Mosaic!

Of course, you're right. You never had a chance.

Vesper shatters like glass beneath you. The room cascades and breaks, reality slipping and destabilizing. Your organic eye aches, your vision distorting and going out of focus. It'll take you a moment to realize why: for the first time your real eye and your Auspex are seeing the exact same thing.

You have passed through into the realm of the Gods.

The crystal storm you stand in the center of is, of course, Dionysus, mirrored face atop the body of a stuffed clown puppet/eer. It bows and stands aside, a revelation of the field of play. Mars, inert and red and pulsing with canals full of bacteria, clacking away at an abacus and rolling dice as he administers the battle. Poseidon prowling at the edges, vengeful and bitter, holding the end of all things in his hands, wrapped with a bow and a card. Zeus in the center, one hand raised up towards the heavens, one hand keeping her family's peace. Aprodite in distant shadows, snapping lines into place like the bars of a cage.

And Hera, every colour of authority, an anthem of peacock feathers, even the loose and molting patches implying a greater beauty than mere symmetry could manage. She is coming here to enforce the dignity of her family against those who would play games with it.

You have but two pieces of hope.

The first is that Vesper gave you a note, pressed against your breast in the moment of your collision. A typed letter, simply stating 'Ask her about her son'. On the reverse was a '<3'.

The second is that, in the moment before reality broke, you got a good solid second of Vesper in a state of total shock. For all her calculation, in that moment you did what Thor could not and outran Thought itself.

Dyssia!

Oh, is that all you need? For it to be later?

Good news! It's later!

Dionysus whirls his puppet strings and brings you to bear. Vesper is coughing - all the air pushed from her lungs by Mosaic's collision. The typewriter is open to you, all the knowledge of what is and what could be laid before you as a buffet. A hyperfocus learning pit trap for you to pour yourself into. Nobody to judge you, no responsibilities, no one at risk other than yourself. Sometimes all a gift from the Gods needs to be is enough rope.

Ember and Dolce!

The designers of this Drone were limited creatures. They thought in terms of open white room engagements where everyone stood at reasonable distances and traded blows in a sporting way, not in terms of close quarters grapple and unarmed leverage. It flailed dangerously, wildly, completely incapable of resisting being put wherever it was directed to be put.

A droning buzz echoed through the ship, one that then resolved into a primitive butt rock blasted through the ultra-acoustics of the speaking tubes. The Cancellation was raising its alert level, tens of thousands of eggs quickening in vast awakening chambers. Sanalessa glanced up and down the corridor, alert but not alarmed. "On that note, do you want me to kill everyone?" she asked.

What the fuck?

Everything is nonsense. The air smells left. Her tongue tastes cold, her ears are filled with the deafening roar of quadratic equations. It's worse for having her Auspex; perhaps if she'd had both natural eyes she might have just been blind, or mapped some kind of incorrect texture over everything in her own stupid mortal understanding of the universe, but here she has just enough context for reality that her overmatched senses are insisting on delivering her correct information.

Bella stumbles on her first step. Her legs won't stop trembling and her stomach swoops with nausea. Those at least are sensations she can understand. But she clamps a hand over her mouth, and forces her breathing to slow until she starts to feel stable. If there's one thing that's gonna get her killed right now, it's puking on Olympus.

Once while she was fighting Taurus, Mosaic briefly glimpsed the true shape of the gods. In that moment she could see the curve of reality and the shackles of the rules that bound it tight. It was something of a lonely awakening, realizing that the gods she'd dreamed of having a relationship with had been much, much too large to be considered anything like she was. The anthropomorphism had been incorrect; these beings were reality itself.

But now, fighting a headache that could kill the worst migraine of her life, Bella can see everything unfolded in front of her with enough time and clarity to properly gawk at it. Her other self had only been half right. The gods were manifest. What they did changed everything, determined everything, became everything. But they moved, they schemed, they put on airs and took effort in their appearance. It wasn't the failings of her idiot brain that made her see it, the eye of Hermes assures her, the gods were the universe. But they were also at the same time and for lack of a better word, human.

For a moment, Bella forgets her nausea. She stands in place with eyes wide with wonder. She forgets decorum, neither maintaining proper posture or remembering to keep her mouth closed. She even forgets that she still needs to breathe. She just stands there, half slumped and slack jawed, watching truth and beauty so deep and indescribable that she can't even tell if it makes her feel huge or tiny to bear witness to it all.

And then the little note slips a bit in her palm. Bella turns, and stares at the little prayer her sister left for her before she'd been kicked away to stand in the same place as the gods. Her throat dries in an instant, and her sudden nervous swallow is painful. Shit, that's right. She's not just looking through a spy lens. She's here, and they'll be expecting something from her. Suddenly she can't keep her spine from snapping so rigid that it interferes with the motion of her legs. Her tail won't stop bushing, and between the arm wrapped tightly around her stomach and the one clutched desperately at Vesper's note she has nothing she could use to soothe it. Not that it would help if she could. Every part of her body telegraphs nerves and fear response.

And the worst thing of all is that she's shuffled up to Hera anyway. Hera, who wears even her imperfections as beauty and pride. Hera, who can command decorum anywhere and from anyone with nothing but her gaze. Hera, who wields the fear that only a disappointed mother can control. Bella flinches in on herself, but no storm of mirrors and shattering glass sends her elsewhere. She is trapped.

"Um," she says, "Uh. Hi. Sorry. Uh, hello."

It’s over just as quickly as it began. A moment of calm replaces the frenzy of imminent crisis. A moment of calm scored with guitars played at inadvisable volume that somehow did not drown out the sound of a million million drones waking up.

