"This is," said the Shogun, "exactly what I am talking about. Come. All of you! Look at each other! Really look! Look past the beauty of those faces to see how tired and sad they are! Look past the thoughtfulness of those words to hear how full of despair they are! I was warned that I would greet ambassadors from the Underworld, and if you are they it must be as grim a place as the stories say!"

She leapt into the air, and her burning feet landed on paws held out in offering. She stepped forwards, onto the shoulders of wolves, so that she could stand eye-to-eye with the Azura Dyssia. "Of course I don't want to do that," she said, smiling as she leaned in to touch nose to nose. "But that is not the question I asked. I asked if you wanted to do that, little dissident, little rebel. Because if you do, then how could I not grant your wish? Say the word and I will send my packs to burn the skies. I will have them burn every world just as we burn the worlds of Nemesis. I will have my ships reverse themselves over population centers so that the plasma fire of their thrusters burns cities to ash. I will land my legions to personally crucify every citizen on every planet that resists. I will launch the populations of worlds into space to form a ball of corpses so massive that it will feed the void sharks for years. I will personally travel to the Saoshyant's palace right over there and make her swallow my entire arm so I can feel her choke to death around me."

Her footstool had caught fire, fur burning with oily peals of smoke, the Shogun's burning feet digging their brands deep into muscle and flesh beneath. She steps to the left, onto a new servant, wet nose tracing around your cheek. "It would be nothing to me," she said. "The death of this empire. The return of unrestricted war. Nothing - nothing not nearly as satisfying as offering this small gesture of hospitality to you, my new friend."

Teeth. Teeth. Teeth.

"But you won't. No! You won't. Because you are a prisoner of math. Your huge intelligent brain can imagine all of those people out there. You can hear the phrase 'trillions of deaths' and let it fill you to the point where it overwhelms your sense of scale and your brain short-circuits and shuts down. You would call it atrocity and refuse to countenance it, even though my war would be the cleanest, sweetest, most humane war waged in the galaxy's history! But even if I only had to kill one percent of the population of the Skies, half of one percent, a thousandth of a percent - the death toll would still be measured in those trillions and the war would still take centuries. That is their greatest shield, did you know? The scale of what they have built. But all the ideology in the world will not stop me because I do not care, eternity will not stop me because I will die young, all the numbers in the world will not stop me because I cannot read. So take care when you tell me what it is that I want," she kissed your cheek and stepped down to the ground, leaving her second footstool engulfed in greasy fire, "Lest I decide that what I want is you."

She swung around to Vasilia, each footprint that left its scorch-mark in metal rather than flesh coming as a relief and a blessing. "No angels?" she said. "Are you sure? Because what is an angel if not a perfect being, created by God for the maintenance of the galaxy? As She once wrought a universe alive with nymphs, sprites and spirits, so have our Creators wrought us to be whirling natural forces. Imagining yourself as people is a delusional appropriation of an alien moral system. You are the mudslide, you are the west wind, you are the gravitational force that holds the planets in check! You have a purity of purpose and a purity of essence uncorrupted by selfishness, one that will forever reassert itself no matter how far you wander from it! You, little sheep? What will you do once you have miraculously built a galaxy of peace and kindness? Why, you will settle down and open a little tea shop and spend the rest of your days in the kitchen. Just as you did before, just as you naturally returned to on Bitemark, you are forever enslaved to what you think is beautiful and satisfying and calming and that was written aeons ago by men with computers."

She took a deep, satisfied sniff. She stopped, not quite within arms reach.

"For you to come here and stand before all of this war and chaos with steady back - that is the most daemonic thing I have ever seen. You have built your own personal hell, and it is right here and right now. I respect it."

And at last, she turns her attention to Bella, looking at her palm atop hers. She considers it, gently, thoughtfully, even as she takes her thumb and starts to twist it back at a painful angle. "You talk of the Empress," she said, no longer playful. "You talk of the Empress while in such pain? You talk of the Empress with such despair? You disrespectful fool, how dare you? Her name is light and joy, and should be received and spoken with light and joy. Your broken body is unprepared for this blessing."

With a whirl and rush of fabric she took off her overcoat and cast it to the side in one smooth motion, revealing a chest bandaged with ribbons.

"Get down on your knees. Take off your shirt. Press your cute breasts to the cold metal floor. I am going to massage you. I will beat all the pain and misery out of your battered body. Only once I have you gasping in pleasure and liberation will you be ready to receive your answers."

She did not speak from a place of lust or dominance. This was religion, this was duty - and you are broken meat that she is going to, without compassion or gentleness, repair.

The tiny breath she draws in is the only acknowledgement she makes of the pain. Bella watches her thumb back farther and farther, twisted and pulled to unnatural lengths, and her lips stay set and proper. Her eyes are curious but passive. She inclines her head to the slightest degree while she waits for the digit to break, and she watches.

