She’s the only one who could keep up. Fleet-footed Redana, daughter of the gods, racing after that tumbling thunderbolt. Where it falls, rents and gouges tear into the roiling flesh of the monstrous mother of serpents. And where it falls, it does so without thought of itself.

Bella would have burned herself out in that awful armor, would have melted from the inside out. But that heart is still furious within her, burning, searing, as she dances with Hades on the edge of death. And Redana will not let that happen, will not let Bella tumble into the dark with a mocking, hopeless laugh on her lips. So she turns aside claw and jaw, the enemy from all sides; she uses the shield to crush, swinging it as if it was her answer to the awful assertion of this monster against the world, which is…

Something. There are things going on here that even the Shepherdess doesn’t understand, signifiers meaningless without their context. Mothers and monsters, killers and defenders. What is real in this moment is the frantic fight, the constant shift of attention, and even if she were Hera’s hundred-eyed guard she still wouldn’t be thinking fast enough to cover all the angles, to find the empty space between the many deaths of Sagakhan, no matter how hard she tries.

Then she catches sight of him between the writhing flesh, the necks and the teeth, with a shovel over one shoulder and a cigarette smouldering between his lips. He catches her eye, nods his head, gestures vaguely towards—

“Bella!” She vaults over a falling head, comes as close to the raging, roiling thunderbolt as she dares. “Follow me!”

She reaches out and takes her Bella by the wrist.

“Trust me,” she says, and for a moment they’re back on Tellus. I know what I’m doing, Bella. Follow me. Be with me. Trust me.

Because there’s no way to kill a monster like this, save for the intervention of the gods. And there’s no way to force a monster like this to give ground, only to give chase. She gave up her cunning, thinking it a weapon worth discarding; now she’ll be outwitted by Redana, of all people.

If Bella comes with her.

If.

Sometimes, experience is a terrible thing.

See those mangled ruins surrounded by feathers? In her mind's eye, she can reconstruct it--piece together how the Kaeri struggled in Epistia's jaws. See the tracks in the ground where the Kaeri scrabbled, struggled, see where the frantic wingbeats scattered dust. See, there, the deeper footsteps, where Epistia reared back, shook until bones shattered, and then shook some more for the joy of it.

There: blood, a rapidly cooling brown stain, standing stark against the sand. Carotid, based on the Lantern head nearby. They'd all drawn back when Epistia landed among them, bit the leader's throat out, and tossed the body aside. But that was their mistake--that was movement, that was the chase, that was fun, that was the hunt. None of them get more than a hundred yards.

She's felt that power before. Known what it's like to have a god coursing through your veins, to be able to move with a certainty that's not your own. She wants to believe it's Ares doing the laughing, Ares treating this like a game. It's Ares, throwing a body, and then bowling through a phalanx with the excitement of the chase. It's Ares, drinking in the heady aroma of fear like the finest Ambrosia. It's Ares, Ares, always Ares doing this.

But it's not, is it?

Alexa's victims were no less bloody than Epistia's, to be sure. Her battlefields were left strewn with just as many corpses. But she never enjoyed it. There was an enemy, an objective, and punishment waiting unless she got the job done. There was the satisfaction of a clean kill, maybe. Of thrust, parry, riposte, all played out with units.

She'd seen it, in that first dance. Seen Isty, seen that ferocity, and thought, "there's a girl who can take care of herself." There's someone strong enough that I don't need to worry about her when I'm away. I don't need to worry about coming back to an empty library, because anybody who tries that is going to lose whatever hands they use to do it. Isty, who helped see herself as more than an expendable tool. Isty, who had the cutest laugh. Isty, who glares every time she suspects she's not being taken entirely seriously.

Epistia, who shows no pity for those she cuts down. Epistia, who is so young, so inexperienced. Epistia, sitting alone in a cafeteria, surrounded by the friends of those she hurt, declaring that they are the ones in the wrong. Epistia, so faithful in knowing that the people she hurts are people, but with not enough understanding of what that means.

That they're precious. That they have wants and needs. That it's a tragedy when even one is cut short, no matter how much glory and respect it wins you. That ending them--even if they're enemies--is a terrible thing.

Could Alexa have been fine with that, once upon a time? Put that away in her head, blinded herself to it, so long as Isty came home at the end of the day? Sacrificed everybody else, damned everybody else, so long as the person she cared for was safe?

It's a pointless question to ask, because no matter what past Alexa might or might not have done, present Alexa needs to see that Epistia is taken down.

Taken down. Gods above.

She barely has time to think the thought before she's passed to a Kaeri.

"Beljani!"

Dammit, she. There's no time to think, no time to assemble the words, to get it right.

"… Please."

There are too many words to be said. Please survive, please come back alive. Please, let there be more opportunities for me to get to know you better, since I was too inside my own head and up my own ass to do it before. Please, don't kill her. Please, I don't deserve to ask you this, but please. Please, please, please.

"I need to make this right. Please, don't die."

Redana and Bella!

At the end of a long road, through war and death, pursued by a demon, is a grave. It is roomy. Space enough to lay you to rest along with all your friends.

Above the grave stands Hades. He's been busy. His shovel is wet with sand and all about are the crystals and precious metals his industry has brought forth from the earth. He dabs at his forehead with a white hankerchief and gives you the first smile you have ever seen from those thin lips and starshine eyes.

Oh yes, it's roomy down there. Space enough to bury one side of this conflict forever. Down in the depths of the pit smoulders a single cigarette butt, and there's a spot of light as the middle-aged man who smoked it lights another. You know, Aphrodite might have been beautiful once? He tips his round hat and he's gone again in moments.

Behind you comes a monster. But there is no one to light her way.

Alexa!

They could be sisters. Two wolves of Ceron, armed and armoured for battle. Theirs were the throats that howled the end of the galaxy. Theirs were the teeth that broke its neck. The finest warrior species devised by an ancient humanity. The ancient wolf, man's first enemy, its first friend, born anew in this distant future as the war hounds of empire.

They couldn't be more different. A bloodhound and a poodle.

Epistia is young, lean, jagged. Blood and fire, inside and out. The genetic alchemy of her biology runs rampant, this machine of flesh and bone and death, perfect vessel for the god of war. A great many genewrights laboured for a great many years to encase the mysteries of battle in the language of instinct. She moves with confidence, swaying as the intelligence of her spine alerts her to threats. The scythe swings back and forth like a pendulum, cleanly severing fledgeling trees of clusters of wheat as they grow rampant in this world that was once a desert.

Beljani is in each aspect the opposite. She is prim, round, delicate. She moves like a flower petal or dandelion seed, never seeming to accelerate beyond a walk. Her shortsword and fan are so comically mismatched against the reach of that terrible scythe it seems she may as well be disarmed. But below the surface her own biologically engineered organs are pounding just as hard. The air becomes thick and heavy with the scent of her perfume, a faint fuchsia tint visible in the air around her. And as she circles so do her puppets; twenty soldiers who emulate her own slow-walking dance, connected to their mistress by strings of delicate mist.

Neither salutes. To show respect would be to die.

There is silence for a moment. The rain pours off their fur, darkened puddles around their feet.

And then, all at once, Beljani and all her soldiers drop their weapons.

With one motion each of them snatches a SP grenade from their belts. With one motion, they throw those twenty grenades upon the ground. In the roar of light and sound the pink thread severs and Beljani loses all of her puppets. In exchange for this surprise she cast off her entire arsenal.

Through the storm she runs, eyes shut and senses deadened. She ducks under the scythe and crashes into Epistia, a tackle around the midsection. And then she's on top and that airy little poodle is biting and biting and biting. All along the arm, the collar, the neck - and then she is caught and hurled away. Epistia staggers to her feet, snarling, and stalks after her opponent, smoke billowing away from her in clouds.

