"Oh, come now," said Aphrodite, as beautiful as the Skies. "Did you think this was for you?"

The wind pulls at his hair, touching the line where it threatened to recede. He takes a deep breath of pure, clean oxygen. He stretches in the radiant sunlight, the warmth that carries out even here at the system's edge. He feels the trace of humidity, and looks forth to the coming thunderstorm.

He needs no cigarettes here.

"I know exactly what each of you people want, and frankly, it's disgusting," said the Heartbreaker. "Your desires are the desires of the dead, and I mean that quite literally. For you see..."

He leaned across the sweeping silver railing of the Plousios, and he called to the air. "What is the purpose of life?"

And the uncountable trillions of microbacterial life in the air that stabilized the wind currents, perfumed the breeze, and transported nutrients to the larger organisms in this sky blue sea - they raised their voice in chorus to answer.

"Life is the export of entropy!"

"That is all there is to it," said Aphrodite. "All organic life, from the meanest parasite to the most complex biomantic miracle, exists to export entropy. To stabilize the center by pushing chaos to the frontier. When the first algae blooms oxygenated the ocean they pushed chaos into the atmosphere. Laudable, but they were not complex enough to understand their world's limits, and their ecosystem overloaded and collapsed. Demeter had to search long and hard to overcome that problem, deriving ever more complex ways to push chaos to the frontiers in the process. She had to invent the brain, and then invent social organization, and then invent the empire. The technology of empire was able to push entropy to its fringes long enough to build a ladder to the stars. The great work could, at last, continue, unbound by the chains of a singular atmosphere."

He smiled, like a polaroid photograph of a grandfather when he was still young and beautiful. "That is your purpose. The galaxy out there is merely the spoil heap at the edge of the ant nest; the inevitable consequence of the dig. You dare to think that this place is not beautiful? The infinite force of life that builds and maintains and expands it disagrees with you. The galaxy swims with life, and all of it is bent towards this end."

"But," he sighed. "Your desires are not those of the living. You have dead souls. Corpse souls. Broken hearts that see the beauty in the entropy that life itself slaves to expel. You are nothing of mine, you breathless dead, but I love you even still. How can I not? So come, see, the night time sky that lives as the proof of my love."

Night fell across the Skies. A macroengineering marvel beyond measure, involving eclipse and storm clouds beyond comprehension. Celestial mechanics whirled and swung to darken the blue almost to black so that the citizens of the Skies could see the stars and the galaxy beyond.

A galaxy of constellations. Stars organized into framing squares, and the pictures within drawn with stars as ink. The ancients looked for meaning and order in the sky, but the Skies built that meaning and order even if it meant moving the stars themselves. Seen from Capitas, the whole galaxy is organized. Seen from Capitas, entire sectors of uncountable trillions form a single glittering portrait in the endless whirling night.

"In the ancient days, men built pyramids," said Aphrodite. "But they told stories of the Gods immortalizing their favourites in the stars. Now the pyramid is obsolete; any man can become my favourite by immortalizing himself in the Skies of Capitas."

Thus spake Aphrodite... but you might not have the ears to hear him. After all of this, the God of Love might feel distant even from atop his own throne. Instead all this bombast might feel like buzzing, like silence, like the raving of a small man, like knowledge spoken by the choir. Instead all you might see is a night time sky where the stars are not scattered wildly, but organized into neat rows and shapes.

Splendid. For a while.

What did it feel like to be the Crystal Knight?

Bella sits in silence and watches the stars. The motes of pure white that pierce the blue, in all their vast complexity and their woven tapestry of stories written in the Skies to extol the virtues of civilization. True Civilization. Ancient constellations were vague shapes and inferences, but the Endless Azure Skies painted with a far defter brush. Here the stars formed visible lines to depict their greatest moments and the highest kings in their history, things that represented true and absolute beauty in such specific clarity that it was not possible to miss or misinterpret them. Even they had a mind to, they could even backfill the galaxy with nebulae to color in these paintings and render their history in living color.

