in half, shaking her head to loose the delicate braids to send her hair cascading down her neck in a wild, blue-back wave.

"Stand and wait. When I flush her out again, grab her properly this time and we can finish getting her ready to come back to Tellus where she belongs. She's got so many lessons to learn before she's ready to see her mother again, it's our sacred duty to the Empire to be her tutors."

She doesn't run after the princess. There's no need, where could she get to in the dead end she just flung herself into without thinking? Typical Redana, always assuming. She's never gone a moment without thinking she's destined to win, has she? Never thought for a second she wasn't among lesser beings. That's why she doesn't listen. She doesn't care. She's never cared about anyone in her entire life.

Bella rakes her claws against the darkened corridors as she walks, grinning from ear to ear at the tortured squealing noise they make as she passes. Her every step radiates power. Control. Her eyes gleam in the dark, sharp enough not to need a magic eye laying out every step on her path to keep her from tripping.

"Oh Princess~" she croons, "Where do you think you're going, princess? That's not the way out! Is locking yourself in a maze your idea of showing me? You're pathetic. You're outmatched. You're alone. None of your stupid little friends are coming to save you!"

She stops moving. The sound of Bella's snarling breath echoes through the halls before it's suddenly swallowed by furious yowls and the sounds of destruction as she tears her claws through whole chunks of wall just to prove she can. In the silence that follows, her burbling laughter seems to swallow the entire maze.

"Oh Redaaaaaanaaaaaaa! Come out and play, Redana! I thought you loved the stories where the brave heroes fought and killed the big, scary monsters?" the sound of footsteps starts again, accompanied by the wailing song of stone yielding under claw, "What part of this isn't living up to your expectations? You have to speak up, or 'your Bella' can't fix it!"

Who! Puts a sacred divination maze[1]! In the temple of Athena!! A very clever and conscientious architect! But also this is not what Redana needs right now thank you very much! Especially the part where it’s one-way and once she gets to the end, all she can do is sit down and wait for her ex-best-friend to hurt her more!! That’s pretty terrible actually!!!

It’s hearing glass splinter and smash that gives her the idea. That, and how her heaving, exaggerated breaths for air fill the entire maze. And also the part where Bella smashed through a wall next to her head and now she’s crawling on her hands and knees trying to get out of the radius of the Bella Danger Zone.

“At least I have friends now!” The words (hopefully) hit Bella from every direction at once. The words also hopefully hide the sound of her heartbeat, which is as loud as the guitar solo she played in the arena. “When I asked them to follow me, they did! They haven’t hit me, they haven’t torn out anybody’s throats recently, and they didn’t lie to me for my whole life, so, wow, it turns out having friends is great! I wish I’d gotten to learn what that was like instead of buying your shit my whole life!!”

Redana doesn’t even know how much of what she’s saying is real and what’s just wanting to hurt Bella for hurting her, for wasting the pills, for not coming with her, and what’s hoping that if Bella smashes all the walls she can sneak around to the entrance and lock her in[2].

“Yes, milady! No, milady! Fuck you, milady, I’m a backstabbing heartless bitch who tricked you all this time! Would you like tea or poison, milady? Are you going to be a good girl like me, milady?” There we go, don’t think, just be angry. And definitely don’t wonder what happens if Bella catches you...

***

[1]: a specially-trained priestess walks to the center and back while reciting a mantra. Due to the acoustics, the words uttered here hem you in on all sides; the mirrored walls take light sources and magnify them to infinity. It is a way of disassociating yourself from regular contexts, even regular thoughts, and opening yourself up for revelation. It is also fucking terrifying to be chased through.

[2]: and then she’s totally and completely, as they say, “home free.” Owls don’t exist and are fake, actually[3].

[3]: Bella is the most real thing in the universe. Everything else is negotiable.

"No!"

Thank all the gods that Molech is dead. Just imagine what he'd say if he saw her like this?

Pushing, shoving, biting, breaking away only to be swarmed again by the wall of bodies? Sloppy, lacking technique, undignified. Fit perhaps for peasants, but reflecting poorly not just on her, but on her teacher.

And yet--she can just imagine the downwards pinch to the mouth, gods help her if ever it reached full scowl--she's still not striking the way she should. Pulling punches, misdirecting strikes. When will you understand, Alexa, that you are a weapon? You kill. It is what you do, it is what you are. You were created for this. I created you for this.

"Aphrodite!"

