Eyes for eyes. Stares for stares. And a dress... for a princess.

Bella's expression is unreadable. Her eyes fix on Redana's, watching herself be watched, calculating the angles of vision and where, and what they point to. She watches the rise and fall of Dany's chest and listens to the rattling of the bell that tells her the Princess has developed a slight tremor she can't quite control. She watches the reverence with which those strong, calloused hands lift the dress and carry it toward her.

Bella's posture is immaculate. Straight and proud but without being stiff. She is solid as the earth and fluid as the rains washing over it. Her silence could rival the Anemoi. The stalemate lasts for long moments that can only be measured by how many shallow breaths can be taken before the galaxy stirs to motion again. She breaks the wall between them by turning her back on her new maid. But then she reaches back and pulls up her hair, lifting it above her neck in a great, blue-black cascade.

She points at the floor by her feet, and knows without looking that she is Understood. She lifts her feet one at a time and steps into the confines of her new dress. The fabric is smooth and soothing against her fresh skin. Where it brushes against her fur, particularly where worshipping hands guide it there, it draws a soft sigh and something like a purr from the depths of her chest. Her arms lift automatically in just the way she remembers seeing to make it easier to finish fitting the garment onto her body. Back straight, tail tucked out of the way, waiting with the patience of a warrior's held spear for the signal to relax, release, and move again to accommodate the tying of the knots.

It takes a while. Redana's frills press against Bella while she works, followed closely behind by her own magnificent body. Bella makes no complaint and no cluck of impatience. What irritation remains beating in her heart, she works out through the flexing of her fingers and by breathing in the scent that now permeates the air. The sharp and soothing tones of Redana's skin mixed with her own signature perfume and splotches of spilled syrup. At long last. These sensations belong to her. They are given out as gifts for her to snatch and hold tight against her heart.

The knots are clumsy. She feels them cinch too tightly around her waist and knows from their presence and weight that Redana has chosen familiar ones instead of correct ones, and in choosing has marred the beauty of this perfect dress. Unseen, Bella opens her mouth to admonish, and then closes it again without a word.

What is she to do? Is this a test of some sort? An offer of retribution for what her life had turned out to be? There is no temptation in it. Condescension is a dagger she might wear at her hip, but every cruel or cutting thing that crawls across her mind does so with a memory belonging to a face or faces that disgust her to hold onto them. She looks down at her claws, sharp and full despite her attempts last night to trim them, and shakes her head.

"Get me a chair, so you can actually reach my hair. And stick closer. This far back I can't feel you working. If we're going to do this I..."

Her breath catches. Her body grows warm. Bella's neck turns away to look at the wall, even though she still hasn't set eyes on Redana since this began.

"Love me, Redana. Worship me. With your body and your heart. I have no use for a maid who can't do both."

Oh Hera, is it the dream of every abused creature to grow strong enough to be the abuser? Or can the scales be balanced by softer measures? Don't hot and trembling hands that need instruction on how to weave any hairstyle more complicated than a ponytail a better show of penance? Aren't small, soft breasts pressed close enough against her back to feel the heart beating underneath them a greater payment than any whip or hurt that she could manage?

I waited my entire life to have you. I was prepared to burn the stars out of the skies to have you back. I chased, I yearned, I destroyed myself for less than a sliver of what you're offering now. But now that it's mine, I won't take less than everything you have to give. Don't you dare hold back. Don't you blush or shy away now, Your Highness. Thrill if you want this. Speak up if you don't. But don't you dare do anything to take last night away from me, not now and not ever.

She doesn't speak a word of this aloud. Private thoughts manifest as knots in her neck to be massaged out of her by careful, tender hands. She sits and she endures the tugging of her hair, and the tiny swears that punctuate each little mistake. Fueled by pancakes, she sits and waits for Redana to be satisfied with the braid she is attempting to weave. She doesn't even offer a word of criticism when Redana pulls the whole thing loose after wasting minutes on the struggle and switches tracks to lovingly brushing her locks into silken smoothness instead. As if she were deciding that there was no improving on the natural perfection of her mistresses' body.

"Mmm, very good. Now sit still and let me fix yours, you sloppy thing. And turn and face the mirror while I do it, so you can learn. Don't talk back! Mistress knows best, right?"

No. No scales can be balanced by any bright acts of bravery, nor of love. And even if they could, the crimes they would absolve were long since washed to the point of filth by planets' worth of blood. But if the universe was so keen on delaying her punishment, then... endure it, Redana. The desire to put her fingers through your hair and make you beautiful again has burned so hot and so long that it can never be put out again.

Give up your dreams, and give her this. Let her make you the envy of every other maid in the universe. And after that... after that, do as you will. Take her anywhere, do anything, as long as it's together. Do not waste what little time the galaxy has allotted you and she for happiness before it steps back in to take it all away.

Crowds surge, crates lurch like icebergs, and a solitary sheep wheels his way steadily through the hanger. Gaps in the whirlwind open before him, and close in his wake. Never pushing. Never quite stopping. Always where he ought to be, when he ought to be there. And now he is before Jil, armed only with a frown.

"Were the choice mine, there would be no difficulty at all," he says. "Why?"

Alexa!

"Pheh!" said Cerberus dismissively, although every mechanical hound in the station was visibly relaxing as part of the pets and attention. Rusty and another dog are sniffing each other, invisible communication passing between them before leaping and rushing away in zooming contest. "Isn't that the way with humans? Always worshiping yesterday's gods? You think that you can know something and it can stay known. That doesn't even apply to other humans."

She hopped down from the shop window she was sitting in and walked across the street. "A while ago there lived a man who said 'the only thing that I know is that I know nothing'. His government made him drink poison over it. You think that's not the case now? Tellus, the Azure Skies, every Empire that ever was would rather drink poison than admit things had changed."

Dolce!

"That's what I'm saying," said Jil. "The choice isn't yours. It's mine; get fucked and live a happy life. If anyone wants to try and push you into this they have to go through me."

