"You've never known love, have you?"

The Coherents catch her, swallow her in the press, as she knew they would. How could there be any beauty in the world, if they did not?

And Redana! She was worried she'd never see you again! You're getting the hug of your life after this, and probably a second one right after, and then you're going to tell her all about your new look, holy shit!

But still, she's staring up at Liu Ban, a look of shock on her face.

She stares at Aphrodite, meets his gaze across the battlefield, and levels one finger at her father.

"All this time! All this time, Aphrodite, I waited! You watched me wait, watched me slave for him, all in hopes that one day he'd love me, and you mean to tell me that he doesn't know how to love? For real?"
"All this time, you've never known what love is! What it feels like! You've never been in love! You've watched it happen, seen it from outside, and you decided you wanted people to love you, because people in love are half mad! What better servant could you wish for than one who loves you?

Liu Ban fights alone. He is all strength and too-long-limbs and terrible thundering strikes. And if she weren't so angry, she could almost feel pity for him.

"You saw how people in love hold to each other, and saw a servant who would never leave! And yes, love is greedy! When you have that person in your life, when you have so much of yourself tied up in them and so much of them tied up in you, you don't want to let them go! That you want them to stay, and you want to stay with them, and spend the rest of your life with them! But you saw that and saw only how love could keep a person bound to you, could keep them from leaving! But when you love someone, if they want to leave you let them go! You tear yourself apart, and you find ragged edges where pieces of yourself used to be and painful spots where they still are, but you do it because you want them to be happy, even if you're miserable because of it!

"You saw how people change for someone you love, and saw only how you could define a person, demand what shape that love should take! But people in love don't change because the person decided what they should be--you change because you want to be better! Because you want to fit yourselves together! And sometimes you don't change, and you talk, and you communicate, and you figure out together what the compromise is--whether a compromise can be reached, or who needs to change, or whether maybe no change is needed at all beyond what people want! And you do that together too, because love goes both ways! And you've never done that, because that would admit that other people might have value, might have opinions, that might rival your own!

"You saw what people will put themselves through for people you love, and boy, you're not wrong! People in love are crazy! Not gonna tell the story, but there's a reason for the new arms. That person is so important to you, you'd give anything to keep them safe, keep them happy, even if it means that you put yourself in harms way for it! But you saw only the act itself, of protecting them at all costs, and never considered that, again, love goes both ways! You've never sat awake and worried about a friend or lover, given yourself stomachaches with dread that something might happen to them! Never missed them, never cared! You never considered what you might do if it came down to it, how you'd throw yourself in the line to keep somebody safe, because you only cared about what you wanted!

"Degenerate hedonism, my ass! Love isn't about what you want, it's about what they want! And you can't decide that for them! You can't show them affection and declare that they owe you love! You can't force them to want what you want! And until you understand that, no amount of shutting up or waiting will make anybody else love you back!"

The arrows are almost white, if you look at them from the right angle. They’re not Thunderbolts, not terrible explosive impositions of wrath. They’re tight-packed shapes, compressed harder than the flickering thing in the Shepherdess’s hands. Holos always like to talk up the impossible shapes of chthonic monsters and the wrongness they inherently possess, all slimy and mind-breaking and gross, but the shapes comprising the darts of Hermes’ daughter are impossible in a way that makes them more right. As if the shapes of man are simply attempts to replicate the idea of a shape, perfected.

She’s darting here and there, always a step ahead of Liu Ban, more intense than graceful, and where she digs her heels in to a halt, she draws back the string of the bow and the shapes interlock behind her, the wind kicking up and setting her skirt to wild fluttering, and the shapes are a language inexpressible, writhing as a halo about her. When she lets the finger slip from what might be a string, the aura roars, the shapes lance out, and something that is like an arrow hits true. After all, archery is an Olympic sport, too.

Sometimes they are whistling clean-cutting things that slice away skin, braids, neatly digging furrows in his body where they pass. Other times they hit his limbs with sudden force, knocking blows askew, cracking his jaw, and they shiver out into writhing sigils and fading signs. It’s hard to tell which one they will be until they strike him.

One, two, three. Darts slam into Liu Ban’s chest with such vehemence that even he is forced to stumble a step back, as they roar out anthems of almost-comprehensible defiance in their dissipation. Redana Epimelios spins her wand between her fingers, makes it something small and sharp where it was a well-curved bow a moment before. She looks Alexa in the eyes, smiling, as she stabs it through the back of her hand.

The Command Seal smokes and whines underneath the wand of the Shepherdess, the concentrated meaning cutting through coils of tightly-wound compulsion and will, until— with a snap, with a roar— it shatters and tears out from beneath her skin. The noise released from it, a thousand commandments and strictures, is a cacophony that swells suddenly and then collapses into nothing.

Redana barely hisses as the wand slides back out of her skin, leaving in its wake only the quality of Injury. She taps it twice, then, on her hand, and silently commands the quality of Injury to be otherwise. Her hand, stiff with the knowledge that it should be suffering Injury, relaxes in relief. She flexes her fingers with a satisfied grin, and turns back to Alexa, beaming.

“How about—“

Liu Ban’s backhand should have sent her flying halfway across the battlefield. Instead, she does a complicated mid-air twist and lands on her feet some distance away, skidding but controlled, like a cat tossed down a hallway. She coils her muscles beneath her and then launches back towards the tyrant, her wand a thin and wicked sword that slices through the dead in her path, its reach impossibly long and its keening song the sound of Redana’s heart, her mother’s heart, her aching and her yearning.

I have failed, that song says to the spine, to the nerves. Watch me try again, and again, until I have done it right!

"Athena!" howls Molech. "I would give you the galaxy! Grant me victory and I will dedicate every temple to your honour!"

Arrows pierce him in a dozen places. Blood-gold sap drips, a litany of wounds frozen in time.

"Athena!" cries Molech. "I would give you Olympus! Slay my enemies and I would face mighty Zeus with sword in hand!"

His body dangles on the spears of a dozen Coherent. He flexes and shatters them, the wood of their shafts merging with the wood of his body.

"Athena!" screams Molech. "I would murder your brother Ares! Help me survive this day and I would cut his throat in your name!"

The axe comes down upon his back. This is no longer a battle, this is the felling of a tree, and the blows have settled into a rhythm.

"Athena!" rasps Molech. "Grant me a kiss! Grant me a smile! Grant me any sign of your love and I will find the strength to go on!"

The execution drags on. Slashing talons threaten axemen but briefly. A new set of warriors has to be rotated out to deal blows to the increasingly miserable figure who, despite everything, still refuses to die.

"Athena!" croaks Molech in between the swinging axe blows. "Athena! Please! Tell me what it is you want!"

And there she is at last, and she is utterly unrecognizable. You were told you were made in her image, Alexa, but looking at her now you can scarcely believe it. You have never looked less like anyone. Her eyes are the colour of the stormclouds that drench the desert in rain, and there are poppies woven into hair slashed with blue and violet streaks. She is armed and armoured for war, but it is of no manner of war you might recognize: not bronze and steel but leathers and hoods and a gas mask with one broken eye lens.

She leaned down over him.

"Next time," she said, "try leading with that one."

And then she crushed his skull with a stop sign.

"Asshole," she said.
"Mm," said Aphrodite, coming up next to her. "Pity."
"I was talking about you," said Athena.
"I," said Aphrodite, hurt, "have been given a very difficult task, you know."
"Nobody gave you shit," said Athena.
"It is a turn of phrase," said Aphrodite. "Look, every other god in Olympus has found if not a wife then at least had a fling or two."
"And you thought this was the guy to do it?" said Aphrodite, heaving her bloody stop sign up over her shoulders.
"Look, he had a plan to at least get a kid out of you!" said Aphrodite. "Honestly, this is me taking your feelings into account. Entirely platonic, respectful, distant cerebral love from someone who'd never make an inappropriate advance, and who could help you reproduce without any of the things that you've already ruled out. And isn't that what you're all about?"
"You still have no fucking idea," sighed Athena. She pointed at Alexa. "Does she look like my daughter?"
"Well..."
"Does this look like my idea of a good time?"
"It's a war, isn't it?" shrugged Aphrodite. "One is much the same as another, surely? War never changes, after all."
"War changes all the time," said Athena. "It's love that stays the same. This man built a monument to a single fleeting instant, a mechanical simulacrum of me made of gears and cogs and sorcery. He thought it would "perfect" warfare. It was obsolete by the time he finished and he lost. And here I find the damn thing has survived on this side of the Rift."