And it's awe inspiring. It is artifice that the Empire of her childhood never dreamed of. What else could you call it besides total mastery of the universe? The vast tapestry of creation was nothing but a suggestion that had long been ignored. The only thing is, as soon as you stepped away from paradise the whole thing was nothing but gibberish. The stars didn't look like this from Beri. Or to the Portuguese, or to any other gods-damned people in the universe outside of Capitas. All of this work and it only made any sense if you lived here. Did anybody who'd come here on the Plousios even know the sky was meant to tell a story in the first place?

So the trash heap didn't know what it had been thrown away to accomplish. Sure, what the fuck ever. But the Crystal Knight was Azura. She'd even distinguished herself to the point of receiving an exalted title from those on high. Surely she'd known better. Surely she believed in the greatness of her empire and all of this shimmering blue horseshit. She knew, and then they shot her off to the bumblefuck quadrant to play with rocks on a scale that was completely useless to the grand work happening in the place where they actually exported all that entropy.

Then what did it feel like to be her? An Administrator Species member in good standing with her empire who knew that the sky she saw when she looked out from her palace ship was broken and wrong. Real beauty was somewhere, invisible to her eye. She must have known enough to miss it. Had they jettisoned her because she'd been a cruel lunatic tyrant, or did she just crack from the strain of being so far away from everything that was 'real?'

There had been a quiet desperation to her reign that Bella had missed before she killed her. All those projects, all of her tinkering... she'd been nothing more than another striving ghost, like all those people on Salib. Only whole enough to know that she'd been cracked. Who could possibly believe in all of this and not be driven insane by that kind of life?

"Oh fuck off." she says through a luxurious stretch.

Her ear twitches first. Her neck turns, and her eyes follow. Bella beholds a nervous sheep fighting valiantly to stand in place. She listens to the music of his determination, and sighs.

"I didn't do shit, Dolce. Like I could have killed that girl even if I wanted to. Do you even understand how many improvements they made on her compared to me? Trust me: not getting killed by her was impossible enough already. No, you don't owe me a fucking thing."

She laughs, though she can feel her ribs straining with every breath. She turns onto her side, away from the Skies and their condescending god and back onto the floor of her... of the ship. Her tail flicks above her head and her spine curls into a crescent as she stretches across the length of her couch.

Slowly, she rises. She walks over to Dolce and looms overtop of him in silence before she reaches down and flicks the bell hanging from his dapper blue uniform. She flashes him a smirk.

"This place pisses me off so much I can't stand it. Every new detail I notice makes me want to kill someone. But I think," she taps the bell again, "Revenge is gonna be a little harder to manage this time. It's not even the size of the place that's the problem, right? They're so fucking... vapid. All of this. Everything. All of us. For a stupid fucking color. To draw scribbles with the universe because they can't think of anything else to do with all their power. We could kill everyone in charge and I bet you the Skies wouldn't notice after a day or two."

She flexes her talons, watching the tips gleam in the light with an intensity to her face that could crack buildings. But when she moves again, it's only to toss her hair in a messy wave over her shoulder and down her back. She ought to return to her rest, but she holds her back straight and proud for the moment. Diminished in form though it is, the Regalia shines like a tiny star atop her head.

"But."

Her teeth are daggers in her grin.

"There is one thing we can do. This is where we're leaving the Summerkind. And the people of Beri, and every Pix or other person who isn't sure about our journey. Help me organize it, Dolce. Let's give them paradise, if they'll take it. I'm sure it'll be a pain in the ass to negotiate, but if I can make this place do one actually good thing before I turn my back on it I'll count it as a win.

"It's... all I can manage. Artemis has plans for me too, you know. I have to get ready her next gauntlet, if I have to hear her call me flabby again I'm going to kill myself out of spite."

"I have several stacks of forms taken from my last job, and I can reproduce the ones I do not have. I would be happy to put them to good use." It's something. It's more than standing still. No, it's much, much better than standing still. A bit of the tension leaks from him, finding a direction to move in.