She snaps her fingers, calling over a pair of Alcedi warriors. They're not in their tribal braids and remnants of military honours any more, instead with the solar badges and glittering torches of the Lanterns. "Watch him, keep him off the ship. He gives you any trouble put him in a pod and shoot him back to Salib."

The tears should have been expected. After all, Redana is very prone to being overwhelmed by emotion, isn’t she? She can never hide anything. You even knew, back then, that something was troubling her, that she was going to say something, that she was going to act out—

But you never could have expected the how, could you?

In the same way, oh Bella, oh most loyal of cats, oh most yearning of maids, perhaps the smile and the way she daintily baps at those tears comes as, if not a surprise, then a treasure long yearned for, absent for such a long time, for leagues upon thousands of leagues, and now it’s here. The princess— the girl that you risked it all for.

“Sorry,” she squeaks, and giggles a little. “I’m trying my best!” She shuffles backwards in the seat, as close to her Bella as she can, her eyes wet with dew and her smile defenseless. Her cheeks are still warm. (Did you hear her intake of breath, when you gave that order? Body and heart, love and worship. An invitation. No, more than an invitation, a command.)

“It’s just— I missed you. And I missed the person I thought you were. And I don’t want to miss the person you are.” Her mismatched eyes shine in the mirror, refracted through wet joy. “And—“

Is it just a finger on her lips? Perhaps. Her eyes widen, and she sits up straighter, and she crackles with the energy of a thunderbolt. Jingle jingle goes the bell! How brave the both are! To dare this, to give, to insist, to demand.

It’s the slowness that reminds her that she’s supposed to be watching. Supposed to be learning. And she does try! Through the occasional sniffle, the occasional happy squeak, she pays attention for as long as she can. Which isn’t as long as she really needs to, but there’s only so long that she actually can focus on the work, and then she’s getting distracted by the softness of Bella’s fingers, and the expression of focus on her— on Bella’s face. Her Bella. Her Bella! Her Bella.

She bounds up out of the chair as soon as Bella opens her mouth to say that it’s finished. But she’s not doing it so that she can race off, to go chase something else, and she’s not dragging Bella along behind her. Her fingers interlace with those strong battle-terrors; her palms press against those nail-pocked twins. She even stands on tiptoe, so that she can sneak in a kiss against Bella’s throat.

“Thank you,” she says, and then she says it again, and then she says it again, and then she’s nuzzling against Bella, holding her monster-killing hands close, a bubbling spring of sweet water, drink her deep, and the sway back and forth, the step by step, that’s dancing, isn’t it? Like on Salib.

“I’ve been waiting my whole life for you to say that,” she admits to everyone in the room, a grand revelation that comes as a surprise to only herself. “For permission to want you.” Her grip tightens. “And I do. I do want you. I want you to be free to be who you want to be and go where you want to go and love who you want to love, and I want you to choose me, I want you to choose me, I wanted you to choose me back there, and I want you to, to get anything you wanted, anything you never got out of your bones, every time you said well if I was the princess she’d be doing this, because it’s fair, it’s got to be fair, and you were—“

She fumbles, rallies, squeezes her eyes up, tries to hide behind their hands together.

“You were so hot on Salib. Are so hot. But especially there, when I was Skotos, and you didn’t know me, and you could want me without princesses and maids getting in the way, and I could be wanted by you, and I wish you’d ruined him.”

She rubs her face against a pair of hands and looks up like one of Artemis’s attendant nymphs, you remember, in that giant frieze in the north wing? A delicate warrior, a dragon caught by a ribbon, a— well, a Dany in a maid outfit.

“And I really want you to do things. To me. In this. To make up for lost time. Body and heart. I’ll be such a good maid. I promise. Everything you want.” And if you asked her to turn this ship around, you’d shatter her like glass. She’s fragile, but tumbling into your hands because she trusts you not to drop her, and because she wants to climb you like a tree.

Going places will probably have to wait.

The wall shudders under the impact of Redana's back. A still sticky plate teeters on the edge of the table, kicked once, twice, too many times. It tumbles to the floor and shatters with a porcelain scream.

Bella's arms are strong. She only needs one, held under Redana's butt, to keep the Princess pinned helplessly aloft. The other is free to clamp her jaw shut, to permit no more than muffled squeaks and other such sounds as can be made without moving one's mouth. Her face is close, forehead to forehead, eye to mismatched eye. Gold peering into blue, green peering into red. Her breath steams against the back of her hand, to wash over Redana's face and neck. Her lips tremble.

"It. Will. Never be enough, Redana. We will never be even. Not tomorrow, and not in three hundred years."

Her hand slides down just under the jawline, revealing now-smeared painted lips. These, she silences again with her tongue. Redana's mouth yields eagerly into hers, but she asserts her will anyway, kissing and biting and mauling that royal mouth with her insatiable tongue. She kisses to kill, as though to steal the breath from out of her lungs even as she feels the frantic drumming heartbeat pound against the outside of her chest as strongly as she feels the kicking of those feet against her back and butt.

She pulls away. The hand rises again to hold Redana's mouth shut against protest. Against argument. Against questioning.

"It can't be fair between us. Even if you lower yourself from princess down to maid, or beneath even that until you're nothing more than my useless, mewling pet," she snarls, and her face betrays how much the image playing in her brain excites her, "...You would still be you. And I would still be me. You don't have enough wishes in you to change what that means. And neither do I."

She kisses her way down the jaw now, and across the neck, marking each new inch of her territory with teeth and a slow, greedy drag of her tongue. Tiny bits of blood and red sores follow wherever she goes. Jingle-jingle goes the bell, singing joy and dancing delight as it's tossed about.

Bella is covetous. One hand gropes Redana's butt as if a lifetime's worth of yearning could be kneaded out of it in an afternoon, and at the very least she means to try. Her other hand loosens on Redana's mouth, but only so that her fingertips can probe Redana's lips and, when they part before her, slip inside and silence her in entirely new ways.

