The vines retreat, depositing the remnants of a sheep onto the desert sand.

Off you go.

Still. And quiet. Soft. And broken. Beside him, a shuddering mass of vines. His ears ring too loudly for him to hear her cries. Between them, a space of sand and flowers. He does not cross it. The distance does not shrink. Too small. Too soft. Before him, a goddess, terrible in wrath. In her hand are torments beyond counting or comprehension. Her gaze falls around him. Too small. Too inoffensive. Gone, for all purposes that mattered.

He does not plea for mercy. He does not permit a sound. With every jerking, shaking twitch of his arm, his body ignites anew. He bites back every voice of pain, and they rip through his heart in their desperation to escape. Slowly. Carefully. He cannot disturb her. He cannot disturb his work. He is small. He is inoffensive. The only sign of his presence is that which he intentionally leaves. In the sand, traced in a trembling finger, a bloody thunderbolt.

A little zap. A tribute of lightning, just enough to send a wisp of smoke skyward.

“Zeus…” His voice is dry, rasping, desperate. It reaches Demeter’s ears only in passing. “The right of offense…is yours. Are you…upset? Has my wife…insulted you so?”

It's hard to get rid of stress when you don't have a body, do you know that?

Shrrrk. Hssss.

In times of old--say, five minutes ago--it would have been so easy. Physical activity, that's the ticket! Take a jog around the ship. Feel the ground strip away before you. Pound the ground, step after step, devouring the earth until stress and stressors are far away. Or maybe something in the kitchen! Try a new recipe, something out there, where there's no space in the brain for anything but figuring out how to do this. Put the stress in a limb--let it bounce, tap, twitch, anything to get the energy of the body. Movement, motion, distractions. None of which are options now.

Shrrrk. Hssss.

What did she used to do, back when any kind of motion would get her punished? Find a corner of her head, right? Get lost in a fantasy, leave the mouth and brain on autopilot, trust that Molech wouldn't want to hear from her anyway, so who cared if she spent the next few hours daydreaming?

Hah. If she were in a situation where she could daydream, she wouldn't have to stare at Hades digging, and feel vaguely guilty about wanting him to dig faster.

Shrrrk. Hssss.

Which makes no godsdamn sense. He has been nothing but kind and helpful.

None of which means she wants to try stress relief technique number 3: talking about it.

Because she's painfully aware that it's his daughter on the line. He's being incredibly polite about not mentioning how she didn't run to save Isty as soon as she was able. Hasn't brought up the way that Alexa has been so inside her own head that she's been…

Well, kind of a shit girlfriend. And maybe, probably, not even that soon.

But she'll be damned if she lets Isty die, no matter what. So as soon as the lid is pried off the coffin, she's leaning forward as far as her limited neck will allow, leaning forward until she pitches down the hillock of earth and into the coffin.

"Beljani. Been a--stop screaming, it's just me--been a while. I need a huge favor from you. You hate Sagakhan. We do too. Help save my girlfriend now, please. I don't have a whole lot to offer right now, but if we survive this, I'll be in your debt."

Alexa!

A pale white handkerchief wipes an immaculate brow.

The God of the Dead has unearthed more than a terrified Oratus Adept. His spade has drawn forth geodes and precious ores each time it cuts the soil. The earth where he cuts it is precious, heavy, abundant and utterly lifeless. Not one seed grows from the dirt where has piled it even as the great rainforest growing up all around and through the battle already stands taller than a man.

"You'll be in my debt!?" shrieks Beljani. "You will owe me a favour!? As what, a bowling ball!? Oh, Artemis," she buries her face in her hands to try and stifle a hysterical giggle. "And to save your girlfriend, which one is she?"

"Princess Epistia, warrior of Ceron," said Hades leaning on his shovel. There are faint creases in his long sleeve shirt and vest but a new hale strength in his slender limbs.

"The berserker!?" said Beljani. "The psychopathic avatar of the murder god who kills everything in her path!?"

"And my daughter," added the God of the Dead.

"Oh, you don't say?" said Beljani, perfect sweetness and light. "You know, my best friend is also a psychopathic avatar of a murder god who kills everything in her path? I'm sure I will get along splendidly with this new one too."

Hades smirked and hefted his shovel over one shoulder. Beljani brushes her robe down as she steps elegantly from the open grave. "But did you say that she is your girlfriend?" she goes on with the chirpy flow of someone who responds to stress by talking more. "Goodness, that's a bold choice. You'd have to have ovaries of marble to get into bed with that ball of emotional issues - you know I told Mynx the same thing? I presume that's why you're all," she made a gesture with two fingers, "snip snip?"

Vasilia and Dolce!

She's there, the infinite and the divine, terrible in the storm. She is the night that devours the day, the gravity that devours the planets. She hovers in the air above you, crackling storm of the battle.

"Vasilia?" said Zeus, Daughter of Cronus. "She's been endlessly disappointing, really. Compromised. Failed. Fled. Stewed in misery. Never lifted a finger to correct her mistakes. Never considered turning around and going back home to fix what she did. Flew nihilisticaly into the void for a wish she never articulated because it gave her the possibility of a spiteful death. Hades' girl, through and through."

A true lightning bolt. It cores a nearby sapling, turning it into an incandescent pillar of burning carbon, gouts of plasma leaking from the tree's shattered trunk.

"A disappointment, yes," said Zeus. She went on like a person but she was that lightning bolt too, she was that indescribable sound and the sound of a heaven where such discharges were the sparks of every neuron in her mind. "But I wouldn't say I was offended. Offense I'd deal with myself."

Bella and Redana!

For a moment you work together in a frenzied harmony. You do not see each other, do not speak to each other. One of you fights as a sword and the other as a shield and Sagakhan is at the centre of your bloody web for a few precious moments. Then you're apart, three points on a pyramid, three demigods watering the desert flowers with dripping blood.