But the Shogun releases her. Gingerly, she spreads her finger wide, and then balls them into a fist. She turns her back on the woman whose information she craves. Her feet carry her in four careful, perfect steps to the place she should have been from the beginning. She takes her wife's face in both her hands. She pulls close, close enough to feel the warmth of her body radiating onto her forehead. Close enough to feel the splash of startled murmuring against her lips. Close enough to drink in every star and sparkling detail lost within her quivering eyes.

She pulls her closer. The kiss is hot and angry, and it tastes like blood. It is dizzying, to drink in something so beautiful and complete and yet so far away from the splinter of obsession now pulsing in her eyes. When she pulls away, she nearly stumbles. When she pulls away a trickle of blood dribbles from the corner of her lip. She laps it away as she squeezes Ember's wrist one last time. This is the touch of the Anemoi, this is the quiet thank you and I love you and goodbye.

"Do not interfere!" she barks.

Her voice is loud and firm, with the inevitable and rolling depth of absolute authority carrying every syllable. Her crown blazes on her head brighter than a sun and in this single moment Bella is an Empress in her own right. Her posture is proud and defiant even as her face is carved as a statue of absolute composure and grace. The air around her crackles with power. For one shining moment, long enough only to notice and admire her, she is the most powerful figure in the room. There are no shadows on this ship. Only wolves bending their knees toward a queen.

Then the light dims and the magic dies with it. Though she does not slacken or show fear, she is simply Bella again. This was never an act of defiance or aggression. Her orders were only ever toward the people who were supposed to be counting on her. As if any of them could ever understand. The noise in her throat is called Revulsion.

With a maid's pride and a maid's delicate precision she unclasps her dress and lets it drape around her waist. She can hear the scraping of the glittering chains of jewelry against the metal floor. For one last elongated moment she stands as tall as she is exposed. And then she lowers herself with reverent gentleness onto her knees. She dips low and places her hands in front of her head, touches her forehead to the ground. She presses further. Bends her spine. Lowers herself until she feels the sharp sting of cold metal kissing her breasts and pressing them into her ribs.

"Please." she says, and her voice is nothing more than the desperate longing of a child only just rescued from a Box, "Do what must be done."

What light there is in the room seems bent entirely upon her. In this moment the scars on Bella's back glisten so sharply they seem freshly carved. Nero's field of roses stands out against the paleness of her skin so clearly and unmistakably that even the dead and the blind could not fail to see it.

Respect for his work. Respect for his posture. Approval? Not quite. But close enough. Mistakes can be fixed later. The Shogun respects him. All voices are silent, for they are satisfied, and in their silence there can be peace. Put away the half-built scaffolding of answers and replies; it is no longer needed. Coax the lightning from his nerves; nothing more is required of him. Let the shadows come into focus. Let the tide of attention and need flow about his ears. Look, Dolce of Beri.

Watch two wolves burn.

They do not move. They make no sound. The fire speaks enough for them both. No shadow can conceal them like this. They will only draw attention to the pack. The pack must stay hidden. So, they must stay. They must silently bear the honor of their Shogun, for as long as it takes for their bodies to adapt to the flames. If they cry out, if they faint, it will be their fault for not growing a fireproof hide quick enough.

No tongue of fire burns brighter than their grins.

She doesn’t see

Dolce watches two wolves burn. Dolce watches the Shogun tear off her coat. Dolce watches a friend sink to her knees. For his work has found favor, and he is now free to watch. Observe. Think.

She doesn’t see She doesn’t see She doesn’t see

Again. And again. And again. He breathes. He taps.

Vasilia squeezes her reply around his hands.

She doesn’t. She doesn’t. Love. Dear heart. My treasure. Mine. She doesn’t.

The greatest daemon the Shogun has ever seen will not turn away. It is all he can do for a friend.

Vasilia of Lakkos will not interfere. She cannot leave his side.

Together, they will witness what happens next.

Teeth.

Teeth teeth teeth stench meat teeth

Why are there so many teeth why is everything fire this is not sexy at all.

Trillions.

She knew, right? Like, this many planets, this big a scale--

Intellectually, right? Like, a number that big stops fitting in your head? You can't imagine a million grains of sand, let alone a million millions.

Trillions. On the low end!

Is a low trillion even a thing? Can a trillion of anything be described as a low of anything?

Is this what the knights felt like, staring down the barrel of interplanetary--

Trillions!

But they at least had--

Friends? Coworkers? Allies? Idiots whose ideals happened to line up?

She has those, though? Right? Or, you know.

Already, she's feeling the loss. They're gonna make the best world possible for them here, but--she's losing friends, nevertheless.