"You can't fix this, Redana. You're, nnnffff, not the one who made me."

A wall's as good as a bed, when you need it to be. Bella grabs her 'maid' by the back of the head, but even now she's careful not to pull hard, not to hurt her or mess up the pretty braids her hair's just been twisted into, but only enough to turn her head and make it easier to kiss her again, kiss her again, kiss her again, kiss her and taste the remains of her fingers on the Princess' tongue. Kiss her and know that she is in control. Kiss her and know that everything is just the way she hadn't dared to dream it could be. Kiss her and know that she can have this without giving up the power that let her catch up in the first place.

Claws slide down the satiny top, all the way down to the waist. Where they pass, the fabric sighs and splits, revealing Imperial glory and more territory for Bella to hungrily devour. She lifts her prey higher, higher, high enough to kiss the tops of peaks long denied to her. To feel with her tongue the softest part of Redana's body that no amount of pedigree or training could quite turn to iron. To hear the squeals and gasps and claim them as her prize.

Lower. Lower. Her thigh is steel and she traps Redana on top of it. Unyielding to any amount of desperate, tangled squirming. She pulls the tattered remnants of the maid's top backwards, pinning her arms at the elbows in the fabric, devouring her face, and leaving her with nothing to speak with except her hips. She presses her body forward and pins Redana against the wall, swallowing her strength in pearls and folds of fabric and the flesh that wears the Sea.

And then, and then, and then...? She lets Redana tumble to the floor. They stare at each other, lungs burning, hearts stammering, eyes glimmering with the beauty of life and promise beyond the reaches of the Underworld.

"Nothing is even between us, Redana," Bella's voice is dripping with the pride of an Empress between her hungry gasps, "So when I take you... when I fuck you... it's because I want to. No debt. No crown. Just you, and me. Body and heart. Until..."

Until you both forget. Until this adventure carries you past the edge of the universe and washes you both clean. Until she is not a monster, and you are not a princess. Or if these things are stronger than memory, then beyond even that. Until the limits of the gods have at last been found. Until Hades keeps his word, and at long last there will be nothing left except the journey home. And from there, the end of everything.

But for all the time between you and that she will have you, Redana. And she will take you, Redana. And she will show you, Redana. That the girl you thought you loved and the girl you do love are one and the same. That there were never masks and lies between you, but only duty. Jealousy. Anger. And fear. But those? Those you may wash away. And a good maid must always clean where she is needed.

Bella lifts the hem of her dress, and watches with eyes shining in the colors of the throne. Her command is unspoken. But crawl into the ocean and speak without speaking, Redana. While your tongue is singing, you will understand. And it will be some time indeed before there will be an opportunity go anywhere, or to see anything, or to bask in each other's company more softly and somewhere others might be permitted to witness.

But that's just fine, isn't it? There are scales to balance and wrongs to be righted. And wounds will heal whether the path can be seen or not.

Alexa lets out a most undignified snort of a chuckle.

"Of course they want the past to last forever. That's when they won."

Because the dog isn't wrong. She'd told herself, for two hundred years, that she knew exactly what she was. That she could never be anything else. She was the point of a spear, hammered to shape, sharpened to a razor's edge. She told herself it until she believed it, until suddenly finding out that she wasn't all but shattered her to the wind. She had to fall so she could find out what pieces were left.

And she, only one woman. Only one mind's worth of ego, of inertia, of unwillingness to pick up pieces long shattered. How much worse for an empire? How hard could an empire cling to that self image? How much rot and decay could set in because fixing it would mean acknowledging how bad things had become? How many crews could come here before Nero had to acknowledge her own desperation?

Two hundred years and change of heroes. Her own daughter...

Idly, her hands explore the dogs--dig behind ears to find that one spot to melt a dog, see how many legs she can make kick with a single belly rub. It's the perfect activity to let her fingers do while she ponders.

"I am curious," she says, slowly, sounding out each word as if preparing for the words to bite, "what your alternative is.

"Not to the affairs of empires. To that first bit, about bargaining with gods as they were. You talk as if you know a better way. And you are old enough that I could believe it.

"Were the power difference not so vast, I could believe that you could learn and grow with them. You could spend time with them. Learn of them. Find joy in their laughter. Know them, know what they want, as lovers do. How else could you know them as they changed? How else could you be familiar with them, to know their moods?

"The gods love, of course. And mortals may even love them back. But can there truly be a relationship so close between the two, when one side bears all the power?"

"That's what I'm saying. It is your choice."

He flicks an ear. Three javelins whistle through the air to glance off the deck a step away from the Alcedi. Each from a different direction. The churning chaos around them presses on without missing a step.

"I don't suppose you've seen my wife...? No, you wouldn't have. It's best you hear it from me anyway." He wheels forward. The Alcedi do not stop him. A flock could be obliterated entirely in a mutiny gone wrong. And still, he is unarmed.

"Jil. I'm going through the Rift. I can't say if I'll make it to Gaia, but I swear I will try with everything I have and everything I am. If you want to push me out of this, I'm the one you'll have to go through." His brakes squeal as he stops before her. A pace outside her cutlass' reach. "Is this how you want to do it? Behind my back? Ganging up on me, when I can't even walk? This close to the Rift?"

Jil, have you heard the stories of Sahar, when Demeter raised her hand against Dolce and Vasilia? He would never speak of such things, lest he take honor that was not his, and bring shame to the goddesses name. But some say they left the field untouched, while Demeter was left chastened, abandoned, bloodied, even, by Olympus. For the crime of overstepping her bounds.

Do you know where you stand? When you meet the eyes of the captain you are deposing, do you smell the cigarette smoke? Hear the scratch of the Hunter's pen? See the light of virtue flicker, but for a moment? How thoroughly - really - have you prepared for this?

"Tell me why you're doing this, Jil. Please." He begs. "The choice is still yours."

Alexa!