There's no time, she laments. No time for offerings, no proper ritual. No time to figure out how best to placate him, can't choose her words. She is not above begging, pleading, if only it will be heard.

"I was wrong![/i]" Important. First step. Admit fault.

She recognizes this passageway, and speeds up. There's no time--

"I believed myself beyond love! Unworthy! Unlovable!"

Music pours from the great hall--the wrong music, improper, mad, whirling, hypnotic, a dirge keyed for revelry.

"But I--you knew! You had to know!"

The mob surges through the great hall, carries Alexa abreast like a wave.

"There was one I--" and here, even now, the word 'loved' is choked, wrung out, demoted, commuted to "--cared for!" It's been two hundred years. He knows. It's safe, even here, in front of the crowd.

The surge deposits her at the dais before the God of love and the mad dancer, One of the bridesmaids straightens out the wrinkles in her dress.

No time!--

She thrusts the letter at Aphrodite. "I beg you," she breathes. "If not forgiveness, reprieve. If, in this letter, there be no love, then…" She shudders, and studies the floor. "Then I am a fool. Then am I a fool who knows naught of love, and more fool me for believing.

"Set me a task, ask of me what you will. I have not earned this, I know but…"

She barely dares to breath.

"If love there be in this letter, then am I still a fool for believing myself past your reach. But a fool who can be taught, and who can hope to rekindle what was."

She can't even bring herself to watch him, too afraid of what she might see.

“Services far more practical than cautionary tales. Barradissar was your capital, and it remains your home. Considering those who know much of this planet, and those who will not assault us on sight, you’ve come to occupy a high ranking on these fast-diminishing lists. Our shuttle crashed on our descent, scattering two of our companions in the process. Both must be remedied before we can continue. And as our journey is long and unpopular, any capabilities we can take with us to discourage further rebukes would be invaluable.”

She did not trust him with this information. Trust was a strong word. It was closer to say that she believed he either would not or could not immediately harm them with this information, and urgency gave frankness an irresistible appeal.

Vasilia!

"Fascinating," Molech grinned his metal grin. "Of all the petitioners who have approached me, your request is by far the most humble. Two lives and a shuttle? A request of insulting triviality to an Emperor, but a feat perhaps that Liu Ban might accomplish with effort."

Yet he hesitates on the threshold. He pauses to mournfully contemplate his broken, dying machine. Even to a casual observer the thing is as far beyond repair as Earth is from Tellus, but still he hesitates. Centuries of his life have gone into fighting back the inevitable and here he is on the verge of abandoning it. In this moment he does not look even like a reflection of an Emperor. In this moment is a mere mortal contemplating finally, truly accepting defeat and that is such a different thing to do than to speak of.

*

Alexa!

Aphrodite is old. He is old in all the ways a man can be old.

The kind of old where the muscle has faded from his frame leaving hands of slender bone and skin that wrinkles like a suit a size too large. His throat has wasted away to reveal his adam's apple; his hair has thinned and gone as white as a blank page, his suit has faded from an eternal black to a dark rust red. He is undesirable in a way that makes him seem faintly distasteful. Who is this strange, decrepit old skeleton who all the bards sing of? How foolish are those who leap to do his bidding? What role does this crumbling relic have here, amidst the stars of empire, in the twilight of humanity, on the broken crownworld of Barassidar?

He might as well be a museum exhibit. A curiosity for the kind of person who becomes very worked up when it comes to beetles. And to some people, he remains so for all their lives.

But when he looks at you now you know you'll never see him in that way again.

He is old in all the ways a man can be old - but he is not a man, now is he? Zeus cloaks herself in a shape of power, as eternal as the skies themselves. She is as ageless as the colours and full of power because she knows no other way to be. When you look into the eyes of the God of Love now you see an excitement and youth you have never known from the divine. You see in that aged shape not a warning of the grave but a strange kind of hope. If you are very, very, lucky you might wind up like me: with a life so full of friends, so full of romance, so full of love that your heart grows larger than death itself. This is Aphrodite, at last! He is old because love is measured in years! He is aged because every wrinkle was once a smile! He is alien because he has a happiness that you do not yet understand!

"Listen, dollface," said the God of Love, pinching your marble cheek affectionately. "All I ever wanted from you was for you to turn your back on everything you ever knew and cared about and devote your entire life to my service. All I ever asked of you was to rise above your own nature, destroy the empire that created you, and say a few silly words. And all I'll do if I don't get my way is snap the galaxy in half, take back Prometheus' fire, and leave humanity to freeze alone in the dark until you're a memorial statue commemorating a species that went extinct for the crime of failing me."