It might be the best they’ll get for some time. He takes the opportunity to sheathe his sword. “No, I’d really rather you didn’t kill everyone, thank you.” He speaks to Sanalessa, but his eyes are on the drone. In a few days time, it would be dead. It had no brain, no thoughts, no capability to understand them or what was happening. Disabling them would mean rendering them immobile while they waited to die, alone and in what pain the Biomancers had seen fit to give them.

He bows his head to the drone, stilling his thoughts for a moment of total silence. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, before turning to Sanalessa. “Could you just kill them for now please? As cleanly as you can manage? Ember, could you please hold them still a few moments longer?”

What comes next, he doesn’t have to see. He trusts a priestess of Artemis to be neither cruel nor inefficient. And he’ll need his wits about him for the next while. (That’s what you’d say, right Vasilia?) He marches over to his desk and begins consulting folders and binders, pulling out sheets of documentation and arranging them accordingly. What was this alert level? What zones were to be evacuated, and in how much time? Give him timetables, protocols, and everything in-between, and he begins to see the shape of what will happen on this ship in the next few minutes. The plan would need some adjusting, but the plan was still the plan: Meet up with the Craftstman, and get out, together. Only now, instead of escaping stealthily through a ship preparing for war, they would be escaping by whatever means they could through a ship going on high alert.

[Dolce is certain something’s wrong here. Activating I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This to learn both the quickest way out and the safest way out, for all of them.]

To his credit, he only gets a little ways into his work before he remembers his manners. “Oh, my apologies. Ember, this is Sanalessa. She’s a friend I’ve been traveling with, the story’s a little long to tell now.” If she wished to give any further details, she could choose to do so herself. That was not his place. “Sanalessa, this is Ember. She’s a good friend of mine from back home, or rather, where home used to be.”

He pauses in his search, only briefly. “Actually, how did you get here, Ember? Did anyone else come with you?”

Ember!

His voice is different then you remember it. Not rude, of course not, he’d never be rude. But when did you ever know him to take charge, even in his own kitchen?

Death in a deathless place is still holy, yet that does not mean that it is loved.

The moment when the drone dies is distinct. In one moment she is holding a drone, and in the next she is holding a body.

It doesn't fall apart. Bodies should, shouldn't they? It's still as it is, because one of the daughters of Artemis (like Bella) has done her sacred duty. Still. Limp. Empty.

Ember doesn't shiver. She doesn't make a face. She closes her eyes for a moment, and then she opens them. Then she sets the empty shell down on the bed, carefully, cradling the head on its broken neck.

She squats. Takes up the suit jacket again. Digs in a pocket until she finds the two coins down at the bottom.

"We summoned a monster of the void," she says, voice neutral and steady, as she lays the coins down. "I was the bait, and the ritual demanded that Liquid Bronze come and save me. But Love brought me here instead, and now... I'm alone. No pack, no ship. And if I don't make my way towards the bridge, then everything we did to call that Angelshark here will... I have to make my way up to him. But I can get you to a shuttle first."

The sir is unspoken.

Does a marionette ever feel the strings?

Or do they just feel the whirl of the dance, the pulse of the music? She moves, and did the string pull, or was it just the right movement in the moment? Another string pulls, but she's moving beforehand to--

Don't you hear it? Not as the ears hear, but as the heart, as the feet, coming up through the floor and pounding in every cell of her being--

She's not a puppet of Dionysus--she's his dance partner. His fingers sit on her hips, her back against his chest, his breath runs down her neck and into her fingers.

What to ask? What to find? What to make?

The chairs, the chairs, it comes down to the chairs, floor to ceiling, heavens to abyss. You can't enter the same parameters and expect the experiment to come out different.

So what if there's a universe with a normal Dyssia? Or a universe with a Dyssia who chose not to become a Knight? Who cares about that? What's the point?

The chairs.

A world without--the consuming hunger, desire that destroys. What did Demeter do? Why isn't Hades here?

… what would happen if Hades were here?

The strings are pulling, but already her fingers pirouette across the keyboard.

Bella!

Hera picks out from her vast panoply a symbol. Engraved in silver within the eye of a peacock feather, a sequence of dots resolving into lines, she places it in the air between you and her. It unravels its magic in a whirl of ribbons. A transcendentally subtle masterwork of etiquette magic, a spell of translation and perspective. Its purpose is to create a protocol of language between the Greater and the Lesser. A clear set of expectations and social conventions that say: So long as you do not stray beyond your limits and your place, you may speak candidly.

It has been the death of many empires that they never had and never thought to ask for this spell. For them, an inferior speaking boldly to a superior meant weakness for the superior, and had to be rebuked. Kings entered bubbles and, cut off from reality, drove their empires to ruin. In this working is the ability to speak your mind without risking accidental offense; all of the caveats and 'but perhaps I am mistaken' and bowing and scraping accounted for by the humility in your heart rather than the precision of your training.

But the humility in your heart is not negotiable. This is still a God. As those peacock feathers unfold again you know that outside of the gift of this narrow path is still profound peril.

"You may speak, child," said Hera, Queen of the Gods. "How did you come to be here?"

Ember and Dolce!

There is a fast way out. Conveniently, the Cancellation is launching thousands of Boarpedoes at this very moment at the Plousios. Getting on one of those is simply a matter of wading through the blood and ruin of all of the Summerkind between here and there. But, because that means evading the defensive screens of two different ships, that is not at all safe.

There is a safe way out. It lies in a ring at the end of the altar; simply give into Aphrodite allow Love to conquer all. Bound and betrothed you will all be kept secure by Liquid Bronze through the fires of battle, close in his confidence, ready for the rescue of your many suitors.

Dyssia!

Once upon a time worth was derived not through glory and title, but through possessions. The universe was smaller then and every grain of sand could be measured, accounted and given a number and a price. In this world arose supreme the Smith God: Hephaestus.