Cerberus looked at you with a hundred eyes. "Why would equality with the gods be desirable? Do you know who got treated as an equal by the gods? Molech. Emperor of the galaxy and destroyer of half of it. Say what you will about the man, but Hermes had to manifest in physical form to kill him and still didn't make it in time. The gods lost that one! How'd that work out?"

They're coming out from side streets in ones and twos, but those add up. A constant flow of machine hounds, more than hands can easily reach. Some fluffy, some chrome, steel and wagging tails.

"Take that further: are we equals?" said Cerberus. "You're patting me. I can never pat you! If it came to a fight you could kill us by the hundred. All of us together couldn't build a single thing you'd find useful. How should I bargain with you?"

Dolce!

Jil set her teeth. "Anyone else, the person is more truthful than the reputation," she muttered.

Her reaction to invisible threat is profoundly disciplined. While the Alcedi are leveling weapons at the crowd in a panic she is razor still, ears carefully moving independent of an absolutely fixed gaze. There's a prickling on her fur that speaks of a prey species' hyperfocused evasion instinct. For all the apparent calm, any sudden movements from this point on will set her off.

"I thought," she said, "I was dealing with a sad, wet, cowardly boy who was being bullied into sacrificing himself for some bullshit he didn't believe in. Someone who slouched into power by accident and hated every second of it. Someone to be saved. Instead, what?" her ears lock into position; telepathic violence emanates from her like an aura. "You're another Temple assassin, is that it?"

The picnic is postponed for tomorrow. The maid came up with such a clever little idea, prancing for her mistress, feeding her sweet cakes, seeing the sights— but the door stays closed, and the two keep their own company in that cabin until it’s too late in the false-day to wander about. There’s more lazy cuddling in there than you might expect. Or maybe you would, and it’s the catching up on years of clandestine lust that would be the surprise.

When they emerge (late) the next day, Redana is wearing something much more usual for her, all dark and just loose enough for Bella to sneak a hand in. It completely fails to hide the possessive marks all along her neck, her jawline, her skin flushed. Her choker is much more subdued, lacking a bell, but one trace of a gentle finger along it makes her knees weak, and her hair is lovingly braided. And she insisted— insisted— on carrying the picnic basket.

So here they are. Bella’s hand on her arm as they walk through this black cathedral together like courtiers showing off the latest fashions. A sword swings at Redana’s hip, but it’s little more than an affectation, the kind of thing to be unbuckled by a hungry not-a-maid. And Redana herself fairly glows.

She wants to see everything on the way, you see. She’s going to find a place with a view of the stars, backlit by that pink fire, somewhere where they can still see colors (through a brutally squared-off observation window the size of a stadium). And then? There will be a blanket spread out. There will be something bubbly from the kitchens, and sandwiches, and hard crackers with honey-clotted dip. But getting there is half the point, and so she’s half-pulling Bella along (who could, if she wanted to, pull the princess back into check, but not effortlessly) and she stares, guileless, from one cryptic anachronism to another.

“Love is war.” She laughs, almost seeming naive. Almost. “Love is, as the Magos tells me, neither war nor Elysium but a secret third thing.” Her tone is light, but she takes a step closer to Bella. “Love is one of the mysteries.” Love is trying to kill us. “Love is shaped like a star.” Love is shaped like the inside of a closet and a prayer that she’ll be safe. “Love is—“

Thank you, Bella. The princess looks around, as if the screens are going to stop their nattering on to stare at them, and receiving no sign that they are scandalizing the dead, gives that gentle palm a fluttering-eyed kiss. And that’s closer than anything she’d managed to say.

It would be preferable if comprehension dawned like the sun--if a wave of light had broken the horizon, clearly illuminated the untrod paths of thought, and all she had to do was walk them to their conclusion.

Alexa can't help but feel that comprehension is coming like trench warfare.

All around her, dogs huddle and press for attention. Has she pet that one yet? She's sure there was one with that pattern, but was it fuzzy or metallic?

And isn't that just proving Cerberus's point? She wants to say that they could be equals. They could give her pets, and she could want them. What's stopping them from creating something she could find useful?

But already, she can feel the lie dying in her throat. They can be equals, yes. But only if she wants them to be. Only as long as she tolerates them. Only as long as she lowers herself to be like them, or raises them to be like her. Equality, but only on her terms.

Surely power to kill isn't the only metric? Power to give? Power to use? But what else is power good for, if not to push yourself onto the world? What is power, robbed of its teeth?

The dog metaphor makes it harder to swallow, somehow. She knows better than to pit herself against the gods. She had front row seats on what pitting yourself against the gods got you, thanks much for the reminder.

But to sit and have someone--have a dog--tell you that the only way you can bargain with the gods is by being cute--

But is it wrong?

She's seen the philosophers. Seen the amount of state-sponsored work, all to uncover whether the rituals are wrong. Whether maybe, there's a better way. Arguing with each other, arguing with leaders, arguing for change, for greater purity of understanding.

The ceremonies. The rituals. The rites, the prayers. All, nothing more than clever tricks to please indulgent masters?

It would…

She's staring at nothing in particular, fingers working mechanically with the force of thought.

It's galling, to have it put in her face like this. The gods don't need anything from them, from servitor, from human. They never have. Why does the sun shine brighter when offered this than that? Why does Poseidon grant passage through his waters to some, and not others? They don't need to be worshiped. The gods will continue without them, and have done for eons.

She stares at the neon around them, at the advertisements promising to bring the gods to heel if you just invest wisely. Suddenly, she can all too easily see herself in those same ads. Offer this to Zeus for favor in kingship. Perform this augury to divine the will and favor of Athena in battle. Pay the gods, and they will pay you in return.

And all along, arguing from false premises.

"No wonder those in power want things to stay the same," she croaks.

Once upon a time, two girls went on an adventure. Being young girls, what they'd meant by 'adventure' turned out to be nothing grander than a trip to the outer markets. But as was the way with these things each step of the way had felt thrilling, impossibly grand, astonishing, appalling, terrible, and terrifying in its turn until it finally overwhelmed them and sent the two heroes scrambling back to the safety of their home.