It's so, so tempting to say yes.

Such a relief when she turns away, like a cloud passing in front of too hot a burning sun, and isn't that a shameful little ember piercing her. Yes, let Bella take the weight--she's always been the strong one, even now, even broken.

Even now, there's a part of her that's contemplating the idea. She doesn't have a plan for what happens after the Skies, after all--she's not a dreamer, not an ideas person, doesn't have a grand art project to cast into the skies.

She can see the blood already, dripping off her hands to pool on the floor and drown them all.

What would be the harm in saying yes?

Better put, what would be the harm in saying no? Beyond, you know, trillions of lives?

If, you know, you were to think about it purely numerically. If you shut yourself away from thinking of them as people, and reduced them purely to casualties reduced.

How do you go forward, knowing that--

She's not wrong, is the thing, right? How can she do anything against the sheer scale of trillions?

… How can she not, against the scale of hundreds of trillions?

It'd be so easy. Sit back, be a toy, let massive atrocity be carried out in her name from the safety and distance of the seraglio, tell herself she's taking the moral option, the humane option.

Her hands ball into fists.

Unthinkable. She will bathe the galaxy in blood, first. If there are horrors to be done, she will do them. Dyssia the distracted? No. There will be other epithets carved on whatever shallow grave she's eventually dumped into, but they'll be hers.

Agony tears itself out of Redana's throat. She grabs her sword arm with her other, digs her claws in until blood trickles down the bones of her wrist, and she

obeys.

Her eyes are wide in her face. Her fangs are bared, the noise of her suffering flowing between them like spittle.

Isn't this the wrong way around? Isn't she the one who should be humiliated for being the princess, the alpha, the daughter of Ceron in the presence of the Shogun herself? Isn't she the one who should throw off her ceremonial coat and yield herself to the fire? Why does Bella have to suffer? Why does Bella have to suffer? Why does Bella always have to be the one who suffers, always and every time, while Redana stands untouched and unpunished and unable to protect her?

This was supposed to be different!

Blood delicately dots her heavy-duty, void-proofed spacer's boots. The laces are thirsty.

The noise is pressed out of her lungs. Dionysus throbs at her temples. She meets the Shogun's eyes, and she

obeys.

No interference.

No drawing of her sword, leveling its tip at the Shogun's breast.

No grab at Bella's arm, pulling her back up off the floor.

She trembles like a tree about to split apart, like a wave about to break, and she

obeys.

But she can't find words.

No more words.

There is nothing better than a massage from someone who does not give a shit about you.

Someone who cares will be gentle. Will be kind. Will be soft - or will be hard and deliciously cruel depending on their nature. But when there is a dialogue and self-expression and intimacy, the unique touches of a lover draw away from the possibility brutal, mechanical perfection. The Shogun could fix catgirls all day on an assembly line and every one of them would stagger away with knees too weak to walk and bliss too thick to speak through.

It's amazing.

A gift from the Gods.

Hermes, Nero, Imperator in her wisdom must have noticed the suffering of her people. And so she donned her healer's mantle and put this power in the hands of the Wolves. Your arms are wrenched and dislocated. A burning paw stomps on your neck so hard it feels like it might break. Your ears are yanked and pulled. Hairpin needles are drawn from the Shogun's hat and stabbed into the centres of pain that had become part of your personality. Art like this went from the galaxy when Hermes descended from Olympus, and its return, for all its agony, is the most transcendent of bliss.

"The Empress of the Galaxy," said the Shogun, "has descended to the Underworld. There She corrects the wicked shades of the dead, and teaches them again of glory. The Wolves of Ceron have been issued with this great mission: To seek the True Death. We fight and die and are reborn in the shadow of Nemesis, our flesh renewed as bird and beast, our souls and legacies returned in the cloning vats of Ceron. We live, we die, we live again. But one day the weight of our deaths and our kills will become so heavy that we will pierce Demeter's law and our souls will fall to the Underworld. When they do, we will find Tellus and summon it to Nemesis. All the uncountable shades of humanity will rise with it, and with them, our Empress. Until then, we live. We die. We live again."

At last she was done. She pitilessly stepped away.

"To reign in her stead, She has left Her shadow atop the Psycho Throne. She awaits you, Voyagers, upon the surface of Nemesis -" the Shogun gestured at the empty space in the centre of the Ring.

Space warps and distorts. The will of the God of Travel runs through a million glyphs and prayers. A divine hand reaches out to a distant star where a hidden pack howls at the moon. In the blink of the eye a pristine world is plucked from Heaven and served up to the Wolves for execution.

C-beams glitter in the dark. Orbital plates flatten mountain ranges with graviton pulses. Wolves pour from the skies - some in jets, some in pods, some simply leaping through the endless azure skies. Flickers of defensive systems come online, fortresses close their gates, military bases scramble to react. But, like an oryx separated from its herd, all it is now is meat.