"Annh... hrnnn..." Sagakhan presses a hand over her severed jugular, holding her ebbing life with her fingers. "Artemis..." She looks at XIII; at her name carved on that armour. Knows there is no negotiation to be had. "Zeus..." she looks around at the war, at the little crab hanging from Redana's shoulders, that has a little jolt of electricity pass along its claw every time it snaps. "Aphrodite..." she looks at the two of you, the wordless unity you share, nobility and hatred.

"Demeter," she said with finality.

She rips her robe away, revealing a suit of fine hardened leather armour that already tears off her body as muscles grow underneath it. The sword falls from fingers that have become swords. Her neck sways with the same sinuous grace as her lengthening tail shows, and each time she blinks her pupils are a different shape. Hair widens and hardens and turns as jagged as blades, growing all across her body.

"I wanted to kill you as a hero," she hissed. "in the sight of the gods, in accordance with every rule, beloved champion of Olympus sent to save the galaxy from Hades' monsters. I wanted to give blessings to my servants and mercy to my enemies. I wanted to give wealth to my household and happiness to my daughters. I wanted to live free and wanted to prove that I could rise to the highest station regardless of what liberties were taken with my DNA."

She spits blood through teeth like razors.

"But if I must I will kill you as a monster," she said. "I will take your names and give them to your replacements. I will raise the two of you anew, properly, as my left and right hands. As I raised this planet from the dead so shall I raise you from the dead, and let Aphrodite see the love I bear you and give us happiness in that new life."

She raises her hand from her severed neck.

Something grows there from the blood.

Sagakhan grins. Twice.

A second twisted serpentine head rises up alongside her first, swelling to full size.

"Cut one head," hisses Sagakhan in unison, Master of Assassins, Hydra of Demeter, "and two more shall grow."

Sagakhan is an impossibly complicated knot of life lines that blaze hotter than a bonfire with the pulse of divine light. No simple puzzle to be clipped short with a sharp set of claws, these: many of the lines cross jaggedly around nothing at all that she can see, while others form tightly clustered lumps that could each be a heart on a lesser creature. They are more numerous and more vibrant than anything else on the entire battlefield, even Redana.

Her words drip black-devouring-white, so unwholesome and powerful that they rattle XIII's senses and try to force her back up into the world of sight and sound and taste and touch, and reduce her understanding back to a mortal level where they couldn't terrify her half so much. But she snarls instead of quaking. Her fingers quiver with power and longing. She charges, before another word can be spoken. And two heads become three. Three heads become four.

You couldn't call what happens next a dance. Blood spatters everywhere from dozens of deep cuts made with suicidal abandon. XIII flashes everywhere; above, below, from every side, appearing and disappearing only to deal death to the newest name shining brightest on her skin. It is violent to a degree where even the gods might turn their heads. She trades shattering blows from a Hydra's talons for what would against any other creature be a mortal wound. Her armor chips and cracks on her neck, her shoulder, her left leg, her stomach. It holds. Her mouth fills with blood around a shattered fang. She swallows it without complaint.

She is beyond pain. Beyond all reason but the hunt. Where she bothers to dodge Sagakhan's strikes it is only in service to preserving herself enough to make sure the job is finished before she falls. Each strike, each moment where she freezes after she scours out a new line, each shower of blood is a scream. A defiance.

I. Am. Here, Mother. I. Am. What. You. Made. Me. I. Can. Not. Be. Raised. Anew. A. Beast. Can. Only. Raise. A. Beast. I! Am! The! Hunter! I! Am! The! Monster! Who! Hunts! Who! Slays! Other! Monsters! You. Will. Not. Erase. Me!

It feels like a battle that lasts an eternity. In reality it's over in seconds. The cuts turn out to be superficial, closing easily. Four heads become five. XIII only makes her mother stronger. Until at last she finds it: the opening at the left of her breast. Her claws drive into it with a thrust like a thrown spear. Her arm disappears into Sagakhan's flesh up to the elbow. Her claws close against the brightest cluster, and she squeezes.

She snorts. "Is. That. All?"

But she cannot see smiles. She misses the sardonic grins. Held in her moment of victory, she does not feel the skin close around her arm. And she is bitten. Again, and again, and again, and again, divine whips lashing an unworthy slave. Wounds that burn with venom. A tail smashes her full in the face with more power and fury than the largest sword swung by the strongest warrior ever to appear in the history of Empire.

XIII is free. XIII is flying. She crashes to the ground amidst the ruins of the black pyramid, and coughs in place of breathing. She head flops to one side, against her will. She feels pain. She wheezes. She smells blood, tastes it. She sees. She sees. The faceplate of her armor, already cracked in five different places, falls apart.

One eye is milky silver, tinged through the middle with murderous red. Her lips are unpainted and her face is covered in dirt and cuts. But that golden eye could only belong to Bella. She hisses as she struggles back to her feet, and her head snaps back into place with a heavy crunch. But her gaze stays on you, Redana. Her vision fills only with you.

The tears from her one good eye wash her face clean for her mistress.

Decline the eyes. Permit no change in posture. Zeus’ pronouncement against Dolce’s wife passes unimpeded through him and - by a tilt of his head - proceeds to the Lady Demeter. “It is…as the Thunderer says.” A good servant speaks when it is to the interest of their masters. A good servant offers no explanation, where none is asked for. “Shall your pronouncement stand?”

Do you, o Maiden of Spring, wish to contradict the Queen of Olympus? To her face?

But of course, your will is yours. Act, speak, as you see fit. He stands not at all, but least of all not in your way. Small. Inoffensive. Gone, for all purposes that mattered.

There are times when Alexa wishes she were faster. Better able to put together thoughts, to assemble words, to line them up for a salvo without inspecting them for perfection. Every second of not replying is anguish, but she only has one shot at this, and they have to be perfect.