She snaps a hand wearing a fingerless glove, and the sky changes. Above is the planet of Baradissar. Huge sections of it are crackling and aflame, enormous rents opening in the barren sands to reveal colossal grinding and tearing gears and machines. Upon its surface stands Athena as you know her, the four-armed and cold-faced goddess, the splitting image of Alexa in whose image Alexa was carved. She looks up into the sky, grim faced, and raises her shield.

"Look at this shit," said the true Athena. Then she hefted her stop sign up into a javelin thrower's stance - and hurled it.

Across the gulf of space it soared. A bolt of blinding light seen across all the galaxy, crossing the distance between Sahar and Baradissar in an instant. It punches right through the simulacrum's shield, through her neck, and out and down into the planet below. It crashes through the earth shattering gears and machines, driving through into the bloody and mad heart of Baradissar. Finally, slowly, it grinds to a halt in the planet's core. The red and white word STOP is still plainly visible as the gears grind to a final close all about it.

And then, the planet Baradissar and its enormous god machine finally and mercifully dies.

"You are impossible to please, you know that?" huffed Aphrodite.
"Shut up," she said, turning away. Instead she walked over to Alexa.

"Hey," she said. "I'm Athena. We haven't met. I don't come out this way much." she glances around at the battlefield. "Fuck, this is archaic. Cavemen hitting each other with clubs. I can't even remember who I'm supposed to root for in this situation. Anyway," she snaps her fingers again, conjuring a massive industrial hammer, more like a tool than a weapon of war, with a glowing force projection array in its head. She hands it off to you. "Here. You look like you've had a shit day, and you're the side that needs to break something massive and ungodly, and that's good enough for now."

An Empire reaches across the infinite expanse of the stars, and plucks up a little lost sheep. He squirms. He struggles. He swings his needle of a sword. He changes nothing. He moves nothing. He does not move, save where the Empire moves him. His ribs, at an angle too sharp to maintain. His body, skipping across the desert. His thoughts, torn from his rattled head and left strewn on the sand with his blood. No more. No moving, now. They want him still, while they peel him open. They do not care to hear him scream. If his voice mattered, they would have sent someone who could listen.

An assassin falls to the ground, and an Empire sighs in annoyance. What now? If she hadn’t wanted to breathe the poisoned air, she should have stood someplace else. Or tried not to breathe. Did she think of that? Did she think to put in a little effort, for once? Didn’t she realize how much trouble and expense they’d gone through, to strip away everything that couldn’t be useful? Good girls say ‘thank you’ when they receive a gift. Good girls get up. Get up. Get up. We took out all that could’ve held you back. Why did you decide to stop? Get up. Get up.

A little lost sheep flops over on the wet dunes, coming to a halt beside his death. The toxic gas sends him coughing. The coughs break him anew. But inch by grasping inch, he pulls the remnants of his armor over his mouth; just enough of a barrier to let him breathe. Still, he watches her. He never stopped watching her. He couldn’t stop. Not then. Not now. Not when he has his answer, at last. Not when he sees, at last, who taught her to hurt like that.

Through the wool, through the fire in his flesh, one voice speaks against the omnipresent rumble of Empire:

“Your name…is Bella.”

And he is gone, snatched up at terminal velocity.

Get up.

They’re escaping.

Get up.

"Thank you," Alexa says, which is probably the single dumbest thing you can say to somebody who just casually shattered your world.

We've never met? Then, so, uh, mom isn't mom? Mom is a machine intelligence the size of a planet? Mom is dead?? Mom is a robot, but also the robot is Ares? Is Ares dead? Is Ares free?? Huh? What?! ??!???

Mom is dead. Holy shit, mom is dead. She stares up at the wreckage of gears pierced by a stop sign, and can't help but feel… well, a little guilty? For feeling glad? She's not the child of Athena? Or at least, not that Athena? Because wow, the one who actually raised her is… Look, she wasn't the one who killed her friends, that was all Liu Ban, but. Apparently she's a fragment of Liu Ban's mind? Liu Ban's imagination of what Athena was, that perfect frozen moment that Liu Ban worshipped and idolized so much he poured the resources of empire into making a literal idol of it? She'd pushed Alexa into the same direction that Liu Ban wanted her to go, because what else could she do, and Alexa had lowkey kind of hated her, she's now realizing? But also Alexa had thought of her, for so long, as the lesser of two evils? Good, by virtue of not being quite as totally shit?

Fuck, and Liu Ban's dead, too. She… well, she's torn. Because for so long, that was the only way she could be free, she was a hundred percent sure of it. But she also didn't want to be the one to kill him, to put the nail in that, eheh, coffin. Have Nero do it, somewhere she couldn't see. Feel betrayed when she has to do it herself. Even now, in the ranks of the Coherents, she felt every blow to his body, winced at every spearthrust, watched him dying with both glee and dismay, because somehow she'd imagined that… That what? That she'd leave him, half a corpse, on a desolate planet, and feel particularly gleeful about leaving him alive with a fate worse than death?

The seal is gone. She'd stared at Redana as she shattered it and felt… Well, she ought to feel something, right? A release of energy, a bowstring snapping. There should be a twang felt across the galaxy. She should bolt upright at the new movement in her limbs, feel a fire of ability to choose inside her chest. She shouldn't feel, she's sure, so confused, so empty. She's had these voices telling her what to do for her whole life. She's alone with her thoughts now, and the silence is deafening.

For so long, Alexa has been three things: the firstborn of Molech, the enslaved Pallas Rex, and the daughter of Athena. And now she's none of those, and she gets to choose what she wants to be, and you know what? For someone who just fought a war to get to choose what she is, she has no idea what that looks like and holy shit, being free is confusing.

The hammer sits in her hand like a lump. It's not chosen. It's not familiar. It doesn't burn itself into her mind, doesn't practically pull her into motion, shove patterns of thought into her. It doesn't have plans for her. It's just a hammer, new, ready for whatever she decides to use it for. She gets to choose what purpose it's put towards, just like she gets to choose what she does with herself.

"Thank you," she says again, more fervently this time. The first time was automatic, now she gets to say it for real. "For everything. I look forward to getting to know you for real, this time."

And then she's lunging at Redana, pulling her into a hug, and doing her level best to squeeze the life out of her. To pull her in, and show her how much she means to her. One arm snakes out to grab Ramses into the hug, and then one coherent after the other joins the squeeze, the press, and she can't stop thanking them and squeezing them and she never wants this moment to end.

But, alas, it is a battlefield, and she loosens her grip somewhat so she can grin at Redana.

"Now, how about we go save that cat?"

The world shifts back into focus. Power settles into her muscles, and they cease trembling. Her breathing steadies. She rises.

Who did that? Who did that?! Say the name! Say the name so she can check her list! She'll purge it first no matter how small it is! She snarls and hisses; a line of flowers, seeds, and wet sands scatter a full meter in the air across a long line where she kicks out in frustration. When she lifts her gaze up beyond the debris, she sees the pair of scoundrels soar above the battlefield.

Mocking her. Ruining her intentions. Punishing her. Running away. Cowards. Vermin. No more. No more games, no more handicaps. Now they die. XIII lifts her arm and twists her claws around the space between them, to tear it away and plunge her hands into a pair of soft, sweet hearts before they could waste another second.

Your name... is Bella.

She flinches. The pressure on her skull is agony. What is, what is, what is, WHAT IS THAT NAME?! XIII staggers where she stands, still wheezing and spitting out the last traces of chemical agony that had dropped her, and then past that. Just get it out! This pressure, this name! She won't go back! Don't call her that, incomplete, broken, weak! Don't! She howls her fury into the storm. She is whole. She knows who she is. She is a number. Tredecima. The Thirteenth.

But her hand drops. She watches them fall back to the earth, away from her.

"Ar. Te. Mis. Bear. Wit. Ness," she rumbles as her body hunches low to the ground. Her entire body tenses with the effort of speaking, but this is worth the effort, "I. Will. Catch. Them. With. My. Feet... I. Will. Kill. Them. With. My. Hands... Do. Not. Throw... Rrrrngh! Gol. Den. Ap. Ples. In. My. Path... Do! Not!"