"- so come with me now," said the Shogun, illuminated by the fires of Hell. "Come, but be warned. Whenever I step foot on the surface of Nemesis I am fair game. Any of my wolves might kill me freely and claim my title, and once that happens it can be months before my conqueror will be established enough to pick up where I left off. So, unless you'd like this to be a long trip, I suggest you keep me alive~"

Dyssia!

Did you ever realize what a luxury it was to go to war and know exactly who you were fighting?

This will not be a march for the fainthearted. You know nothing of the terrain nor the distance. Your allies may turn on you at any moment. You may be attacked by a people you don't know, as you walk through their home, and what will you do when the wolves howl for battle? The only mercy is that you've already left behind those whose resolve would shatter. The Shogun grants you another; some time to prepare, beneath the gaze of biting shadows.

So perhaps it is a comfort when Dolce joins you, a pack on his back and a pen in his hand. He and Bella had to account for every soul that was leaving, and every soul that would stay. Deck maps with territories color-coded, inventories of supplies and who holds them to account, a mostly-accurate list of all of Iskarot's side projects, he has it all to hand, if not already memorized. Lean on him, brave Knight. Nothing will be forgotten or overlooked on his watch. Let your scales hold back the shadows, and let his heart know some peace.

(Vasilia has gone to Bella and Ember. She has stood apart from them long enough.)

"Excuse me," Dolce offers his notepad to you. "Could you look over these figures? I'm not sure if they're right."

The figures are meaningless. The words in the margins, less so.

The Shogun sounds familiar.

The Shogun, who boasted of her illiteracy. The Shogun, who leads a pack that respects and craves her in equal measure.

I’ve heard the Crystal Knight, the Royal Architect, the Royal Architect’s proxy, Liquid Bronze, 20022, and others. They sounded identical when they talked about their dreams. And she sounds identical to them.

He looks to you for confirmation.

The unyielding ground welcomes her like the arms of a lover. It drinks the blood that weeps from her imperial roses and the tears that spatter from her half-divine eyes with equal rapaciousness. Its cold surface steals away her warmth with the greed of water, and emphasizes the softness of her form where it presses her flatter and wider as she twitches, convulses, writhes, and trembles against it.

Her vision is white. Her vision is all-in-black through wide open eyes. Her ears are buzzing, ringing, hollow silence and her spine is a blazing forge through which love long since chipped and pitted has been crafted anew. Her sigh is full of drool and ecstasy and reverence, misery, and pity in exacting measure, swirled together in her throat as by the universe's most supreme bartender.

There is a sensation of sudden weight across her shoulders. A single cube of ice has been tossed into the glass that is Bella, and when it clinks against her insides the world once again fills up her senses. Shining halos and kaleidoscopes break up her vision, but as she clutches what she realizes at last is a jacket wrapped across her to cover her shame, these brilliant hallucinations fade down to nothing.

Bella turns her head. It is not Redana but Vasilia who she sees standing above her, watching her with neither words of care or admonishment but rather only a single cool and calculating expression buried somewhere in her eyes. Bella watches her for long moments before suddenly turning away and making a show of wiping her lips dry on the back of her hand. She shivers as she pushes herself up onto her knees.

Now her ears fill with the soft threshing of a billion-billion tails all swishing in anticipation. She tastes sweat in the air, smells the blood pumping through the heart of this machine of war, listens to the whine of gears winding up to perform the next step in a perfect ritual dance. She smiles at it all.

As her lips spread her mouth fills up with glinting daggers. Her eyes flash with the sharpness of a thousand spears all pointed in a single direction. Inside her heart, a sword is drawn. She clutches her weapons tight and she laughs with a broken chime of a voice even as steam issues from between her teeth.

"There is nothing to be worried about."

She is singing. Her voice was made for that before any other considerations, and here at the end she lets it fill with the aching lilt and joyous tremolo that were whipped into her as a small child. They weave inside her body and turn weakness into power. She stands, slipping her arms inside the sleeves of the jacket and dipping into a bow in a single motion as smooth and certain as the bouncing of a river.

"I will be the only one who touches a single hair on your beautiful head, Lady. Show us the way! Bring us to Her! Come, come, come, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry hurry hurry HURRY!"

Her howling laughter does not join the chorus, but splits it like a leaf against an evil blade.

Any wolf, huh?

The thought won't leave her head. It's been bouncing along inside her head like a pebble in a boot.

Any wolf could try. Any wolf could be shogun, if they had the ambition and the guts to try it.

… Redana's a wolf, isn't she?