She looms over the assassin, bloody froth on her lips. Beljani, bloodstained, smiles up at her.

And Epistia freezes in place. Her muscles tremble and her eyes flick down to her bite wounds, glistening with the aftermath of Beljani's venom.

But then she slugs Beljani across the face.

The battle is now on Beljani's territory - the landscape of mind control. Her venom courses through Epistia's veins, but Epistia fights against it. The fight has become stop-go, with Epistia frozen in place for long moments while Beljani recovers and lands counterblows, before snapping out of it and counterattacking. It's vicious and you have no idea who is going to win - until Beljani's hand falls across the hilt of a sword. She picks it up.

And throws it aside.

You know in that moment she's going to lose.

Further and further she goes back until she's fighting with her back against a tree - arms up, battered into a corner like a boxer with nowhere further to retreat. The heavy blows come harder and faster as Epistia finds a rhythm and you can hear the heavy impacts over the rain. At last she seizes Epistia by the wrists and then lifts her up off her feet, pinning her against the tree as the assassin's legs ineffectively kick against her. Epistia, face alight like a demon, leans close and snarls, ready to return the bites she was given earlier.

And at that moment a fuchsia mist, thicker than anything Beljani has previously used, pours out of her body. Her mouth, her eyes - everything she has. It pours into Princess Epistia who howls and drops the assassin, clutching at her head, clawing at the air around her. She struggles and writhes. She collapses. She kicks against the ground, tearing roots and fresh grass apart. And then at last, they both lie still.

And then a few moments later they both sit up. They both stretch. They both sniff the air, look at each other, then look at the world around them. Both perfectly synchronized. Not puppet and master - two puppets.

Vasilia and Dolce!

"Oh, forgive my tardiness," said Aphrodite. "Business. You know how it is."

He couldn't look older than fifty.

"But you're wrong, with your prayers," said the God of Love. "You always have been. You people always are. I try to tell people how it is but nobody listens to me. Listen, Dolce, if you have ever obeyed the gods listen to my advice now: You do not have love. You were not gifted with love. You do not deserve love."

He snapped his fingers, hard and clear. "You belong to love. It owns you. You will be love's obedient slave or it will torture you until you learn your place. This bitch," he jerks a thumb at Demeter, who looks scandalized, "is nothing. She's just another way for me to teach you that. Capisce?"

The SP grenades touch down, and everything goes to shit.

Noise! Fury! Noxious gasses blind every sense except that of having half a desert planet shoved through eyes, nose, any open orifice. Hands grope in the smoke, voices call out for friends, and find the wrong shapes and voices answering. Lanterns scuttle to escape the chaos, Alcedi and Kaeri find themselves next to each other and reach for weapons, and one startled Kaeri finds herself holding the loudest rock she's ever heard.

"HOLD!"

It's the only thing Alexa can do right now. She can't defend herself from the blasts, can't cover her eyes, her mouth from the choking smells, but here, right now, she has one chance to make herself heard.

"Hold, you blithering idiots! The fight's over! I will not have you starting it again!"

Keep talking. Keep them focused on her. Keep them puzzled, interested, anything to keep them from realizing that she's just a head. Keep them from reaching for those weapons.

And, if she's being honest, keep herself from looking at the fight. Keep the sound in the background. Allow herself the luxury of cowardice, that she does not have to watch two people she cares for tear each other apart at her own behest.

Keep it going, so that when she finally calms the crowd, she only has to catch the last blast of purple smog, and feel her heart sink into her metaphorical shoes.

She urges the Kaeri holding her forward, and topples herself into the ground in front of the pair.

"Please. Please tell me you're okay."

And just for a second, she's not sure which of the two she's talking to more.

Who lights the way to the grave? Who walks with you when no one else will? Who knows the path and will lead you to the final rest? Who loves you in the dark, who sees you for who you are and knows you?

Who but Hermes?

The Shepherdess is not Hermes, but there’s no one else here to do the work. She can’t slip away yet. Not while Bella’s still in danger; not while everyone she loves is at the mercy of this hydra’s poisoned tongue, her wicked deconstructing talons. For a moment she stands there, neither in the grave nor wholly outside it, and the universe expands all around her— that universe torn in half by the wound, by Molech’s roar, by the sin of hubris. She stands on the lip of the grave, and in the depths of one far vaster.

A cigarette butt smoulders in the grave. It is going to burn through, right to the other side of the reel. Say, turn this record over, you ain’t heard nothing yet. The only thing in the cold and the dark that could possibly do it. The connection’s on the tip of her tongue and it burns as if Aphrodite snuffed it out there, as if Bella was drawing out the venom again (sobbing and cursing and shaking the hero), and all she can say is that it burns like gold, see how it shines, the golden joinery racing from planet to planet, broken and beautiful, beautiful because it was broken, reaching out for an answer she just can’t see yet from this side of the door, but her fingers are on the lintel, and she’s almost there, the whole wide whirling burn of it, the clatter of the empty reel, and Bella is digging her fingers (the ones with no claws, oh, Bella, the ones without claws) into her arm, because oh, here comes the dragon at the end of it all, here comes the monster who will make a desolation of this place once more, here comes death by venom and fire and snapping jaws.

She scoops Bella up into her arms, holds her close: one set of legs instead of two, one body instead of two, less chance of something or someone being left behind. She’s heavy. Not like that, like— there’s so much of her. Dany could never hope to do this. But the Shepherdess can, and she knows to squeeze Bella close, to reassure her that she’s not at risk of falling, that she can trust. That her princess isn’t going to leave her behind again, no matter how bad this breaks, no matter what she did while the gods set whips at her heels, no matter what she did wrapped in bones, for the sake of a dance with a hound. For the sake of a kiss.

Masters don’t abandon their pets. Don’t you dare!

And at the very last moment, the Shepherdess, who trusts in that cigarette butt but not blindly, who knows too many people have walked the last road with regrets sour on their lips, who is so terribly aware of the awesome power of the many-headed death barreling towards them, kisses Bella, and the kiss tastes like their blood intermingling, heat on heat, and everything unspools before and behind, the rattle of the empty reel, the sizzle of the burning film, surrounded by death before and behind and below and above, and not even the Shepherdess can see right now what she’s put into motion, but she’d have died regretful if she hadn’t taken the chance—

“For luck,” she pants in giddy explanation, and jumps.

[Redana, hoping to outsmart Sagakhan like a rabbit waving a red cape in front of an empty grave, rolls an 8.]

Since the day she'd had the Auspex implanted, it had always shown her where to go. Omn had called it the Golden Path - a series of pulses of light that flitted across her vision even when she shut her eyes, always leading her across the fastest, most efficient path from one place to another. The more attention she paid it, the more details unfolded across her vision. She could will it into faint, ignorable specks or make it open a pattern so specific it told her exactly where, when, and how to place her feet to unerringly bring her victory. Or if nothing else, opportunity.

Bella is focusing now. One. Two. Three steps, and that's all there is. Just three steps. She turns her head, looking above and to every side. She frantically spins around, still holding Redana's wrist, but the terrible hydra is all she finds waiting behind her. Three steps, into the middle of this strange, awful hole. And then nothing. She feels ice fall into the pit of her stomach. No, but of course. There's no longer victory to be had. Her opponent is an immortal monster. Her mother. So this is where the eye of Hermes was leading her this entire time. Her mouth turns drier than the desert this planet used to be, and all her tongue can taste on the air is ash.

She'd been running from death since almost the moment she was born. Starvation and torture at the hands of the Kennel Master, or the hideous fate that waited for her inside the dark confines of the box. The humid, fetid bogs and jungles festering inside the Eater of Worlds. The dark and claustrophobic openness of the lonely floating grave called the Yakanov. In the end she fled from every single one. No god terrified her more than Hades, whose priest she was forced to murder. Whose priest she failed to save. Even now, with death a certainty ahead of and behind her, a cowardly servitor finds no hero's nobility quickening in her veins. Her heart pounds frantically against her fate. Too little, too late. The lord of the dead stands there waiting. A shovel over his shoulder. And three steps left to her for the rest of her life.

