[b]Redana![/b]

"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 [i]you[/i]."
"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?"

[b]Dyssia![/b]

"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 [i]live [/i]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."