He stood at the center of all things, for everything had to pass between his hands to have any value at all. It was his hands that built unbreakable armours, his hands that made glass think, his hands that made the great suits that raised up the original Knights. Each time something passed through his hands it became more refined, more rare, more desirable. And so it was that Hephaestus built a pyramid, the object of world's desire, the whole galaxy rearranged into this shape.

He did not care that the pyramid was the shape of immortality. Hephaestus never cared for what it was he built, what became of his materials or scraps. He was famous for this; he wanted merely to build. He did not see the scythe when it descended, didn't believe it even when he felt it. Who would kill the goose that laid the golden eggs?

Demeter lifted his bloody head from the floor and ate it whole.

The pyramid was the shape of immortality. With the galaxy arranged into this configuration then Summer might never have to die. The afterlife could be kept at bay outside the walls of perfected hierarchy, entropy conquered, changed quenched, and the realm of the Afterlife - the realm of Dreams - consigned to a memory.

This is how the Age of Knights ended: When Demeter picked up the Smith God's hammer and began to build. Each time a life form passed between her hands it became more refined, more rare, more desirable. The galaxy became an ecosystem trending towards a single perfection and extinction.

"That's, uh, a really good question. I don't... know? I think my sister sent me. Maybe. She wrote me a note, anyway."

Redana would not have needed the protections of this miracle spell. Her smile would have done enough for the whole thing, and turned whatever awkward babble that spilled from her lips into a refreshing stream of good company and earnest intentions. She'd have walked right up and asked what needed to be asked, because it was her birthright to ask and to know and somehow she'd been such a good person that she'd managed to flip the script around and put herself lower than everybody else anyway. Could any other Human have managed that? Could even Nero have--?

Bella winces. It is not jealousy or fear that strikes her body into the shape of the cringe. No, it's just embarrassing as fuck to be here like this. What is she supposed to do with her hands? With her tail? With her -- fuck! Yeah, great, the humility in her heart, how wonderful. Don't worry sister, she's got that in spades, there's not a trace of arrogance anywhere inside of her she could summon under the direct gaze of Hera, of all people. Not her. Never her. But that doesn't...

It would still be... nice. If she came off as cool? A visit to Olympus should be a wonder, a miracle of profound and reality defining importance. For Bella it feels more like a prolonged flopsweat. If she doesn't manage to get something to drink she might literally die while she's here just from the sheer terror of it all. All she can perceive is the peril on either side of the path she needs to walk down. It's all death, from here to eternity. It's worse, even, because she is directly in the realm of the gods and interacting with them on a level they fully understand. They wouldn't kill her at all, they'd turn her into a new myth. On top of whatever more literal thing they metamorphosed her into.

She coughs. Her tail droops around her ankles, and she forces herself to match the posture of the Queen of the Gods. She owed that much and more besides. She pushes her ears into perfect poise and alignment atop her head. She smooths her hair and adjusts her outfit until it fits as stylishly as she can manage. She does not allow herself to hide the clothing's celebration of the things that make her Mosaic. To wear her imperfections as honors: that's what it meant to mirror Queen Hera. She couldn't think of any other way to show respect.

She licks her dried lips with every last ounce of decorum she can muster.

"There's a lot," she turns her eyes up to watch the cage that Aphrodite builds around them, "I'd want to say to you. Here where it matters, I mean. I'd love to cook for you, if I could. Even above Dany you're the one I'd most like to serve a meal. That's a dumb dream I've had since I was a little kid and I saw the first prayer of my life get answered. But I was sent here. I didn't earn this. So I just..."

The paper in her hand is rough as it crunches and wrinkles in the face of her nervous fidgeting. The ink on it feels oily on her skin, but even as it rubs off onto her the message stays as clear as when she first noticed it. Bella watches the Queen of the Gods across the infinite reaches of space and the horrible infinity of this awkward silence, and closes her eyes.

"The thing my sister Vesper wanted from me was that I ask you. Um. About your son."

There is only one way out.

The theory is sound, in that he knows it’ll work. If he followed Ember, Aphrodite would take over from there. But Ember has training. Experience. He’s pretty sure he noticed her whenever she popped into his cafe on some mission or other, but he would never say for sure. The chance was low, but never zero. She could adopt the role required of the ritual, to the degree required of the ritual. But ask him to call that love?

He could never pull it off.

Which left the boardpedoes. Or a shuttle. Either way, two defensive screens to fly through. A ship full of chaos and blood. Problems he did not have answers for. Funny how many of those he ran into, working within the real power of the Skies. But he’d have to see about finding a miracle later.

Iskarot wasn’t here. If he was left behind, then escaping to the Plousios changed nothing. He was smart. Clever. Resourceful. Flush with the authority to go where he pleased, within reason. He’d know what the alarms meant. He’d have seen the attack plans coming. He’d know he didn’t have time to rendezvous here like they’d planned.

I met you in a dream…

He didn’t know where Iskarot was.

The quality of a mind is not in its discoveries or its successes, but in the length and breadth of its emergency protocols.

But he knew how to find him.

“Sanalessa will be escort enough, though the offer is much appreciated.” He tap-tap-taps a sheaf of papers, and passes them to Ember in a neat stack. “You have a job to do, and we would only slow you down.” Diagrams. Floor plans. Alert protocols. All the intel a scout of Ceron could wish for. His smile shines soft as his wool. “We’ll see you aboard the Plousios. That’s a promise.”

It's not actually a full decision to lay her fingers on the keyboard again. And honestly, that should probably concern her, right? Seems to happen a lot? Decisions just makin' themselves, down in that heart? But also the music hasn't stopped yet, right? There's more yet to the dance.

And so she dances on, heedless.

