"No."

The sword is warm in her hand, and lighter than air. As if she held her sisters' hands all joined around this single hilt. As if the promise they had made on it was strength enough to lift it toward the sky all by itself. But for all the ease with which she wields it, Mosaic makes no move to thrust, or slash, or to parry. Simply having the weapon in hand makes her head squeeze with pain; a memory or a thought that won't fit inside her skull pressing down on her insistently.

Asking her to wait. Asking her to listen. Asking her to watch.

"This is just a game. A stupid game for children to play. What could be less serious, and us not even fit to be the children playing? If this is all there is, then we are toys. And if the gods are watching at all, they must be weeping. Or laughing, maybe. Bored. But I'm [i]Mosaic[/i]. I'm nobody's plaything, and there is no god that I can name that I need the favor of to crush this farce. You were warned. We are out of time."

All that she can hear is the thrashing of a wild heart. All that she can see is the writhing of night-dark chains around it. These tendrils called Purpose, rattling and squeezing until everything that could be beautiful about the life struggling inside of its cage turns limp and lifeless. It makes her teeth grind. It makes her hand squeeze the hilt of her sword until she can feel her bones crunching against it. 

There is a sound. Louder than any rifle or cannon a Silver Diver or a citizen of Beri could conceive of, and yet purer than the crack of a whip. There is a vision. Brighter than a lantern's light and startlingly white, until it splits into a prism of the deepest hues in every color of the rainbow. There is a feeling. A lance of cold air cutting between the heat of two women whose bodies had been burning themselves in the name of war. A sting, a kiss of winter wind and then after... nothing. 

The world returns. The ELF buzzsaw splits and crumbles into pieces. The chariot rumbles and tips as its wheels collapse under the shock of the impact. Harnesses snap clean off and panicked bulls scream as they scramble away only to fall howling into the ravines dug for the Ceronian phalanx just hours earlier. This is the power of Quajl's brilliant diamond arquebus: no toy of war could stand against the culmination of this much passion, this much effort, this much desire for something so much realer than the chains of some invented purpose.

Taurus does not falter. The instincts of a perfect warrior see her legs tense before her war machine can toss her off of it, and she turns what might have been a helpless fall into a picturesque leap and pounce. Her whip arm flicks back and she lashes at Mosaic, who catches the barb around her wrist and holds it taut. Even this is nothing to a daughter born for war. Born so strongly to the song and smell and lust of battle that she would drag herself out of paradise just to taste it. She rides the momentum higher into the air and swings on her whip like a grappling hook to carry herself toward Mosaic's back. Her scythe whistles through the air as it sings its way toward Mosaic's neck.

"YOU!"

Mosaic ducks at less than the last second. Her body sinks so low that the decorative chains on her vest clink and drag across the stony street, and her shoes groan from the strain of spinning so intensely with her feet. She pops up in a tenth of an eyeblink, only to vanish from sight entirely for a moment.

"WILL!"

She is above the haft of the scythe. Her foot crushes down on top of it and and drags the weapon to the floor. The blade bites deep into the ground with eerily little sound as she plants her foot and pulls her weight back onto her hip for a strike. Her free arm pulls at the whip. Momentum is Taurus' enemy now, but even still she rolls into it intending to turn these twin setbacks into the form of a deadly wheeling kick. The knife blade hidden in her boot clicks as it pops out from under her toes.

"WAKE!"

It is too late. The muscles along Mosaic's back crackle with power that no ELF could match, however hot it burned. Her arm is already uncoiling with the might that only a demigod could wield. Her thrust is more perfect than perfect. The sound of splitting skin, then tearing muscle, cracking bone, and the cry of a heart all mingle in the air of the town in a chorus of pain and shock.

"UP!!"

Blood trickles from Taurus' wound onto the edge of this blade borrowed from a person Mosaic had never met. Blood trickles down the length, catches the crossguard, and splashes against the ground. The stone turns red, and nothing more. Black miasma hisses from her wound, but no flowers spring forth. There is no chattering of new animal life, and no microbes grow from the wound. This is no hunt of Artemis, and yet. And yet. 

The wound is only a wound. Because it is more than a wound. Because it is not a wound at all. Mosaic's strike pulls her forward. Up the length of the blade. Forward. Forward. Forward. There is a promise to be kept. The promise she made to her sister. The promise she made to... No One. She feels Taurus' weight slump against her shoulder, but then.

Forward. Forward. Forward. Her claws itch at the sight of chains.