"No, Beljani. I'm snip snip because I didn't help my girlfriend. Because I put Redana and Sagakhan first. Because I told myself that Isty can handle herself to cover up that I don't know how to talk to her anymore. Because I couldn't help her back when I had a body, because I can't help her now. Because maybe we won't be girlfriends after this, because the things we value are just too different.

"And you don't care about that, I know. It's my mistake, my problem, my girlfriend, not yours. But maybe you care about keeping her from interfering in the fight with Sagakhan. Maybe you want that crusty bitch in the ground more than I do. And maybe it's a good idea, when you're relying on somebody's favor, not to let her die. So it's in both our interests to calm Isty down enough that we can focus on putting Sagakhan down. And then, providing we survive this, you can collect your favor afterwards."

[Talk Sense, 6,5,3. +1 if with Wisdom, +0 if with grace. If with Wisdom, this also triggers Speak Only When You Mean It.]

It’s a simple story at first. When you mistreat a lion, it always comes back to have its revenge by the end of the story, and here comes Sagakhan’s champion to do what the horrible owls never would. A very pointed critique of her leadership skills, coming back to quite literally bite her. But, no— this close, the Shepherdess can see the names written across the armor, Sagakhan painted in blood. Of course she understands what has happened. She is the daughter of Hermes, who taught the first humans how to write. What could be hidden from her?

What indeed, save for the identity of Sagakhan’s weapon?

If Sagakhan was not, for a moment, preoccupied with the gory wound in her side, that would have been the end of the Shepherdess, because Redana’s whole world is fury. When Bella’s name leaves her lips, a scream, her voice cracks, and the Shepherdess closes the distance between them, hand outstretched, ignoring the name that throbs against Bella’s skin. It doesn’t matter. She’ll figure out a way. She’s so very clever, after all.

But right now, there’s only one way that she can be. There’s only one path, all the possibilities becoming one, or else she would cease to be who she is.

Redana, the Shepherdess, reaches out, knowing that Bella will tear at her, that Sagakhan is already swinging a tail at her, that her world is about to explode into frantic struggle and pain. But that doesn’t matter. There’s a lost sheep here, and the Shepherdess knows her duty.

“I’m not leaving you behind this time,” the Shepherdess swears to the maid consumed by violence, to this bloody nightmare in front of her, to the girl whose past and future are entangled with hers from beginning to end. “No matter what you’ve done, no matter what happens here— I’m not leaving you again! Remember, Bella!”

She forgives you, Bella, for what you’re about to do. You don’t even need to ask. Everything else is where it gets complicated, but she won’t hold it against you. She knew what was going to happen when she offered her hand.

She can take it, Bella.

Alexa!

"Oh!" said Beljani. "You're just like the others! No hellos, no how do you dos, no you look fetching in that armour Beljanis, just straight to 'Kill this person, save this other person, also here is my life story'!" She huffs but the words don't have real bite to them. They're just stress noises. Her actual action is to snap her fingers at a charging Kaeri. "You! Bad owl! Stop what you're doing and carry this for me, would you?"

The owl warrior's footsteps drag to a slurred halt. After a moment of struggle she leans down and picks up Alexa's severed head.

"But," she said thoughtfully. "You're offering to pay me? Nobody's ever done that before. I mean, I'm not clear what sort of favour you're positioned to offer... oh!" she snaps her fingers again. "Do you know how to write letters?"

Dolce!

"Oh, darling Zeus," said Demeter. "You're such a soft touch. You can't keep letting these mortals get away with this! They'll never learn if you don't discipline them."
"Why is their learning of interest to me?" said Zeus. "Either they please me or they don't. Either they seek my favour or they don't. I do not seek to control their lives."
"That seems such a cruel way to rule!" said Demeter. "Your garden runs wild. If you let your field bring you whatsoever harvest it pleases and in the end the forest will grow and all will fall into darkness. Just think of all the wonderful things that you could do if you took a more active hand?"
Zeus smiled and patted the top of her sister's head. "Demeter," she said. "You think that the path to glory is through your children. You couldn't be more wrong! My glory comes not from what my sons and daughters do, but from what I do!"
In the heavens above, through a gap in the cloud, a brilliant-bright star winks out. Ten million years ago across the cosmic void of space an explosion of incomprehensible size finally comes to a halt and the last supernova light finally reaches this distant world. A tiny thing. A gesture missed by two armies knee deep in wet sand and nettles, but no less mighty for their failure to see.
"And were I to spend my days persecuting failed kings, or torturing those who fail to live up to my moral aspirations," said Zeus, "then I would be an ignoble god indeed."

Though Zeus smiles there is no question of the edge of cool judgement in her tone. She does not bring Demeter to heel but her disapproval is clear as she turns away to Olympus. Demeter remains, though red faced and bitter at the implied insult.

Those fingers look softer than they should. Longer and more perfect. But that is surely her hand. Her expression is all wrong, too. The silly smile and the intensely furrowed brow that comes from thinking too hard has been replaced with a look of grim clarity and righteous anger. Those mismatched eyes, the green and the blue, shine with divine understanding and mortal determination. That, then, is surely her face. The smell of her sweat is pungent and... familiar, yes. But she is missing the complex rose perfume she uses to cover it up, so every sniff tells her no, no, no. She's wrong again.

And this, of all things, is what confirms it at the last. The name on written on her skull burns in agreement.

Bella reaches up with one trembling hand to grasp Redana around the wrist. Her touch is soft to the point of weakness. Until the claws dig in. They pierce the skin and quiver as godly blood trickles down to her palm. Her eye grows wide, and then unfocused, and she pulls herself up and throws Redana down in the same motion.

She howls as an animal would: a beast with a thorn in its paw. Her claws become a whirlwind that tears gouges into the earth that will never heal, that crush rocks into dust so fine nobody would notice if they breathed it in until it choked them, that rip deep gouges from Redana's flesh that only manage not to split her open because the glowing staff has become a lasso to protect its master and catches Bella by the wrists in the nick of time. Even then, she cuts deep and with an eye for pain.

