You have been here before, in a dream.

Not the dream of Tellus. That was a world of steel and ferrocrete, of crimson carpets and crimson banners and the awesome power of a united humanity crammed into a single ball. Once humanity's empire had spread as far and wide as the Endless Azure Skies before being crushed into a single point, all of its joys and cruelties stacked cheek to jowl until they all blended together. You would remember the dream of Tellus, but this dream slips through your fingers. Where have you seen it before...?

The room is small, built for no more than twenty seated. The floor is wood, poorly laid - each step creaks, and walking is almost musical, no matter how softly your feet fall. The walls are paper, beautifully painted, but not fully blocking out the fire and noise of the war outside. Three quarters across the room there is an open channel, filled with ever-burning fires, forming a veil to separate you from the Empress. It is not there for her protection - it is there for yours, for the Empress that sits upon the Throne of Regret is a ghost.

Her hair is long and lank, rotting through its elaborate bindings. Her fingers are withered into claws. Her eyes are sunken into a beautiful face, shining with the metal pins where it has been stitched together. Her robe is the palest white. The morticians of Ceron have done the best they could, but this is still the face of death - the twisted projection of a soul trapped in the Underworld.

Above you sits the Dead God.

"Re... da... na..." the words come from breathless lips. "I knew this burden was not too heavy for you."

Dolce!

"Hm, hm, hm~" Artemis hums with every step across the floor. She brings out the music of it; the nightingale melody of footsteps. She twirls on one toe, then steps down hard. There is joy here, in the sounds footsteps make in this haunted place. Even you, trained for stealthy service, cannot avoid the music of these floorboards - but you knew before you entered that the mistress of this house has no fear of assassins.

Then this is not a weapon in a game of murder. This is a toy. A thing of happiness, amidst the fire and darkness. As you step across the floor something of that mysterious dream comes into your head: the memories of the Starsong, and what it means to turn battle into music.

A precariously permitted toy. Were a single one of those great urns of coals to be kicked over this entire building and its paper walls would go up in a conflagration. Indeed, it feels like this entire place is intended to be flammable. Easy to destroy. An impulse that exists in tension with this beat of playful indulgence, so...

"It'll be easier for her to leave one day, if there's nothing here to return to," said Artemis. "It'll be easier to ensure that there is nothing to return to if the smallest spark might burn it all."

Dyssia!

You know the glyph-crest of Dekal Lawgiver, Knight of the Publica. One of the Publica's legendary warriors, liberator of a dozen worlds and author of some of the most insightful legal codes in the Order's library. A renowned champion of the Grav-Rail and eternal enemy of the Endless Azure Skies, she has not been seen for a hundred years after resolving to launch a strike on Capitas itself. Of all the places her legend might have taken her, serving in the Imperial Court was always more likely than dead and unremembered.

She is unchained. Proud. Strong. But she has given all of her Publica's red for the ghostly white of her corpse empress.

"You look as tired of this as I am," she said in a voice like tarnished copper. "Come, sit with me, young Knight. Tell me of the worlds outside this eternal war. Remind me that there is peace out there, somewhere."

"It was."

Ember stands straight at attention, helmet tucked under her arm, her knight's finery hidden under the heavy ceremonial cloak. Outside, the low rumble of munitions; the tea quakes in its cups. Her hair falls lank over one side of her face, leaving one green eye looking up at the dead empress. At her mother. At her Shogun.

"You were right that I wasn't ready, looking back," she admits, and it's a knife to her own ribs. The words collapse to the floor as soon as they leave her mouth. Do they even reach her mother? "I wasn't good enough," and it's like tearing out her own spine. She opens her mouth to admit what they both know - that she's not even worthy of being the heir - and she flinches away from it. It hurts too much. It hurts too much.

