[b]Alexa![/b]

It works. Your voice rises above the din. Quiets it for a moment. Ares' mad form settles a little, sinking back into the restrained features of Athena. As she returns so does order, so does organization, so does practicality and the intelligence required for survival.

And then, from inside her, he winks.

And Lorventi and Epistia erupt into the room in a hurricane of blades. Dozens die in their passage. They are a whirlwind, the roving manifestation of Ares himself, and Athena is swallowed by him entirely. You have fought against warriors devoted to Ares for much of your life but the struggle of Ares against Athena was never his most pure self. His most pure self is this: Ares fighting Ares, fear battling fear, chaos destroying chaos. You've never seen war like this. 

You pray that you never do again.

You know that it wasn't this sight that made Molech declare war on Ares. His motivations were selfish, proud - he sought to win Athena's heart and elevate himself to the pantheon of the gods by emptying a divine seat.

But what you never understood was why [i]Athena[/i] hated Ares so much that she was able to tolerate the affection of a man as corrupt as Molech if it meant bringing him down.

Now you know. Soaked in the blood of a dozen of those who stood by you a second before, now you know.

And then they're gone, elsewhere in the ship, a storm of death. And you still have people standing by, dazed and shocked and too traumatized to fight each other or anything else. You've got your ceasefire.

[Damage your Sense]

[b]Vasilia![/b]

"The Third Form, the Mad Orbit, is limited in its potential," said the Furnace Knight. "Conceptually, it relies on leveraging an advantage in speed. If your opponent is faster then you will lose, as you did against the Praetor. If your opponents are numerous enough to prevent a breakthrough then you will lose. You can try to chase the dragon's tail with the form - become faster, faster! And that might seem like progress, but it is no such thing. There is no advance in technique in that. It is the reduction of the Glave to a foot race."

Again, the Furnace Knight slipped off his robe and levitated into the air. He held still, steady. "Have you ever tried doing battle while stationary?"

He swung his blade ineffectually a few times. As you know, it's an awful way to fight - with nothing to brace yourself again there is no way to put the strength of your hips or legs into a blow. You drift in unpredictable ways. Always, there is the call to align gravity with your opponent and let the power of terminal velocity drive your blade true.

But the Furnace Knight gestures for you to strike him while you remain on the ground - and when you do, off he goes like a balloon. Despite the strength of your strikes, the reverse is also true; there's no way to hurt him. There's no way to hit him hard enough because he's not grounded to anything, and so the energy of your strikes travels through him and turns into motion.

"The First Form is not a technique, per se - that is simply how you would say correct action, or one who does battle with divine inspiration, using whatever techniques are perfect in the moment. The Second Form is the practice for dueling other wielders of the Glave; I shall not teach you this. The Third is for armoured opponents, as you know, but the Fourth? The Fourth, the Atmosphere Surrounding, is for defense. It is collected techniques to shield, restrain, and endure. If one needs to engage in extended battle with an eye to survival then it is the Fourth you must turn to. There are many techniques for developing powerful strikes in this form, for battle endurance, for maintaining self and stability under a range of chemical attacks. But be wary, for if you offer your opponent no leverage..."

He surged forwards, hands grabbing you by the collar, and you felt the nails sink in to your clothes and start to tear you in two.

"They may [i]create[/i] it."

Again, he relaxed, descended, and returned to his seat.

"You attempted to live in the clouds, untouchable, but your levers were plain to see and easy to exploit. You did not know the techniques to conceal or defend them. Excellent politicians are often like excellent warriors; they keep their convictions mysterious to deny opponents leverage, while searching for the correct moment to take a stand and strike with hurricane force. Those who are too open are pinned and assaulted until they collapse, those who are too closed may pass their entire careers as nothing more than balloons in the wind."

[b]Dolce![/b]

"No."

Jil clutched her lantern close, the words of Apollonian scripture engraved in fine calligraphy on the metal surface.

"You are alive and the gods have answered my prayers," said Jil, trying to keep her voice steady and meditative as her large eyes focused on the light in her hands. "And that is where it ends. You'll hurt yourself if you walk, and I can't be trusted with your safety, so you need to just lie here and heal."

She gently set your head on the ground, then stood up. She walked towards the door, unfolding an item in her pack into thick barreled solid projectile shotgun she started loading chemical catalysts into.

