"You do understand the Twelve Labors were a punishment, right? Or is that the point you're-- mmmn. No, never mind. I get it, ok? I get it. Can't wait to see the bullshit you've got lined up for me on the other side of this."

Bella rolls her eyes. A beat of two, and with heroic effort she surges from her spot on the wall onto one knee. And from there, to her feet. Her arms stretch toward the stars and her back arches in a long and elegant curve behind her. As her fingers bend back and her heels leave the ground so she can stand on her toes, Bella is a bow. Her tail lifts up toward her hair and together these become the string. It would take no effort whatsoever for Artemis to reach out and pluck her to send some terrible doom in the shape of an arrow at wherever whatever or whoever she pleased. All that it would cost is the woman she'd been speaking to, which is really no cost at all.

But the Goddess simply watches. As much as not she doesn't even really do that much. The woman, once a maid, once a Praetor, once an assassin, once a monster, once a demigod, once a queen, now nothing, settles back down into a standing position and becomes Bella again. She rolls her shoulders to feel their power. She tenses her claws against the air. And she scoffs. Then she sighs, softer this time.

"...But if I make it to the end that's it, right? Sure. That's a deal, Goddess. Do what you need with me till my sins are all washed clean. Just stop calling this shit impossible around me. I can't tell if you noticed or not, but I'm not Heracles. I don't have the luxury of using words like that. All this is for me is the continuation of the Olympics. I just. Haven't won yet. That's all."

Her feet are stones at the ends of her exhausted legs. They lift and fall without feeling as she walks away from the miracle projects of an Empire she cannot bow to and into the place where the air smells like the garden meeting the sea. Salt and rust and rotting plants, dried flowers and bones encrusted through with gleaming diamonds. A place of broken glass and shattered murals. Even the crabs give this place a wide berth. 

Of course they do. No living creature wants to intrude upon the temple of Death.

Bella twists her neck as she moves. Her shoulders seem to weigh as much as her entire body, but she simply strikes them with a fist until pain takes over fatigue as the prevailing sensation. She lifts them with pride, and her arms swing with controlled ease by her sides at every step. She does not pick her way gingerly through the path in front of her, but rather crushes it all underfoot in a straight line. Fallen warriors, each and every one of them her superior, shatter beneath her heel. The crunch melds with the clacking of her toe claws against the metal of the floor and together mark her entry. 

Cloaked in shadow with eyes gleaming, a tall, lithe silhouette crosses the threshold into the place where Sagakhan had attempted to explain the nature of the universe, once upon a time. Then as now, she wears a pure and simple white robe. Then as now, her body screams inside of her with the the memory of a hundred horrible abuses. Then as now, there's nowhere to go but forward. To the place where XIII was born.

But this time her eyes see clearly. She sees green and gold and blue and flecks of melting orange where before there was only swirling black and grey. This time her head is held high and the air is filled not with chanting and her own desperate screaming, but with the crunch crunch clack of her own steady footfalls and the distant sound of lapping water and the rippling plips of condensation striking a pool. This time she does not need anyone to tell her that she has claws.

She pulls the place and the moment into her lungs, and transforms it into the voice of bright and musical authority.

"Vesper."