When she moves, the ground explodes underneath her. She bounds effortlessly, faster than a spear hurled by Ares, scrambling across the sands in leaps and bounds on all fours. Petals and shattered bits of branch scatter all about her in a halo of death. The world shrinks away from her, bit by bit. Sense by sense. Light dwindles down to blackness so that she can see the trail their scent leaves as they flee her. Smells sink lower and lower until she can't catch any but their leaking blood as it spatters on the sands in her wake. She licks her lips, but tastes nothing except the flavor of the hunt. Her ears bend and twist to catch the sounds of their lungs fighting for new air, and even the roar of cannons is a whisper compared to that sweet song.

There is only them. The pair that flees. And XIII who chases. Who hunts. Faster. Faster. Faster! She leaps high into the air every time her feet touch ground and smashes down like lightning again, and again, and again. Every time, the sound of her impact gets closer, faster. Thunder heralds every storm. There is no reason for her to fear this. She is doing what she was born for. Made for. Good girl. Good girl, XIII.

Dolce and Vasilia!

Even fully grounded planetside, the dark shape of the Anemoi reminds you of a dagger, quivering with the need to stab into some enormous, godly heart. That sleek, black, and evil ship is the closest thing you have to a friend right now. The Alcedi lines are broken into chaos. Lanterns fall by the score. Kaeri and Bonsai swarm everywhere in their place, with no Epistia to slow them down.

But you drew up the battle lines yourself, Dolce. Some three kilometers in front of you is a cache of ammunition that feeds into the Anemoi's artillery, now one of the few things keeping the fight from descending into total chaos. Whatever your heart tells you, however bruised and torn your muscles might be right now, that stockpile is your best chance at pulling out a victory.

One shell at point blank was horrible enough for you, but for Bella it was utterly incapacitating. With an entire pile, you might actually be able to stop her completely. With the right combo and timing, you could overload her senses and leave her a writhing, helpless mess. You might knock her unconscious, which could buy you time to at least get a look at her armor, if not figure out how to pry her out of it. You might even be able to kill her.

There is time to come up with a plan. There's time enough for the pair of you to make a decision, together, if you are quick and daring, or full of heart. There is even time enough for an I-told-you-so. But only now. Only right now. Your head start is already gone; Bella races underneath you in a storm of motion with a promise of violence and death the second gravity carries you back into her arms.

Why is she not leaping? What's making her wait? She runs ahead of you now, and turns in a wide circle underneath you as if to prove how much faster she is than you. You're low enough to see the way her claws twitch with anticipation. Her body is relishing the anticipation of the moment she spears the both of you and soothes the irritating burns carved into her skin. Her eyes gleam sharp and silver, and utterly not her own. She will kill you. She could do it easily. But she hasn't yet.

It's time to make a choice. You can roll to Get Away, and put your faith in the Anemoi's SP rounds. Or you can roll to Keep Her Busy, and with your courage or your words try to pry an opening in her armor for someone else to squeeze through. Either way, pay a price.

Redana is—

She’s not the Nemean. But she’s big. Maybe even a little taller than Bella, though the heels are definitely doing a lot of the heavy lifting there. She looks older, more mature, more sure of herself right now. When she smiles back, it’s as someone who is comfortable in her own skin, who isn’t second-guessing herself. There’s magic here. And it’s beautiful, isn’t it?

“We have to take out the Pyramid,” the Shepherdess says, her gaiety tempered by the battle raging all around. A victory’s been won here, but there’s more to be done. “Alexa, do you think these shining arms of yours can tear it down and leave no stone standing on another? I’ll keep the Gardener off your back while you work.”

The impossible shape in her hand twists and writhes into the shape of that long and terrible bow with which she harried the tyrant. Her fingers brush against the string, which quivers with a dreadful note, a promise of battle.

“Once that is done, my uncle’s shackles will fall away, and perhaps these breathless dead all around will be allowed their rest. And then there will be nothing standing between me and Bella. And after that… well, I suppose we’ll all find out together. Shall we?”

Redana and Alexa!

There are allies, and there are slaves.

Slaves are all Sagakhan is left with.

The Master of Assassins has spent her deadliest coins but she always had fewer to use than her enemies. Now she must take the field herself as the storm of war reaches the edge of her pyramid once more. The tool she calls to hand for this moment is a ten meter long sarissa - a pike five times her height. From her position atop the pyramid she walks at a steady pace, stabbing down at those trying to climb the steps towards her. The motion is like that of a crocheting needle - a sudden and precise dip in and out of her victim's chest, threading a single bloody stitch at a time. So steady and precise is she that the offense is stalling out, morale collapsing as entire waves are sliced down in thrust after thrust and blood runs down the black pyramid in rivers.

She does not stand alone either. A unit of elite Kaeri Bloodfeathers have detached from the battle to help her hold this position, perched with wings unfurled along the upper edges of the pyramid like gargoyles. Now and then one will detach from the stonework and descend silently and alone into the enemy ranks. There she will snap the neck of a commander and then lay about her in bloody carnage with scimitars, dragging ten souls down into the bloody sand with her as she dies.

While the skill of these warriors represents a significant barrier, the real defense here is terror. The theory here is obvious: The way to defeat a phalanx, even one formed of a single hero, is to hold the line long enough to bring up an Esoteric weapon who can sweep them from their position at a safe distance. But the terror and disruption caused to the lines by the combination of the Master's presence and the Kaeri's bloodlust is keeping the lines too disorganized to properly shield the Hermetics as they approach.

Leadership is required.

All Alexa can see is that impossible knife. Another soul gurgling its last, chest heaving to capture breath through lungs with too many unexpected holes. Another future friend cut down--or maybe a peer, or a rival, who knows--but somebody she'll never get to know. Somebody who's gonna bleed out into the sand of this dusthole nowhere planet, all so that some psychotic bitch can fulfill her lunatic scheme.

Not today. Not here, not them, not now, not ever.

So when the next Bloodfeather descends, Alexa and her hammer are there, swinging like a champion slugger at a ball.

See, there, the instant the universe holds still. See how those Kaeri eyes, so full of bloodlust and confidence, flinch, turn to confusion and then panic, as the hammerhead draws close, consumes her entire vision. See the moment the hammer makes contact, how flesh mushes and molds itself to the hammer's surface, squishes out sideways. See the beautiful follow-through, see her step into and through the blow, the muscles bunching and pushing the perfect silver arc of the hammer, see the feathery comet hurled back up the pyramid.

Home run.

The Bloodfeather frenzies, spasms, throws her knives, inflicts her deadly worst in her death throes. But too late, too far.

And people see, and fall behind, and for now, these people will see tomorrow.

The second Bloodfeather is similarly battered away, while the third is pounded down, down, into and through the stone of the pyramid.

And now there's a wedge, and a flaw in the perfect replica. As below, not so above, and Sagakhan cannot help but pay attention to this new threat.

Once, twice, thrice, the sarissa lances out. And once, twice, thrice, Alexa catches it on the Aegis, fends it off. Once, twice, thrice, Alexa responds with additional craters on the surface of the pyramid.

On the fourth strike, the Aegis shatters. But that's okay--Alexa's expecting it, waiting for it, stepping forward and into, pinning the sarissa under one arm and bringing the other elbow hammering down onto the shaft.

"Dany! Now!"

[Keep Them Busy: 2,2,2,+3. 7. Paying the Aegis as a price or acting against a threat to the world.]

Redana vaults over Alexa’s shoulders. She seems as graceful as the bird on the wing, her movement as effortless as keeping those wings outstretched; it would take a moment of frozen time to appreciate the strength that holds her limbs in close and her torso straight as she flips nimbly over Sagakhan and continues her ascent. The Master of Assassins may try to follow, but Redana is light of foot and Alexa is in no mind to allow her free passage. Every moment that Redana might delay is one where Alexa will bear the responsibility, the price, and so she rockets up towards the tip of the pyramid.

She sweeps up a fallen spear in her wake, spins it from hand to hand. It fits perfectly in both when she drives the spearhead between the stones, and she is already leaping, vaulting, dashing up the shaft, and from the butt she jumps even higher, as if trying to reach the upper sky, as if trying to reach her uncle’s domain. She ascends from the chaos all about, radiant. Then she twists about, faces what lies below, vast, monolithic, defiant.