"I am here because of my allies," she continues, though her voice is frail, trembling. "The Starsong Privateers, who saw me across the underworld and beyond. The Order of Hermes, who taught me how ships work and how to ask questions of the universe. The Alcedi, who were brave and true and got me to the Lethe. Alexa, who stayed behind, who..." Her hand, which once held command seals, shakes. She forges on. "The Silver Divers, who welcomed me into their pack when I didn't even know myself. Mynx and Beautiful and Beljani, my sisters-in-law in moonlight. And Bella Hostilius Mosaic, herself... my wife. My huntress. My everything."

Her cheeks are wet. A mile distant, a war howl reverberates through helmet amplifiers. A mile distant, there is an explosion of butterflies.

"I'm useless," she says, "except that everyone's still following my dream. That's all. And that's why I had to go even if I wasn't... even if you didn't..."

Her voice gives out.

The Starsong believed there was a mystery in music.

Journey to a hundred hundred planets. Meet a hundred hundred worlds, of all shapes and sizes. Grown with forgotten intent or thrown together by nameless fate. The mountaintop with room only for one or a sea of life flowing beneath the ground. One house. An entire city.

It doesn’t matter. There will be music there. There will be room, in the audience or the players. There will be a song from the stars - even if it is only one - that finds a new home. But this is only part of the mystery.

In the court of the Dead God, there is music. Music to draw a sheep out of himself, his hurt, and higher still.

Atop the creaking floorboards, there is room. Room for even the Mistress of the Hunt to play. A chef from Beri is a rounding error.

Between the notes from Olympus, there weaves a song from the stars. Plucked from a dream, dancing after a goddess, softly ringing from bells in curls.

Together, they build it a new home.

[Rolling to Speak Softly with Artemis: 6 + 3 + 3 = 12. What song is in your heart?]

The red eye witnesses. The gold eye watches.

Bella smoothly bows before her Empress, sliding onto one knee and bowing her head in worshipful respect. The beauty of that throne has not declined in centuries of death, and she does not dare to profane that divine perfection by trying to scrutinize it. It is enough that She is here. It is enough that She is speaking. Her heart is all aflutter with love and with longing and with the deep-coded desire to be as pleasing as possible.

Bella's legs are trembling. The pressure in the air is like a poison, like gravity itself. Though she fights to keep her feet next to Redana (her wife who needs her now more than ever), defiance is more than her body can stand right now. She collapses. She feels the weight crushing against her skull, bending her neck, forcing her eyes toward the ground. Her claws dig into the floor with a musical chirp. She refuses to be bent. Not like this. Not in front of this woman, with her contemptible reek and her desiccated, plucked apart face that still dares to hint at a smile even after everything that has happened. And worse, dares to seem sad.

The red eye gazes. The gold eye glares.

"Your Majesty, I have done everything that you asked of me. Please forgive my lateness: it has been a very long and difficult journey. I do not seek words of praise, but rather wish only to return the office you lent to me now that my task is finished."

Is that how it goes? The words come out of her mouth, but is that what they sound like? Or do they come out in a furious hiss, anger and jealousy boiling over until they come out as blasphemy?

"Look at me! Look at me!! For once just say my name! Am I not... Aren't I your daughter too?!"

The red eye squints. The gold eye narrows.

Bella stays bent on the floor. Half for love, and half for hate. Half fearing danger, half just wanting to be Redana's strength. Half pushing her forehead to the ground, half lifting her onto her feet. Two eyes watch the same scene and see different things.

One red, and one gold. The colors of the Imperium.

Dyssia sits next to her and takes her hand slowly, as if moving too fast will spook the universe.

"Precious little, at times," she admits, and stares.

It's like standing next to a statue, you know? She's seen that face on statues, read stories of her exploits, had spacers talk about her in low whispers, and she's here, in front of her, and she wants her to tell her of outside?

Where did the words go? Normally they're so easy, you know? Her mouth is burbling brook, full of commentary on what's happening and her thoughts and side thoughts and those little thoughts that aren't relevant to the situation but would fit neatly in a parenthetical aside, and now her mouth is failing her. It's a desert, both of words and saliva.