She can't help it. She can't help herself at all. There are two names carved into her flesh, one in ritual sacrifice and one in blood, and whichever one of them is closer becomes the only thing that she can see. Right now that's you, Redana. She switches to punching, and her fists leave holes in the sand where you roll out of the way. Each time she wrenches her wrist free with a spray of sand it gets harder to see, harder to dodge. The next blow catches your jaw and sends you spinning.

She leaps and pounces, inches from your face. Close enough to eat you. Her teeth are bared as though to do just that. Her spittle foams around the corners of her mouth, dripping pink from the blood that won't stop pooling in her mouth and splashing onto your face. Even now you can see the way her body trembles. She coughs straight in your face even as she pins your arm down and presses herself down on you, close enough to start smothering you in that hard, sharp, and spiny armor.

She can't see what she needs to cut right now to kill you. That's why this is sloppy. But that's fine. That's fine, right? If you forgive her, then it doesn't matter if it's messy. If you forgive her, then it's fine if it hurts. If you forgive her, then block her blows, little weakling! Idiot princess! Live so she can hurt you more! Struggle so she can savor it! If you forgive her, if you love her, then die, die, die and make the name on her head stop burning!

You can throw her at Sagakhan, and this whole story will flip. She'll return instantly to murdering her mother, and you'll instantly fade so far into the background that you'll stop existing. That's what it means to be a Diodekoi, and every second that armor powers her brings her closer to transforming into Artemis' divine avatar until the strain crushes her body like an ancient star. But before even that, Sagakhan's venom will kill her. The more she strains, the more her heart pumps lethal toxins through her, ones her body has no defenses for. She'll dissolve from the inside out before she figures out the riddle.

Unless you can make her stop. You'll lose your strongest weapon against the other monster here who has only not killed you yet because her daughter is doing such an excellent job of it at the moment. But Bella will live, if you can figure out how to pull Bella out of Servitor Candidate Number XIII. Tredecima is a past you barely even know about. How are you supposed to reach through those thorns and find her heart?

And while you're pondering that, take damage.

Zeus passes. Demeter is left alone to her business. Paused in rebuke, but bitter, much too bitter to stay her hand. Vasilia can go nowhere. She has waited long enough. She expected satisfaction long ago. Her continued existence is an insult, a denial of her vision. Would it still be Demeter’s garden if even one weed was permitted to flourish?

In a moment, she will settle her mind.

“Oh, Lady Demeter,”

But before that, he speaks. Again.

“You are engaged in mighty works this day. I do not…presume that I can be counted as a distraction. My…my apologies, then, are only those of poor timing. But the…worse insult would be to remain silent.”

Hadn’t he left? Hadn’t she told him to leave? So difficult, to remember something so small…

“As you have said, you did give the task of Vasilia’s death over to your niece, Artemis…and I must recall to you:”

The vines shuddered, and turned a sickly, withered brown.

“The hunt is not yet finished.”

[Vasilia has Protection from a Location stat via the Anathema.]

Alexa's brow furrows.

"Would you like to be told you look fetching in that armor? I cannot imagine you choosing a tactical vest if a ballgown is available."

She sighs, and grudgingly admits, "You're right, though. It was rude of me to just expect your help.

"Letters, huh? What kind of letter, and to whom? You looking for composition tips, or just a scribe?"

This is wrong.

Redana scrabbles with a monster. The world around them is blotted out, overexposed; it will be easy enough for Sagakhan to kill them both. All that matters is the wasteland beneath her, leverage to push against, and the monster above her. It is pitiful, vicious, and not her Bella.

Nothing about this creature is right at all. It howls, rages, thrashes, attempts to gouge out her eyes, tears into her flesh. It’s not her Bella. And that’s what gives Dany the strength to fight back. Because the heroine needs to set things right; because the damsel in distress needs to be saved. And there is so much distress, rolling off Bella’s heart like waves breaking on the shore, in her hot, heavy groans of wet breath, in the blood flecking on them both.

It hurts. It hurts so much. The Shepherdess’s blood is bright, star-flecked, refusing to be absorbed into the sand. The creature’s claws tear through her breastplate as if it was wet paper, laying her open, but Bella’s trapped behind those savage blows, and that’s why Dany is able to fight back.

She’s a wrestler, after all. Did you forget?

The Shepherdess lifts Bella off the ground, as Hercules lifted Antaeus, her back flayed to ribbons underneath the whip of Bella’s claws, and Redana does a little hop and spikes her back down to the ground, sand spraying up in great gouts, and Dany pounces to get Bella’s arms locked behind her, pinned between them.

“I never should have left you behind,” Dany says, pushing her weight down on the writhing, scrabbling monster trying desperately to break free. “I never should have left you with her.” Joints crack and pop; Bella tears herself free with a raw scream, pivots about with jerking limbs to keep hurting, keep killing, and Dany tackles her again, gets bloodied fingers into the place where the helmet meets the skin and she pulls. Osseous plating comes free with a sickeningly wet pop, sinew snapping, exposing blood-matted hair to the rain. “I wanted to share it all with you, you idiot!”

Bella lunges again, and Dany’s fist snaps out, but too slow, wrong place; teeth clamp around her wrist and crunch. Dany bites down the scream, because now she’s close enough, now Bella is distracted by the rush of her shining Olympian blood, because now she’s close enough to reach across Bella’s body with her other hand, her trembling bloodied fingers.

And the Shepherdess, who knows the secret words, who understands the shapes of unseen things, wipes Bella’s forehead clean with her star-clotted blood.