Two. She's long since run out of bile to cough up. Venom eats away her strength and replaces it with the sensation of ten thousand needle teeth clamping down around her insides with powerful jaws to guide them. Skin and organs split, and blood leaks internally. She can feel it pooling in her arm. Come on, is this really how she's gonna go out? She chokes back a scream, but it dribbles out as a whimper. No closure. No happy ending. Just the conclusion of her misery; the proof that she was first and only a wicked monster. No matter how hard she tried to be anything else. Too many sins to count, Bella. Pay up. You did save your coins to pay for the ferry, right? Or was even Tartarus too good for her, compared with eternity trapped inside the close and crushing dark?

One. This is it. The time she has to say goodbye. To say I... to tell Redana the words etched across her heart. To burden her princess with one last thing before the end. Or perhaps, one last chance to redeem herself. The Auspex is the eye of Hermes. The path must be telling her to stand her ground here. In falling, she could save Redana's life. That wouldn't... be so bad. Maybe then, at least, the gods would forgive her for this life she lived so impiously. If only she'd learned how to pray. She glances around one more time. No steps. No Apollo with his insufferable eternal smile. No Artemis in her crisp moonlight suits. No Hera to squeeze strength into her shoulders. Just a cigarette, where Aphrodite used to be. And Hades, all alone.

Bella squeezes Redana's wrist as tightly as she can. It's time you idiot, let her go! The ember of that cigarette butt burns as hot as any star. She twists her fingers deep into the skin, trying to claw herself free only--

Only she'd given up her claws. XIII's claws. And nobody trusted Bella with her talons anymore. Her heartbeat stumbles. Bella feels herself fall as if from a great height, tumbling over and over again into herself without her feet ever leaving the ground. Why? Why, why, why? Why had they taken her claws from her? What did she do to deserve mutilation like this? What did that little girl do wrong to deserve so much pain? Sagakhan had told her it was all to grow her perfected body, but that was already rotting into the sands. So. Then. What if?

Was it... for this?

"Redana, what the fuck are you dooIInG?!"

Bella's feet leave the ground. Her arm is pinned between hers and Redana's bodies, and the only thing she can think to do with the other is throw it tight around the Princess' shoulder and cling. No more steps. There are no more steps for her to take. No more steps, and nothing to do, except be held. And then be kissed.

She feels the warmth of Redana's lips as they press indelicately against hers. Her tongue tastes blood, and for once Bella has no desire to spit it out. She feels no nausea, even as her mouth finds the corner of Redana's that's been split almost entirely open and she's forced to contemplate the texture of a wound on her palate. She holds her eyes open, so she sees Redana's close. It's a private moment that belongs only to her. Their tongues dance, and the expression that paints Redana's face is... relief. Fire roars hot to replace the ice inside her stomach. Hades recedes farther, and farther, and farther away as two children of Tellus take to the sky as if on wings.

Bella is still watching her princess when she opens her eyes again. 'For luck', she says. Moron! Idiot! Stupid dipshit royal dumbass!! Heat colors Bella's cheeks as a fresh surge of pain crawls up through her chest. She snarls as she watches the ground pass below. She clings to Redana to try and hide a coughing fit.

"You still read," she sputters, "Too many fucking stories."

I am afraid, sir. I am tired. I am hurt, so sorely I cannot remember what it was like to feel normal. But I am also angry. I am determined to act, and I think that may be courage. But anger and courage did not bring me to where I am. You say I have no love. What, then, brought me here?

Or, maybe.

If it is as you say, then why haven’t we killed each other? You could snap your fingers, and make it so, but that would not be love that did it. Why then do we live, if love owns us?

No. Not that. None of that.

The stories he’d read, late at night in the Manor’s library, they would have had an ending like that. Or the tales the Starsong would swap over a few too many mugs of ale, they’d have a speech as grand as that. Since when had he come this far for a heroic ending? Did he really think himself so important that he needed to deliver a big speech to the gods themselves?

No. He sat on something far more precious.

To Aphrodite, he offers a noncommittal nod, or perhaps his head was growing too heavy to lift. He had fought gravity long enough. He lies down, he crumples, he stretches out across Vasilia’s chest, his head coming to rest beside hers. His fingers, shaking, brushed the grit and blood from her cheek. No priceless heirloom, no treasure of history across the whole of his long career did he handle more delicately than her. A nudge. A careful tilt to the side.

And Dolce leans in to kiss his wife.

The haze of Dionysus’ blessed torment melts from her eyes. At the edges of her awareness, something familiar. Something precious, and sweet, and soft. A language her mouth remembers, when all thought has passed.

And Vasilia kisses her husband back.

No more words for you, Aphrodite. He’s said his piece, and whatever else he could’ve added, it could not possibly be more important than the lioness beneath him. Vasilia. Oh, Vasilia. He doesn’t understand why she keeps seeking to punish herself for mistakes long past. His heart breaks when he thinks she might have forgotten him, that fateful day aboard the Yakanov. He knows, he knows that everything he could ever give would not be enough to fill the holes in her heart that keep her up at night.

And as the world fades around him, Dolce chooses to kiss her.

Whatever else may come, he’s done what he can.

Now, Vasilia needs him.

Nobody witnesses the end.

Eyes are turned down. Turned towards each other. For a moment, not contemplating violence and war. Not beholding twisted mothers and the horrors of their gardens. For a moment you're blind. For a moment all there is in the land of the breathless dead is love.

Perhaps there was a tale of glory you could have glimped. You might have seen the God of the Dead raise his shovel and strike down the Hydra. You might have seen a miracle of strength and earth and divine authority at last asserted. Perhaps you might have seen Aphrodite pull the pin from his hat and stick Demeter in the neck. Perhaps her scream would have presaged a battle of the gods. Perhaps this war would have ended in blood, death, and thrashing misery. Perhaps it would have scarred the minds of those who witnessed it.

But no. This war ends with kisses.

The storm blows out, the ragged remains of the rainclouds rushing off into the distant horizon. As rainwater catches sunlight the magic of Zeus' alchemy splits the light into its component parts, horizon to horizon. The horizon is no longer desolate, and it is no longer green. The wild rainforest that grew here on barren Sahar now erupts into a storm of flowers and blossoms seen only once every thousand years. The wind blows petals of pink and white and blue so thick that they seem like clouds of their own. The bodies of the dead and infested are drawn beneath the earth, and the spirits of the living rise to see the sunlight again. Weapons are thrown down and prisoners are taken. And somehow that was all it took. All it took was everything.

There will be time to talk later. When cuts have been stitched, limbs reattached, tears wrung dry. Peace is not the same as healing. There will be time to count the cost of everything. But when all the tallies are made and all the prayers are said, it will still somehow seem to have been a small price to pay.

What happened? She must have closed her eyes without realizing it. There had been a moment, she was sure of it, when she was flying. Held. Kissing. Falling. Hunger and terror and desperate passion pulled her down into the depths of a pair of lips that had haunted her dreams since she was a teenager, and then... what happened? She had meant to take in the whole scene herself. She was supposed to drink in every fraction of every second and burn it into her memory so that however long she had left to live, this at least would stay with her.

But there had still been work to do. The great beast who had once been the Master of Assassins was still roaring in her ears the entire time. An invincible opponent. An immortal opponent. But all she could remember is the sensation of falling, and now... it's as if the hydra never existed. The storm that marked the excellence of her preparation and her prayers, gone but for an arc of soft light in a prism of colors as if to mourn its passing. The battlefield that proved her dominance and terror is gone as well. Something happened. She can't remember closing her eyes. But one instant turned into the next and the entire world had transformed with it.