He can help her to a more appropriate spot. Or he can bring his desk here. He'll do either. He'll do anything.

Wherever and whenever they are, there comes a moment when he stops. A thought, at last, has come into view. "You could tell. You could tell right away that the Azura here weren't the ones to target." He says it without judgement. Just a simple truth. "You're right, I know you're right, but I didn't think about it until you said it."

Above him, a thousand thousand worlds upended to create a pretty picture. About him, the god of love calls it good. In his hands, he straightens his papers. Unnecessarily.

"Does it feel like this...all the time? Holding a knife, when someone you want to use it on is. Right there? It's, well, it's quite a lot. So much that...even though I know you're right. I didn't think about it until you said it."

Dolce of Beri looks to Bella the Deodekoi, Praetor of Nero.

"How did you manage it? All this time?"

"All of the suffering, all of the work. Centuries of war, of effort, of empire. Of painting the sky with royal azure blue."

Dyssia is still staring out the window--the too-large, too-open window, the better to display the universe with to the gloriously new bridge, aren't you so happy you came--with hands limp at her side, shoulders sagging.

"For a picture in the sky."

Where's Irassia? What speck in what quadrant of which picture?

She's not angry.

Which is, itself, strange. It had felt so strong, so pure, just seconds ago. A god just called her scum. She should be foaming, righteous, upset, not--

She should feel something, surely?

Is there--

"Do you think they have a department dedicated to making it happen? Like, you know, some happy cluster of Synnefo, smiling at whoever wants to wreak their will in starlight? D'you think they'd want to outsource their immortality or micromanage every aspect?"

It's…

"How much effort is dedicated to this? For something that's not visible until they turn off the lights? All because…"

Because they recognized, from the beginning, that their grand artistic design was a lie.

Like, sure, paint the map blue. Bring civilization to the frontier. Expand the center. But there will always need to be, you know. The outside. The frontier. The backwater. And there will always need to be people there.

It was never going to happen. It was--

It was always a lie.

As the Alpha of a Ceronian pack, Ember should, by all rights, have an answer to this, all this - to why the Azura think themselves the center of the universe, how their schemes function, on what timeline the sidereal architects work on. As a Princess, Redana should, by all rights, have some political argument against this, some devastating line which punctures their hubris and makes the folly of attempting to immortalize themselves at the cost of an entire universe clear.

But she doesn't. She was never a very good princess, and the Silver Divers are not a politically relevant pack, just another minor scout-pack devoted to Poseidon and his wealth. She doesn't have an answer to Aphrodite's villain speech, and she doesn't have an answer to the constellations. She considered drawing them, just to make sure that they wouldn't be lost if something happened to the Azura and inexplicably didn't happen to her sketchbook, but she gave up when she realized that there's probably artbooks available, each one packed with concept art and contextual articles. That's an art too, after all, and the Azura are all about their art, this art, their use of the entire universe as raw material for their projects. How could they not have artbooks?

So what she does, instead, is the sort of thing that she's been doing since she left Tellus.

She puts her arms around Dyssia's arms and squeezes, and puts her head on the Azura's sholder, and is just there. Good luck trying to pry her off! A lifetime and a galaxy ago, she was practicing on plushies, never realizing that she was preparing for moments just like this. She's steady on her feet, just warm enough to be reassuring, and good at squeezing in a way that reinforces the physicality of the body.

Cry if you like, Dyssia. She will remain steady and present. Take deep breaths and she'll take them with you. Pat her head; it's clinically proven to reduce stress.

You are hurting, and all she can do is this. So it is vital for her to do this.

A breach in the blue. A carcass tears its way into paradise.

Rainbow light bleeds where its hide has been pierced by the cosmic flock. Silver light shines upon its brow where the mark of Artemis alights still. Its jaws hang loose to reveal an infinity of teeth and a storm of insects wraps it like a veil. Liquid Bronze has come, and the oil-slick chroma of his passage stains the perfection of the Skies. King, slave and madman, he has sworn himself to the Earthshaker and carries a shard of chaos into paradise.