It's a terrible thought, a nightmare of logistics, counter to their whole mission, a position that Redana would hate and Bella would chastise her for even considering.

But still, the thought is--

Dyssia takes the notebook like a shipwrecked sailor climbing into a lifeboat.

It's weird, right? Because on the one hand, writing things down is, ugh, you know? Like, you're pinning thoughts on paper, and making plans you just know you're not gonna keep, and setting goals you'll find unimaginable once two weeks have passed.

But on the other hand! Oh, on the other hand, words that someone else has written down! Glorious thoughts, or, or better yet, instructions! Like nectar from the gods! Stabilizing, bracing, understandable! Distraction, compulsion, immortal, eternal!

She pores over the figures, absentmindedly nodding, eyes flicking between sums and columns and supplies, and makes some quick notes.

"Yes, in this column here, I think you'll find. An addition error, perhaps."

Like they're trapped repeating the same project, over and over again, always moving forward and yet staying still. Locked into their ambitions, working towards them, making endless progress and no change whatsoever.

Aphrodite has his claws in them all.

Once upon a time there was a little princess of a lonely planet named Tellus.

One night, she was wandering the halls of her subpalace complex, a village built for one inhabitant and her maids, who were secretly fearful assassins in the service of Artemis in disguise. But on such a night as this, she is alone, and she is the moon slipping from shadow to shadow.

And in such and such a room, one hung with tapestries and chandeliers and clockwork fencing automatons that always need a little too much winding to be useful, she happened across a very sad woman.

This woman was wearing a massive fur cloak over her shoulders, and black armor designed to keep a seal when fighting in the void, and held a helmet in her hands, and she was crying. So the little princess hopped up and took a seat next to her and asked: "Why are you crying, miss?"

"I'm descending into Tartarus," this woman said. She had very fuzzy ears like the little princess's favoritest favorite maid, and teeth like that maid, too. Her eyes were blue and green. "I have to sit here and watch my wife get broken and pieced back together by some tyrant who's turned her head like wine, and, and she's really into it, and every part of my biomantic upgrading makes me want to kneel and thank that awful, awful woman for doing that to Bella! What's gotten into her? Is she reacting strangely to the pheromones?"

The little princess nodded very intently. "Like the Hypno Baron of Axum Prime."

The woman, who was very wolfy, said: "Like the Hypno Baron of Axum Prime, exactly."

"Well," the little princess said, holding her forefinger and thumb up to her chin sagely, "in circumstances like that, trying to shock them out of it is the worstest of worst ideas. It'll scramble your wife's brain like eggs!"

"So, so, right, you were supposed to..."

"To stick with them and guide them out of the nefarious hypnotic wiles!"

"May I give you a hug?" And because this woman seemed very, very sad indeed, even with her tail starting to wag, the little princess gave her a very, very big hug, one proof against the very saddest of sad days.

---

A click of the tongue. A shift in command scent. A step forward.

And half a dozen of the Silver Divers are surrounding their tutelary deity, Bella-Mosaic. In their front is Princess-Alpha Ember, one hand on her sword's hilt, shaking with the effort of keeping her spine straight and her knees unbent.

"Lead the way," she says, trying and failing to keep her fury completely under wraps, positioning herself right between her wife and the Shogun of Nemesis.

Because what you do is you stick with them.

You stick with her.

No matter what.

The world in Nemesis' jaws is not a no-name chunk of flesh ripped from the throat of an alien civilization.

It is a world of the Restoration Crusade.

At the end of the Age of Knights, after the fall of the High King, a powerful clan shattered their own webgates and sealed themselves off from the galaxy. For a thousand years, during the rise and fall of the Atlas Cultural Sphere and the Imperium that followed it, they built their own civilization. A continuation of the old virtues of chivalry, paired with the traumatic reaction to being on the receiving end of an apocalyptic total war. For generations they advanced their technology, militarized their society, and sought every atom of potential that existed within steel and chivalry. Their blades were honed against lesser alien civilizations but their goal was always this: to prove that ordinary men and women, fused with technology, hardened by experience and lifted by virtue, could defeat the horrors of Biomancy on their own terms.

A mountain range falls like a velvet curtain; behind it, a formation of Knights. Not the gold and ivory marvels of bygone age, these are boxy, grey and industrial, everything lovely cut away and sacrificed on the altar of More. The massive reactor-mech screeches and glows, engine creating a fourth sunrise. Magnets flicker and fade and blades the size of houses scythe into the Wolves.