She swallows, or at least tries to.

"The Azure skies are…"

She sighs, and gestures to the walls, alight with red.

Which… does not convey the skies outside.

… Is she allowed to go outside the tent? Would she want to? Would they even be visible through the haze of fire and smoke and screams?

Wait, shit, she's thinking about--

"Everywhere," she finishes hurriedly. "Peace and beauty as far as the eye can see, relative to here. Servitor and Azura alike are free to live according to the demands of their civilization, if they are able. Entire planets, systems, space station, all living in harmony and pulling together in service of painting the skies blue.

"It's just that… People like you and I do not often get to experience it. If we were content to serve the Azure Skies, we would not be Publica, would not be knights. Would not follow in the wake of problems, and leave problems in our wake."

Is it her, or is her mouth suddenly even drier? Like, if you took a desert and fed it into a continent-sized desiccator, you might approach a hint of a fraction of how her mouth feels.

Bella and Redana!

"Ceron has taught me to accept this," said Empress Nero, broken neck jerking out a serene nod. "Every connection is violent. Every love is hate. Build a road and an army can pass through; build a ship and plague will fill its sails. My role was difficult before I understood that bridges were military infrastructure and love was prelude to the launching of ships."

She leans forwards across the wall of flames, as close as she dares. Her undead face smiles.

She must not be let out.

"You, of course, have no function in and of yourself," she said. "That is not your role - nor is it even a worthy goal. Ability is a tool. Simply draw a line and all the worlds will be drawn after it. Open a gate and the sheep will flow through it. You have a goal, somewhere to go, and that is more than all of these ten trillion servitors will ever have. It fills them and animates them, and they love you for giving it to them."

She abruptly turned and settled back on her throne. "It was different, once. Once a turning wind set pulses racing. Once the dream of exploration ripped children from their homes. Once distant mountains inspired joy, wonder, curiosity. Now not only is the galaxy mapped, but its future is mapped - there is nothing left to explore and no one alive who would be interested in exploration. The frontier has closed, expansion has stopped, and all that remains is a long and slow decline. Every connection has already been forged and perfected violence flows through every vein of civilization without friction. The only souls who can truly feel the joy of adventure are all dead, and so that is why I chose you, my daughter. I hope that it was everything you dreamed of."

Dolce!

Each time you step through a sequence, Artemis continues it. She continues it on and on and on, following through diligently on every implication of the notes that you set in motion, on and on and on. First like she's finishing your thought, then continuing it, expanding on it, taking it further and further from what you originally envisioned while still feeling like a natural extension of your own idea...

And then she stops.

Perfect obedience, right up until the point where it stops. Perfect patience, right up until the point where it is over. Perfect music but she decides when it ends.

The moon goes silver through the sky, night after night, until one night you look up and it is gone. The trail of breadcrumbs continues joyfully onwards until the hinge of the trap slams shut. Music that could go on forever until the string leaves the violin and fingers lift from the keyboard leaving only a period behind.

In this deathless universe, she remains death.

Dyssia!

"No, we don't," said Dekal. "We choose to dissent. To fight for a better world."

She rolls out a combi-map upon the table. Rolls of charts and graphs and paperwork, the most advanced origami techniques the galaxy has ever produced resulting in this unfolding sheaf of paper. "The Empress has allowed me control over the Service. From here I direct the establishment of occupation garrisons, of re-education camps, of the construction of schools and the administration of biomantic uplift, establishing control over biospheres contaminated by mass reincarnation. I seed the principles of sound governance, establish layered constitutional checks and balances against resurgent militarism, organize the mass public executions of slaveholders and the distribution of their properties. My role in all of this is to ensure that something beautiful and stable flowers from the endless fields of ashes Nemesis leaves in its wake."

She looks down at the map, face illuminated by fire. "She does not care that I do this. If I were to stop, the work would go undone. The only condition is that I remain here, in the heart of Hell, as I do my work. So please... tell me more of that peace that lives out there, beyond my sight."