There had been the climb over the palace wall, facilitated by a rope spun from weeks' worth of carefully 'misplaced' bedsheets. The weave through the shadows to avoid the eyes of the perimeter guards. The breathless, excited giggling as they donned pre-tattered cloaks: a perfect and impenetrable disguise. And running, running, running until the glittering alloys gave way to dingy streets and streets crammed so full of people there could be no word to describe it other than misery.

The market stank to hell. Filth wafted everywhere, just pervasive enough to overwhelm the advanced filtration systems and fight with sickly sweet wines and other desperate street fare that was in no way appropriate for the palate of an Imperial Princess. Moans. Sniffles. A few brave but hollow cries for help. Barter offers shouted atop the other voices (one even offering a pair of diseased Servitors for just one of their cloaks), the general din even more oppressive than the massive wall of bodies and the stale air that had warned them even then: this was a place of death. No less in fact than the Palace of the Dead. Nothing living could be kept inside this prison.

They had been far, far less careful coming home. And home had turned out to be far, far less safe than they had left it. And the rest was history.

Now those girls were grown up. Less naïve. And at the end of a vastly grander and yet far less magical journey, they find themselves once again at the farthest markets, in the Palace of the Dead.

But these halls are cavernous, and empty. These shouts are muted and polite, lifting themselves into full focus only when they've already caught someone's eye. The streets are glittering with wealth, even if they seem so flimsy compared to the adamant power of Tellus that it boggles the mind that ambient solar winds or even a stray sneeze haven't torn this wonderful place to shreds.

Everything is a marvel. No breath of air smells or tastes quite the same as the one before it, and none are natural. Wispy attempts at floral scents dance with freshly baked bread, though there are even fewer souls here to make it or eat it than there were among the ghosts of the Azura. Incomprehensible messages bounce back and forth across the halls in an endless chorus, dancing in time to strange images that call to mind the magic of movies without ever quite seeming to fit that word.

Bella's ears strain every which way. She turns her head, eyes darting this way and that to catch the soft beams of light that must surely be trapped in the air above her. But she is thwarted at every turn. There is no telltale flutter of a projector, however faint. No beacon streaming from a cleverly hidden backroom to paint these motion pictures against these walls. They loop, occasionally break, then reform without any help or source at all. Like magic.

"The arts must have thrived in the ancient Empire. Don't you think so, Redana? Just look at the styles they worked in! It's all so vibrant and yet... it almost hurts my eye to watch it too directly. I think their explorations of Love must have consumed the entire society. They called it an 'Investment', right? I don't know that word. Love is... a return on Investment. They were so wise. They must have been."

There is wonder in her voice, and it paints its way across her face. Slight headache or no, every bit of motion on every screen captures her attention. There is no need for her to pull Redana to heel; she rushes about just as much to capture and gawk at every little thing, all the while feeling an intense longing build up inside her head. The pressure is overwhelming. Impossible to ignore. And what law could stop her now?

Trembling, her fingers reach for a screen in the midst of depicting a cloud of hyper-stylized falling leaves, just before it shifts to an equally stylized depiction of a man and a woman in dark tuxedos dancing on some golden, unrecognizable moon. Her fingers press on the smooth, glassy surface of the screen and she gaps.

"Redana, look! Look! It's..."

Everywhere her fingers touch the image bursts into a cloud of rainbow light. It follows her touch this way and that, blurring only where she passes and reforming the original image as quickly as it broke behind her experimental probing. She strikes it again and again, hardly daring to breath, when a slightly too excited flick cracks the entire thing in an enormous spiderweb pattern. Liquid oozes from several of the larger gaps, paradoxically containing none of the colors they had just been watching. All around them, images play on as if nothing had happened, but in this one spot there is nothing beyond splintered black and white.

"I understand now!" she smiles to herself as they pass around the bend to a new set of wonders that await them, "How they managed to create their films without using projectors. These are paintings, Redana! They must have spent months on each individual one of these! Can you imagine? Hundreds, no, thousands! Maybe even millions of master craftsmen bent over their workbenches painting every motion blur into existence with their brushes. All to create a hallway filled with treatises on their musings about love, worship, and society! Though I'm still not certain what message they intended by drawing all of their characters so... scrawny. Still, though. Beautiful."

And as she says the word, she glances at the Princess. Her fingers are still coated in bits of mystic paint as they entwine around Redana's. Two girls went on an adventure, to find a marketplace. Only this time, their feet carry them further on without thought for safety or home.

At the end of it all... would be the two of them. If not together, then at least not apart. But at least for now, there was the promise of a picnic under the stars, and even deeper wonders and puzzles left behind by the great Foremothers of civilization. To say nothing of the promise of another night. There was, after all, still so much to see.

If he was a Temple Assassin, he dearly wished someone would have the decency to tell him so. Now seemed a rather insensitive time to raise the question.

“Nothing so grand, terrible, and straightforward as that. I’m afraid I’m just a sheep.” He starts, hands folded carefully in his lap. No fidgeting. “And a chef. Then a runaway, and a pirate. Now, a Captain. I did stumble into that one, but, to be fair, I was already thinking of trying something new.” Not even a nod. He’ll furrow his brow, and that’s plenty to tell her he’s giving her due consideration. “I’m not sure what that makes me now. All of them? None of them? It’s difficult to say.”

She searches for the strike she fears is coming. Generations of instinct, running on finely-tuned genetic hardware, wind her body tight with adrenaline. This close, he can hear her heart thundering, fit to burst. How much must it hurt, to stand so still, when your nerves are screaming death, death, death comes for you! Run! Flee! Scurry! Save yourself!!!

It isn’t fair. To complain about a knife in your ribs after you’ve drawn your sword. That’s not a rule, at least not one he’s familiar with, it’s just good sense. But. It makes it difficult, to hold your sword steady, when there’s blood running down your coat, and steel jabbing at your lungs with every breath. Put down the sword, and the wounds can be tended to. Put down the sword, and lose what you took it up for in the first place.