The coolness. The relief. The rivulets, flowing down, filling the thousand thousand names, drowning them beneath:

The confusing feeling of staring at Bella’s lips for too long. The thump-thump-thump of her soothing heartbeat while they napped in the garden. The most amazing creature in the whole world peering out of a Box. The fear of ruining everything forever. Yearning without a name. The guilt of imagining holo heroines with triangles and impeccable diction. The confusion, the betrayal, the throb of a cheek. The dream of sitting beneath strange skies and being alone and free and able to do anything. The mortification of waking up from a dream of dressing in each other’s clothes, Princess Bella Claudius and Good Little Dany. Screaming upon the deck of the Plousios because it’s too late now, because Bella will die alone and thinking herself unloved. The pain of Barassidar, of betrayal, of knowing that Bella never cared for her. Cuddling together while the Batrachomyomachia unfurls onscreen, buried beneath blankets. The horror of seeing the helmet crack and who was beneath, who was tortured, who was made a weapon when she never should be, when she could be a queen, an explorer, a scholar, more than just a Servitor, equal to any human Dany had ever met in her life—

Redana Epimelios crumples to her knees, clutching her brutalized wrist to her chest, like a Servitor waiting for execution. She tries to speak, but her clever words don’t have the breath behind them to be more than hoarse gasps for air; she can’t even lift her head to look Death Herself in the eye.

Redana awaits her judgment.

[Redana damages her Courage and expends the second use of her Healing for her Bella. 7 on a Finish with Wisdom.]

Alexa!

"So firstly, it's not like I did anything wrong," said Beljani. "And the letter should say that. But it also should say how terrible it feels to have done nothing wrong and have everything be wrong anyway. Do you know what I mean? When you can't do better and still not have it be enough?"

There is an eerie unity as she walks across the battlefield, cradling your head in her arms. All around her there is peace. Kaeri, Alcedi and stranger things grind to a halt and join a phalanx around her, a mongrel formation with a harmony strangely reminiscent of the Coherent.

"So it should be that feeling," said Beljani quietly. "But in words that make the reader feel that feeling. They need to be able to cut through armour. And they also... need to say that she didn't do anything wrong either. That she was perfect too. And that I respect that even if it didn't solve anything either. Can you write that?"

She doesn't say who she wants to write it to. Maybe to many people.

Vasilia and Dolce!

A wind swept Sahar's airless moon. Regolith like mountains of paperwork swirled and blew through the stars, every one signed in red.

"That is a sacred blade," whispered Artemis in the click of abacai. "This is a sacred hunt. This is a sacred prophecy. The husband will murder his wife. Aphrodite's will be done. Demeter's will be done..."

You are outside yourself. Your hand moves, frictionless. There's nowhere you can go other than Vasilia. There's no one you can hurt other than Vasilia. The Anathema, invoked in the presence of Artemis, in the presence of Demeter, in the presence of Vasilia must perform its function. You are the executioner and you know in your bones that it was always going to end this way.

You can taste her blood already.

"Stop! I revoke the contract!"

And you stop, the blade a centimeter beneath Vasilia's skin.

"You," said Artemis in the silence of broken oaths, "what?"

"Away with you, ridiculous girl," said Demeter. "You have failed and I no longer have need of you. Coming to steal my kill once I am finally positioned to do it myself? To grant mercy to my captive with death? You have failed, Artemis, and I will not grant you the satisfaction of pretending you have fulfilled your oath."

You turn your head shakingly to the side. You see the Goddess of the Hunt.

You see crazed eyes. Terrible fangs. Wild hair. Deadly talons. Flowing hair and armour of bone and skin carved with ten trillion names and red, red, red.

She might be Bella's sister.

You close your eyes as hard and as fast as you can and look away. Greater heroes than you have suffered far worse punishments for daring to look at Artemis when they ought not to.

"I understand," you hear her voice still so close to your ear, still so calm and measured, hardly any blood and flesh on her teeth. "I apologize for failing you, Lady Demeter."

You feel the knife in your hands break and crumble to dust, but you wisely keep your eyes shut until the moon disappears behind the clouds again.

There was. A name. There was a name. There was a name on her lips, on the day that she was born. She was screaming it as she was waking up. Or had she been falling asleep? She can't remember. A skull splitting pain pierces her brain like a drill. She can't remember. She can't! Remember!

...They wrote the name on her forehead so that she would remember. It was the most important name on her list of thousands. In desperation she reaches for her head, claws scrabbling across the blood smear where it ought to be, but all that's there are white hot lances of pain. The name. The name! Where is it? What is it?! Give it to her! But it's gone. It's gone. There should be a name and it's gone. And all that's left is pain. All that's left is longing. All that's left is --

flustered bewilderment and trembling hands when it was time to wash the same gym clothes she'd cleaned a hundred times before. The stillness of a movie theater that she could not in all her life imagine deserving to inhabit, emptied just for her and the girl without a name. The fluttering of violet-black butterfly wings in a garden too beautiful to pay attention to history lessons in. A bouquet of rose-scented perfume. The pounding of her heart as she snuck under the covers of the nameless girl's bed for the first time. The look of betrayal and hurt on her face when she finally got the medicine she needed forced down her throat. The tears in her eyes before she shut that closet door. The screaming match. The graceless but somehow perfect smile of a girl as her head shone like an angel's. She opened the Box and set her free and her smile was brighter than the sun's just before she fell and --

Bella opens her eyes for the first time in a lifetime. Not looking up from a pit or trapped inside the body of an assassin, but here in the middle of a blood-soaked battlefield and a strange desert planet she'd never known before. The face in front of her isn't smiling this time. Her eyes are older, and mismatched green and blue where they ought to be simple little oceans unto themselves. She's more beautiful than pretty, more tragic than heroic, and not half so wise as she ought to be for all of her adventures. But she has a name, something Bella could never forget even if you tortured her and whittled her down into nothing but a barely beating heart.

"REDANA!"

She screams and struggles against her body. Her hands around her Princesses' throat. Redana doesn't say anything in response; she can't with her windpipe rolling under Bella's thumbs. Her claws bite into the skin and she can only scream the name, again and again and again, and wrench backwards with all her might only to crawl further and further forward to a thing she can't take back. Redana, Redana, Redana! She'd been screaming it with all her strength back then. Redana, Redana, Redana! Calling for the only person who could save her.