… Why "heedless?" Heedless of what? Heedless is a strange choice of internal monologue, the censor insists--

An olive finger brushes her neck, shoots lightning through her spine, and she hurls herself into the dance with renewed vigor.

Of course it was Hephaestus. No wonder that the universe is so different now from the time of knights--the gods themselves are different. Demeter herself takes on his aspects, subsumes him, becomes the craftsman--ha, the graftsman!--of life! And so it follows that noting can remain the same.

Is he still around? No god can undo what another god has done, yes, but if one mortal can steal fire from the gods, certainly another should be able to do the same? Is Hephaestus dead? Consumed? Dormant?

She's shining, brilliant, metallic, a blade--no, no, a tool. She dances, gleaming, across the keys. New input! New information! More! What then, life? What happens then?

Would that be better? To live in the age of knights--to live in the never-ending Portuguese? Smash the pyramid, return life to death--Life to Death, whispers the chortle in her ears--Could that work?

Aphrodite. The purple strings dance her fingers clicka-clack so satisfying across the keyboard. Aphrodite, around since time began, around as Time. Desire. If he were imprisoned, what would that do? How would the universe change? A wish, a boon, a journey, a chance, the beat drumming in her ears like an earthquake, frantic, continuous, heedless, thrum, thrum, thrum--

This, too, is a magic spell. It's one of the ones that the scouts of Ceron know, but which most shed as quickly as they can once they are proper knights and can pretend that they have never staked their dignity on a ritual approach to warfare.

This one is called "Oops!" when it is not called "In Sheep's Clothing."

One scout behind enemy lines can drive them into confusion, turmoil, and logistical bleed using this approach, as long as they are willing to both hide themselves in the servile busyness of the Synnefo and leave a trail of messes behind them. Do you have any idea what one innocent bride, taking it upon herself to help whenever she sees some place to step in and provide assistance, can do if she is deliberately clumsy enough? Even with no one to watch, she must (in order to do this properly) exclaim in dismay whenever a line gets cut, someone is sent the wrong way with a nonsense missive, volatile explosives tumble out of a crate and block a corridor, on and on and on, a zig-zagging path cut towards Liquid Bronze leaking chaos in its wake.

What ridiculousness that she mixes up her suit jacket with a domestic servitor's plain apron! How could she possibly mix up sending a message up to the kitchens and tripping an evacuation alarm on multiple sublevels? How easily she ducks out of the way of patrols, squeezes past drones while carrying a tray of meat smothered in Liquid Bronze's Epic Boarbristle Barbecue Sauce with an apologetic air, and then fumbles the tray all over the ship's inner shrines- but not to worry, she'll make it to her darling eventually.

Once she's run out of disasters to cause, that is.

Mosaic!

"You can always cook me meals," said Hera. "I never fail to miss them or appreciate them. I never fail to note the sentiment that goes into their preparation."

She says that as she thinks. It's a dangerous kind of thinking. She has the option to obliterate this entire sector of space as an alternative to answering it, and when it comes to the memory of children that is always a tempting option. Perhaps once she might have.

"The stories have not been kind to me," said Hera. "When they told the tale of Hephaestus, they said that when they placed him in my arms I was so horrified by his crippled ugliness that I threw him from Olympus. They said it like it was a matter of vanity, these men who had never borne a child inside them. They said it like I," she spread ten-trillion peacock feathers across the length of the galaxy, an ocean of green and blue, "am a slave to the biological defects that tormented humanity at the time. Not any of them considered what it meant for a Goddess to recognize a family member as hideous."

There is not certainty in her speech. Her doubts are still evident, no matter how many times she has told this story.

"Hephaestus was not physically deformed," said Hera. "He was spiritually deformed. He was born heartless. A creature of dead matter and dead machines. The mind and soul were nothing special to him, just more raw material, more dead matter to make into more dead machines. In his heart was an all consuming industry that ran for its own sake."

She stepped away. "He was not malicious. No cruelty, no wrath. I had a wicked son, Ares, who despite everything I could still love. Hephaestus was not wicked, he was worse. He was born with the mark of his grandfather, born with the love of creation. And for the sake of his love, anything was possible for him. Anything was acceptable. He would accept any cause, alliance or master, so long as he could continue his work. He would pave over a living galaxy if he could continue his work. Fallen from Olympus, he shared his love with humanity. He taught them to build miles-long cities in the desert to prove they could. He taught them them to burn the planet to power a machine that could pretend to be a very stupid person. He taught them to build the pyramid just to see how high they could pile it. And what he never did was teach them to maintain what they had already."

Her feathers had wilted, a galaxy of bone spikes mouldering away into stardust. "I still wonder if I could have taught him differently," she said.

Ember!

They come for you. All of them.

What wouldn't a man sacrifice for love? Summerkind are awakened to stupefying tranquilizer pheromones by Biomancer attendants, slowing their initial fury to a sclerotic headache, and legions of these dazed shambling soldiers are sent in pursuit. Stumbling, mindwiped and barely awake they pursue you in a vast crowd, hands reaching out to catch something just out of reach.

And it has to be them. Drones can't be relied on to do such delicate work as securing a bride, and the Biomancers are certainly not combat capable themselves. And when awakening a thousand Summerkind doesn't work, their only escalation is to awaken another thousand - and another. The Cancellation's corridors begin to flood with a tide of intensely hung over Summerkind all trying to catch one extremely helpful and enthusiastic puppygirl doing klutzy zoomies.

All of these soldiers are, incidentally, not being deployed in the shooting war with the Plousios.

Roll to Keep them Busy to see how long it takes this situation to resolve, if ever.

Dolce!

Ember hasn't exactly located Iskarot herself, but she has distracted literally everyone who might come between you and him. You find him coming out of the Garden, which glows orange-red with the roaring flames he has lit there.