It’s isn’t fair. But he holds himself steady. No movement that could possibly be a signal. The most he can do, all he can do, is leave her no doubt if he swings. If.

Because the choice is still hers.

He swallows hard. “But whatever I am, I want to be the sheep that makes this the last voyage. I want it all to stop. Not just good people throwing their lives away year after year, and half the galaxy growing dim. The Spear of Civilization. The Atlas Cultural Sphere. The universe shattering over and over again, falling apart, and broken people without a chance to put themselves back together again. Enough of it. It has to stop.”

“I know I could try and get…on with it, and live a happy life. I’m glad you want that for me. But how am I supposed to live a quiet, happy life with Vasilia, knowing what I know now? The universe is in dreadful need, and I have a chance - maybe the only one I’ll ever get - to help set things right. Maybe everyone could pull it off without me. Maybe it’ll be just a little bit better if I’m here. I don’t know. But I don’t think I’d ever be able to live with myself if I didn’t try.”

They may need all the help they can get, to stop the one behind it all, the one he is wise enough not to name aloud.

“So. I want to go. That’s my choice, Jil. Mine. And not anybody else’s. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’d have a problem with that. But I can’t do any of it if I get overthrown and stuffed in an escape pod. So.” He holds himself steady. He whispers a silent prayer. “So do you have a problem with that?”

Bella and Redana!

There is a small fairground here, operated by the skillful dead. Clowns and mummers, comedians and jugglers, beings of rare skill collected by Hades from across the galaxy. They entertain each other and swap stories in their little sideshow in Tunguska's downtown. When you arrive they scramble to their positions, snatch up their instruments, and a real carnival begins for just the two of you.

It takes a rare talent to serve in the House of Hades; shades of artists who could make grim-faced Hades laugh or weep. Acrobats of prodigious talent and clowns with perfect insight. They know when they are called upon to entertain and, just as importantly, they know when to step back and let their guests move on to the next attraction. A small man in a false moustache and bowler hat argues ferociously with some ancient knight in cloth armour. A group of dancers whirls and crackles with clawed sexuality - their primitive lungs don't allow them to dance and sing at the same time, but machines sing for them in distorted electronic tones. An unassuming looking person sits in a corner and writes and writes and writes and even though you are not reading their text you get the sense that it must be magical to command such focus.

There are prizes in the carnival, and to earn them you need tickets - strangely printed rectangles of green paper, elaborately illustrated with woodcut graphics. Win them from games of skill or chance and turn them in to the machines to have them dispense eerie drinks hollow and devoid of nutrients and flavour, shrink-wrapped items of clothing, or even plush sharks who have been waiting patiently for this moment in eternity when they might be taken home by girls who needed them. The tickets come easily and fall away just as fast, but the machines spread far beyond the grounds of the festival; the longer you walk the more of them you will find, each one with some new selection of exotic prizes.

Alexa!

"Yeah, well," said Cerberus. "Where does it get them, really?"

She looked around at the shops, the lights, the screens. Somehow you can see reflections of more than just that in her glass-light eyes - broken stone pillars, shattered glass towers, crumbling white pyramids. The digital screens cracker and flicker around her. People vanish from commercials, leaving empty corridors. Populations empty out of cities as the vines move back in. Concentrated sand returns to sand and the desert buries mighty statues. On and on and...

"Neat how this stuff piles up, isn't it?" said Cerberus. "Because this is what it's all about, right? This is what it's all for. All of humanity builds and builds and builds and destroys-destroys-destroys. You know, the boss used to think he got the worst deal out of his siblings? He got a barren, empty realm to lord over. Now it's full to bursting and those upstairs keep finding fresh marvels to send down. It seems to me that the reason for all that up there is to decorate the House of Hades."

Dolce!

Somehow it feels like nothing you could say to her could ever reach her. She is silent. She is still. Her ears still take in every breath and every click of metal.

"No, no problem, captain," she says, the strength of Zeus keeping her voice casual. The choice is hers? She knows exactly what it means to make a choice without power. "Totally get it. Couldn't live with yourself. All I needed to hear."

Isn't this the true nature of Empire? Captains and lords, assassins and princesses, making heartful statements of ideals while the Kaeri lurk in the shadows? She knows exactly where she stands now.

Redana Claudius does not know what a carnival, strictly speaking, is.

She’s familiar with parties, mostly somber affairs in her mother’s palace; she knows about gatherings of people, certainly enough. She’s been social on the Plousios with all sorts. But this is new. Performers, not for the sake of a party but seemingly for the sake of the performance, and games quite actively waiting to be played, and everywhere, an invitation to come and try, or to participate, or to test her mettle, or to sit for a caricature, or to have tasteless white corn-snacks, or to see if she can keep track of where the icon of Hermes is, or to—

“Bella, Bella, look! Oh, let’s!”

—or to heft up a hammer and take turns with Bella seeing who can ring the bell harder, until it is knocked from its high perch completely, tumbling down at their feet as both of them jump back like startled kittens, and, oh, how the tickets are heaped up in her arms then!

The bag is finely-woven, patterned in the manner of a civilization that once burned bright, one that revered Iris as their patron, the messengers who would look upon the entirety of the Plousios’s voyage as a feat worthy of their epic courier-heroes. Into it is heaped more tickets, and more prizes, and more laughter. The first caricature hugs one side of the bag, Redana’s smile shaped like a striped bean, Bella’s ears a perfection of triangles. The second is slightly crumpled, slipping underneath the towel, bearing a picture of an elegant cat and an exuberant puppy.

Tickets are fed into the latest machine, prizes from the animation dance (the floor flickering between colors and scenes impossibly fast as Dany kept time and managed to score high than the somewhat distracted Bella), as the servitor stares with wide, bright eyes at the plush sharks (some sleek, some hammer-headed, some mammoth, some palm-sized, some blue and grey, some grey and brown, some red and black).