All that's left is... a garden. Not the kind that Sagakhan was so proud of, the wilting land of death and terror that she tended so obsessively for so long. This was a proper garden, like... no. Not like Redana's little paradise in the Tellurian palace at all. For the first time in her life, Bella's memories fall short of the reality around her. The colors here are more vibrant and beautiful than anything the Imperial miracles could conjure back home. The petals flutter more softly and more perfectly, turning the swirls of the gentle zephyr into a physical thing she can watch with her eyes, a dance of pinks and whites and yellows. The smell is sweet. So bewitching and wonderful that it makes her mouth water, and not even the passing bounty of Demeter on the Yakanov can rise to match it.

If... if there could only be a butterfly or two, this would be paradise. She might ask for music, too, piped softly into the air to help her Princess focus on her reading. She'd sing herself, but she. She can't. Remember any songs just now. The desire flutters out of her as nothing more than nonsense humming, and the magic of the gods is that to her softly twitching ears it sounds melodious and sweet. Somehow she's captured every lullaby and masterpiece she's ever known inside this ridiculous crooning.

Bella falls silent a moment later. It hurts. Singing hurts. Breathing hurts. But, the way it hurts is unlike anything she's ever known. This must be what Beautiful felt like when she was jabbed through with that needle carrying the Lethe. The hot stab and the burning feeling of something sticky and pervasive, like sap, and then... peace. The inevitability of it all is soothing, somehow. She sighs. She doesn't want her body to shut down like this. She doesn't want her body to stop feeling anything. Not when the sensations were finally the thing she had been dreaming about for her entire life.

She drags her arm up as high as it will go. Her fingers clumsily paw at Redana's face. Even in this perfect garden, she can't help but smear that perfect face with blood. Typical. But she can't bring herself to care. The feeling of her skin is soft and warm. If she wrapped her hand in Her Imperial Majesty's finest silks it wouldn't compare half so well to the wonder of this stupid girl's skin. Finally, she finds her grip. She squeezes, harder than she means to, to hold on. Her touch is so light it might not be noticeable at all. Bella laughs: a shaky, breathy, weak noise. Her grin is lopsided and exhausted.

"I... finally... caught you. Princess. Now you... can't..."

Ha. What a joke. All the weight of Bella's body slumps forward unsupported by any meager power she might have left inside her. Only Redana keeps her from dropping into the garden and sinking beneath the flowers like the rest of the dead and dying. Already, she can't even feel the sensation of being held. Being supported. All that's left is that calm inevitability. But that's ok. That's... ok. It's enough to see it with her eyes. It's enough to know it happened. Even if only once, before the end.

This is what she deserves. So many of the bodies here were names on her list. Murder was forbidden. No higher law existed in the Empire. Her secret purpose was no excuse, not now after she'd discarded her own flesh and denied her own transformation into Artemis. She had brought only death and misery with her on this journey, and the list of names stretched so far beyond the ones they'd asked of her. Lanterns, Kaeri, Magos and Coherents both. King Jas'o and the frenzied queen of Ceron. That pirate woman. She can't even remember the name.

Ivory Smile. Mynx. Oh, Mynx. If you were... if you could... no. It's too late. Her eyes are already falling shut, no matter how hard she wills them open again. Her head feels so heavy. The last memory of Sagakhan, her mother, swims through Bella's veins. Dragging her down, and down, and down again, until surely even Redana won't be able to hold her up anymore. After so much wishing for it, now it is finally time to die. Or perhaps some miracle will come to save her? She would shrug, if only she could. It doesn't matter. If she takes one more breath or one million, it doesn't matter. She will be a corpse or she will be a prisoner, and she'll deserve it either way. So much pain. So much misery.

And for what? In the end, she hadn't managed a single damn thing. That was the thing that really made her want to laugh, if she could just manage it right now. After all her effort and frantic scrambling, after every plan and scheme and choice, after each close call and bloody toll... she'd only wound up in the same place she would've anyway.

If she'd just.

Gone along.

In the first place.

“Bella!”

Her throat is raw, and it shouldn’t be. It’s raw and trying to close up and her body is shaking and it’s small again, the Shepherdess receding from her in bright ribbons shining in the sunlight. There are a hundred reasons why, and all she can do is trust the last squeeze against her skin as reassurance that this isn’t a retreat from a moment too painful to relive. But she’s still afraid. And why shouldn’t she be?

Her Bella is sprawled limp in her arms, bloodied and surprisingly heavy now that her muscles are no longer supporting her, keeping her up, keeping her moving, and Redana knows enough about how a body is shaped to see Bella’s body for what it is.

A fellow Olympian.

“Bella, you can’t,” she says, and her eyes are hot, and her legs itch where she’s kneeling in the grass, and she’s pulling Bella close but Bella’s not resisting, Bella’s not opening her eyes, Bella is barely breathing. “No, no no, I won’t let you, it’s not fair!” She gulps down air, and hiccups, small and dumb and useless. “Stop! You can’t! After this whole thing! I stopped the Assassins, I got you out of that awful— and you haven’t even apologized to Vasilly!”

The tears land hot on Bella’s bare skin, her matted fur. She doesn’t move.

Redana lifts Bella onto her shoulders. One hand on her thigh (and she doesn’t even flinch) and the other on her wrist, and Redana deadlifts from kneeling. She is small, and tired, and her face is wet, and Bella is very still. So Redana takes a step forward. And then another step. Then another. All that matters is taking another step, because there will be triage set up by the Lanterns now that they’ve won. It was in the meeting. She was listening. She knows where they are. So all she has to do is carry Bella, and then there’s a chance. Maybe everything will be okay. Masters don’t abandon their pets. Her face is red and she feels like she’s running the last lap of the marathon, but she can’t see the finish line.

There’s so much, she doesn’t say, because she’s focusing on breathing: in, out, in, out, hiccup. There’s so many apologies. Apologies to Dolce and Vasilia and the film! Bella doesn’t even know that Dany saw them! Bella can’t die without knowing that Dany knows about the holos and the Lanterns and they still need to talk about how Batrachomyomachia is good, actually, Bella! And she needs to apologize to you, and you need to apologize to her, and you need to talk about what happened with Skotia, and so she’s going to! She’s going to get you there!

…and she would have, too, if she hadn’t heard the long, slow round, a twisted braid of voices rising and falling, singing—

And when I fall, don’t lay me
under earth or lonesome sky;
and when I’m gone, don’t mourn me
just send me out and watch me fly.

Lay me down among the stars,
let me soar through veil of night;
send me out on one last jaunt,
see me shining far and bright.

The strength leaves her. She could be strong enough to carry Bella. She could be strong enough when she was just thinking about the things they couldn’t lose, all the reasons that Bella can’t die here, not yet.

But here they come, Coherents in all their beautiful glory, their incredible bodies, bearing one body from the field: her four arms limp, her arms and armor laid out on the stretcher, missing her head. And Dany breaks. Her legs crumple beneath her and her knees hit the earth hard, and her body convulses as she’s reminded that she’s lost Alexa, brave Alexa who was fighting so hard against her creator, Alexa who kept her safe and came with her all this way, Alexa who ended up here (like Bella) because of Redana, because she insisted, because she escaped, all of this hers.

All of it.

The dead. The dying. Bella, Alexa, Lanterns, Alcedi, even the horrible Kaeri. Her fault. Her fault.

And she’s lost. She failed. Alexa’s never going to know what it means to be free. Bella is never going to get to make anything right. All because she was selfish. Because she had to ruin everything. If she’d just stayed home, none of this would have happened at all.

It’s the Coherents who stop to help her, who take pity on the little princess who dirtied her hands and put her shoulders to the work without complaint, no matter the task. It’s the Coherents who change their song, who help Dany find the last of her strength, who make a work-song of it.