For a moment, her light flares around her like two great wings, and she draws the string of her awful and wonderful weapon back to her cheek. For a moment, she hangs in the air, a beacon, shining bright and beautiful and holy, her face set with the serenity of determination, and the world holds its breath for her. For a moment, her mother’s love radiates outwards from her in vast mandalas, the shapes interlocking, the words pregnant with meaning, the colors shining like her uncle’s waves crashing against the ships of the Grand Armada.

She releases the string, and her rebuke of this black blasphemy shrieks downwards, strikes the stones, and does not stop. It stops for nothing. Not even the sand will stop it. The light’s fingers worm through the cracks, and as if great hands, they leverage the stones apart, one from the other.

It takes a moment for the roar to catch up with the wave of light that sweeps outwards: a roar that is the half-understood word, an exhalation of divine breath, the sound of shackles snapping and stones slipping free, the shape of the name of Alexa’s heart. Who else could be the dart? Who else could shine so, could set shoulder to the work, could ever hope to take apart such an edifice?

It’s simply a convenience, to tell the pyramid that it has already met Alexa and been found wanting. That’s all it is. Assertion. The weapon of Hermes’ daughter is meaning, and the collapse of the black pyramid is art, is a showpiece, is Redana’s final word on the meaning of Alexa.

Do you see, dear heart? Do you see it? It’s for you, because it is you, and because you are the answer you were looking for all along.

And now she tumbles back down to ride the stone rain to earth. Even lightless, even with her wand shoved through her ponytail, even with the petals of her skirt flaring about her hips, she’s impressive as she falls like a cat, tumbling into place, hopping from one stone to another, glowing like the Imperial Princess making her way through the obstacle course in the gymnasium with her loyal Bella timing her and keeping track of the score. Even now, she’s grinning and long-limbed and a wonder to watch.

Here she is. Here she is!

[Redana nails the Finish with Blood with a 12.]

“Darling. Why…?!”

“She’d have got you again. I couldn’t…you shouldn’t have to…”

“Was it better I should watch you die?!”

“...ah. Sorry. I, I didn’t-”

“No. No more. We’re not splitting apart again. Not now. If this is-”

“We can do this.”

“...”

“We can do this, Vas.”

“...then we’ll do it together, dear heart.”

******************************

The first steps of XIII cleared the field. The sound of her approach slaughtered plans where they stood. Lines shifted. Friend and foe clamored in retreat. Those creeping plants, those breathless dead, remembered the shape of fear, and scattered to new ground. The eye of Ares found better game, elsewhere. No one will stand between them, now. Nothing stands between the Diodekoi, and her prey. They will fall, and they will fall, and what sweetness it will be! Names and bodies growing cold against her! Thank you, Artemis. You kept her path clear. She is here, for her treat. She is a good girl, in the end.

Down, down, down. To doom. To death. With a glaive in her hand and a sword in his. With her body before his. Let her take a fraction of the pain. Let her lifeblood buy her husband a breath of peace. She winds up for a swing. One, last, fruitless resistance.

XIII leaps. As does Dolce, right on time.

The sheep flies from his wife’s back, equal and opposite reaction dropping her low. The claw meant for her heart drives through her side, piercing armor twice over. But he’s away. But he’s close. So close. XIII twists, pivots off the air, body bending like a bow at full draw, to spear the little stormcloud-

*BOOM*

And Vasilia’s strike lands upon the desert floor. With a strangled gasp she kicks herself off those hungry claws, vanishing into the dust cloud. She hears no shredding, no screaming, and knows her husband broke clear. She does not hear XIII’s kick, splitting the sandstorm in two. She feels her ribs crack. Then-

Silence. Chaos. Silence. Chaos. Dunes explode to dust, one after another, as she passes through them. Enough gravity not to bounce off into the sky. Not enough that her body will break. Barely. XIII is coming. Blinking closer with each silence. Coiled to pounce if she runs. No escape. No retreat.

“Vas!”

A voice shouts from behind her. Not alone.

The swipe. The strike. Thunder claps twice. XIII digs a ditch twice her height, and sand rushes to fill the wound. Vasilia vaults a hair’s breadth from destruction. Her glaive missed. The blast of sand and grit could not. XIII eyes blink themselves clear. Her ears catch the shifting of the wind. Divine sense tell her where Vasilia must be, where she will be. But for Dolce, he simply knew. XIII must leap after her. He was already there.

For an instant, two fields become one. They split, and only they know their direction. Again, the swipe. Again, the glaive. Wound. Vault. And again, the pair meet. Faster. Faster! See the trench they carve in their wake, the desert pockmarked by thunderbolts. The air resounds with the staccato of the Armada’s cannons, violence to split a planet in two. And still they fly! In patterns impossible to predict, two souls fly, untouched! As one, outrunning a nightmare!

“E. Nough.”

XIII spins, once. Her heel strikes the earth.

Vasilia’s swipe passes through open air. Dolce scrambles to land, but finds nothing. Beneath them, a yawning crater. A grave, big enough for two. Big enough for an army. Big enough that he will not find his feet before she is upon him.

He gets his sword up. She cares not. The sound, ah, the sound it makes, when her strike meet his guard. A chime so sweet, like a fork against a dripping wineglass. The steel holds. His arm does not. Pop. Crack. Go. Away, little lost sheep. Scream, that she will find you easier. She must kill your shepherd, first. See, even now, the lioness’ glaive whistles towards her. Too slow. Much too slow.

This, then, is the hunt. This is the difference between predator and prey. All that she is, bent to one, transcendent moment, where nothing stands between her quarry and her overwhelming strength. XIII moves as if she has her own rail - no. XIII does not need to move. The world is simply beneath her. And between the world and a god’s hammer, a fragile little thing of blood and bones.

Down, down, down. Down into her stomach. Down to the grave. Falling with her. Because she will bounce. She must not manifest any weight, or else she will shatter. Off the ground. Up. Into the claws. Too close to swing her bothersome weapon. Too fast to dodge away. Nothing more than an offering upon the altar of the hunt. Shoulder. Legs. Back. Arms. The thunderbolts run red. All her breath is screaming. The claws drive her into the sand. Her weightless body sends her back into them again. XIII strikes for the kill. The blow falls. Heavier than it should. Faster than it should. Pulled, by a moment of terrible gravity that draws the surrounding sand to Vasilia’s battered body. Her will screams for her heart. But an arm, not a ribcage, splinters.

Fourth Form: Atmosphere Surrounding. Reversed.

Hunger of Styx.

XIII excavates her shoulder. XIII tears wide the hole in her side. XIII ruins her hand. By her choice. By her offering. For the price of a heart still beating, Vasilia hurls the blows of the Deodekoi into her body. They fall heavy, but off the mark. Wrong targets. Wrong angles. Every inch of flesh, every unbroken bone, is another hit she can survive. When her leg hangs useless and shattered, she drives it into the ground, and XIII’s claws meet an iron-hard cast of sand. Just enough to pad the blow. Enough to keep her conscious. Enough to command the rail. Enough. Enough. Enough.

One extra step in a hundred. A fraction of a second where eyes must clear. A feather’s-worth of force absorbed by sand and tattered armor. They don’t have to win. They can’t win.

All they need to do is hold long enough.

A spear haft comes tumbling down the crater wall, and her hand darts out to grab it. Away, in the light, Dolce feels a tug on a string, and pulls with all the strength left in his body. His wife comes soaring, weightless, out of the crater, out of the grave, in a glittering arc across the gray clouds. He gets her high enough, before XIII reaches him. Then he is flying too. His leg, nothing but agony. If it is even there at all.

Two stars fall, and they fall at the feet of the Anemoi.

Together.

[Rolling to Keep Her Busy: 6 + 4 + 2 = 12. Damaging Sense as the Price for acting against a Threat to the World.]

The world is drowning in blood.

Iron tang and velvet notes of warm quivering meat; sweeter than the richest wines in all of Empire. Intoxicating. Terror sweats and the shit smelling foulness of war linger on her tongue after every breath. Flowers, ruptured organs and the overwhelming immediate smell of rot the punctuates their bursting, the dusty aroma of packed wet sand, sickly sweet sap from branches snapped in two and oozing with parasitic infection. Every fresh scent carries through her body and builds excitement for her next breath, so they can wash over her again.