He smiled to let you know he'd done it before.

The world outside loomed, as though through frosted glass - vague, indistinct, like time was slowed to a crawl.

"So tell me, Alexa, now that I've set the stakes - do you take this robot to be your lawfully wedded bride?"

The sharp click of stiletto heels bounces up and down the mirrored halls. Every step explodes like a small SP rifle before the maze catches it and amplifies the click-click-pop into a tiny, furious thunderstorm raging across the labyrinth. The walls howl with pain; Bella is coming. A dozen different Bellas with their dozen tails wrapped tight around their legs come slowly down the hallway from a dozen different angles. Some stretch impossibly tall and thin, while others splinter where they pass through a web of cracking glass. Another few are perfect, and even more terrifying for it.

Every Bella wears the same expression, which could only be described as pure, incandescent rage. It certainly could not be pain; she would need to care to be able to feel that, and she doesn't. She doesn't. So it can only be anger that clenches her jaw so tightly she can barely move it, or that presses her lips together thin enough to make them disappear, or that makes her trembling eyes shrink to angry pinpricks. It's adrenaline that's making them wet. She pauses. When she turns her head toward some spot around a corner, darkness swallows the features of her face and transform her into one of the erinyes.

The scream that comes from her belongs to a wounded animal. It lodges in the spine and shivers there long after even the echoes of the noise itself have faded. There's another sound of rending claws and shattered mirrors and crumbling wall as though it were crushed by the Spear of Civilization, and the various Bellas crumble to the floor in pieces. The path forward is dark, and ripples with the heaving breaths of a hunting beast.

"...Friends?" Bella's voice is trembling, "Friends?! You think you've got friends?"

Laughter dribbles out of her with the burbling drip drip of saliva on the ground. She's close. Close enough that the sense of heat coming from her body is palpable. Close enough to feel the way her body is shaking. Close enough... to know she's not guarding the way out.

"That's just like you, Princess. Does it hurt being that stupid? Those... mercenaries aren't your friends. You're just a meal ticket for the likes of them, when are you gonna wake up and realize it? Oh, but maybe you meant Alexa? Well I'm sure she's your friend. After all, besties aaalllllways keep leashes or command seals on hand. Just in case, right?"

Bella's teeth flash in every pile of broken glass. Her tail cracks like a whip, close enough to touch.

"Did you think you could hide from me? I could smell you from the other side of the planet you fucking moron."

[Redana, damage your Wisdom or roll to Overcome]

“I’m a moron, huh?”

Redana’s voice is shaky, but there’s a triumph to it. The triumph of a winning move in the strategy exercises she had back home[1]. That should be just the warning Bella needs, but the princess is one step ahead already. Did you think she would just curl up like a frightened chick and wait for your claws, Praetor? She’s irrepressible.

Turn, Bella. See Redana silhouetted against the doorway. Realize that she picked her way through your trail of destruction to loop back. She might be reckless and silly and a bad friend, no, not a friend, your prey, your enemy, but she is glowing with triumph and does that door lock from the outside?

“Then how dumb are you?” Redana says, and slams the door shut[3]. There’s a bar on the other side which she sets in place, and then she stumbles back, trembling from the adrenaline. She got out. There’s something else that’s a problem, but she can handle that when she gets to it. She did it. She stopped Bella. She didn’t let Bella win and take her and hurt her. She didn’t let Bella win. She didn’t prove Bella right.

Which means Bella’s wrong, and she doesn’t have to worry that Bella might be right.

[Redana rolls a 7 to Overcome, very very temporarily. This also heals her Blood stat.]

***

[1]: But this time, there’s no best friend leaning over the table and asking, always so curious, how it worked, what Dany’s plan was, oops, sorry, of course you’re not supposed to reveal your secrets in the middle of a match! That whole time, lying[2].

[2]: it hurts. so don’t think about it, Dany.

[3]: It’s as dark in there as in the inside of a box. Or so we must imagine.

Alexa should be afraid.

He threatens to end all that she cares for, threatens to end civilization as they know it. And, staring at that face, she believes it. Every nerve should scream, wrack her with the tension of knowing that she is in the presence of--not an apex predator, because that elevates her to the position of something he would hunt. Something so utterly beyond comprehension that whatever instincts she has should writhe with terror.