And she came. After everything she'd said, she came. After everything she'd done, she came. All the lives she took, all her imperfections laid bare, the monster revealed where the Princess had only wanted a silly little pet, but even still she came. That. Idiot!

Bella squeezes her eyes shut tight again, and screams. It's a horrible thing to listen to, tortured and quivering and very, deeply human. Her body convulses with the pain of a thousand hot knives flaying her skin. Slipping under sinew and ripping, tearing. Popping. Her ears shudder and clamp shut to drown out the chorus of wet tearing noises and pitiful moans, but how can she drown it out when it all belongs to her? Her body longs to collapse. Her brain screams at her to sink back into her skin, just stop before she kills herself. She pulls harder.

The Diodekoi armor unfurls at her back like a flower. Folds of spikes and chitin unfurl in layer after layer, revealing the now black-stained muscle fibers still quivering and fighting to hold her in place. She wrenches with every spare speck of might left inside her body, and with one final explosion of pain, XIII and Bella part ways forever.

Her skin feels frozen in the cold rain. Her fur feels sticky and clumped, like her hair, soaked through with blood in every weave of its clumsy braid. About her body what had been pristine white robes have turned translucent pink that sticks to her skin and does nothing to protect her like her skin... no. Like the armor had. She lifts a foot and kicks the Diodekoi away from Redana's body, but the jerkiness and unfamiliarity of the motion makes her slip, and all she does is make it collapse on top of her.

"...Whatever. You. Obviously need it more than I do. Idiot."

She doesn't smile. Doesn't cry. Bella simply looks down at her hands. At the claws on her hands that seem less sharp and deadly than the ones she'd had just minutes ago, and all the less for the mutilated stubs her index and middle fingers ended in once again. She didn't even have any talons to cover them with, her only jewelry was the worthless gold bracelets about her wrists and arms, and the circlet squeezing against her forehead. She lifts her arms to put it straight, at the very least.

Her ear twitches. Her back arches. Bella pivots on her bare feet and she lashes it with both her useless hands to turn aside the thunderbolt that is Sagakhan's tail. She can't keep the wince off her face. Her wrist feels numb. But even so, she snarls and hunches low to the ground, as if about to pounce.

"You can't have her," Bella says, and her voice is soft and strong and finally hers again, "Redana's mine."

I have failed you, even though I did my best. I'm so sorry, even though I could do no better. I ran the race as hard as I could, threw everything I could behind this one goal, and it wasn't enough. I made all the right choices, could have made no other choices even knowing what I do now, would make those same choices again, and there's no world where those choices would be enough.

And you did, too. You ran just as hard as I did. Saying it doesn't change the situation we're in, doesn't magically solve the problems we face. But I saw. I witnessed. I felt the blows. You're amazing, and I could never ask for more than you gave, because you gave it everything.

She could be writing to anyone, our Beljani. Probably wouldn't use those words, exactly, but the emotions are there.

Nero. Hermes. She who ran to save her beloved people, ran as fast as she could, was just in time to see herself fail, just in time to see half the galaxy--half the people she loved--plunged into the afterlife.

Bella. Dear, dear Bella, who worked so hard. You did everything right, and so did I, and I'm so sorry we weren't enough to save each other.

Redana.

Mynx.

Herself, maybe.

"I," she starts, and goes quiet. The battlefield is too quiet, no sound but that of the pheromone-led crowd shuffling over sand.

"I might need a bit of time to actually write it out in my current state. But I know that emotion all too well. I can write it, Beljani."

The armor is heavier than the heart of a titan.

At least, that’s how it feels, trapped underneath that twisted mess of bone and blood and sinew; it flattens Dany’s lungs, presses down harder and harder as if desperate to dig down into the heart of the world, taking another girl with it. Its empty skull lolls hideously, its jaw broken, wiry sinews blossoming like flowers.

Getting it off of her is an epic ordeal all on its own; the more she pushes against it, the heavier it grows. Sodden belts flap against her, as if trying to hook around her, pull her into the carcass of a killer, stand up crowned by Ares, avenge itself on Bella for daring to throw it away. How could she be so cruel? How could she be so careless? How could she give up her own flesh, her own bone? (The words are not her own; the words come from somewhere deep inside the carcass.) Doesn’t she know the universe is dangerous, and that if she’s not the most dangerous thing in it, something that’s willing to bite and claw and kill without remorse will kill her and chew her bones in turn? She is afraid. She should be afraid. Kill or be killed, Bella!

Pincers latch onto one cruelly thorned gauntlet and lift, and that’s the opening Redana needs, the breathing space, a chance to cough and ignore the smell of death reeking out of the armor. She punches one fist into its guts and pushes, for all that it becomes furiously leaden.

With a cry, Redana forces it off of her, knocking it down onto the sodden sand, where it lies dormant, bereft of the heart that sustained it for so long. And Dany, on one elbow, stares at it. The cruel lines, the wicked thorns, the blood clotting on its talons, the desperate need to keep everything out, to keep the wearer safe from everything, from a world full of nothing but betrayal and heartbreak.

This thing came out of Bella. This close, it’s impossible not to recognize her in retrospect. The cruelty, the power, the violence, the fear. And yet—

Bella tore it off. Bella tore it off for her. And that means something just as much, doesn’t it? There’s still the girl there who refused to give up on Skotos. And looking at her, crouching low, putting herself between her charge and the monster waiting here at the end of everything…

Redana scoops up the crab, the second bravest thing on this whole world, and holds it close to her chest as she staggers up to her feet, letting it burrow beneath her breastplate and cling close with the last of its strength. Bella shouldn’t have to stand alone. So she won’t.

Princesses don’t abandon their subjects.

“Avaunt,” the Shepherdess rasps, and draws the shape of a shield out of the empty air.

Wake up, little sheep. The moon is gone. The dream is past. Wake, to the lingering memory of her blood.