Dany can do that. She can do the work. Even if she’s sputtering and snot’s on her lips and chin and she can’t see what’s in front of her for grief, even if her chest’s torn open and all her love’s spilling out on the ground, useless useless useless, she knows what to do when there’s a Coherent on either side of her and the round is changed, because it’s what Alexa would have wanted.

Bella lies on Alexa’s body, bloody cheek against her chest, and Dany puts her shoulder to the work, in her place, bearing the two beautiful women she ruined back to the world that will be less without them, a thought she does not have to think because there is only the work, and the song, and the knowledge that everyone around her is lifting, too.

She can play a part. And when they finally reach the triage, when they finally find themselves among the Lanterns, that’s when she’ll fall apart completely. When she’s got nothing else to do, that’s when she’ll crumple in on herself and break so completely that she’ll be really, for real useless, and not even a song will work to get her moving.

Only a miracle, then.

Only eucatastrophe.

Captain Dolce of the Plousios stirs, and wakes to a dance of glowing lights and fluttering petals. They sway, they swirl, against a canopy of bluest sky, behind a familiar snout and whiskers peering over him.

“Ah. Jil…at least you’ve made it to Elysium too.” He does not remember his voice sounding like this; so rambling and careless. The words spill out of him as soon as they enter his head. No room to stay still. “I’m sorry, I really had hoped you’d make it through. There’s your fearless world, at the end of the road. I wanted you to see it yourself.”

He tries to lift his neck, but can’t find it. The little lights, they hide him away, and all that’s left is the bone-deep weariness of a long day’s work. “Where’s Vasilia? She should be here. I don’t care if Zeus was disappointed, she ought to be here. Did you see her, Jil? Did you see her? She did it. I didn’t know how she would, but she did. She did it. Ah, Vas…”

The lights, the petals, they dim beneath a teary haze.

“I’m so proud of you…”

Alexa stares at the diagram, and then back at the Hermetic. "… are we not just going to repair my old body?"

There aren't any eyes to be seen in the deep, hooded face, but somehow you can just tell they're rolling. "You had so many spears and swords shoved through that body that properly filling the holes would make you more gold than stone. At this point, it's simpler, easier, and more effective to build you a new body from scratch than to try to polish out all the dents on the old one."

It makes sense. She should have expected it, maybe. But she'd survived everything else in that body. She'd been stabbed, shot, hacked at more times than she could count. Hell, there was a crater on Barassidar with her name on it.

Maybe that's the point, really. She shouldn't have expected it to last forever, but still, the thought of losing it sends a pang of grief through her.

"So, any changes you want to make before we start to carve?"

"Beg pardon?"

"You've got a chance to rebuild yourself. New body. New shape. New decisions. Never gonna get a better opportunity to remake yourself. So, any changes?"

Alexa stares at the paper and scrunches her lips in thought. "…Can I have a day to think about it?"

***

"And you're sure this is okay? I mean, you all told me how stingy the Hermetics typically are with these things, how much they demand for it normally. It feels like cheating to jump straight to getting everything I want."

There's a burst of sharp laughter in the mess. It seems like every Coherent and Alcedi has shoved themselves around the table, flocking around to see the paper in the center.

Ramses taps the pencil against the paper. "I don't think anybody here would hold it against you, especially if they have to rebuild you from the ground up. So?"

Alexa purses her lips, and stares at the paper.

"It's funny, you know? I… I didn't really mind many things about my body. The only thing I didn't like, really, was that it always felt like it wasn't really mine."

She'd been built after a pattern, after a model. She was defined by being the Pallas Rex, by being the Athena who served the King. Before anything else, she was to evoke awe and be the symbol of Molech's power, that he could even bind the gods to his side.

"But 'Not Athena' isn't much to go on. Tall? Short? Broad?"

For a time, the only sound is the tapping of the pencil and the background of jostling for position.

"I think… No, I know, that I don't want to be a fighter. Or rather, I don't want fighting to be the thing I'm built for. I was built tall, and strong, with four arms for both offense and defense and to look like Athena.

"Strong. Strong is good. I like being strong enough to help my friends. I like giving good hugs, bone-squeezing hugs. I don't want to be a fighter, but I also don't want to be the burden who can't take care of herself.

"And tall is good. I like being tall. Maybe a little shorter? Tall enough to not have issues adjusting. I'd like to keep the arms, if nothing else, and that means I have a limit on how short I can be and still be proportional."

She goes quiet again, considering, before blushing and admitting, "I'd like to occasionally be the little spoon."

More chuckles, and one enterprising "get it!" from the back.

"More than anything, though," she admits. "I want to leave the Pallas here. I'm not her, anymore. I've learned lessons she never could. Let the Pallas be buried here, along with everyone else on Sahar. I want to move forward as my own person, not as the daughter of Athena or Molech. So I think I'd like a new head. One that can taste and laugh and cry and be Alexa, all on her own."

***

It's suffocating to be in the stone again. To know that any second now, the chisel will fall, and bits of herself will flake off, until all that's left is her.

But it's okay. Because the first thing carved is her mouth to cry out, and her eyes to cry, and her ears to hear her friends talking with her, and patting her, and assuring her that this is alright. And somehow, that makes it better.

Deep beneath the ground, amidst the gold and jewels that are the treasures of the earth, an immortal thrashes and does not die.

One act of mass murder - killing each of Hades' messengers for that year - one additional lifetime. That was the pact she made with Demeter. Time was her payment, and for two hundred and fifty years she collected her salary. And like the pharaohs of old, Sagakhan was buried with all of her treasures.

She struggles against an unyielding earth, even as it dries around her. The water in the soil of Sahar sinks ever deeper until it has passed away to great underwater basins and leaves only drought behind. As the water fades away so does the rainforest above start to wilt. As the rainforest wilts Demeter, bloody from where Aphrodite stabbed her, gives up on her search. For many weeks she has wandered this dying world, croaking out calls for her lost assassin. For many weeks Sagakhan has not answered her. She calls and calls and calls and the beast yearns to answer her but it can not escape the earth's clutches.

The rainforest wilts. Flashgrown wood and flowers crumble to sand. Dying trees pour all their energy into seeds, thick and stonelike that can survive underneath the sand until the rains next come. They fall like hail into the ground, thump thump, thump thump, the harvest planting as Demeter calls for her murderer.

And finally, in the depths of her frenzy, Sagakhan realizes how she can answer Demeter's call.

She gives her body to the seeds. Gives them her immortal life, the endless bounty of her blood. They sink into her and she rises through them. In the midst of a dying jungle life endures and even brightens. But it is life strange and terrible, life as the answer of an assassin.

Flowers grow in neat rows. The grass never rises above its most beautiful level. Bushes entwine and form hedges. Glittering rows of dew-kissed blueberries the bushy heads of yams emerge from ungiving soil. A single tree stretches out its branches just so, each twist and curl to its trunk artfully arranged. Even as the desert of Sahar reclaims its birthright, this little patch of green thrives. The perfect garden.

And with every heartbeat of the monster down below unspeakable poisons run through every root and branch.

Two hundred and fifty lifetimes were what Sagakhan took to the grave with her. And for two hundred and fifty lifetimes the Toxicrene's Garden will live on. In time, assassins, heroes, murderers, doctors and foolish victims will find their way into this terrible little garden. By their wits they will find ways to stopper some shard of this hateful afterlife, or by their lack they will water the garden.

For two hundred and fifty lifetimes the mother who devoured her children, that she might master time, will suffer the fate of Kronus.

But after two hundred and fifty lifetimes her poisons will have run weak, and eventually run dry. The garden of death will have become a garden giving. Toxic gifts will have become simple gifts. Roots will cling less desperately to the soil. The artificial structures will have wearied and grown wild and tangled. When the last of Demeter's coins run out then the patch of untamed wilderness, a green oasis on a barren world, will spread its seeds and crumble to dust at long last.