She shivers. They come at her in waves, now. Alcedi ranks like clouds of feathers carried on a storm of violence. They break against a rock named XIII. Soft, even lazy swipes of her claws trace across the silver lines holding them together, and they burst apart like balls of confetti. Fresh blood, fresh excrement, fresh rot, fresh flowers for fresh graves. Tiny names grow cool against her skin and pull sweet sighs from her lips.

Her body sings. She walks forward on unhurried feet, rising out of the crater she built with her own hands. Soldiers scatter like petals kicked up by the breeze of her stomping feet, more afraid of her again than any of the twin cruelties of Ares and Athena. Mother's garden surges and winds around her; ivy around a trellis. She is careful when she trims the bonsai: do not smash the roots, but trim off useless and unseemly limbs that this temple of death might grow more beautiful.

She turns her head to the heavens and beholds a pair of falling stars. Her blood quickens at the sight. The names itch to the point of rawness. So close. So close now. Perhaps she will drink from them when they die. A memory flitters to the front of her eye and up across the surface of her mind. Drink is a reward. An indulgence meant for good girls. A favorite treat. Yes. She will put her teeth to their necks and suck them dry. This is the meaning of her heart shivers.

Pink steam hisses from her palms where the blood of her targets drips across the absurd heat of her body. She lifts a hand to her face, and turns it over curiously. Her rough tongue drags across the rigid surface of her armor, her claws, and the unctuous taste of blood fills every last space of her conscious mind.

There is only the flavor. Richer than the galaxy is wide. Sweeter than ambrosia. Cool and refreshing. The battlefield quiets, to listen to the sounds. Slurping. Sucking. Slobbering. Singing. Sighing.

She is come, Vasilia. She is come, Dolce. You are broken, and she is whole. And she is here. No fury in her eyes, no smile on her lips. When she raises her claws to you, it could almost seem a greeting if they didn't still hiss and drip with the smeared blood of your comrades, and the oozing sap of hers. Her tail flicks once. Twice.

Whatever your desperate dancing and sacrifices have bought for you, now is the time to pay it out. Pay another price, and take your best shot.

Alexa!

"You know," said the Master of Assassins with her knife in your gut. "I always thought that, of all Hades' chosen, you were the biggest danger."

She twists the knife. Steel grinds against stone - and the blade snaps. She glides back to evade your heavy counterswing, golden fluid already leaking around the injury. You have no idea how she moved so fast. She stepped the length of that enormous sarissa in an instant. Distance is the great rule of battle - how to fight someone who it seems not to apply to?

"The Imperial Princess was an inevitability," said the Master, knives filling her hands like butterflies. "A political appointee, sent to demonstrate Hermes' seriousness. She I was ready for. The pirates - nobodies compared to my previous victims. I have emptied the galaxy of pirate queens and legendary starfinders, they are merely what remains. But you? Molech's spear? That was a rainy day asset if I ever heard one. All I did on this journey I did with an eye towards avoiding you on the field of battle. And yet, here we are. The Gods will not be denied their duel."

You advance, and with a blur she's back up the pyramid on the other end of her sarissa. The broken shaft of the weapon dips down, tip fusing magnetically with its broken shaft, and then it flashes back up in a heartbeat. This time her blade punches through the space where your instinct tried to put your broken shield and it pierces into your shoulder. Again, the golden blood. Again, the weapon breaks. You smash the ruined spear with a forearm, for good this time. The Master snaps her fingers, a Kaeri hands her a javelin, and it comes crashing down a hearbeat later and takes you through the thigh.

And then a golden light. Then, Redana, the Shepherdess, daughter of Hermes. You're both moving in unison, two sources of impossible momentum, golden blood splattering the black marble as you ascend towards her and Redana soars above -

One more time you are pierced through.

She didn't blink. She didn't get distracted for a second. Anyone else would have tried to track two targets and caught neither, but the Master of Assassins knows the arts of every Temple - the Ikarani included. The calculation in her mind happened faster than possible and she committed everything she had to a single target, ignoring the other. To you.

Her sword runs you through, Alexa. A Kaeri hands her another and she puts that through you too. She drives you back down off the collapsing pyramid, surrounded by owls with terrible gifts that she sheathes inside you. Blade after blade, spear after spear, all plough through your body one after another, pinning you against the soaking wet sand, an arsenal bouquet emerging from your stone body.

"It was you I prepared for, above all," she said. "It was you who I trained for. It was your name on my lips this entire year, in every prayer, first in every sacrifice. I invented new poisons for you alone. I sought to burn my entire ship to kill you alone. You have been the centre of my galaxy, Alexa, the unwitting focus of every one of my attentions. And here at last, Artemis gives me my quarry."

Behind her the pyramid collapsed into burning rubble, Redana's divine work complete.

The Master of Assassins, finally, takes her eyes off you. She looks up. Looks around. Sees the Coherent phalanx racing up to cover you. Sees the Lanterns uniting and aiming their blunderbuss rifles. Sees the Alcedi rising like the dawn, blotting out the thunder above as they finally take the skies from the Kaeri.

"I was blind," said the Master of Assassins kindly, the smiling tone of a proud grandmother. "Because I thought you were the daughter of Molech. A singular figure, unbeatable, invincible. But you weren't. You were so much more than he ever was. You were an army. You were a multitude, and you bought out the best of everyone around you. This is going to be so much harder than if you had simply been perfect."

She raises her blade in salute.

And then she cuts your head from your shoulders.

*

Redana!

Alexa's head crashes to the ground. Her body, impaled into a kneeling position by a dozen blades and spears, twitches and goes still.

The Master of Assassins, finally, turns about to face you. For a moment she still wears that grandmotherly smile, her face splashed with golden blood, and then her smiling eyes open into slits and you can feel the determination like a hammer blow. She flicks her blade, splattering the ground with molten gold, and comes for you. Behind, her army burns in the unleashed fury of Alexa's vengeful friends. But they do not burn fast enough.

She raises her sword, two-handed, a stance of power. The physical embodiment of every tutor and swordmaster you ever had. All the deathless skill of Tellus is made manifest inside the body of this wicked old woman, and she comes for you.

*

You may not have seen eye to eye with your father on much, Alexa, but you can agree with him that being decapitated sucks. It is a terrible state to be in. You can't do anything, it's awful.

And besides you kneels Hades. The God of the Dead.

"If you would like," he said quietly, "I can carry you for a time, that you might see how the battle fares."

This is the very first time she’s ever lost. It’s cruel to give it to her after such a victory. But that’s what Sagakhan, the Master of Assassins is, isn’t it? Cruelty underneath the pretension of impartiality. Cruelty found in the complete absence of kindness. Cruelty because she is in no way required to be kind, because she has no obligation to it or reward from it. It is a horror that Redana Claudius has never truly seen before. Not like this. Not with such a loss.

(Platitudes about all soldiers being equal in death, about how everyone was at risk, they are drowned beneath the roaring of her heart in her ears.)

The cunning thing would be to run. Harry her at range, despite her incredible speed, her cutting of distance: be faster, lead her on the chase, buy time for everyone else. But she does not. Because Alexa’s head is still there, staring upwards at the relentless storm. Because Alexa was here in this battle because of her. Because Alexa was kind to her when she did not deserve kindness. Because she can hear the furious groan coming from the lips of the Coherents, a deep rumble growing in power, swelling, becoming a roar. And she is one of the Coherents, a member of her mother’s imperial cult, a sailor of the Plousios, and so that death-groan comes from her, too.

This time she does not come at Sagakhan with a sword. She spins, her skirt like the petals of a flower, and the terrible shape in her hands is for a moment obscured by her body. Then she slams the sledgehammer into the side of Sagakhan’s head, carries the momentum through, spins again, smashes a hip on the second approach. Again, again, again, rising and falling, Coherent hammerwork, an elegant dance, cold-burning fury.