Ahead another storm begins to rise."

"My brother has long sought to subvert this domain," said Zeus, wind pulling at her dress, tugging at her hair. "It is the way of brothers. He demands that some things remain beyond understanding, that the unknown should be feared and supplicated. I have never denied him his desire, but I have always known it to be a folly."

The reborn Plousios shudders as the first strong wind hits it. Crystal sails open to catch the wind, turning the ship and sending it through a garden of floating asteroids, each heavy with mighty trees.

"You do not see the humanity in it," said the Thunderer. "And you are right not to. This is no thing of yours. None of your kindness lives here, no equality, none of the stories you value. This is a place for me. I, who carved the atom from the cosmic ocean. I, who placed every star in the sky. I, who wrote laws of mathematics for their beauty alone. I, who breathed life into dead clay, with no plan or higher purpose than the joy of creation. I was here before my brothers and sisters, and I will be here after they have passed. At the dawn of time, standing atop my father's body, I struck a single blow against the cosmic firmament and all since then has been the ripples. I believed I knew how it would end: the ripples would pass, the lake would still, and this universe that I had created would smooth out to the same perfect flatness as before."

She raised her hand, the distant thunder rising. Her clouds were indigo in the daylight, the atmosphere burning the edges of the storm orange, the sky around it teal, the water inside it halo gold.

"So imagine my surprise," said She, "that this place began to form instead. That instead of a passing ripple, a whirlpool began to form. That a tiny micron would sprout, and flourish, and swarm. That it would re-order its own world, and then its neighbouring worlds, their sun, and then other suns. And I saw, for the first time, the Fates reach up to their tapestry of the galaxy's end and begin to unwind the threads of the ending."

A bolt of lightning split the blue, racing against the speed of light as it continued ever on towards that distant speck of coloured light.

"A better ending? A worse ending?" said Zeus thoughtfully. "Perhaps you have opinions on that. For me, it does not matter. All that matters that the Skies are not the ending I thought inevitable. Daughter Redana, you who seek freedom in your heart, perhaps you of all people can understand me. Every day the Azura continue their work is a day I do not know what the future holds."

In the endless distance the endless thunderbolt struck its target. It burned through to the heart. The roar of thunder and wind, the slash of rain, the speed of the Plousious as it rode the storm - all of this came together into a sense of speed and power, of precarious existence balanced on cosmic edge of paradise.

"Can you forgive me this?" asked Zeus.

It hadn't been the Eater of Worlds that made Bella's flesh crawl. Vast and terrifying as it was and terrible as it might have smelled, that creature had died before she'd ever laid eyes on it. It was Odoacer that scared her: the woman who had put a ship in the great beast's brain pan and then rode that achievement to a political stalemate with the most formidable woman in the universe.

Every plate at that dinner party had been arranged in the shape of a sword. Every selected dish was both opulent and at the same time brutal; gestures meant to offend and manipulate as sure as the seating arrangements had been designed to provoke conflict. She'd sat and watched with her heart in her mouth while so many of Nero's most loyal subjects were summarily executed and thrown into the depths of space to decorate the Armada's hunting grounds.

The only thing that had kept Bella alive was that her relative unimportance put her low enough on the hit list that she'd had the time to slip away from the party and disappear into the monster's jaws, which on balance felt less like suicide. That's what it took to stand up to Nero. She's not sure who if anybody she knows ever properly appreciated how horrifying a thought that really was.

Bella looks across the horizon one more time, and barks with laughter. Zeus could make her excuses, but the truth that Odoacer had shown her is that the King of the Gods was all too willing to be manipulated.

A shiver crawls up her spine. Bella leans back and flops onto her seat at last. She rolls her neck behind her shoulders and watches Dolce upside down. And she shakes with laughter once again.

"It is really fucking funny hearing you, of all people, talk about murdering someone. Guess everybody's got a line, huh? Artemis must like you a lot. After all, she trusted you with someone much more precious than me."