END OF PART ONE.

The Plousios is on its way to the Tunguska - home of the Necromanteion, the temple housing the Oracle of the Dead.

Epistia and Beljani!

Two have become one and it's wild.

The greatest advantage of the Warriors of Ceron is their legendary pack instinct. It holds them in formation when all else is chaos, it lets them communicate wordlessly on an instinctive level, and above all it makes them like each other. A Ceronian pack will walk through fire to collect the body of a fallen packmate and high five each other while their fur is still smouldering. Regardless of how the pampered assassin and the feral princess might have thought about this situation before, right now they are thick as thieves.

And as problematic as thieves. In this intoxicated newly-formed synchronization the suddenly inseparable pair have become an engine of anarchy. With the collapse of the Temple, Epistia has taken it upon herself to procure the luxuries that Beljani is accustomed to, and Beljani is doing her bit to get Epistia hooked on those same luxuries. Their revels are increasingly pursued by Dionysus, and with Beljani's ability to pull more people into her network, their party is rapidly careening out of control. An entire deck of the ship has joined the celebration and while a week of merrymaking is laudable after such a victory, we're nearing the end of the second and things only seem to be accelerating.

Jil and the Lanterns!

The ceremonies for the dead must be conducted. The halls of the Anemoi arise in chorus and drum, thunderously loud to be heard over the silence of the acoustics. The shrines of Artemis have been carefully transferred into temples on the ground and new cathedrals build in favour of Apollo, and so day follows night.

The ship is theirs now. They have banished the darkness and filled every corner with lanterns. In Apollo's name they pray and work and say their many thanks to their many fallen. As is the custom of the ship, once their earthly flesh is stripped away, their bones are taken and woven into the fabric of the ship. Unlike the Kaeri, these bones are not trophies. They are not to be made into thrones for their conquerors to sit in. Instead they are given dignity and purpose amidst their families, remade into weapons that might defend their daughters or cradles that might keep their sons safe. They are built into the macrocannons they spend their lives tending or the lanterns they spent their lives defending. A fearsome custom, but the Lanterns are a fearsome people.

Dignity and virtue, then, they have aplenty. What they do not have is leadership. All throughout the dark their leaders were temporary and improvised. No swifter target for a Kaeri blade than a charismatic authority figure. But a starship can only fly in one direction and the lack of unified authority has paralyzed the Lanterns in their victory.

In the face of victory's entropy, Jil sits in one of the new temples of healing and wonders if the days when they were a united people were but a dream.

Iskarot and the Order of Hermes!

It had taken a long time for Iskarot to feel his age.

His tripod legs had held such speed and power. With them he had been able to clamber up walls without thinking, skitter across the exterior of a reactor, move across a starship exterior at a gallop. His body had contained an arsenal of deadly weapons, esoteric designs collected from a century of travel and service. He'd felt young and vital these past few months. He'd taken a gamble, betrayed the Empire, seized promotion, and survived void warfare.

And now he had to rely on fingers that wouldn't even cease their trembling in the time it took to light the blunt.

Exasperated, he pulls back his hood. The light absorbent baffles and polyweaves fall away for the first time in public for over thirty five years. Beneath is a servitor with the the features of an aging racoon. A common enough breed in the void: a Ruster, those genetically engineered spaceship technicians and salvage experts. The secrets of heavy industry were written on their bones and they would turn worlds into factories if someone would but feed them while they worked.

He takes a deep, shaky inhale of the smoke and blows it out, staring out at the distant industry of the reactor room. Neither the smoke nor the industrial activity calm him as they once did.

Ramses and the Coherent!

They're doing fine! Thanks for asking.

They're a highly unionized unit with strong death benefits, and their control of the field at the end of the battle - plus the capture of the Anemoi - filled their pockets to bursting. They could honestly have taken worse in the battle so they're pretty upbeat, despite their losses, and many of them are moving ahead with advanced or latestage body modifications they had resigned themselves to waiting years for. They are also working on a special project that will make them famous as well as rich - a new movie, Prion Paula VS the Garden of Terror!: A barely edited re-enactment of the recent battle.

Ramses has changed back to being a girl. Out of necessity this time. She is, after all, the actor who plays Prion Paula.

Lacedo and the Alcedi!

The Alcedi were never made for peace. The defeat of the Kaeri sat right with them. The skies are theirs again. But the price was awful.

Their losses were the worst of any side of the battle. Their grudge against the Kaeri sent them into the heart of the fray against the most terrible of the enemy's forces. Both flocks were consumed in the conflagration. The survivors are dazed and shattered remnants, barely one tribe where there had been four. Many simply desert this shadow of glory, leaving to join the Hermetics or wander away on their own paths. The Alcedi were not made for unity. They were made for pride, made for victory and nothing holds them together now their victory has been achieved.

Lacedo is one of increasingly few attendees to the tribal gathering, promoted to the status of Elder despite her youth because of the depths of the losses in the leadership. Even so, it seems like the entire history and heritage of the Fleets might blow away in the wind.

The Assistant Secretary of Fear and Doubt!

A triumph was held for the Lord of the Eater of Worlds. He was borne through the halls of the Plousios by a chariot of seahorses, while a treeshark carried a coral wreath above his head and whispered to him that he was not a god and all glory was fleeting. At the end of the procession gladiatorial games were held between the surviving battlecrabs. The victor of these games was awarded a villa immediately adjacent to the command deck and a staff of twenty Kaeri prisoners to attend and clean it.

The Assistant Secretary then withdrew to the depths to plan his next campaign.

Mynx!

She was not amongst the slain. Where her body had fallen all that could be found was a single burning cigarette butt.

Of course she'd seen Eurydice. Of course she knew the story. Of course she did. Hades doesn't give back what's his, isn't that the lesson? Coming back from the dead should be impossible. Or at the very least, dramatic. A journey across the entire galaxy to bring back the lost, an impossible task as the price. Destined for failure and tragedy, always. And if not, if not, if someone really was stupid enough to cross into the land of the dead and beg for a single soul back, and if they were earnest and gullible enough to abide by all the rules and somehow actually made it happen? It'd be the kind of sensation that would get written down in history books and performed for holos across a lifetime's worth of lifetimes.

She never would have guessed that miracles could be so boring. There had been darkness. Blackness, really. A void with no thoughts and no feelings, no light and no sound, nothing to touch and nobody to notice in the first place. To call it the sensation of floating would be wrong and stupid. There hadn't been anything at all; just a patch of total nothing slapped over what could have been a minute or a year without any extra effort. And then from that endless nothing, she realized that her legs hurt.

That's how Bella figured out she wasn't dead. Whether she was meant for eternal punishment or reward, it'd feel different than just her legs falling asleep. And if she's not dead, she might as well breathe. The air tastes of rust and dryness. Clean, but only in the unpleasant sterile sort of way that meant someone had been desperately trying to scrub this place not very long ago. Well then. If she knows where she is, might as well open her eyes.

The Plousios is not the grand, crumbling temple of death Bella had imagined through her straining eyes the last time she was here. But there's no other place that this could be. It might've been a grand ship, once. Pride of an entire armada or... whatever else Humans might have once used star ships for, back in whichever fantasy time it must have originally been built in. The ceilings in this room are high enough to make a palace, and yet somehow claustrophobic. The colors are bright, compared to the Anemoi. But unloved. Everything here looks either pitted or greasy: Zeus' rainbow by way of an oil spill.

Bella huffs. She was meant to be a dead woman. Or if not dead, then a prisoner forever. But when she sits up, nothing catches on her wrists at all. No lashes or bindings or cuffs. Not even weights, except... no, there is something pinning her legs in place. She looks down to see a tangle of messy golden hair flopped across the covers over her knees. And the Imperial Princess sleeping beneath it.