"I'll take care of the rest," she said, but you can tell she doesn't have the foggiest of what she means by that. Walk around with a shotgun and hope that something obviously evil presents itself.

[b]Bella and Skotia![/b]

The stars of the Endless Azure Skies burn violet above, interlocked in a web of gold. The lines of shining djinn-dust encircle each violet star like gemstones set in rings, and they trace connections between each other. Glittering golden dust floats up into the air, the captured godlike essence emerging from a hundred thousand broken containment rings.

The star pattern wraps around itself, coiling in place, the golden dust flowing into it. Together it forms... an arm. An enormous, glowing golden arm levitating in the sky. It rises higher than the massive spaceport spire, so high it might snatch a ship from orbit. And beneath it, in the midst of a vast alchemical circle formed of salt and quicksilver, sits Beautiful. She looks up at the stars, right arm wrapped to the shoulder in delicate golden braids.

She flexes her fingers and above so does the massive hand.

It's a dizzying, incomprehensible scale and speed. For all its immense size it moves with the swiftness and fluidity of an ordinary hand. She couldn't just snatch a spaceship from the sky with that divine hand, she could punch the planet until it broke - crack it open like a watermelon.

She was not lying when she said she had figured out how to kill everyone.

Around her, in terrified but steady formation, is a wild and motley phalanx. Azura lords, Lantern operatives, Kaeri warriors, everyone who came under Beljani's spell is up here in defensive formation around Beautiful's circles. Beljani is here to oversee them, flecks of blood on her dress. Of the Master of Assassins and Redana there is no sign.

And in the streets below, there is fire.

Tens of thousands of Azura march through the ghost of their city, holding torches above their heads, wearing the red and black colours of the Party. They flow like water towards this place, towards the palace, from all directions. They are not here in support, they are here in threat - a protest formed from the collective anger of some unknown treaty violated.

And Beautiful smiles beatifically, eyes blinking with exhaustion.

"Good. You killed the Taxation Agent. I'm glad," she said. "Fuck, you've got no idea how glad."

She gestured at her divine right hand, a fluid motion, round eyes glittering with strain. "I told you that they were doing something dangerous with their money. My theory was right. The Azura Shah bound a Djinn, but it was too powerful for any prison. And so the Shah broke it into pieces. A billion containment rings, each with a shard of the Djinn's power. Such a treasure was too valuable to seal away, but too dangerous to keep together, so the Shah chose to distribute it as currency. The circulation of coins changing hands across hundreds of worlds would keep the Djinn useful to the Skies as a whole and prevent dangerous concentrations of power accumulating. I theorized that this system would be unstable, for running an unregulated market economy would inevitably lead to dangerous concentrations of wealth. All I needed to do was speed up the process a little, concentrate wealth in the Palace during a formal event, and critical mass could be obtained..."

She glanced up at the sky again, gaze inevitably drawn upwards.

"Though obviously the Shah had the same idea. There exists a secret governmental taxation and regulation agency in the Skies, I shouldn't have assumed I was the only... it's a powerful department that seeks to break up dangerous concentrations of wealth. Obviously my stratagem would be at odds with their mission. Looking back on it the counter-maneuvers were obvious, but I didn't [i]see[/i]. I thought nobody else could think like I did. And so I was in the trap before I realized and - when behind Dark Shrine. Take a risk. I bet everything on you, Bella. I didn't think it would work, actually, I was sure we were all dead. What disrupted the hunt? There is," she sniffed, flexing her hand ominously. "Something wrong here." Her eyes are narrowing and there is a thunderous danger in the air. "Something is wrong with reality. We should be dead. There isn't a possibility branch where you kill the Taxation Agent no matter who helps you. The Taxation Agent would have killed us all even in the possibility branch where you allied with the Furnace Knight, and he's the deadliest warrior on this planet."

And then her eyes turn to look at you, Skotia, and those are no mortal eyes. Those are the eyes of a god - or someone flying so close to heaven that the difference is obscure. And you can feel Skotia start to flay and wilt beneath the cosmic calculations of that semi-divine mind, wax before the sun. Nearby you can see Aphrodite wince and start to walk backwards - even he doesn't want to be anywhere near this.

And beneath the surface the Nemean laugh-cries and Dionysus' mirror mask rises up from below.

"Who," said Beautiful, and her question sent ripples of broken glass shattering through the world. She raised her right arm to point and her gesture blotted out the stars. "are you?"