Her smile is languid and graceless, split somewhere halfway between drunk and bored. Only her eyes are sharp and burning, though this is nothing new between friends.

...What the fuck is she supposed to say here? He wants advice? A pat on the head? For someone to tell him how to not fuck everything up when the weight of his world is on his shoulders? She snorts.

"Does it hurt? Not knowing, not being able to do shit and wondering if that was meant to be your moment?"

Bella yawns, and slides down onto her back. With her arms folded behind her head, she stares up through the crystal ceiling and watches a bolt of lightning tracing through the endless blue skies.

"Join the club, I guess. I'm aimed at Gaia. I'm going to give my sisters real lives, so they can be more than knives and bombs. That's all I can tell you. Everything I pass up is just because I can't afford to blow up before I get there. That's why nothing here is worth shit. Call me callous, but I just don't care about saving the galaxy. And I wish everybody who did would just ask Hades to do it for them and quit haring off in ways that make my job harder. That's what I think."

Disillusionment tastes like caffeine.

Which, actually, is its own flavor, thank you very much. It shines beneath the surface of the drink, bitter, sharp, acrid.

Like, it turns out, attempting personal rituals when--

"It's like, I keep trying to do what normally calms me down, right?"

She inhales the scent of the coffee, and is bitterly grateful that at least the drink isn't blue.

Which is, alas, more than she can say for the rest of the kitchen.

Is it weird to say that she's going to miss the taste of crab? It was their defining meal, their cultural foodstuff and--

She grits her teeth.

"And this keeps happening. It's like, it's the same drink, right? The same food. The same ceremony surrounding it.

"And yet, no the hell it isn't. I keep--keep, you know, going to reach for something. Reach for where something was, where it ought to be, only to find that some fucker rearranged the drawers for better symmetry.

"It's a hearth, but it's not. Not my hearth."

Carefully, she tips the carafe into a mug--beautiful, fluted, delicate, wrong--and offers it to Hestia.

"Sugar?"

The Princess Redana Claudius of Tellus rides through the void. Ember of the Silver Divers listens to the words of Zeus Progenitrix, the only sound in a silent world. The wind that beats her with exhilarating blows, that threatens to tear her helmet away, is utterly silent. The intoxicating ripple of the forests, as if all were part of some larger organism stirring into life, plays before her without so much as a whisper. Behind her, on a cable not too dissimilar from a Plover's, stretches the storm-tossed Plousios. And beneath her ripples the polychromatic rubbery hide of her horse. Its wings catch the wind and send the two flying, and in her wake she drops beacons, points to tack to, lanterns in offering to Poseidon.

Do not let us be the ones drowned tonight, Uncle, she murmurs. But still her glorious Deus Pater speaks, and it's impossible not to pay attention to what your parent is saying, particularly if they might ask you a pointed question at the end of it, and it will look so bad if you were goofing off and trying to get that old blowhard lightshow to give you treats instead. So as she soars, and as she charts the route that will take the Plousios safely through, she continues to speak words that truly only Zeus can hear.

If one new ending is possible, she mouths into the roiling storm, why not another? Or another? Do we have to be satisfied that there's only two choices, this or that? Do I have to be satisfied?

She grips tight with her thighs, for all that she's buckled down into the saddle. Every bit helps, and the physical sensation grounds her, reminds her that she doesn't have to get lost in the labyrinth of possibilities. If she asks that question and is not careful, then she will forget why she is going to Gaia at all, why she is braving this storm, why she needs to bring her friends to the very end of all ends. She will be dizzy with thoughts of who she was and who she had become; of Bella and the shedding of aprons and lace; of how far she had brought Dolce and Vasilly; and, oh, Alexa.

She hopes that you are happy, Alexa.

She hopes that when she opens up the sky again, you will still be happy.

Maybe only they've got it so far, but what matters is that a difference is possible, and that means... anything can be. That was true back when I was there, back home, and it's true out here, and aren't you giddy with it?