Sagakhan will live through anything. Therefore, nothing is off the table; a hit anywhere counts. Sagakhan will live through anything. Therefore, no swordplay can stop her from closing the gap and killing Redana again. Sagakhan will live through anything. Therefore, the only way to stop her is to keep her off-balance and staggered. The shape of the hammer is light in her hands, impossibly light; it yields too easily to the strain of her muscles, falls like a meteor, allows her to chain attack after attack together. She does not stop, she does not relent, she sets her shoulder to the work as if she were performing before the Coherents as they made art out of the labor, sang their work-shanties, proved themselves both hard workers and more than just laborers.

Sagakhan tries to say something. The next blow takes her full in the jaw, shatters bone, caves teeth in, and the Shepherdess does not laugh as she does it, because she is not the Nemean. Her wrath is not a jovial sadism, a desire to meet challenges and tear them open. She does this because you have left her no choice, Sagakhan.

But she doesn’t let it disrupt the rhythm of blows, either.

The war-chant grows. Do you hear it, Sagakhan? Do you hear the name on their lips? The name drawn out of breathless lungs and between hot teeth? It’s not that of Redana, this champion of the cult, this avenger of the dead. It’s that of the beautiful woman you killed, strong and kind and surprisingly gentle, who gave the best hugs and didn’t deserve this, fighting a useless battle against a shitty old woman buying an extension for her miserable life, garden by garden.

The tears running down Redana’s cheeks burn. But she doesn’t stop. She doesn’t sob. She lets them flow freely, from cheek to jaw, and puts her hips into each swing.

This won’t work forever. Sagakhan is too skilled, too clever, too ruthless; eventually she’ll find the rhythm, she’ll twist to make a blow too soft, she’ll throw a Kaeri in the way of a blow. Then things will be bad. You can’t overcome a foe like this just through righteous fury. Something needs to change. Someone needs to join the fight. Redana doesn’t know who. All she knows is the work, the swing, the relentless advance.

Alexa. Alexa! Alexa!

[Redana keeps Sagakhan busy through the power of incredible violence and an 8.]

The stars lie smoldering where they fell, in crumpled heaps against the bulk of the Anemoi. See, if you can, the red smear along the black prow where Vasilia rolled, before coming to rest in a deep divot; a memory of a meteorite obliterated on the journey here. The travel across a few hundred yards of desert wounded them far graver than a few hundred thousand miles of Poisidon’s void. There they lay, ripe and ready for the picking. Ready for XIII. Blood drips down around her, falling the long, long way to the sand below, as it pools out of reach of their rails.

The lioness, first. Crack the shell of sand and debris. Drink the juicy center within. The sheep can’t run far, now. All that’s left to see is which will be bigger: the crater when she takes off, or the crater when she lands?
CRRRACKKKK

She drives Vasilia into the hull, the metal buckling beneath her, until she finishes what the void started. Up. Up. Up. Floor after floor crumbling on impact, until the fifth deck finally proves too much. Until she finally comes to a halt in a ruined heap. At the new entrance to the Anemoi, XIII crouches low, and waits. Listens. Listens for that heartbeat, so frantic, so fragile. How much more, little one? How much more? You must not burst on her now. Not before she’s had her treat.

She does not even look as the weighted line sails past her shoulder. Not this time. No escape this time!!! Her ears caught you the moment you pulled yourself off the hull, little sheep. She felt the air stir as you sailed into position. To save Va-sil-a, and not yourself. You cannot hide a thing from her. She is not playing. She is a good girl. She is the hunt! You are her prey! She plucks the wire from the wind and pulls, savagely, without ever wondering why the wire, this time, was stripped bare.

Dolce shifts his ravaged body. A connection is made. A charge that once flickered in the depths of his armor finds a path. Down a wire. Up a claw. And through an assassin. A pale excuse for lightning, but even imitators can have teeth. Not enough to wound her. Not enough to stop her from pulling him close. Not enough to move her spiked heel out of the way, before it runs through his stomach.

But enough to scramble her nerves. Enough to hold her in place for the space of a few breaths.

Vasilia lifts her head. A waterfall of bloodied sand flows from behind her, discharged at the last to cushion the impact. “They gave you divine armor,” she coughs, bile and blood. “To withstand your own hits.” Her arm trembles, and her glaive rises. “For insurance against shrapnel.” A knot of shattered ship rises with it, a massive chunk of hull plating for a hammerhead. “And because you’re too wired to take a punch.”

The rail screams. Vasilia is gone. Through the holes in the ship she punched with her own body, she falls. With the rail carrying her weight to the fullest, she falls. Twisting, winding up, gravity pulling a body she can no longer move, she falls. Straight to her. Straight above her, at the last. Sparks dance between them. They fly from the Deodekoi’s twitching armor, muscles straining to obey. Straining to move her somewhere, anywhere, out of this hole, away from the strike that fills her entire world.

Too late.

A hull-clad hammer strikes the Deodekoi. Holy armor flies off its feet. The cat within follows a split-second later. Red-hot brands that had merely brushed, now press in. Hard.

And.

Vasilia.

Falls.

The Anemoi above her. The desert below. Pivoting. The sun at the center of a galaxy, drawing a meteor around her, with which to strike down the instrument of the gods themselves. To her right, the piles of SP rounds. To stun, to incapacitate, to spare, to make her someone else’s problem, to let her go, to let her go, to let her go. To her left, the high explosives. To go supernova. To burn brighter than ever before. To kill. Impossibly, in the end, to win.

Behind her, Dolce. Falling limp. Falling silent.

She freezes.

XIII falls.

The meteor burns through the atmosphere at terminal velocity. The heat ignites the poisoned shells moments before impact.

A thousand miles away, an explosion. Here, so close, so terribly close, her body wraps around Dolce’s. A glaive drops. Fingers grip wool.

eyes

flutter

c l o s e d

[Rolling to Finish with Grace. 2 + 6 + 2 = 10. Damaging Wisdom to pay a price.]

All this time, she'd been worried about an impossible knife in somebody else's chest.

How? When?! She knows how this should go, knows how to fight somebody with a spear, but It's hard to think. Every time she almost collects enough of her wits to string two thoughts together, another blow knocks her around. Things are shutting down--no, she is shutting down! Parts are starting to grind and catch, glistening fluid is leaking out, Sagakhan is saying something but she can't hear it over the rushing in her ears--

Step by step, blade by blade, she's forced back, forced down, until she's pinned to the ground like a butterfly. She's slow--too slow, too dull, eyes losing their glow, their ability to focus--

And then her world spins crazily around her, the pain is a vanishing memory, and in the clarity granted by that lack of pain, she knows instantly what's happened.

This is fixable, she tells herself, jolting off a step.

She's come back from worse, she lies to herself. Fell from orbit. Pushed herself into the heart of a star.

She careens off a badly angled bit of pyramid, and is treated to a brief view of Redana crushing Sagakhan's jaw in before her head spins away. God, that girl. She's gonna go far.

This isn't the end. Her story is just beginning. She's not dying on some dustball nowhere planet. Dany's gonna wipe the floor with this psycho, the coherents will find her head, something can be done to sort out all the new holes in her old body, she'll be fine.

Intellectually, she knows all of that is true, but it still feels like a lie when looking into the kindly eyes of the god of the Dead.

She tries to talk once or twice, makes a few false starts of it. Can't bring herself to look away, can't turn her head even if she wanted to. Can't nod with no neck.

Eventually, feeling rather small, she whispers, "I'd like that, please. Is Isty okay?"

XIII falls as a star should, the way a god must when they are struck down by some mortal drunk on hubris. Her body burns, hot enough even that for the first time she can't feel the names carved into her skin. There is only the sensation of pain, of being made of fire and sent crashing through the air by a sudden inversion of gravity. Her stomach squeezes from the weight of her descent. She tumbles head over tail, falling, falling, falling, burning: the roar of the wind around her is her only companion as she falls, with nothing to do but train her eyes upward to see where the upstart lioness will land even as her uncontrolled spiraling constantly tries to pull her sight away.

She does not scream or make a sound. Not even a grunt of surprise when she was suddenly struck with the hull of her own ship the Anemoi. She is poised. Perfect. If her role to play is to be a meteor, then she will strike the earth with idealized grace and composure. When she reaches up with her hand, it is only to wrench her body free from the spell of spiraling gravity and with her own raw strength force herself to flip upright. Even like this, she always finds her feet.