He is up first, as usual. She is still sleeping. She could not sleep. Her eyes drink in the clouded light like she is dying of thirst. They dart past the shade in the shape of her husband. Her mouth opens. Screams that are not screams, only chunks of feeling breaking off from a raging storm. It would be better if she were silent. It would be better if she screamed.

But she’s alive.

His hand gropes blindly across his armor, and closes around a tuft of wool, nearly torn off in the fight. He pulls. Stillness, amidst a sickening pop as something in his shoulder gives way first. He pulls. Without leverage. Without tools. Without any sign that is close, or far, or hopeless. He pulls. The last thread snaps and he falls across her chest, clutching his prize. Not done yet. Not yet.

Arm over arm. Breath by breath. He crawls across her. Finds, in a sea of blood and ruin, one cut. Narrow. A centimeter deep. To this, he presses the wool, and in place of strength he lays his weight upon it.

It’s okay. It’s okay, Vas. He’s here. He’s still here. Even when you couldn’t see him, he never left your side.

Even now, when he lies between a goddess and her prize.

Redana and Bella!

Thunder roars as you stand against Sagakhan.

All her marks of humanity have fallen away. Her soldiers have left her. Her hands can no longer hold a sword. Her fine clothing and delicate butterfly wings have torn to shreds. And now her last daughter and tool has turned against her. Serpentine eyes stare and her necks sway in harmony only with themselves. There no longer seems any intelligence in her eyes. As you, Bella, have emerged from the shell of XIII, she has fallen into her own biologically programmed monstrosity.

And she lashes out like a monster.

Gone is skill and precision. Gone is Artemis' guidance, the deadly focus that keeps a true assassin on the path. Gone is Zeus' intervention. Gone is Aphrodite's cruelty. Your opponent here is nothing of the divine. Your opponent is the intelligence who found a newly lethal way to weave DNA together and the goddess who will not let the result die.

As she fights, she grows. As her heads multiply her body has to become shorter, more muscular and more bestial to support them. Soon she falls to all fours like a quadruped and still her teeth lash out, dripping with venom. In place of strategy, manipulation or cunning what will speak your end is grim mathematics. As the fight goes on you will become weaker and she will become stronger.

You may as well fight the rainforest that now towers around you in every direction of this former desert. As long as the rain falls there shall ever be life.

Alexa!

"Alright," said Beljani, gingerly stepping into the narrow gaps between bodies. "I believe she went this way."

Corpses on battlefields don't just pile up randomly; they're not evenly distributed over a range of territory. The way they fall tells the stories of battle. Large empty spaces followed by the concentrated wreckage where the lines crashed, verdant grass and tree sprouts from the emerging rainforest before reaching the toxic wastelands where concentrated volleys of SP fire left their scars. An experienced soldier can trace the lines of formation, shock, flight and pursuit as a detective might examine a crime scene.

And the scene left by Epistia is a nightmare. It's a highway of ruin. Kaeri and Alcedi pulled from the sky, phalanxes shattered - metal and bone sundered into pieces. And there, bloody red, she hunches atop the body of a horse, silhouetted by the lightning. Her broken legs have ceased to trouble her. Her fur is matted and jagged, standing on end, eyes filled with deep crimson light. She holds a Kaeri soldier like a broken doll in her right hand while her left holds her scythe, and heartsblood drips from her jaws. In ancient days they told the legend of the werewolf, and her she is - another monster gracing a battlefield increasingly filled with them.

She smoulders like fire. Where the spikes of her fur end wispy clouds of toxic SP smoke fume and hiss and crackle. She is one with the dread lord Ares, the aspect of terror itself.

Beljani's phalanx pulls nervously closer. The Assassin sets her jaw and then hands your head, Alexa, off to one of them to carry. She flicks her wrists and then rolls up her sleeves, the absolute icon of dignity.

"Well," she said, with a dreamlike confidence, drawing a shortsword and unfurling a razor-edged fan, "I cannot complain that I was not trained for this."

Vasilia and Dolce!

"If you do not mind," snapped Demeter, "I believe I have given you a sufficient quantity of mercy. You have dared much already, which I will permit as a courtesy to Aphrodite, but at this point I really must insist. Remember your place, mortal, and take what you have been given."

You do not need to look around to feel the blades of the hedge trimmers in the Queen of Spring's hands.

She'd spent her entire life crafting that armor, and not even realized it. Every worry made it grow harder and more invincible, every doubt sharpened its claws. Fear wrapped it in thorns so it could keep her safe, and envy made it larger so that she could become a titan. It was supposed to make her perfect. In actual fact a god; finally making good on the promise she made in the darkness of the Yakanov. It was supposed to swallow her, the ultimate monster that every other monster had to run from. It was supposed to crush her into oblivion, until the name Bella vanished from lips across the universe, and even XIII would vanish into the ocean called Artemis.

It was perfect. She was perfect. Mere minutes away from accession. Tearing herself free was an act of insanity, one that had cost her the power of the gods and the paltry reserves stored inside her own body at the same time. Even now, her lungs burn as if the wet forest air was thick with SP smoke. Even now her legs tremble from the effort of supporting her body. Her spine longs to curl forward and never straighten again, not for all the pride in the universe. Her mutilated fingers tremble uncontrollably: naked lances of fire that scream at the barest kiss of air. The water pouring down is unbearable.

And yet.

Bella launches herself at Sagakhan, and it feels like she's grown wings. She soars over the sand, now covered with sodden leaves, and her feet barely touch the ground. One, two, three monstrous heads lash out at her as she comes. From above, and from either side. She reaches into the air, not knowing what to expect, and snatches at the sky with her bare hand. She disappears in a blink, reappearing at the top of the canopy of fresh trees, and. Oh. She's grown wings after all.