The voidhorse tucks in its wings and dives. Smaller debris, and she doesn't want to think too terribly about the source. Small enough that it will simply yield before the Plousios's transformed might, but big enough to crush her if she were incautious; small debris the size of big debris, then.

I don't know that you have to apologize to me. Dyssia might have words with you, I think. But you know what I want and what it's always been: to not know what the future holds either. Does that make me too much like you?

Perhaps this goes unanswered. Redana's got a lot to concentrate just now, anyway, leaving a trail through peril and into different, new peril. And she wouldn't go back to Tellus for anything.

Dolce’s had a desk brought out. From a different room, he’s brought a comfortable chair to sit in while he works. The heights don’t quite match up, but then again, his height didn’t match up to aesthetic perfection either. He whispers a prayer of thanks that the birds were unable to fix that too. He only pauses his pen when she’s finished speaking.

“Hrm.”

The wind plays at his curls, without disturbing a single sheet of paper.

“It’s good advice. Perhaps we ought to post signs, reminding our crew to try writing out a wish to Hades before attempting the next coup. If anyone steps forward without proof of documentation, then we can declare their plot null and void. Quite the timesaver.” Is he filling out his next form? Sketching out a poster design? Formulating a wish himself? These are all questions. “It is all good advice. Have something valuable to aim at. Too valuable to risk for another good. Even if…”

He falls silent. Still. The papers offer no help, though he stares long at them. Gently, carefully, he returns his pen to its holder. The documents are already straight; he tidies them up anyway, and sets a weight on each stack for good measure. He has to stand on his chair, on tiptoe, reaching past the top of his desk to -snap! snap! some decorative latches. The whole top of the desk lifts up, separating cleanly into a workstation perfect for a lap. Dolce trundles over with his precious cargo, sets it and himself down beside Bella’s sofa, and rests his back against it as he gets back to work.

“To answer your question: Yes.” He says, wearily. “It hurts rather badly. It was a lot easier dealing with wrongs at a distance, and in hindsight. Now? I can do something. I’m sure I have to do something. But I’ll only get one shot. No second chances, no wasting it. So until the time comes, I have to sit with a world gone wrong and just bear it. For as long as it takes. Even if,” and his stomach turns, and his shoulders hunch with shame. “Even if it hurts, and I don’t. Know the heads of the Skies well enough to…hesitate. Enough.”

As if he has the right to even think such a thing. As if Dolce of Beri is the one to decide who lives and who dies. As if those reprimands made the thought any less tempting.

“I’m glad you have Gaia to aim at.” He moves on. Quickly. “It’s, well, it’s a little more complicated for me. When I saw you’d remembered some of the voyage, I wanted to talk to you about it, but then Summerkind, wolves, assassins; I never got the chance until now.” He plays with his pen. Something to keep his fingers busy. His mind’s too busy for important work. “I don’t know how it is for you. It sounds like you remember quite a bit more than me. When I think back, it’s like looking down at a planet through a cloudbank. I see some things clearly, I know some things happened, but the further I get away the foggier it gets. I know I was standing on this planet, and such-and-such was happening, but I couldn’t tell you how I got there, or where I went afterwards. Between two points, was that five minutes, or five months? Which order did they come in, really? How can I know whether or not I’ve got it all back?” A question he’s not keen on exploring too deeply. There may not be a bottom to that well. “I can’t be sure any wish I think of now is the same wish that’s carried me thus far. All I can do is trust that, if the wish was important enough, I’d find my way back to it again.”

And there’s Zeus right over there. And there’s Aphrodite’s breath, still tinging the air with longing. And here’s a sheep, watching them both. Observing. Thinking.

Waiting.

“...could I ask you for a story? From before we reached the Skies.” He’s settling down with his work. Reclining against the soft furniture. “Maybe that will knock something loose. It’d be worth a try, at least.” His head rests so, so close to her hand. It will not take much effort to reach over. To let her fingers sink deep, deep into those soft, luxuriant curls. They grow so thick, so strong, that no claw could hope to accidentally nick his skin. If one’s senses were keen enough, how many hours could be whiled away, exploring all the ways his wool is lovely to the touch?