"I have my bag," he said. "Let's help your friend."

Between him and Sanalessa it is shockingly easy to move through a crowd of sleep-deprived Summerkind. You reach the shuttle bay without problem, but as you're crossing to your destination the unicorn servitor hauls you both aside seconds before the crack-bang of a solid projectile volley blasts into the ground before you. A small rifle unit of ancient, decrepit Summerkind - the geriatric hospital patients kept around for Liquid Bronze's personal edification - have been organized and are staking out a position between you and the escape. You see the silhouette of 20022 standing safely by the doorway well behind them.

These soldiers, despite their dotage, represent a fearsome military unit. They were the best that 20022 could call on in this transitory period for the ship. While you're sure that they have no love at all for Liquid Bronze, 20022 probably made them some promises to get them out here.

"I can hold them off while you escape," said Sanalessa.

Dyssia!

"Is that what you want?" the hand is heavy on your shoulder, heavy and dry and still like a dead man's. "You want to see me imprisoned, little serpent? I understand. I can," you can hear the crackle as lips pull back from gums, "help you get what you want -"

But you don't want that at all. Do you?

You want to know why Zeus still supports the Endless Azure Skies. Why she allowed them to endure the destruction of the Atlas Cultural Sphere. Why she cast them down but did not stamp on the embers. Your course changes -

"I - you want to bring down the Skies? Many do, but you could be the one to make it happen. I can help you -"

But that's not it at all! You can see it in the reflection of the polished keys of the typewriter, the mirror gleam as your hands dance and slam, cutting off the output so fast that the letters smash over the top of each other. A new idea has occurred: what is Hermes doing in the underworld that is so important that she can't deliver Hades' message herself? What would happen if -

"- you wish to - stop! Hermes knows what she wants; she loves humanity, and in that love, she has the power to achieve great things. If you could just focus on one thing you could have my help -"

You're floating. You're buzzing. Everything's here for you, every question trying to get through your fingers all at once. That hand on your shoulder has tightened. It's shaking you, trying to get your attention. To get you to focus. Fingers clench your bones like they're trying to grip your brain. "Why don't you want to pay attention!?" snarls Aphrodite.

But that's the thing. You don't want that at all.

Ha! Heh! Ember's tail wags eagerly as she slips effortlessly out of a door, leaving a dozen dozen Summerkind milling confused in the pheromonal research annex. When they try to come after her, they'll accidentally destabilize the vats and flood this entire section of the Sphere with a hundred thousand contradictory commands! Now, on to her next scene of mischief, of chaos, of innocent mayhem! All she has to do is scamper helpfully down this corridor, take a sharp left to avoid the security checkpoint down the hall, and--

It should be impossible for materials to fail her. Clothing is about form and function, each perfected since before she was born. The world is full of useful and wonderful things just waiting for her to figure out how to use them.

And yet the heel of her shoe twists underneath her and the perfect dance of chaos comes to a sudden, yipping, undignified halt.

She stares up at the brown, slowly dripping ceiling, and too slowly realizes that the grating is dripping the peanut butter from the Heartwarming Wedding Cake Disaster. Ah. Well. In the last moment before being buried underneath a wave of Summerkind, she folds her hands and considers how all mortal endeavor is ultimately its own sort of farce--

[3.]

To make a pancake, one must first create the universe.

Bella blinks. No sooner had Hera suggested that she might cook than she'd found herself standing in the middle of a kitchen, still surrounded by the grand cosmic wonder of Olympus. Her body had taken over her mind a moment later, and now even as her ear bends to absorb the Queen of the Gods' musings about her terrible son she finds herself absorbed in the act of making breakfast. Specifically, pancakes.

Nothing about this is the way she'd always imagined this happening. Every offering she'd ever made to Hera she'd always made excuses for. A lack of ingredients, or time, or, or, or whatever really, but always she would apologize for the meagerness of it all and swear to do it better next time. To do it right. And so in the perfect kitchen stocked with every wonderful grass and grain of wheat and creamy milk-filled pod she could dream of she'd expected herself to prepare something appropriately upscale. A meal to rival anything she'd created before, or even seen inside the Imperial kitchens. Nero herself should not have known a finer or fancier cuisine in all her life.

Instead, Bella was making Redana's favorite breakfast. A thing she'd first cooked when she was nine years old. She grinds out her flours and mixes her fats and picks out the spices that delight her nose the most before turning her attention to the berries that seem like they would be the best compliment to the budding flavor profile unfurling in front of her.

"He also taught them how to paint with liquid crystals so that their art could layer on top of itself and tell a story when you fed it an offering. And how to weave wisps of almost immaterial nothing into beautiful dresses that celebrated the body. And how to make stuffed shark plushes."

She flushes fever hot and tries to bury the moment in the motion of her hands grinding and sorting the powders she needs to work with. Her head hangs, spell of propriety or no, and braces herself for Hera to fling her into a star for being so stupid. Or worse, to laugh at her. She does neither.

"I, uh, saw it all on the Tunguska," she says awkwardly, "I really thought that the Ancients were beautiful. And if Hephaestus gave them those crafts, then I think we lost something precious when he died. Even if he also enabled all the horrible things that struck down the old civilizations in the first place."

...Maybe pancakes were the best that she could offer, after all. A more skilled chef would have seen the potential of a more intricate dish, but the fact of the matter was that Bella had next to no formal training after all. And of all the things she knew how to make, this is the that best responded to the skills she did have. Putting her hands in the batter she can feel when it reaches the consistency that will make it fluff when it hits heat. Her nose can tell her when she's added her seasonings to the perfect levels without needing to know what the measurements ought to be. She can hear the moment when the insides have stopped cooking and she needs to flip them over, and of course her muscle memory guides that flip in a perfect, majestic arc.