And yet...

There is nothing in the world but those two eyes. Twin wells, portals into infinity, and full of such wonder!-- She could spend an aeon reading the stories in them, and still only scratch the surface. Tales of romance spanning galaxies--daring escapes, forbidden meetings, passionate confessions, swordfights, murders, passion, and more. Alien races, unlike anything she's seen. Looking into these eyes, there's a vague part that remembers that Aphrodite, like Zeus and her family, is born of titan's blood. In those eyes, she sees all that Aphrodite has promised, and more besides.

And at the very center, in the heart of the black hole, a small twinkle surrounding those three little words.

Dimly, she feels pressure against her hands. How did she feel that, under the overbearing weight of those eyes? Everything feels... not off, but diminished, somehow. No, not diminished, not really. The sound is the same as it ever was, as is her vision. But in the presence of Aphrodite, in the midst of such a vibrancy of life and love, everything else must feel like a pallid imitation.

She looks down, wrenching herself away from those eyes to meet the gaze of one of her bridesmaids. She has to be--she bears the bumps and bruises and dented metal from the trip here. And yet, the maid is smiling. Gently. Encouraging.

They're flowers. That's what the maid is doing. Is giving her a bouquet. Of course she is, can't be a bride without-- She should thank her, right? That's what's done in this circumstance, is be...

Tenderly, the maid closes Alexa's fingers around the bouquet and withdraws back to the cluster of the other bridesmaids.

She knows these flowers. Molech didn't garden, himself. That is to say, he wasn't the one in the dirt, tending to the weeds and the watering. But he drew the plans and ordered the work, and woe betide the errant soul who dared disturb his mastercraft by picking them.

And yet, here they are, in her hands. Errant, wild, run mad with two hundred years of crossbreeding and patchwork.

Her eyes track inexorably through the crowd. Wild, free. Patchwork, run mad. Beautiful in their chaos. There's barely room to contain them all, pushing, shoving, vying for space to see... see her. To watch her get married. Is that touching, she wonders?

The sweep of the room continues to Caval, waiting patiently. Even now, she's impossible to read. Is that excitement? Dread? Eager expectation? Terror? There's nothing to read in that strange, bulging optic array. Does she want this? Is she a mere puppet to the will of the god of madness? No, no, that's. Well, it's possible. But Alexa doesn't want to consider it. Doesn't want to believe that even the gods would be so cruel as to deprive someone of...

...of the ability to choose. To decide who they are. More important, to decide who they want to be. To fix them in place, and tell them, "your lot, and no more."

Her breath hitches as she turns once more, finally, to Aphrodite, and hopes she's making the right choice.

"I... do not."

She cringes back, waiting for the smiting. When it doesn't come, she cracks her eyes open again.

"I do not marry this woman," she hesitantly declares, if for no other reason than to fill the void. "I barely know her." Slowly, marveling at her own audacity, but picking up steam, "I have not spent time with her, listened to her, held her as she cried or cried in her arms. I have not marveled at the way the sun streaks across her chassis, or found wonder in her smile. I cannot greet her at the doorway with her favorite food, or whirl her away to a romantic evening, because I have not spent enough time with her to know any of that."

She desperately hopes that's a smile creeping around Aphrodite's lips, because all the gods couldn't stop her now.

"I do not love this woman. And I admit that I am as yet unversed in the ways of love, and perhaps in your wisdom you have chosen my perfect mate out for me. If so, I am so very sorry for once more disappointing you, failing you. But I cannot marry someone I do not love, or ask her to marry me when I know that she does not love me. That is not fair to her, and it is"--her voice chokes a little, and she has to rally before continuing--"and it is not fair to me."

The crowd, for once, is silent. Alexa shrinks into herself, and soggily wipes her nose. "I... I am very sorry for wasting your time."

Vasilia was many things. Few of them were casual.

“Liu Ban may accomplish much, with effort.” She placed a hand upon his shoulder, taking great care not to encroach on the lice’s territory. “But only if he is given the chance to start right. New lives cannot be built on messy foundations. That which is ruin,” she exhaled in a hiss. “Is ruin for a reason. Whatever it once was, it is not. Whatever it once did, it does not. By all accounts?” She curled the fingers of her free hand, pondering the shape of her claws. “Best to cut it out.”