If this was a trap, it could keep Dany here for a long, long time. There is no day and no night here, where the lights hang criss-crossed over the stalls, trapped in lamplight globes, and everywhere she turns there is something new and wonderful and new.

But the other part of the trap is who she is experiencing this with. Because even Dany’s beginning to notice that the bestest part of the whole thing, from start to finish, is who she’s getting to do this with. And as her Bella, her friend, her girlfriend, her girlfriend, makes an adorable noise under her breath as she tries to choose from the wonders in front of her for the ones that need her the most, palms pressed against the blue-white glass, Dany looks at her with an expression of adoration written plain across her sea-touched face.

This. This is what she’d wanted the whole time. This is what she’d hoped would be her reward after going to the end of the universe and back. This is what she dreamed about when she stared up at that one star, glittering like a solitary diamond, when the clouds broke. This, forever and ever, and every day after that.

This, then, is Empire. The Armada around Tellus. The curious gravity of Lakkos. The Manor’s picket fence. A sheep could clear a fence with a running start and good form. But never could you leave. Her Highness had run from a goddess, sacrificed her entire future, and if you listened closely you would hear a whisper of titles trailing in her wake. Because that was what one did, for a Princess. And for a Captain, one would do quite a bit, to ensure their attention could rest fully on the matter of keeping a ship running. No matter how many quiet dinners you’d shared together; a Captain was still a Captain.

Then again. There’d already been one mutiny today…

“Jil. What am I about to do is completely unrehearsed, and could not possibly be a signal. No one will harm you or yours. Please don’t stab me.” No sudden movements. His hands rise to lift the ornate hat perched atop his head. Up it goes, clearing ears and wool easily. No difficulties, no accidents. Down it goes, to rest on his lap, turned to face him in all its glory.

And he takes a bite. Tears off the Captain’s insignia in one go.

(Broth. This belonged with a soup of some kind. Perhaps soaked in seasonings for days, weeks, to soften it up and add flavor, and then draped alongside some noodles, eggs, chopped vegetables, fish, make up the nutritional deficit…)

“No Captains.” He says, swallowing. “This is not an Imperial ship. This is our ship. And whoever is going through the Rift ought to decide how it runs, together. And. If I’m not really a Captain, then you can’t be having a mutiny. At best you can kidnap me, as a friend, for my own good. And I can tell you why you don’t have to, and you can decide if that’s good enough. So.” A bleat slips out, and it’s okay, because friends don’t ambush friends with assassins and gods. A sheep can bleat, and no one has to bleed for it. “So do you have a problem with that?”

Alexa wanders from Cerberus to Cerberus, meeting each of their eyes in turn. Civilization after civilization ends in their eyes, and it dawns on her that she doesn't recognize most of them. A hundred guttering candleflames, a thousand bygone styles, all remembered here and nowhere else.

Humanity seeded the cosmos. Their hands touch every planet, their servitors litter every continent.

How many times over, she wonders? How many empires? How long since humanity fled Gaia for safer waters?

And yet…

"I don't think you're right," she says, finally.

She continues to stare at each set of demises in turn, each set of canine eyes, but now with purpose. Searching.

"Or. Hmm.

"You're right that everything ends here. Civilizations end. Empires are overthrown. Even the greatest buildings end in decay and ruin. Nothing lasts, remember that you will die, and so on. Hades collects the bounties, and the universe moves on.

"But that doesn't make it its purpose.

"An artist writes a symphony. They die, and in time, all manuscripts decay and are lost. None recall their work but the dead. Was it written to decorate Hades' realm, or is that simply the end result?

"A couple love each other. They share their time, make memories. Travel. Build families, touch lives. In time, one and then both die. Was their love nothing more than a monument for Hades?

"Yes, things end. We all end up here, in the afterlife. Hades collects his due of all. And maybe you're even right of empires and kingships and power.

"But small scale? On the personal level? That doesn't rob the things we do of their meaning. There's worth in building, even if it falls. There's value in loving, even if the relationship ends. There's joy in living, even when we die."

Bella did not, in fact, have any idea what she was going to do with all of these sharks. Already they had overtaken the bag she'd won, and now her arms were filling up with the things. She had no room to put them in. She hadn't even gotten around to taking her cup back from that sheep just yet for that very same reason. But she can't seem to stop herself. Every time she turns her head there's a new game waiting for her and Redana to play. And every prize booth has a new shark she hasn't seen before.

All she understands is that whenever her eyes pass across a new stitched together toothy smile or meets a pair of shiny bead-eyes, she is filled with an overwhelming sense that it has been waiting here, possibly for hundreds of years, for her to come and rescue it. Only for her. It's a weaker impulse version of the lurching in her stomach that happened whenever Dany would wander too far off when they were children, or when she'd noticed her temple sisters (and especially Mynx) getting into trouble. Her genetically engineered guardian programming must have been overtuned at some point. That's all it was.

It was the vendor's fault in the first place for suggesting a plush shark could need rescuing in the first place. And now she'd found one locked behind a 'firing range', soft and blue and guileless, the practically as long as the Princess was tall, and she feels her heart tweak fresh all over again. She is doomed, for perhaps the fifth dozenth time since they'd wandered into the carnival.

The games, she'd noticed, were all patterned after various arts of ritual and warcraft. Many had been rendered down to be so easy it was almost insulting, but Bella was certain there was a test involved to this, as well. To obey each priest or priestess commanded to the letter was a trap: you could only show your alignment with the god each temple game prayed to by figuring out how to exceed every expectation. The limiting nature of the equipment they provided for each task only proved she had the right of it.

"...Redana, hold these."

Off go the sharks, to the only other person they... that is, that she trusts. These are sacred treasures of the God of the Dead, after all. They can't be allowed to touch the floor, even clean as it is.