A crushing flank maneuver follows. Treads scream, tanks smash through forests, turrets already turned to target enemies in a predetermined kill zone. Just before the hammer falls, the dagger slices - airframes cut through the sky, trailing ribbons of fire that cut through the earth and transform the soil into poisoned knives. Infantry with jetpacks race behind, weaving through every gap, investigating every bush and crevasse for hidden soldiers. Assisted by machine intelligence, lifetimes of practice and discipline, and the most profoundly meritocratic culture ever devised, the maneuver is perfect. There are no gaps, no failures of co-ordination, no hesitation or morale shock. Warriors drilled from the moment they could walk take the field, a crushing fist of metal driven directly into the chest of their most hated foe. Thousands of bloody doves emerge from fields of corpses.

"Look," said the Shogun with a smile, "at what they must do to imitate a mere fraction of our power."

And it is true. No Ceronian trains so. There is no need to, any more than a woman must train her stomach to digest what it is fed. The calculation of war does not happen in the minds of officers, nobody has ever needed to explain to a Ceronian how to react to an artillery barrage, the Shogun for all that she is their leader has never needed to give a single order throughout her reign. The Ceronian penchant for art in battle does not in any way represent a lackadasical approach, instead the depth of military understanding is so deep that there is room for playful flair. The mechanics of action can be taken for granted, all that's left is the meta-war of reading the minds and souls of their enemies.

And this war is not fought alone.

Some have thought the Ceronians are a hive mind, a single distributed entity carried across trails of phereomancy. That was not Doctor Ceron's design. Instead they are an entire ecosystem; specialists emerging to fill every possible combat and social role, flexible enough even in the moment to adapt to new opportunities. The pack keeps some outcast, bullied and predated upon, to ensure that there are stealth hunters and intellectual outsiders. And yet, when the circumstance of war aligns with their privately developed specialty, they wordlessly seize complete control over battlefield command. Proud alphas lower their ears, lie flat and unquestioningly obey the instincts of the girl who knows how to play dead.

This was Doctor Ceron's genius: to divorce war from desire. This is the perfection that prevents Aphrodite from devouring his lover. Though later there will be time for desire, for pride and humiliation to make itself fully known, for positions to be reasserted or overthrown, as long as Mars stands upon the field the wolves fight without ego or pride. And for all the grey paint and small unit tactics of the Crusade, that flicker of pride that still burns in their hearts is what the wolves exploit time after time after time...

*

Even the Shogun is not immune to knowing her Place. When the War needs her to pick up a rifle and join a solid projectile fusillade she does so without thinking. When she must detour to place an anti-Knight mine on a deserted stretch of road deep in the backlines it is not the sort of thing that she's even consciously aware of happening. Sometimes she passes by mass formations of Ceronians without so much as a blink of the eye, all of them instinctively knowing that the War does not permit them the space for a leadership contest at this moment. The skyline burns, macrocannons pouring fire into orbital plates, the howls of wolves jamming every frequency.

But then a shield bursts. A city collapses, pulverized under its own amplified weight as gravitational pulses fixate on it. Immediately every Ceronian's internal calculus changes - and that is when the heavy weapons emplacements swing around from guarding the road to fire on the Shogun and her companions.

Eagerness falls from her eyes and from her lips. To dream is to dream, and to experience reality is something else entirely. Bella: Maid, Assassin, Praetor, Chief, Demigod, Mosaic. Whatever you call her she is built for battle. Not for war.

It is only here in this place that she understands the difference. Countless fights and a hundred bloody wounds suffered in the name of victory, and of perseverance, and of love itself so strong it spits in the face of Aphrodite, and not once has she seen war before now. It is not merely something she has no context for, but rather something she is built entirely counter to. XIII with her list of names could shut out war and turn an army into a thing to kill.

But Bella is all alone. With no golden path to guide her.
But Bella is all alone. With no silver path to guide her.
But Bella is all alone. With only love to guide her.

Bright light blossoms into flowers.
It roars with the fury of a beast m
ade of Thunder and it is the ang
er of Zeus
and it is the shriek of Ares from
beyond the veil of death
and



the crowing of Mars.
Fire flash and thunder clap.
Red and

Green and



Pink and

Ring and Chime and




And roar and scream and muzzle flash
And oil and shit and pilot crash


Pause. Terrible pause.
Silence worse than darkness worse than





She hisses and froths and twitches, for all the good it does her. Her senses will not be shut off. A bodyguard cannot afford to be blind or deaf, or even block her nose from the scent of roses. Just in case.

But her ankle catches in an uneven patch of ground. But it twists and wrenches and it fails her. But all of everything is joined by the hollow swoop in her stomach that means her sense of balance is abandoning her to the rush of gravity and she feels it pulling ten times harder than it should.

And then with only this for warning Bella is --

f


















.




.

.
.


And all alone. And all alone. And all alone. And nothing of honor to guide her.
And all alone. And all alone. And all alone. And nothing of joy to guide her.
And all alone. And all alone. And all alone.

And all alone. And all alone.

And all alone.

And nothing.