It is not the best food that she could make. It is the best food that she could make. The sweet tang of the purple-red berry syrup wafts up her nose and mixes with the storm of cardamom and stars anise that are so delightful it makes her tail curl even in the middle of this awful, heavy conversation.

She looks up, and feels a tear on her cheek. How awful, to see a god this vulnerable and fragile. How awe inspiring to see her still so poised and and beautiful even with all her feathers rotted down to nothing. Bella's breath shudders, and the drip of pancake batter off her claws reminds her to wash them clean before she returns to the final mix and pour.

"I dunno, though. Like I don't blame you at all for throwing him out. I think if I had a son like that..." she trails off for a moment, looking toward the peak of Olympus and trying to imagine it. Bearing a child, trying to raise it. Would it be Dany's? That is, Ember's? That is, urrrrgh, ah,

She nods and her vision is once again filled simple with the infinite wonder of creation.

"Yeah. I do think I'd wind up doing the same as you. Especially in your position, like, how could you not be horrified by everything that could turn out to mean? I don't think it's fair for anyone to call you a monster over that. I'm just, saying I guess, there was something maybe worth salvaging."

There it is, the moment. Bella's hands are pristine, freshly dipped into the purest water before she slides her pinkie claw along the fluffy length of the pancakes to divide the stack in half. She pours the syrup and the mixed berries (a compote, you dipshit) overtop and watches for it to sink into the opening she's created. Her nose tells her it's perfect. Better than she's ever made before. She holds the plate up in front of her like a knight offering a sword.

"For you, then. You deserve more and better but this is all that I can do. I wish the stories had been kinder to you when they were written. I wish it was easier to understand, and be understood. Maybe then..."

Bella stops. Her lips press tight as she watches the dance of the gods unfold behind her. Against the backdrop of the heat of the kitchen and the smell of sweet batter and tart berries though, it all seems somehow more relatable than it had before. Maybe she was just getting used to everything the Auspex already knew?

"We can't really take back the things we've done. But maybe if you ever, uh," she awkwardly clears her throat in place of explaining the image suddenly filling her head to Hera, "You could... try again. Maybe it'd be worth it. Something new, I mean."

“No thank you.”

He can hardly recognize his voice. It sounds thin. Tinny. Details swallowed up by the ringing in his ears. There’s no time for it to recover. The volleys are coming too fast.

“I am not going to leave you alone with him.”

The smoke is growing thicker. Soon, blinking won’t clear the stinging from his eyes. They cannot stay here. The ornate trim of the shuttle bay provides plentiful cover but they will have to dart through the open to do it. Through the smoke. It’s the only way to avoid a direct hit, for now.

And then what?

The elderly Summerkind are slow. They aren't mobile enough to flank them. They could still advance down the hangar. What can he do if they are beaten to the shuttles? They’ll be hemmed in, just the three of them. The smoke is growing thicker. Soon, he won’t have any voice at all.

They can’t stay here.

“Get,” he feels the first cough more than he hears it. “Keep moving. Cover to cover. Outcropping ahead, ten meters that way. You may have. Have to carry me.”

But he’ll run as far as he can.

Somewhere, Dyssia can hear screaming.

The music continues, you understand? Pulsing, pumping, throbbing, beating. And she continues the dance, hands flying across the keyboard. They keys are slippery, she notes. Red. Unpleasantly tacky.

It's not Aphrodite, for sure, because he's here, did you know that?

You can't have desires like this, she realizes. No plans, no rules, no wants. Nothing but the infinite yawning void of the typewriter and what we'll put in it next.

Information. Curiosity. Her first, her greatest loves, since the days of leaning over a barrel and hearing about Out There.

Why is she so distracted? So distracted she can't even focus on who she is? She couldn't stop if she wanted to. What is want? Who is Dyssia? The tempo pulls her along, blood dripping in her wake.

She should--needs?--wants! Wants to do literally anything else.

Dionysus smiles, and runs a finger along her neck. The tempo changes, the hooks dig in, and her body follows.

The keyboard is hungry.

Mosaic!

"..." Hera sighed. She sat down and hugged her knees, her emerald dress extending away from her in all directions like the ocean. Within its depths, fish swam and lilypads bloomed. "Even if I decided to, I could not," she said. "My sister took that chance away. She ate my son alive, and I am not sure either of them even noticed what was happening. Since then things have only gotten worse, and worse, and worse..."

She tilted her head back and undid her hairpin. Her freed hair cascaded endlessly, falling into the depths of her dress, an optical illusion where she was above and below the landscape at once. "I tried to kill her," she said. "In my rage and despair. It was I who made Molech mad. The Spear was intended for Demeter. Ares did his best to fight for me, and we might have won, but Hermes intervened," she laughed bitterly. "She prevented me from killing Demeter, I prevented her from saving humanity. Demeter never gave the incident a second thought. What is left for me to try?"

Ember!

The good news is that you have already come dressed for the occasion.

A few modifications have to be made, of course. Cleaning for one, and then some adjustments for local tastes. A wedding veil is draped across your face, the better to conceal the gag. The bouquet placed in your hands is so overflowing with flowers it conceals the ropes pulled tight around your wrists. A carriage and train is wrapped around your hips, placed so that nobody can see the small device that delivers sharp electrical shocks to your rear whenever you so much as put a foot wrong. You are a klutz, you see, Ember, and the Summerkind handmaidens assigned to prepare you for your wedding have decided to leave nothing to chance. They intend to steer you like a puppet, kept in your place through immediate rebuke the second you leave it. You will be made perfect regardless of your opinions on the matter.

(The Cancellation shivers. Distant metal bends and tears. Your other suitor has not forgotten you.)