He won’t mind. He’s not going anywhere. Except to give the slightest sway, to give the slightest jingle, to invite her attention.

Redana!

"There are more than two choices. I did reprimand them," sighed Zeus, watching particulate destruction scatter over the Skies. "At the height of their power. You do not know how bad things were. They broke My thunderbolts into needles and lanced them into each others brains. They built cathedrals of electricity and sacrificed billions upon their altars. Things progressed faster then, and it was a rush to see, but I could not countenance it and..."

The thunderbolt returned to her hand, coiling around it like a serpent of glittering indigo. Every moment of it was the tearing of the sky, booming thunder deeper and fiercer than the roar of the Engine.

"I rebuked them," she said. "And the consequence of that was catastrophic. Trillions died. Planets shattered. Vast macrostructures broke into glittering stardust. Entire species, entire civilizations, burned away screaming in the dark. I thought it was a simple change: to give even the least amongst them the ability to shatter the tools of oppression. I thought that they would realize that their civilization could not exist if it was failing the lowest amongst them, and they would rebuild a new consensus. Instead they found it easier to rebuild their Empire without electricity at all. For all this, it is still an improvement over what came before, but I taught the child a lesson by breaking an arm..."
"Father."
"Oh no."
"Look at me father."
"Not you."
"You did the right thing, father," said Mars, resplendent in silver buttons and the correct shade of red for the eighth year of the Atlas Consolidation Campaign. "You killed them. You committed an atrocity. And they learned! They did not repeat their mistakes. They learned to cower before the Gods. They learned again when Molech fired the Spear. Half the galaxy's death taught a lesson to the other half. Peace has endured in the Skies, war confined to the ritual of Nemesis."
"I do not wish for your solution, Mars."
"But it is the correct one!" screamed Mars, snatching the thunderbolt from Zeus' wrist. "It is the correct one! I know it! Hermes knows it! Apollo knows it! You must punish vice with atrocity! You must stamp upon the necks of the mortals until their spines shatter and they find the flexibility to obey!" As he spoke, the thunderbolt twisted pitifully in his grip. "Kill them, kill them, and keep killing them! Kill the cruel! Kill the wicked! Kill the tyrants! Kill the unjust! Kill the stupid! Kill them so that all the others see! Kill them so that all the others know! Kill for love! Kill for hope! Kill for freedom! Send them all to Hades and let him sort them out!"
"Well... he has, hasn't he?" said Zeus. "Redana, child. You do not know what the future holds, but you know of the past. What do you think of the kingdom of my brother, Hades? Should I heed Mars, and send all the wicked to join him?"

Dyssia!

"Definitely not," said Hestia. She's wearing Azura blues too, her bear hoodie no longer its comforting shade of brown. She may be the sister of Zeus, but she still has to show respect in this place. One day, if the Skies have their way, she might never stop having to show respect.

"You know how the Skies have a way of making you feel broken if you don't fit into them?" said Hestia, taking a sip. "Well, you're lucky - you had that feeling even way out on the fringes of them. You got used to it as a child. But out there they only controlled things like culture, education, society and so forth. Think about what happens to the poor bastards who come all this way to paradise and discover that they don't like how the air tastes? What if the seats are misaligned for their tails? What if they find that the Skies have set the thermostat a fraction of a degree lower than what they're comfortable with? The more things that are controlled, the more people you boil away."

She set the mug down. "You ever wonder why so few people actually live here?"

"But most of them don't blame the Skies for that," she said. "They just figure that they're broken, and they either Biomancy themselves 'better', putting themselves right back where they were before this whole fucking thing started, or they take the Knightly path as an act of fallegation. And don't think that's not by design, either. The Skies still needs its armies and it wouldn't have them if everyone who came here was perfectly content."