And then she patted him congenially, gracing him with a smile. “Of course, a long goodbye can just as well turn to blessing than curse. See to it that it stays the former. Dolce, will this spot do?”

Dolce licked a finger, and quickly tested it against the heated metal, nodding approvingly at the sound. “Ideal temperature for lunch.”

“Brilliant. Everyone, see to our Chef Mate for rations. Rest, tend to your wounds, and keep your spears close. We march for our companions within the hour.”

Vasilia!

"I agree!" said Zeus daughter of Cronus, slapping Molech on the back so hard that he jumps. She then glances at her hand, grimaces slightly, and wipes the dead lice off on Hades' shirt. "It is a time for feasting! It is a world for feasting! What do we have here? Sandwiches? I love sandwiches!"

The Thunderer beams at Dolce, and goes to ruffle the fluff atop his head but is thwarted by the fact that she holds a sandwich in each hand.

"Little sister," Hades said quietly, with thin-smiled grimace of someone who was doing their absolute best to be polite. "Are you sure that this is a good idea?"

"Of course it is!" said Zeus. "Hospitality has been offered and accepted. Alliances are being negotiated. Peace reigns, Hades! Do you have any idea how tired I am of war? Dionysus? DIONYSUS! Get down here!"

With a shock of violet, the God of Madness is amongst you. A mirrored glass face with painted eyes sits atop a beautiful androgynous mechanical body, wearing a flowing cape of cold violet and purples. Zeus beams and offers a high five. Dionysus silently meets it and then sits cross-legged at the table and pats the ground for Liu Ban to sit next to them. The former Emperor sits as directed.

"Little sister," said Hades again, reaching a new record for the smallest possible upturn of the lips. "I do not think this is a good idea."

"Oh, psh, Hades. This poor man has been tormented for nearly three hundred years!" said Zeus through a mouthful of sandwich.

"He has not suffered enough," said Hades whose voice was all the icier for the fact that he forced so much warmth in it.

"You don't think anyone has suffered enough," said Zeus, rolling her eyes. "If it were up to you we'd all just sit about contemplating our sins while playing Russian roulette. Come! Food has been offered and you will join in, big brother."

Hades' eyes burned a brilliant blue as he sat down next to Dionysus. Immediately the Strange One threw their arms around him and kissed his face and neck and whispered into his ear. Hades' expression did not change an iota, even as Zeus gave him a thumbs up with hands filled by her third and fourth sandwiches.

For the part of Liu Ban, he is not aware of the gods. His mind is still on the machine, still on the challenge, still far away as it focuses on a problem he has been absorbed by for -

Then he takes a bite of food and all else is forgotten.

He eats in a frenzy, prompting Zeus to beam and slap him on the back again - and wipe her hand off on Hades' shirt again. This, at last, is how one brings an emperor's dignity low.

[Mark off two units of food - one for yourself, one for Liu Ban - but by sharing a meal with another you can heal two instances of damage]

Alexa!

It's more still than anything you've seen from this world so far. The spirit of madness has lifted; Dionysus has been summoned elsewhere. Instead you face the soft whirring and clattering of mechanical minds, so still and familiar they seem entirely like what they once were. This is no longer a party, a riot of colour and motion. Now these are machines wearing clothes, as emotionless and alien as you must seem to others.

Cavel-4954 speaks to you not as a mistress of the dance, not as a wife, not as an individual. She speaks to you in the voice of a standard issue Cavel unit giving a report, and though that voice is as emotionless and mechanical as any of her kind it feels all the more raw and emotional for that. This is the most honesty she can give.

"It was not a waste of time, Palas Rex," said the Cavel unit. "We had to know. We are not separate entities, you and we. Together we form a complete engine of war. You are our speartip, our champion, our avatar. If you were perfect then we would have wailed and gnashed our teeth and tore our clothing and become perfect in turn. We prayed to all the gods that when we found you that you would be as flawed as us, as broken as us, for if you were broken then we could remain so too. A galaxy where the greatest killing machine ever built functioned properly would be a terrifying one indeed."

Aphrodite nods at that, and glances aside at you. Molech was always obsessed with Ares, but it was not Ares who wrought this fate.

What the Kaeri do here is not blasphemy. They take no pleasure in it and give no thought to the possibility of rising above their station or dragging the princess beneath hers. When they seize Redana by the arms, they are precise and firm, restricting her movement while harming her as little as possible. When they take her by the legs and lift her in the air, it's only because she's writhing too much to guarantee her safety. They follow the orders of the Empire, and the Princess' safety is paramount. But her return to Tellus is more important still.