In this manner, you are walked towards the temple deck, towards the Shrine of Hera. There Liquid Bronze intends to finally make an honest woman out of you.

Dolce!

In the end, it is the starships - and not the leviathans of the deep void - that are technologically inferior.

The combat drums change rhythm, a deep and terrifying alert frequency. Lights respond to the resonance, applying blue-black filters. A synthetic horn ripples out a cry of alarm and everyone pauses in their fighting to grab hold of nearby wall panels and slam on emergency helmets if they can reach them. Out through the open shuttle bay in the wine dark void, prismatic lightning flares.

And the Sunshark bites.

Metal ruptures and tears. Teeth the size of houses rends through hyperium alloys. Plasmatic heat rends through the void. Debris pours everywhere, a spectacular cascade of ruin. Flesh-orange blotches of Summerkind reincarnation eggs spill out like grapes and the spectacular flares of adaptive evolution as dying Biomancers and support servitors erupt into flocks of tropical parrots and deep sea crocodiles add new colours to the prismatic black. You can see miles across the ruined structure of the Warsphere; twenty percent of its colossal mass gone in an instant as the hunter of the void strikes its prey.

And upon the brow of the mighty creature, one hand holding a pistol and the other a Razorwhip lash which she uses to drive the beast onwards, is a lioness. Her eyes search the ruinous scene for you and you alone.

Dyssia!

Line overtyping line. The ink is layering on thicker and thicker, the white blacked out as characters are hammered into their place. All of the knowledge of the worlds, all the possibility to write new ones, possibilities overlaying and overlaying as the same page is overtyped again and again. With no paper to grip ink hits ink, splashing and wet, beading together and dripping down the page...

You see the truth.

The words are traps.

Reality is in the mirror; in the reflection you can see on the edges where the light hits the liquid ink.

Dionysus is the substance of that mirror and they are not true, but they are not delusion. They are not lies. All of these alternate worlds, all of these possibilities, everything contained within the possibility of the ground-up Hadean crystals used to make this ink - all gateways into this world of creative madness. In those colourless depths are things more valuable than the truth: ideas. New ways of thinking. New ways of being. New ways for the galaxy to be, freed from fatalism.

This is the weapon the God of Madness is here to give you: how to glimpse the shape of something new.

"Nnf."

Bella sighs as well. But then next to a goddess what possible weight could her own melancholy carry? She could sit on the ground next to Hera, but her silly cut up suit will not form an island to match Hera's ocean. Tight fitted and simple fabric that it is, it wouldn't shift enough on her person to make so much as a pebble. She could loose her braids, but the gesture would take her awkward minutes to finish and then what? Half of it was already loose so instead of any dramatic cascade she would at most add a touch of wavy volume to an already loose and tumbled look. Blue hair did not matter in the face of absolute divine sorrow.

The fact is that she's just standing there, having just said something so stupid it might have doomed reality, holding a plate of pancakes with a berry compote slowly seeping into them and ruining their fluffy warmth. She might have been made to be perfect, but perfection meant nothing to a god. Call her what she really is instead: a useless little shit.

Without anything dramatic for her to do, all that's left for her as a response is setting the plate down on a table that both is and is not contained within the depths of Hera's magnificent dress. She picks up a knife and a fork (etiquette above practicality, Bella) and carefully cuts the stack into bite sized pieces. The universe is quiet while she works. There is only the clink of silverware on the surface of a plate and the mixed symphony of two people breathing anywhere in all creation. The gods are quiet. The universe is quiet.

Bella crosses infinity to be with Hera, and kneels down next to her with the plate balanced delicately on one palm. She jabs the fork into a bite of pancake and holds it in front of the Queen of the Gods' mouth, quiet but insistent. There is nothing to be said, there is nothing that can be said, until the offering is accepted.

"Um." she offers at last.

Now she watches Hera chew the food she'd made. If these were Dolce's cooking that might have been enough, but all Bella's gesture buys her is the opportunity to offer another forkful. What the fuck did she expect? They're just pancakes. Even still she offers another bite and then another, a rhythm of fluffy prayer, until the plate is more than half emptied.

"What good's it doing anyone to just give up?"

Her mouth hangs open in shock. What... did she just say? She almost drops the plate in surprise. When she lifts the fork again, her hand is trembling. She does not dare to watch what happens, in case the audacity of continuing to make her offering is worse than the audacity of cutting it off. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck is wrong with her?!

"I just, it's... like you said. Everything is getting worse. Doesn't that mean you're free? You could try, just, just anything at all. It wouldn't even matter how useless or trivial it is. If you can't, erm, have... ch-children then, like, I don't know? You could inspire people to pick up hobbies or just weave stuff yourself or whatever. You could fight another war if that's really what you wanted. You could talk to Lady Demeter or any of your children or siblings or, you know, your wife. Or you just..."

She has to set the fork down on the plate. It takes both hands to hold it in the intense pressure of this moment. Mosaic wouldn't falter like this. Redana wouldn't falter like this. Nobody but Bella would trip here. Why her? Why did she have to be herself?

"It just... doesn't matter. At all. If every stupid little thing turns out to be useless then it's just the same as it is. I just know that if we sit here forever, then we're all gonna wind up dead. And I... used to want that. But I don't now. So I just, I guess, if... if the food meant anything to you just now, then what I'd ask in exchange is that you. That you..."

Her voice falters. But the strain of her muscles, strangely, reminds her how strong they actually are. She didn't mean to arrive here, but Vesper might have. The little heart on the back of the note now tucked into her breast pocket fills her neck with the power to lift up, and sets lantern lights inside her eyes. She dares, from one knee, to behold Queen Hera in this moment.

