[b]Alexa![/b]

"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 [i]fast[/i]. 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, [b]Redana[/b], 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 [i]you[/i] 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.

*

[b]Redana![/b]

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."