It's a trap as thorough as can be. Lines of proud owl warriors wait in slowly fanning semicircles spread out from door to door in the chamber. They shift about in confusing and mesmerizing patterns, not with restless energy but with the calculated skill of a hunting pack. They whirl and wheel about, but slowly, slipping in and out of the battle lines to present no opening to attack and offer no obvious paths to escape. Even with their princess captured again they maintain their net. Breaking free and making a run for it would still leave their quarry with an endless-seeming, constantly morphing net to try and scramble through. The way is shut, Princess. You were never free.

But they do not gloat, do not leer, do not paw greedily at all of the skin they worked so hard to bare. A Human phalanx might be so bold as to trust in their divine favor to make sport of their princess in such a fashion, but Servitors know their place in the chain. In this way, one supposes, it is better to be caught here by them than by some of the alternatives. But can you say that, Redana, when they hold you so tight and fast and make so little noise that the room you're in has nothing to swallow but your own useless grunts of exertion?

A high pitched scream cuts across the question like a cruel sword, so sharp and piercing and horrible that it could freeze the blood of the honored dead in Hades' keeping even through that locked door. What could even make a sound like that? A monster could. Or a wild animal with its heart filled past bursting with the kind of primal hunger that wouldn't be satisfied unless it ate a whole village in a single night, tearing out throats one by one to drink the people's screams. Pain. That scream is pain, ugly enough to freeze even the Kaeri where they stand. That scream is vile and... and wrong. Why won't it stop? Doesn't she need to breath?

The door pounds against its hinges with bone rattling force. And then nothing. The quiet is somehow more horrible than the screaming, and the low scraping that trails away from the wall is worse still. The space of a heartbeat, and then two more. The door shudders violently, seeming like it was trying to hold back a ship's cannons. The scraping. The anticipation. The thunder: the door explodes into splinters, and Bella leaps through it with a desperate fury that swallows the idea that she might have been sweet and beautiful, once.

Her saliva soaked mouth glistens in the dim light of the room as she stands there, hunched over and tensed, muscles bulging, claws curling in and out and in and out again. Her breath comes in wet and ragged gasps while her hair falls in tangles across her shoulders and over her face. She leans lower and lower, close enough to drag her claws against the floor; the tiger preparing to pounce and devour its prey.

But then she stands up straight, and when the light catches her face it's the new worst thing in the universe. Her mouth is split in a feral grin even as she drags her dainty sleeve across it to wipe it dry. But it's her eyes that make it awful: those cold, dead eyes that have slipped so far past mere anger that nothing shows inside of them at all anymore. She is gone. The old Bella is gone forever, if she ever existed at all. She makes a wet gurgling sound which probably passes for laughter where demons come from.

"You wanna do this the hard way?" she spits, "Fine with me."

Bella crosses the room with inhuman stiffness, ignoring the looks her warriors shoot her as she passes to press her face right against Redana's. She shudders violently, and suddenly backs off several paces. Then she rears back and spits in her princess' eyes. Her clawed fingers reach up right after to brush against Redana's skin, not quite hard enough to pierce.

"...Ah. You really think they're coming to save you. You really think you've got friends, don't you? Lemme tell you something, princess. You couldn't make friends with beasts or dolls if you tried at it for a million years. More toys, more slaves, that's all you've ever bothered with. Does it make you feel better when you call them your precious friends? Well. They're already figuring out how little they mean to you, just like... everyone else you've ever met."

The claws pull back. Bella's grin, terrible as it was, disintegrates into a scowl. Every muscle in her body is trembling and rippling in waves that send her carefully selected clothes into spasms where she stands.

"You. Are. Alone. And to prove it, I'm going to drag you back to my ship and tie you up so tightly even that dumb fucking eye of yours won't have any ideas about what to do. And then? I'm going to lock you in the darkest room I've got and leave you there with nothing until you understand that there is one person. Just one, princess! In the entire fucking universe that loves you even the tiniest bit, not that you deserve even that much, you defective, traitorous, sorry excuse for a spare battery."

Even now, there's no flash of emotion in Bella's eyes, but her face is nothing but pain. Is it hers, or the promise of someone else's? She spits on the ground this time.

"And guess what? That person's not on this planet."