She steps toward the crude booth and picks up the rickety SP rifle. This was as an obvious a temple of Artemis as she could ever hope to come across. Good. She owed the goddess an apology, and had yet to figure out a proper way to pray ever since she'd learned about what their relationship with each other actually was. There were myths, fragments really, buried in Redana's old textbooks and lessons that talked about "Archery" as a concept relating to the Goddess of the Hunt, and this probably had something to do with that.

It was hardly more than 20 meters to the targets. She could spit farther than that (if she thought nobody was looking). What was the trick, then? She eyed the rifle with apprehension, and raised it to her shoulder. It must make the most dreadful noises. Her ears were sure to be bleeding after. But for this largest and therefore kingliest of the sharks, it was worth it. In the end she was just no good at leaving anybody behind. That was what got her in this whole fucking mess to begin with. She winces as she squeezes the trigger, turning her head away and squeezing her eyes shut to mitigate some of the noise and the inevitable blowback of smoke.

There's a soft click, and a dull whoosh of air from the rifle. A tiny pellet flits out at speeds slow enough to watch and pops a balloon on the far end of the range with similarly little fanfare. Bella lifts the gun up to eye level and stares at it with amazement.

Aha! So it's a form of self restriction! They must have used these to hide their numbers while the phalanx advanced on the enemy, carrying balloons like these ones filled with all kinds of chemicals. Right? And with the smoke pouring over everyone you could invoke Artemis even in the middle of a war!

"I get it now, I see! Ha! Watch me, Dany!"

Her fear is gone in an instant, replaced with swaggering confidence. Bella lifts the ancient tool of this brilliant-yet-vanished civilization (...they must have done something truly terrible, at the end of things) and empties row after row of pellets into the range with the swiftness and surety of a creature that can finish aiming before she's begun. Almost all at once she strikes an entire wall of balloons, several round discs with painted concentric circles, and a stack of bottles that fall over with a loud clatter.

And there at last spew the tickets. HA! There at last had been the secret SP target she was meant to find! She passed the test, O Goddess! Were you watching? She has not forsaken you, do you see? If only she'd put the pieces together sooner, she bets she would've won at least twice this many. As it was she'd barely gotten enough to rescue a second King Shark for Redana's sake.

But even still, there's a spark in her heart that doesn't seem to want to go out. A smile flashes across her face and she twirls with girlish glee toward the woman she loves more than anyone in the universe, happy to be here, happy to dance forever, happy to do whatever so long as it's...

She stops, catching her reflection. And Redana's reflection. And at last, the absurdity of the size of her collection sinks in. Instantly, her posture changes. Her back straightens to perfect rigidity. She turns her head and coughs. Smooths out her dress as best she can holding such large animals in each arm. And she blushes, beautiful as the stars themselves.

"...This did not happen, ok?" she snarls, but in a voice that could only belong to the fussy Bella who used to inhabit the Imperial Palace, "You begged me for these. Fucking begged! They were gifts! We never got them! If anyone asks, we tell them about the paintings and the performers! We found these at our picnic and brought them back as... as... damn it Redana stop laughing! I'm a Praetor now, I've got a reputation!"

Alexa!

"Hmm!" Cerberus thinks about that for a moment. "Hmm..." Not like she's coming up with a witty response, just rolling the idea over in her many minds. A certain energy starts to fade out of the hounds as she does; the swarm unravels and drifts away along a hundred doggy paths, and soon the street is empty again but for you and the robot dog in the window. In the absence of the machines and the motion the lights in the screen seem cold and lonely, and the guardian of the Underworld seems like just a toy.

"You reminded me of someone who I haven't seen for a long time," she said quietly. Her digital eyes blink, flicker, and go dark. Her voice, without the plurality of reverbs from so many speakers and directions, is small and tinny. "Thank you for that."

Dolce!

Jil laughs. It's at first a stunned, incredulous kind of motion, trying to come from a place of cynicism. But she has a terrible weakness: she is unpracticed with laughter. She's been in a state of absolute seriousness for so long that she's forgotten how to manage a laugh, how to stop it escalating, how to handle a world that is not themed around SKULLS and DEATH. She puts her fist in her mouth to try and stop it but she's already lost control of her breath. She tries to take a deep breath and give a serious response but she loses her shit each time. Her proud, jagged willpower gathers time and again only to immediately fall apart.

"wELL," she managed, "I'll EAT my HAT before I -" and then she's gone again, unable to finish broken like the tension.

Strike for strike, then. Weakness for weakness. Dolce’s docile, innocent smile can weather long, grueling hours, legs about to collapse, a heart so full of pain he might burst, but never has he trained to endure the honest, body-shaking laughter of a friend. His nose twitches, shaking to hold back a grin that would surely stretch from ear to ear were it turned loose. But he is a professional. He will not give the ground so easily, and shame his name. With the grip of a practiced expert, he holds himself steady on the line. The scrunched-up half-smile, like the tiny silhouette of a ship against a massive star, may only serve to make his joy seem all the larger, but he holds himself steady all the same.

“I can help you with that, if you like.” He is the calm. “My time in office has dulled neither my culinary skills nor my hospitality. I would gladly stand before you,” he is not looming. He is much too short for looming. “Hat in hand.”

He is the very picture of humble servitude and that was a professional snort he’ll have you know.

It's strange. All morning, she wandered this station, content to meet any new sights in perfect solitude. And only now, with tails slinking away, only one hound at her side, does she feel lonely.

She considers the dog. Listens to the voice. Raises one arm invitingly, as if for a hug.

"D'you... want to talk about them?"

Hurriedly, she adds, "You don't have to if you don't want to, of course. I don't want to open old wounds. But..."

Well, she's heard that tone of voice before. She's used that tone of voice before. Remembering those who aren't around anymore, for one reason or another.

"Sometimes," she admits, "it's nice to remember people the way they were. There are friends that... Well, that I don't know what happened to them. Lost track of them. Got reassigned. Disappeared. I know some of them must have survived, because I've met their children, but all I have of them is memories and stories. So...

"Would you tell me their story?"