Bella whips her head around first this way and then that, eyes darting around for signs of other people in the room. Some sort of trap. But there's nobody here except Dany, with her exhausted face made innocent again by the spell of sleep cast upon her, and the ridiculous squish of her cheek where she'd slipped on top of Bella's kneecap probably an hour or more before. Dumbass.

But here. Here still. Holding onto her, carrying her up into the skies, kissing her for luck until all the monsters had disappeared, and now... Here. Bella's fingers press into each other for long minutes, worrying at her knuckles or brushing against her lips or doing anything at all other than sitting still, or touching the one thing on this whole stupid ship that they really want to. She watches the princess' rhythmic breathing with a hunger in her eyes that can't be hidden anymore. After so many years, maybe not ever again. But in any case right now, there's no one to hide it from. So she sits. And she watches. And Redana sleeps.

She doesn't realize she's doing it, at first. There's so much to focus on that her own hands don't really matter for shit, do they? After the endless boredom of the Yakanov she's forgotten how to stop herself from filling quiet moments with little games, little chores, little projects. Just to do something. But the feeling of Redana's hair in her fingers is so soft that it pulls all of her attention to what she's doing, and once it's there how could she ever focus on anything else?

On Tellus, she wore special gloves to hide her mutilated fingers from the Princess. Over and over and over again, Dany had asked about them. And over and over and over again, Bella had answered that they were tools to help fight tangles. She wore a lot of tools over her fingers, come to think. Scrapers to smooth away oil from the skin before a wrestling match. Small blades for clipping split ends. Absorbent cloth to wipe away water and grime so that her princess would always look her best. It was stupid, every time. None of it was a match for the power of her hands.

Over, down, around, and through. The memory of a shared childhood guides Bella's fingers through one of the most complicated braids in her repertoire. The one she tied for Dany every time something bad or scary happened to the two of them. When Her Majesty had harsh words for her daughter, this was the braid she wove to make the Princess strong. When a test loomed over her, this was the look that would let her throw herself at the examination like a warrior. Hundreds of times, she's pulled these locks into this shape. She could do it with her eyes closed. Only she won't, because that would mean not seeing the girl who ran away. Maybe she'd mistake her for someone else, given the impossibility of it all.

Her fingers run out of work to do. With it comes an unpleasant tightness in Bella's chest. Her stomach feels filled with lead. But the great loops of hair are tied into the fine, tight plaits of the prettiest fishtail braid Bella knows how to tie. Even with her dirty clothes and the smudges and burns all over her face, Redana looks regal again. Every bit the princess she's supposed to be. Bella's teeth clench. Her fists wind tight enough to rip out clumps of hair, if she hadn't caught herself in the nick of time. Every breath in this place tastes staler than the one before it.

It's the bed. She's been here too long, however much time it's actually been. That's what it is. But she waits, even still. She watches for Redana's eyes to open, thinks about what she might say. Maybe she could open with a smile. Her intestines writhe like serpents inside of her. Her body pulls taut and rigid from her neck down to her toes. Bella flicks her fingers through the empty air, watching what claws she still has slicing through the air.

Fucking dumbasses. She snarls and slips her legs out from under Redana. She watches the most beautiful face in the world slump against the dingy sheets. Like finding pirate treasure tucked inside a napkin. She rolls her eyes and lifts Dany off the chair she's been stubbornly plastered to, and lies her in the bed. Your turn to rest, idiot.

Dany's lips open as she's moved. She mumbles something, and Bella freezes. For luck, she said. For luck. For a thousand different times she'd let a little debt build up, and now, and now, and now...

Breath swallowing breath. The heat of two pairs of lips, wet and begging for a tongue to brush them. The feeling of bodies that want only to press so tight together that they absorb each other. Two becoming one. Bella hesitates, a whisker away from the kiss she's dreamed of since the first time she saw those lips smiling at her. Her body turns to ice.

She turns, and runs instead. If only there was somewhere left to go.

*********

Bella's legs are soaked up to her shins. She's not even found the deepest part of the pool yet. Crabs snip at her priestess robes (the only outfit that belongs to her on the entire ship) as she passes by. Cold and clammy and uninviting. Everything is death and salt. Everything is misery and doubt and fear. Everything is tentacles, paranoia, and whispers.

For some reason it feels like home.

"...All this time they've been running from me in this? Fuck me, the Empress could cut me in half for failing her and it'd be less than I deserve. This. Seriously, this?! What the fuck have you been doing, Dany? Do you not have a single dipshit in your entire misfit brigade who knows how to clean up? Gods."

A wet tearing sound echoes through the sloshing water and empty halls. Bella lifts the battlecrab that had dared to claw the back of her skirt open up out of the water and squeezes until she feels the carapace start to splinter in her grip.

"Try it again! Just fucking try! Next one of you gargling little shits even thinks about it, I'm gonna turn this whole damn ship into a pot and boil the lot of you! Test me. Try it again. I dare you."

Had it been any other opponent, the sharpness of her words could only do so much to cover the awkward way she pulls her legs together, or the bushing of her tail. Gods, what an awful place. Gods, but isn't it exactly what she deserves.

...Gods, why does it remind her so much of Tellus?

“Where is she?”

Redana Claudius staggers out of the medical tent like a white-faced wraith, a spirit of the underworld herself. Have you heard the things she did to Dolce when they fought on the bridge? Did you see the star on her brow when she destroyed the Black Pyramid with the arms of a goddess? This is the young woman that drove the Praetor halfway across the galaxy, and looking at her now, is it that hard to believe? One wrong word would send her spiraling. Around her, Lanterns cringe and find things to interpose between themselves and Redana, the Imperial Princess who was twice touched by Dionysus.

“Why didn’t you let me say goodbye?” she sobs, grinding the heel of her palm against her eyes. “I brought her this far! Why didn’t you let me be with her until the end? Where did you take her? Let me say goodbye!”

“She’s not here,” Jil says. Dany turns, teetering on the edge of mania, and stares down the little mouse woman. The bags under Jil’s eyes suggest that, unlike Redana, she’s been too busy to do anything like sleep. She holds a surgeon’s sewing kit like one of her folk’s great war-shields. “Our Praetor left three hours ago. Before you ask, I don’t know where she’s gone.” Unspoken: and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. “But she wasn’t dead. Not when she left.”

Redana shakes her head, like a stunned bull, and the braid swings behind her like a tail. An instinct, a memory, brings one hand up, and her fingers trace the pattern. Her sobbing continues, but underneath it bubbles laughter. She got her miracle. Only her Bella would have done this, and if she was well enough to work the hair, how hard was it to believe that she could have—

Dany closes the space between herself and Jil suddenly, and scoops her up. The sudden moment of horror on all sides melts when she spins Jil around, laughing, wet-cheeked. Then she kisses Jil on the face, repeatedly, askew, because that’s the only way her fireworks-sparking brain can vent its heat.

“She’s alive! Bless you, bless you, Apollo light your way! Haha!” She sets Jil down with a sudden exaggerated care, as if worried she might shatter upon hitting the ground, and runs out of the temple because her body is on fire and, why not, she does a cartwheel that doesn’t even break her stride.

It takes quite a while for her to finally slump against a wall and crumple into exhausted, ragged hiccups and sniffles and giggles. After all, she’s an Olympian(-in-training). Plenty of people would have seen her, racing down corridors like one of the nymphs bringing in the springtime.

How different from that awful day when she had walked the ship blind and ruined, with only Dionysus for company! And yet, how similar, too: the people she saw becoming just a blur of uncomprehending faces, watching her as an emotion too big for her swallowed her whole.

“There’s still time,” she says to herself, smearing tears inelegantly across her burning face, and makes an inelegant and overjoyed hornk noise, and doesn’t even care.

