Ice. Every vessel in her body restricts with the sheer intensity of the cold clawing at her insides just now. The fractal patterns of frigid crystals grow in the pit of her stomach and fan outwards from there. Her spine is so tense so suddenly that she fears it is going to shatter. Her ears stretch painfully toward the wall above her head. Her breath is hissing through her teeth.

Bella's eyes leave the goddess to behold her claws once more. These misshapen and brittle tools that she'd put such pride in her entire life, attached to the long and twisted fingers of a monster who had slept so long that the universe passed it by. Her arms, with their hideous white fur and all of the acid burn marks that hadn't been bothered to get cleaned away when she'd been processed to show off more of the cold, pale skin underneath and appear more "human". All her vaunted muscles were straining and sore, but even more than that they were soft and shattered. Mosaic had moved a mountain and the attempt broke her. 

Every awkward place her body pinches where it shouldn't, or stretches where it can't afford to feel on display. Her strength is built into softness, and in her awkward halfassed lifestyle she's let both slip from between her horrible fingertips. That plain and ordinary face she'd seen in the water is all that she could be. This unshaped mass of lumpy clay is all her body could ever be. Disgusting. At once too fat and too thin, too human and too animal, too burned out and too lazy. All in all completely useless. A relic with nothing to be proud of. She should have stayed where she belonged.

What had she been expecting, exactly? A pat on the head? To be told that she was [i]special,[/i] that she had some grand fate that the Gods themselves had ordained for her? Pathetic and stupid, Bella.

Her fingers curl into fists, and it takes every fraction of power in her body to uncurl them again before she can stab her claws into her palms. Her lips curl into a sneer, and then a snarl, all teeth with nothing but her own mouth to bite back down on. She wills her lips closed again, and breathes out through her nose. She'd spent too much time among the wolves. It was so easy to hear their howling and get swept up in the power of that swell. But here on the floor, burning and freezing to death at the same time it's suddenly so much easier to see why the moon never quivered at the sound. 

Her arms are trembling as she sets them in her lap. Her eyes shine like lamp lights in the dark. She forces her attention back to the goddess, who has not looked away even once this entire time.

"...Fuck you," she says, her voice barely above a whisper, "Don't you dare underestimate me."

The words are deliciously warm. She can feel her throat thawing and the crackle of her very dry lips as they finally taste moisture again. Her heart pounds with frantic delight inside her chest, equal parts thrilling at the terror of the hunt and the elation of the chains that fall at her feet.

"She's stronger than me? Faster than me? Works harder than I do? I don't care: she's between me and Vesper. I am [i]going[/i] to save my sister, Lady Artemis. I'm gonna to pull her head out of her ass and I'm gonna do it without resetting her, and I'm sick to fucking death of being told all the ways that's impossible."

Even now, Bella does not bother standing. Her position has not changed and there is no show of force she can muster that will change Artemis' view of her, especially when a show of force is just what she'd said she doesn't want or need. She does not even raise her voice above the shaky whisper she'd begun with or make any secret of her terror just now. All of that is for shit. What matters is that she has a voice at all.

"Would you like it in writing? Because I'll give it to you. If I'm a failure then so be it. If I'm a disappointment even though you played me anyway, that's nothing new to me. Nero, Redana, Jil, Dolce, even Dyssia. I've let everyone down who's ever depended on me. But here I am. I'm not asking you to do the work for me, ok? But since I know you can hear me for once, this is my prayer. Light my path, Artemis. Show me where to put my feet so I can get where I set out to go. If show me even that much care, then I promise you here and now that I'll be whatever it is you need. No matter what it costs me. I will not allow a Diodekoi, not an Empire, not even a God to stop me. After that. After that, if you're satisfied, then I'd like..."