"Hope," she finishes in a high and clear voice, "And if I have to pay a higher price for that then just name it. Anything. Everything, ok? There are so many mistakes I need to fix. The only thing I need is a world where I can try."

It would be very easy indeed to assume that the bride is completely helpless; is petrified with fright beneath her wedding veil; is a posable doll ready for the ceremony, barely audible even without the sound of Summerkind drones clapping and weeping to see the grace with which she takes such small, dainty steps across the room. At this point, anyone would have given up, and isn’t it obvious that Ember has succumbed to the inevitable?

Ember has succumbed to the inevitable her only lightly singed ass. She is a Ceronian scout. Her ears twitch under the veil, triangulating the positions of the audience, the shape of the room, the offerings before each shrine. Her nose twitches and sniffs, taking in the scents of the room, the air currents which flow through it, the emotional shifts of the crowd. Her arms tense; if she needs to buy time, she will have to toss them over Liquid Bronze’s neck and start strangling him with her bound wrists while wrapping her thighs around him to share the electric shocks and beating him in the face with a lovely bouquet of flowers[1].

Really, the most unfair thing about all of this is that if anyone, Bella should be at waiting at the shrine. Would that mean anything to Bella, if they were to…?

The thought makes her miss a beat and grunt in alarm as her rump becomes slightly more singed.

Would Bella even be on this journey if not trying to marry her princess? But she often seems so pragmatic (even when she is grinning, sweating and naked), and perhaps she simply needs to ensure that the princess’s mother and the gods do not curse the marriage together. Would this ceremony mean anything to Bella’s heart? Would she wish to see Ember— that is, the Princess— come down the aisle in a dress hung heavy with pearls and white lace? Would that make her eyes widen, her mouth open, her tail twitch?

The thought of it fills every bit of free space in her mouth. Suddenly, this entire plan — from start to finish — feels like a gamble too far. How dare she risk her own wedding as the stakes of survival? How could she let herself be trapped in a position where Liquid Bronze of all people might take her special moment away from Bella? And doubtless the pack hasn’t yet informed the Lare about her predicament, since the Sunshark is actively imperiling the ship— but will it disrupt the wedding in time? And will Liquid Bronze stop preening and ignoring just how pretty she looks coming down the aisle? Bella would never.

…does she even deserve salvation? She’s not really Bella’s princess. She’s just an echo, a new drink in an old glass, trying to live up to all the memories that her girlfriend has of that heroic, swashbuckling princess. Redana definitely wouldn’t have ended up in a position like this[2]!

Oh, if only Bella would swoop out of nowhere, scoop her up in her arms, and declare the wedding canceled! If only…

---

[1]: hopefully she can keep the flowers. Maybe put them into a vase in her cabin? Surprise Bella with them?

[2]: a thought which has all the certainty of dramatic irony.

---

[11 on Look Closely. Tell us about the wedding! Tell us about Liquid Bronze! And tell us about what is hidden!]

Is the sheet ruined? Or a work of art?

The ink covers the page from edge to edge, dripping ink into the mechanism. Jewels form around the center, locking up the keys in crystalline splendor

Blindly, she hits a key, and watches it crick-a-crunch a glistening impression of a "K' into a puddle

Glisten. Lovely mouthfeel, that. If ever a word felt like what it is, glisten does--a pool of saliva, holding the light of the 's' in your mouth. Guh-llllissss-en.

She can't even tell where one sentence ends and the next begins. The page squirms with letters like bark on a tree. You know, bark, that thing that famously squirms.

The marionette's strings are cut.

No, no, not cut. Wrong word. Discarded. Abandoned. Left to sag beneath her, pull her down, tug on her wrists and arms and chest like an event horizon. The music is dead, poisoned, probably on the end of a lovely stiletto.

"X" splatters its way through the mirror, and the page is left as smooth for its passage as a rough pond.

Ways of thinking. That's what--

The thought should electrify. Light her on fire, push her through life.

It's the answer she's been seeking. Or, perhaps better said, an answer.

We get so set into ways of thinking that we cannot even see the bars of the cage. Not just in, in ritual, in ceremony, in the "correct" way to worship. In what we want, instead of what is, what could be. We build and rebuild, every day, the way of thinking that reinforces the way we think.

… It's not enough. Not enough to simply destroy the Azura Skies. To cast them down, and then do a nicer, politer version of it. It's the same thought patterns, the same cage, the same seats, over and over again.

But how to. How to avoid the cage?

She stares into the mirror at the figure behind her. At the purple eyes, so full of a smile. New thoughts. And carefully, she reaches up and places one hook in his fingers.

She’s beautiful.

No, the word is all wrong. Not suitable at all. Much too small to match the size of the feeling.

He is starving. He’s been starving. Don’t ask him how long exactly. Long enough that the emptiness inside him feels normal. He hasn’t forgotten, not really, but he’s forgotten enough that he can wake up, get dressed, and go about his business without falling to pieces. He knows he was full sometime, like he knows that once humanity warred with the Endless Azure Skies. Surely it happened at some point, but don’t ask him to describe much more than that, he’s not studied up on it recently.

She is a big bowl of stew, served alongside a loaf of fresh, crusty bread, the kind that tears apart into big, fluffy chunks that were just made for mopping up broth.

She is a cabin you can just barely see through the snowstorm. Up ahead, if you squint, there are windows sharing the light from a big, roaring fire. And through the biting cold is the whiff of wood smoke, growing stronger with each step.

She is the voice saying come in, you must be hungry after such a hard journey.

Through the tinted lights and echoes of battle, he staggers towards the void. One step in front of the other. Arrow-straight through the rubble. He clutches his companion’s hands, and they keep him upright. He is too lost to notice one hand emerges from an oversized hoodie.

Dolce is starving.

Dolce is going home.