The first explosions catch her just before she lands. The impact drives her into the sands up to her knees with enough force to send shivers through her bones. She does not bend. When the rest of the rounds catch, she meets the endless ocean of bursting SP ammunition looking for all the world like a statue after the apocalypse.

The world shrinks. It squeezes the whole of her with random clawing, pinching, grabbing hands that push and compress her until she is in a Box too small and too painful to even fit herself inside of. Her straining eyes see only hot, blinding white light. The roar of exploding shells fills her ears and expands until it's the only thing she has inside of her. Roaring. Screaming. Shrieking. No mind. Pain. Pain. The cocktail of horrific scents layer themselves one atop another until they become a single miasma of foulness beyond description. The flavor pulls bile from her stomach just to cover it with new fire. It dribbles out her lips, and she is helpless to stop it. Each tiny break in the torture is only a trick so that the next new burst will ruin her straining senses all the harder. She is disintegrating. Shattering. Breaking.

Dying. She must be dying. Kill her. Kill her!

She squeezes her head with a wet, gurgling howl. She balls her hand into a fist, and smashes it into her face. The world shuts off in response. Black and cool where it had been white and hot. Silent where there had been nothing but torture bangs. The air with no scent. With no taste. She breathes it freely, and lets the gasses do what they will to her insides. She can't feel it anymore. She is aware of her own body only through the presence of the softly glowing names still on her skin. Where they itch, she is. Where they are dark, she is not. She is a creature in pieces, but that is enough to move.

And the Auspex is enough to hunt by. Slowly, the soothing blackness fills with gentle golden-glowing pulses and swirls. These are the movement of the creatures around her, their steps, their breathing, their hopeless words of encouragement and despair to one another made manifest into motes of light that she could snip in half with her claws, if she wanted. Where the gold pools thickest, there are softly shifting, trembling silvery lines in vague shapes she recognizes.

Ah, yes. Bodies. Or rather, the strings that hold those bodies together. All she has to do is put her claws to them, and they'll burst apart into nothing. The light will go away. Another name, another piece of her body will vanish into pleasant nothingness. And when she's purged them all, then she too... then she too. Nothing. Soothing, silent nothing. All of it, gone away forever. The ultimate treat for a perfect girl.

She bursts from the sands and flies up, up, up into the air high above the noxious, obscuring clouds of heavy SP smog, and doesn't even notice. She makes herself into a comet again, and falls where the brightest and sharpest lines gather. Her claws sing a clumsy song, but it's plenty for what she needs to do right now.

Not this one. Not this one. Not this one either. Pieces of her vanish and slough off in a brief sensation of wet, numbing relief. But none of them are her. None of them are Vasilia. They could be anybody; the only way to know who dies is to kill them first, and mark which part of her body disappears in response. No matter. She doesn't mind.

Another name falls limp in her crushing hands when she notices it. A golden chiming that ripples through through the entire world. More beautiful than the entire rest of creation. A name that burns more insistently than any other. Dangerous. Yearning. She spins and faces it, and the chiming of its soft footfalls draw closer.

XIII's mouth splits open in a savage, feral grin. Finally. Finally! The name she lusted for in her heart longer than any other! The one she must break ahead of all the others, the only one strong enough to see clearly in this world she's built for herself. Finally, finally, finally! To kill, to kill, to kill! The name she screamed herself on the morning she was born.

"Re. Da. Na..."

"Oh Bella," The voice swims around her head in melancholy greens and blues just like her eyes. She comes closer still, "Look what they've done to you. I never thought you'd fall this far. It's ok, Bella. It's ok. I'm going to fix everything, now."

[XIII expends a use of Bella's Clever Tricks to buy herself an Overcome. Tenacity Incarnate is active, so with Vigor the roll comes out to an 11]

Redana!

By the time she finds her escape her face is too broken to speak. No twisted kindnesses or poisonous insights comes from her lips. No philosophy, no bargains and no prayers.

Only dragonfire.

Sagakhan knows the art of all the Assassin Temples, but her origin was in the Toxicrene. Shapeshifting is her oldest and most deadly weapon and it is what she turns to with her senses scrambled and all her grace and cunning turned away. While you beat her, inside genetic alchemy was extracting advanced hyperium composites from her blood and bones and converting it into a plasmatic fusion compound, and it is this she unleashes on you. It is hot as sin and as blinding as rage and it buys her a moment's reprieve to advance her transformation.

When you see her again her flesh is hardening into jagged metallic scales, her face lengthening and inhuman, broken bones reconfiguring into aspects of war. Talons grow and a tail long and lashing extends behind her. Her delicate butterfly wings are twisting and hardening into avalanches of muscle and batlike leather. Sagakhan, Master of Assassins, wore a human face but in the end she was a servitor like any other, built for purpose. And her purpose was to transform into a killing monster. Just like Bella.

Intelligence crackles in slitted eyes. A monstrous thing, an iron will seeking to exert itself even as the source code of her genetic alchemy plays itself out on her mind and body. She picks up her sword and holds it out in a combat stance again even as her biology renders the weapon an irrelevant toothpick in comparison to the arsenal she now wields. But it is a symbol of civilization, of authority, of power. All things clawed tooth and nail from a universe she could trust nothing within, not least her biology.

You have a fearful sensation of why Zeus favours Sagakhan so. You fight for vengeance, blood running hot, Alexa's name on your lips. But for all your righteous fury in this moment, even you cannot say that you want this victory more than she does.

Lightning strikes overhead.

Her warriors rally against the onslaught. While Sagakhan is prepared to fight every cell in her body to rise above her conditioning she has no compunctions on using the deepest warrior programming of her slaves to its fullest and most suicidal extent. The duel is no longer single combat; now it is a bloodbath with both sides constantly pouring in to the reach of your weapons. Any mistake either of you make in your stance or awareness is paid for with the deaths of dozens. Your fight positions you at the heart of a whirlpool of blood.

This she bets: That your heart for this slaughter will give out before hers does.

Alexa!

Princess Epistia of Ceron lies between two battlefield surgeons, yellow robes stained with blood as they struggle with their patient. Even missing an arm from the elbow, a leg from the thigh, and her left cheek to the bone she fights them. She will throw them off, snatch up a weapon or surgical tool, hurl it, and kill some Kaeri warrior as she flies before being tackled again by her surgeon. She and Ares are one; sparks flow from her nose and her blood melts the sand to glass where it drips.

Bella's work was terrible. A precision strike that rendered the most chaotically destructive piece in this war neutralized at a stroke. Yet seeing the carnage Princess Epistia works even here, on the brink of life and death, you fear what might have been otherwise. The Warriors of Ceron were designed to fight alongside their own kind, and without any familiar scents for her limbic system to identify as friendly she is as much a danger to friend as foe. As you watch she takes a hand from a doctor, causing them to retreat at last, her crippled rage growing even more terrible.

If only you had another Ceronian, who might reach her and...

The thought comes to you that the assassin Beljani is of Ceronian descent.

Vasilia and Dolce!

The explosion stops the rain.

The shockwave parts the clouds for a moment, knocks aside the wind. It leaves you blinking in a brief flicker of sunlight, lying paralyzed and shocked on soft sand sprouting with soft grass, in each others arms. Soft wool, soft flowers... sharp flowers. Thick vines. They wrap around your ankles and wrists. They wrap around each of you, tying you in increasingly tight binds. The verdant life of the desert beneath the rain grows with a hostile purpose and you can feel a third heartbeat running through the sap of the trees that are growing around you, almost a meter high already.

"You know," said Demeter, spring maiden fair, garlanded with flowers and smiles. "It's really quite rare that I get the opportunity to kill someone myself. Normally I have to rely on my nieces and nephews to do this kind of thing for me."

She leans down, smile warmer than all the summers of all the worlds. "But for you, Vasilia? You, who slashed and burned my bonsai on the Yakanov? Reveling in your victory as though it was not an insult to me? You who have not offered me prayers and libations, who offended my sister Zeus after all her aid for you, who have not killed your husband yet, as Aphrodite assured me you would? You I will take the time to render into soil myself."

And then she turns aside to face Dolce. "Hello Dolce. You, I have nothing against. You always remember to thank me when preparing the fruits of my gardens, and I can't remember a time when you offended any of my family. I see no reason not to spare you." She snapped two bright fingernails and the vines loosen around Dolce and turn all their attention towards binding Vasilia tighter. "Off you go."