Ever since the Royal Architect, Dolce has kept a little time to study Mars. The odd gap in his knowledge troubled him. Not that he ever planned to go to war, not even when Beri was left far behind, but it was a perilous thing, being unfamiliar with a god. All the worse when you were well-behaved with all the others. Imagine the insult.

So he studied, so he prayed, so he learned, and little by little that gap shrank. What was once a yawning abyss became criss-crossed with firmer ground. Holes remained, but there were paths around, and he could work with that. Iskarot once told him it was an admirable quality for a student to have; the ability to see your own ignorance and not be overly bothered by it. To neither stumble into it blindly nor obsess over it, but to watch, and to wait, and be ready for when answers may come. In whatever form they may come.

In all of his studies, he never found a single prayer or ritual intended for the front lines.

But Dolce is not a soldier; he is only slightly higher than a civilian. There are official terms for those tasked with logistics and assistance to the officers, but unless Mars asks it of him he will not fetch that knowledge. It is all he can do to stay where he belongs, in the center of the column, by Vasilia’s side. He wears a cap, and it’s got a symbol of some kind on it, and he can’t tell you where it came from but he can tell you it means he’s not somebody who should be shot at. He marches. He bandages. He provides, water and rations. He waits for her return. And because he is precisely where he ought to be in formation, then it is easier for Vasilia to be where she needs to be in formation, and all moves as it should, to the glory of Mars.

So he stands, so he waits, as Vasilia rises up alongside Dyssia. The artillery turns.

His ears have not stopped ringing.

[Offering Hope to Dyssia’s next roll.]

Dyssia has never seen war. Not before today.

Oh, she thought she knew what it was. Been in battles, doncha know? Seen the results. Felt the exhaustion left behind when adrenaline runs out, once all that's left to keep muscles raising and falling is the thought of what will happen if you don't.

Her nose is full of chemical weapon and burning flesh.

She thought she understood what she proposed to bring to the galaxy. Peace, prosperity, freedom, all served on the tip of a spear. Her spear, of course--her weapons, her plans, her friends.

Her plans. What a laugh that is, right?

She's a child once more, being taught a lesson by a master too good at what they're doing to be truly frustrated with her.

They're demons--beautiful, terrible, fallen angels, carrying out their work with barely a thought. No, no, that's wrong, without thought. On instinct, on a level that training could never instill.

She has no plan. Had no plan coming here, still doesn’t have one.

Her gravrail feels inadequate, impossible. It's a fool's errand to deflect that . There are too many cannons aimed at them fired by people who've just demonstrated their perfect coordination.

Bella is on the ground. Eyes drill into the back of her skull. She rises.
There's no time for words. Which, when you think about two gravrail masters doing the same thing in the same space, is damned inconvenient.

The ground cracks between them. Her heart quails, and she almost shuts her rail off entirely.

But the shots are missing, is the thing. Close, right? Close enough to shave hair, to deafen the one ear that particular shell whizzes past.

But she meets Vasilia's eyes in between shots, and darts away from the Shogun.

Vasilia will protect the Shogun with the formation. Mars will protect.

She?

She doesn't have a plan, and if this goes wrong, she'll be isolated and vulnerable. Or, you know, as vulnerable as any gravrail master can be? Which is to say, as vulnerable as she was stepping on any planet with a large enough number of Ceronians?

Anyway.

The point, see, is that you don't always need a plan. You don't always need to be elegant and upright and a master. That's for Vasilia and Bella and Redana.

For her, sometimes you just need to fuck shit up.

Two gravrail users going at it in a small space is a recipe for disaster. Everyone knows that. Stories about palaces torn apart, chaos spread, disasters unmitigated.

But as bunkers and emplacements crumble around her, as shots go wild and miss and stray… Sometimes it pays to be good at fucking up.