She plunges with the seeming of a spear hurtled from heaven. Sagakhan's heads pivot on a pin and snap at her with a series of furious hisses, but none of the fangs sink into her flesh. There's a burst of light, a flash of color she can't afford to notice right now, and unlimited attacks somehow turn into straight on thrusts and snaps that she can counter directly. Bella's whole body burns, but it burns with a rush of elation and a surge of golden power that feels lighter and happier than any sensation she can remember. Even with her sharpest claws removed, even without talons to replace them, the ones she's still got left are sharp and strong enough to carve deep wounds in Sagakhan's armored scales and spill her toxic blood in great hissing splashes that wilt foliage to nothing wherever it falls.

Bella rises and falls. She cuts circles around her opponent and flashes from corner to corner with a speed, precision, and sense of easy grace she couldn't have hoped to match as XIII. She is the true manifestation of the storm. She is the tool you send to fight the rainforest. She is the spear, the sword, the hammer, raining blows from above and below at the same time. She can be a weapon because she does not need to be a shield. Without the fear, she's lighter. Without the doubt she's stronger. Sharper, more precise, calmer. Free.

Her name is Bella. Named for her beauty. The Imperial Maid. A Praetor, chosen by no less than Empress Nero herself. She hops lightly out of the way of snapping heads, crushing tail blows, and claws larger than her entire head. She catches one deathblow between her hands, sinking half to her knees before she finally manages to throw it to the side. Suddenly all she can think about is Prion Paula. What a stupid thing to think about, when she's dancing on the edge of death with a monster beyond her power to kill? But she smirks, in spite of herself. Even laughs, in a brief sort of snort. And that feels... nice. Fuck it, then. Chan-barra-chan.

Ah, she's light. She's so light. What did she ever need that armor for?

Two heads roar in her face and snatch at her with deadly sharp teeth. Her saliva singes the fur on Bella's arms just from being this close. They bite down, and there's no time or space for clever dodging this time. Her shield is occupied elsewhere. All she can do is twist her body so the teeth can't get anything vital. She sacrifices a shoulder and her opposite elbow to keep her body safe. Her skin crawls and burns with the sensation of hot beads being endlessly pushed into it and rolled around by some giant, malicious thumb. She does not scream. She grits her teeth and wrenches her limbs free, and as she wheels around her foot crushes into one of Sagakhan's jaws. She takes the head in both her hands and wrenches it with all of her might, smashing it into the other one over. And over. And over again.

Until the scales split. Until the teeth shatter against each other. Until the bones grow soft and twin necks slump with the listlessness that hers long to, even now in the middle of her golden song. She stumbles back, and twists her neck to touch her lips to her injured shoulder. Suck, and spit. She wipes her lips clean and repeats the process on her arm. There, you stupid bitch. If cutting heads won't work, she'll crush them instead.

The smirk falls off her face immediately. The rest of Sagakhan's heads rises up and contemplate their fallen companions. The great Master of Assassins roars her displeasure, and crunches down on her own neck. The hydra lashes furiously, biting and tearing again and again and again until her useless, broken heads lie severed on the ground, skin and scale and muscle already dissolving down to misshapen bone. All around her is a graveyard made of herself. She gnaws it with a monster's zeal. New heads grow to replace the ones she ate herself. And she grows larger to accommodate them. Her teeth grow sharper. Spines rise and shiver along her back and at the tip of her tail.

But she does not grin. She does not laugh or taunt or condescend. She hisses and smashes her new club of a tail through several giant trees in a single catastrophic motion. And somehow, that's the cruelest thing of all.

"You called me your daughter," says Bella with enough venom to rot a hydra skull, "In front of Zeus almighty, you called me your child."

Her hands ball into fists. She rises as straight and tall as her body can manage, and stomps her foot into the ground.

"You disgust me, you worthless piece of shit. How dare you? How dare you! After everything you stole from me, how dare you say that and throw it all away?!

"Kill me if you can, I don't give a fuck. I'll come back, see if I don't. If it takes me three hundred years I'll find you. And I'll drag you with me. I will. Never forgive you."

Her shoulder burns. Her arm burns.. Bella squeezes her fingers again to keep from pulling her arms taught against herself. She snarls so she doesn't scream. Her eyes betray her, and wander away from the fight for the first time. Of course they land on Redana. Now her body burns with shame, too.

Sorry, Dany. This is gonna be a pretty short reunion. Whatever, it's not like she had much a future left anyway, after everything that's happened.

Her heart beats wildly against the thought. She punches her chest and hisses. Shut up, you.

[Keep Them Busy: 11]

The totality of nature waits on a tiny, filthy lump of wool. To spare, or to devour.

“I have. Been given a lot.” More than he asked for. Or what he asked for was more than he ever realized. Years, he’s spent, thinking of what he’s been given. “It’s been hard to say if I deserved any of it. Just.” A wet, sickly cough wracks his frame. Her face blurs. “Just a chef, after all.”

She did not ask him to leave quickly; yet another mercy. He needs both his arms to raise himself upright. A moment, please, for the world to settle down. “Now, though,” he rasps, in-between gasps of air. “I think, it was a little unfair, yes? To everybody. Myself. And to you.” Could he have really hidden his heart so thoroughly, that you did not actually know him? Did you grant your gifts with anything less than his life in your hands? “Suppose it was never really a matter of deserving, after all. I have this. I am this. It’s a matter, then, of what I do with it.”

At last, he moves. Clutching scraps of shattered armor for leverage, he half-turns, half-rolls, and the Lady of Spring is before him. The face of his wife stares back at him, reflected in the blades of her hedge trimmers. His own face, too, growing clearer with each moment he stalls. This, then, is to stand before a goddess. Before the turning of seasons. The end that is beginning that never shall end. Life-giver. Tyrant. Bully.

Dolce looks up. And past her.

“I am told, we have already defied expectations.” His hand rises, shaking, clenched. Not a fist. A presentation. Of a band of gold, where the blood of two runs as one. Shining, amidst a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Aphrodite. Love took us this far. Do you permit a universe where it will take us no farther?”