XIII!

Redana's name burns into your skin.

You are moving. You are moving.

It's so close. So bright. Redana. Redana. Nothing has ever mattered more. It is written on your forehead, pressing at the delicate skin there, pressing right into your brain. The crown. The highest kill. Clear this name and for the rest of the battle you can kill without thinking, kill without waking up. The suffering of the hands and thighs is nothing compared to that word burned into your brain. Redana.

You know every part of this. You know every hole in her stance, every trick of footwork she never quite learned, every flinch and habit. You have studied this target your entire life. You know her to her braid. To her hearbeat. To her scent. You flow around her like water, preparing at last the kill you have been visualizing your entire life but never acting on until now.

It's perfect.

She's perfect.

You're perfect.

And the name burns on your forehead still.

...

No.

"Hey... Bella..."

Impossible. You know perfection. You are perfection. She has a tell. She has a tell! Her scent is never quite right. You'd know! You were meant to know!

"Pretty disciplined of me, huh? I faked a mistake... for twenty years. Just so I could do this. I always thought it would be you..."

She was perfect. For much longer than you were.

"It's okay!" her voice is smiling through tears. "I never could make you see me. Even when we were making love. But I know you can hear me now so... I'm happy. That's all I wanted. I just wanted you to see..."

Her voice trails away, and Mynx's frail body falls against yours. Her blood mixes with Beljani's on your armour. You feel it, warm and soft against your skin. And where Beljani carved your armour you feel a new name glow across your skin. Not bright and painful like the others, warm and soft. Warm and soft like...

SAGAKHAN.

Inside the armor, a Servitor. A best friend. A maid. A Praetor. A woman. Nothing more or less than that could be the heart of a Diodekoi assassin. Someone trained her entire life to be everything that anyone could need. Someone whose entire life depended on noticing every tiny thing about the world and especially the people around her. No detail could be worth overlooking. Each tiny stain and spill had a scent that stood apart from the intended order of the world, and it was unforgivable not to find them all and wipe them clean. Every person, even the godly humans with their superior genetics, gave off signals that hinted at their moods and needs. Things they weren't even aware of. But she was. She had to be. To know when to speak up and when to hide, to be able to appear from nowhere holding a tray of drinks for refreshments guests hadn't got around to demanding yet.

Years of perfection. Years of training to improve perfection. Years of effort and attention with a body tailor made by the best breeders in the Empire. And it wasn't enough. Her entire life was leading to a single point of failure, because she didn't even know the game she was playing.

In the darkness, a single golden eye struggles to open.

There is so much that needs to be done. Her eye fills with tears until it's as blind as XIII's. What has she done? What has she done? She shudders. She cries without reservation, because she sees her friend in front of her. She sees her sister in her arms, for the first time in her life. She holds Mynx close, as gently as she can, and brushes her palm across the cheek with a tenderness she'd always been afraid to show. Until now. Until now. There's no time left, she has to do it now. She has to say everything now.

"Don't go, don't go, Mynx! Don't you dare! I see you, ok? I see you! You got me! So stay. Stay! You can gloat for the rest of your life, I promise, but don't you dare leave me! Not like this. Not like..."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You never deserved anything I did to you. All those times I was angry at myself, and scared, and... it didn't give me the right. I was horrible to you. It should be me! It should be me, not you! It should be me, me!!"

"You were perfect. Better than me. It should've been you in charge. This whole time. I wish it was. Maybe then we wouldn't be here. Things would have worked out better for everyone. I'm nothing but a monster. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't see it until it was too late. Don't go, Mynx. Don't die. You're... the only one. Who can punish me the way I have to be."

But no word, no gesture, no sign or token of acknowledgement leaves the world of that eye. How could it? Bella is not a person. She's the beating heart of the assassin Tredecima, nothing else. She has no arms to move or voice to speak with. These things belong to the armor, to the body, and those belong to the hunt. Affection is unnecessary. Speech barely more so. XIII stares at the body in her arms without seeing. Mynx's voice is tinged pink. The waves of her breathing are shallow and more beautiful than anything she's ever witnessed.

But admiration is also unnecessary for the hunt. XIII kneels, and lays the broken body of the Toxicrene on a soft bed of scattered leaves, where she might at least be comfortable in her last moments. She was... not a name on the list. This is acknowledgement of that fact, nothing more. She takes her time to wipe her claws, her hand, her arm up to the elbow clean on the sands. XIII is a monster. XIII is a hunter. Bella's only function inside of her is to read the names written on her body. To choose the targets that come first. And so she does."

"SA! GA! KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"

The name glows on her back and on her chest. Where the blood drips and spreads across her, it soothes the burn of the other names, like ointment on an old wound. This is not a name that will help her erase herself. This is a name she must purge to prove that she is real. When it is gone, the blood whispers, she will be whole. It took two sisters to write this prayer upon her. Two sacrifices in the full favor of Artemis. Nothing less could buy a name as valuable as Mother's.

Her body is alight in golden light. Muscles spark with power, and she hunches lower, and lower, and puts herself on all fours to take the shape that will channel all of it. The claws on her hands and feet tear into the sand like flesh. Her teeth are bared in a full animal snarl. She cannot feel the other names on her anymore. Her eyes can't even see their lines. There is only one figure in the wastes, as large and radiant as a sun.

Mother is a tangled and complicated knot of lines. Her life is a puzzle that needs to be torn open in careful turns to solve and end it. This will not be a simple hunt. This will not be an easy kill. It may even break her to try. XIII licks her lips in anticipation. She bounds forward, potential exploding into motion all at once, and disappears from the sight of every eye upon her.

She comes. She hunts. She tears space apart wantonly for the crime of getting in her way. One tiny hole opens in the clouds, a bargain struck by one god or many. She doesn't know. Doesn't care. All it means is that, before it closes, a ray of sunlight creeps through to shine against her armor as she hangs impossibly in the sky. She gleams like a star in the night sky for a moment. Only for a moment.

And like a star, she falls. She is coming. She is here. She is Hunting. She. Is. Death. Are you ready, Mother? You, who court Zeus' favor so freely, ought not to have devoured your children.

Of course it does. It is one thing for Redana to fight a duel, where she can shine, where she burns with fury. It is another thing for her to pay for each swing with the deaths of her shining-feathered soldiers, her comrades-in-arms chanting the name of their beauty, and the swelling mouse-servitors who fling themselves at owls with fury. And Redana is not ruthless enough to spend the lives of her lessers for her own advantage. She never has been.

So she dives into the Kaeri, and her hammer is a great long-hafted sword that she swings about her with the muscles of an Olympian. If she will be surrounded by blood, it will be the blood of nightmares; if Sagakhan is willing to kill everyone standing around Redana, then let Redana be surrounded by the shadows of owls.

It is incredibly dangerous. Impossibly so. And yet, in the midst of it all—

A battlecrab lurches unsteadily. It was half-crushed underneath a heavy footfall, and all it knows is that it is in pain, that it is missing its mightiest pincer, that it is going to die hurt and confused and ignored by everything around it, save for a moment’s irritation from one of the Kaeri. And yet it still drags itself forwards, furious, snipping at the air defiantly.

And the Shepherdess clears space all around her with a swing that rips apart these silent killers, flips away from the fall of Sagakhan’s thunderbolt of a tail (one which would crush her instantly, were it to fall on her head, and that be the end of all this striving), and scoops up the crab, letting it cling to one shoulder as she keeps moving.

You are seen, even the smallest of you. You are important, even the smallest of you. You do not die here while the Shepherdess still has strength within her. And if she will do this for an injured crab, a hurt and confused animal, do you think she will do any less for the hearts and souls that believe in her?

It is impossible for her to win, unless something changes, doubly so now that her enemy has become great and terrible, the greatest of monsters, but the Shepherdess does not give up. This is the heart that saw the skies and dreamed of a world where anything could happen, where adventure was real, where she could be free with the girl who meant the most to her.

And she will never give up hope, even here in the dark, beneath Sagakhan’s shadow, using every trick she has just to stop more of her subjects from dying. She burns like a white flame in the deepest night, and though she flickers, she will not go out.

[Redana rolls a 9 to Overcome; she protects her army from Sagakhan, but only temporarily (and clears Grace in the process)]