Overcome with hope: 5,3,6, -1: 10

It gets into you, the army of it, the army of you, the wires singing up and down the blood. Did the Princess Redana, bereft of all memory, know precisely what she was getting into when she accepted Ceron's gift of battle and dominance and belonging? Of course she didn't. No one can know this in their brain, it goes right past and underneath it and all the thoughts are bobbing on the top of the mind like apples but nobody's interested in those, it's the wine of war that gluts them all, and Dionysus isn't so very far at all, are they? It gets into you and the thoughts are isolated and lonely things stamping bits of this into the memory, though perhaps the Lethe would shake them loose just as easily as the things that she had lost before, not even the shape of that bootprint or the flash of the cannons on the heights or the wail of the shells bursting into disorienting smoke and pellets and roaring, all of that could be washed away underneath the river's surface, all of that could be washed away, and it's not the important part anyhow, the important part is that she is aware of Bella struggling next to her and the swivel of the guns on the far ridge and the way Sagetip has a rifle to her shoulder and is providing counterfire and that's a bleeder shot and Redana interposes herself and it goes through one arm into the chest but she's not just Ceronian no she isn't she's missing the machines that would mend her perfectly but she's still standing, apply pressure, Goldie's got the patch kit out, and it's in her, and it's like being part of Beljani in a way, mustn't it be? Mustn't it? That she is the hand holding pressure on the wound and the hand unfolding the patch and the finger pulling the trigger and the satisfied huff of breath leaving Sagetip's nostrils and the hand of Arrowstalk waving them over to cover and she's the one who takes Bella by the arm and coaxes her along, like you would a child, her voice smooth and her teeth not chattering at all, see, there's hardly any bleeding getting past the patches now, and she'll be moving her fingers again like normal in just a moment, we're not playing hopscotch here but there's an echo of it one two three come along home how you looked so pretty in that apron hopping oh-so-seriously back in the very first month, that's how far back this memory goes, buried so deep that it takes artillery shells to tear it open, and it gets into you, shared in the blood, the blood that tells her that she could renegotiate her oaths with the goddess of the Silver Divers and force this shell-shocked assassin into a more favorable agreement, and she holds Bella tighter, closer, and lets the thought-impulse bleed into the mud, and there's a Thunderbolt who brought a fucking Thunderbolt or rather who impulsively tries to become Shogun using one at this time of day and she'd have gone down holding Bella to her chest and getting blood on her if Dyssia hadn't been an absolute sparrow going one two three and the Thunderbolt picks up a hillside and decides that it should be elsewhere in very small chunks and they're in the cover now, in the cover nicely, and it's Redana who takes a moment to brush Bella's hair back behind her ear because even if everything in her nerves is telling her to be the pack to be dissolved to take control to take a crown for the pack there's still an iron bar at her heart and it's the shape of a Shepherdess-to-be and she would never ever ever look away from the panic in Bella's eyes because that's an entire fucking battlefield in and of itself and it is there that she must not, must never, lose, and the war rushes around her anyway, and she knows rather than sees the next part of the path that she will die before she sees Bella lost on.

"War is funny, isn't it?" said the Shogun. The light around her was so red it turned even her black leathers shades of crimson. "It is such a disproportionate response to the desires that ignited it. A question of who pays taxes to whom turns into a conflagration that consumes a generation. A yearning to be seen as beautiful and worthy devours an entire planet." She climbs up out of her trench and stretches widely, greeting the burning suns overhead. "No matter how Lord Mars tries to instruct and warn, Desire cannot help itself but dig down to this place where Desire itself is ridiculous."

It is not a dance for her. She does not express anything, does not seek to communicate with how she walks across no-man's land. Turning her head to avoid a cannon round that leaves a whirling arc through her hair is another breath, leaping atop a ruined Knight to not be trampled by a cavalry charge is nothing more than stepping on a stone to cross a river, shooting down a jet fighter from an AA emplacement and leaving before a retaliatory missile reduces it to ash is no more than a pause at a traffic light.

"See how quickly things stop mattering?" she asks. "What does it matter who reigns on Capitas? What does it matter what humiliations the weak must suffer at the hands of the strong? Of all the ways a peace can rot and fester, of all the societies that may be better than the one you are in, of all the wealth and glory you might personally gain from the war - which of them makes you take cover when the shells rain? Which do you think of when the horses charge? Is it love in your heart when you fix the bayonet, or is it instead -"

She grinned. "Nothing? People don't like to think it's nothing. Cut down far enough and it's nothing, nothing, nothing. You are not dead when you live without Desire, you are not stupid when you live without thought. It almost feels like enlightenment. Don't you think that this is more real than what is out there?"

Music, through the fire and crash. Yellow light, dull against the red. Banners held high, the hexagon eye of Jupiter's storm marching through this burning world. The Imperial Caravansary walks about the Nemesis world's equator, lanterns swaying against the storm.

"When Nero came to us all those centuries ago, the Shogun had one condition for our allegiance," said the Shogun. "And that was that she always fight alongside us. She thought her wars would be brief and her peace would be glorious, so she made the deal easily. Gods do tend to underestimate us mortals that way. We have been working on her ever since - showing her that the toxic peace she is building is stagnant and senseless, without meaning or reality. After centuries aboard Nemesis I think that she is coming around to our way of thinking."

The din of battle quiets as you approach the vast carriage-complex, the mobile palace of Imperator Nero, Hermes Manifest. Marble buildings roll ceaselessly atop churning wheels. Wooden temples and interlocking shingle-rooftops wander endlessly on. Half-tracks and jetbikes howl around the edges of this strange, ethereal sight. The din of battle quiets -

- but does not entirely cease.