---

“Magos!!”

Iskarot, cultist of Hermes, is tackled by his patron’s daughter. She hugs him like he’s a life preserver and she’s been drowning.

“I was so worried after they stole the ship— but I prayed, even if— well, I don’t think Hermes will listen to me, given who she is, but just in case, I lifted you up for her care and— your legs, what did they do to you, I’m so sorry!”

She sets him down, allows him his dignity, stands to attention. But she fidgets, chewing on the question that’s been boiling up inside of her.

“…I’m not an Initiate any more, am I?” And unlike everything that exploded out of her heart just now, she’s been mulling over saying that. Ever since Skotia. Ever since the Heart. Ever since she saw her mother’s truest self.

Heroes of legend. Rulers of Empire. Songs to outlast them all. How do such things come to pass? Raw talent? Dedicated practice, day in and day out? Closed eyes, frantic prayers, and dumb luck?

Darling. Please. You just have to know the right people.

For instance: Vasilia, hand of the Captain, knew the Coherent were setting up to film in a particularly overgrown wing of the Plousios. She also knew the location of the five closest workshops to their set, and which one of the five could most easily admit someone with a more tentacle-based form of locomotion. Which is how Ramses, future star of Prion Paula VS the Garden of Terror!, came to know that, why, yes, the Captain had plenty of time with which to review some character designs for his film counterpart.

So it was that Captain Dolce found himself seated in the private green room (walls fully engulfed in green hanging cloth so you knew it was official) of Ramses herself. Sharing a wheelchair with his wife, perched snug on her lap, far away from the office, bridge, and infirmary. For the first time in a week, the document in his hands weighs far less than a casualty report.

“Hrm.” Dolce carefully turns the sketch - one of dozens - a quarter-turn. Then another. “There was a lot going on, so it’s possible I missed it…” He squints at the dazzling figure staring back from the page. “...but I was pretty sure I only ever had the two legs?”

“The cape is a rather dashing look, you have to admit.” Vasilia offers, peeking over his shoulder.

It's hard not to feel that this is her fault.

She told them to choose for themselves what they want to be. To seek within themselves, as she had, what they wanted to be for, to choose what purpose they'd pursue. And truth be told, every time she sees one dressed in a red robe, or guffawing amongst the Coherent, or mingling with the other groups, it sends a little twinge of joy in her. They listened! They're learning! They're growing! Even the partings, for all the sadness, share a note of bittersweetness as well. They're seeding themselves into the cosmos.

But fuck, they're so few.

She told herself that getting to know them--becoming familiar, learning names, pastimes, wants, dreams, would set herself up for more hurt down the line. And she wasn't wrong, either--she looks out at the grouped Alcedi in the meeting and can name every gap where there should be a person. If she'd been faster, or cleverer, or more responsible!--

It's useless to stay awake and ask the questions, replay the memories, tell yourself that if you'd been smarter, or better, or something, maybe you could have saved a few more lives. It's not your job to save them--they aren't your soldiers, you aren't their commander, there's no phantom Molech waiting in the wings to reprimand you for your failures. They are their own people, they owe you no loyalty.

But they're your sisters and brothers, and every empty spot gapes with those not there. And so, there's you, and the bed at night, and feeling vaguely guilty about not wanting to ask how you could do better.

Vaguely, she notices the question hanging in the air, and struggles to replay the last few seconds of conversation in her head.

"I'm sorry, Lacedo. I remember names and faces and friends, yes. But you've grown your own culture in the past two hundred years. I can tell what I remember, yes, but it's not what the Alcedi put together for themselves."

Redana!

"Hmmph! Hrmph!" Iskarot grumble-hisses when hugged, with an irritability only shown as false by the lack of claws. "Redana. Do you wonder why I never gave you a saffron robe? Why I'm not wearing mine now?" he gestured self-consciously at his face; the fur worn and tattered, the scars visible beneath. "Because the robe isn't a sign of rank. It's fashion, girl. Well, fashion and an attempt to make it more difficult for assassins to target us."

Even crippled, even missing his legs and sat down like a plush toy, there was a quiet dignity in his perpetual seething rage. His face made it clear of the presence of a biologically coded aggression, and his stillness made it clear that this war had been won a long time ago. "We're not united by uniforms, Redana. Not by rank or by blood. It is not knowledge that binds us together across a trillion kilometers of space. It is ideology. It is the journey. It is curiosity to see what is over each new horizon."

He looks at you, small and so very fierce.

"Were Hermes herself to take mortal form and command us to do differently, we would not. We know this because she did just that."

Alexa!

"We awaited this battle for two hundred and fifty years," Lacedo said. "Trained for it. Drilled for it. Wove it into our myths." She raised up one talon to a distant star through the window. "And we succeeded. We took the sky back. Before the eyes of Athena, before a galactic empress, we cast our ancestral foe down and redeemed our species. Our names will live forever."

She looks at you, an impossible emotion in her eyes and in her heart. "Do you think they will make more of us?"

Dolce!

"Gotta be a quadruped," said Ramses briskly. "A bipedal sheep would look like a cute boy in a wooly jumper on camera, not an intimidating war leader. A ram, though? That is fearsome! That puts the focus on your horns, makes it known you are a warlord to kill a king and maim a god! It makes your craving for E N D L E S S B A T T L E known through your visual design! That's just basic cinematography."

The script has you swearing a lot more than you remember ever doing, incidentally, and in more languages.

Bella!

Crabs proceed without fear. They attend you, Bella, in a trail of clicking pincers. Some of them carry single strawberries. Others little bowls of ice cream. Still more jewels or shiny buttons or fragments of tinfoil or other, prettier crabs. Around your feet they skitter just out from underfoot, holding up their tiny offerings. Poseidon's realm is a place of treasures, and the crabs offer them as though to distract from the dark, the warm, the wet. The infestation runs deep.

Then a larger one approaches, signal flags held in its pincers. It sweeps and gestures and all the smaller crabs back away to a meter's remove.

Another crab, painted gold and blue, approaches beneath the cover of the signal flag. It has a letter in its pincers which it offers, clattering. "Mighty Praetor of Tellus, the Assistant Secretary of Fear and Doubt understands that you are presently unemployed. It would like to offer you position as Consul, with all salaries and privileges associated therein."

A hundred tiny treasures skitter about her feet. Bella wades further into the dark and the wet, never once stopping to look at them. She still remembers how it felt the last time someone came to her in grandeur, bearing gifts to win her favor. She remembers this same smell of fear, the only scent that anyone would debase themselves in before offering a creature like her tribute. The only motivation that could be trusted. She still remembers how that ended. And those were far prettier baubles, then. Much more queenly gifts.

She steps around each one of them without breaking her stride. Her teeth grind more with each clacking pincer reaching up for her attention.

But she stops, to read the letter. She pauses to read it again. She stands there with her tail slashing through the humid air, and takes the extra time to tear the note in half no fewer than four times. The pieces turn lumpen in the water, nothing more than ugly clumps of uglier promises. She walks past these, too.

"...Tell me why."

Her eyes are gleaming in the dark. Her claws are glistening in the damp. But her head is tilted, in curiosity.

"I have never betrayed the Empire. Not for the Princess, and not for Mother." (the word spills like hot ashes from her mouth. she uses it anyway) "What the fuck makes you so special that you think I'd do it now? Tell me why. Why'd you offer? What's your game? Tell me. And if I don't like your answer, I'll pull your guts out and use them to mop this ship dry. Redana and her band of dipshits seem very lax on their cleaning standards. I am not."

She offers a mocking curtsey to the darkness. The wet. To the crabs in all their sizes, and the voice that thought speaking to her through them was wise. She grins with a feral longing to be unleashed.

"I was originally designed to be a maid, you know. You are nothing new."