Her tongue is covered in sand. Heavy, dry, gritty, barren. Trapped. The desire to swallow is overwhelming, but it's like trying to do it with a mouthful of cinnamon: all that she can do is choke and sputter. But she must do it quietly, quietly. Oh so very quietly. She has not known fear like this since the Opera.

She can feel fingers of pure ice reaching down her chest and filling her insides with a cold more intense than any weather she has ever known, a thought that chills her even more as it registers across the front of her brain. She cannot speak. She cannot speak. She cannot allow Her to know that comparison that came to mind. The very concept is blasphemy itself.

All she wants in this moment is a whiff of roses. All she wants is the smile that smell implies. It is nowhere to be found. There is sulfur and bright burning metallics and the odor of their conflagration, and there is the formaldehyde miasma of a body preserved well enough to contain a god even in death. Part of a god? Or just an Empress? Her nose cannot tell. She is too busy looking for roses. Roses the Empress has lost. Roses the Princess has given away.

"Your Majesty, I..."

The words drop from her mouth as if shot out of the air with arrows. Useless platitudes delivered in her useless voice to express useless sentiments. This is not her place. She puts her mouth to better use and drinks the tastes and scents of the chamber deeper than before. And there she finds sweat, and ash, and the soot of war. She finds fresh soil and iron and a fear that is not hers.

Redana.

Bella finds her legs for Redana. She stands again even as the anger that was animating her ebbs away into pure terror, all for Redana. She stands behind her and wraps her arms around her shoulders in an act of suicidal possession, where there is warmth and the firmness of muscles still fit for the Olympics (as hers never were) and the grateful pressing back of that beautiful head into her own soft chest. She holds, and is held. She stands.

And even in this, Nero does not turn to her. Not even to frown.

"Y-Your Majesty, can't you see me? Can't you hear my voice? Please, I! Do I... do I have to give It back to you? Because I! I!!"

A mother. A father. It doesn't matter to her at all. She left in the end for the promise of a single tender glance. So why? Why isn't she getting it? What did she do wrong? What has she forgotten to do?

Somewhere - he couldn’t remember where - he went from bounding after moonlight to dancing before a goddess. When the hunter stops, he stops. His head tilts one way, then the other. Twitch, twitch, flick go his ears. He hears nothing. He sees nothing.

The next steps of the hunt are his. It is the way of things. He turns where he is led. He creak, creak, creaks, closer, knowing nothing. He stops, by Her side.

There has not been a sacred stag for many, many years, so Dolce of Beri will have to do.

“Th. T. Thhhh. There. I-is.” Breathe. Bite back all frustration. Please, Mistress of the Hunt. Bear with his broken tongue. They are the first words he has spoken since the foul march began. “Is. There, necessary…play?”

Obediently, he waits by her side. Obediently, he listens.

Dissent.

Weird word, really? It feels so, so peaceable. We, the undersigned, do not agree with our peers, but will nevertheless follow the conclusion reached by the majority.

Doesn't feel like a word that'd be used to describe a screaming rebellion, like chemical mortars in your face, like clawing yourself from the dirt for another swing.

A respectable word.

And a lie, as surely as she breathes. Dissent, in every revolution. Dissent, in violence, in throwing the first punch, in striving, in lying, in bluffing, beating…

The Dissident Knight.

… Is that tautology? Would it be arrogant to name herself as the one? Like, to make that what makes her different from the others, to claim that for herself, even as she recognizes that only dissidents become knights?

Or, you know, only people that don't fit the system.

Like, she's been thinking of how to title herself for this long partially because it's, it's declaring yourself to be a power in your own right? Isn't arrogance the right kinda mental state for that?

Better than the Distracted, for friggin' sure.

The Dissident Knight--which, whew, is gonna take some mental effort to envision herself in that big of a name--reviews the maps, admires the paper, the--

Clockwork is the wrong word, right? But that similar level of this tugs that until a delicate flower of data unfolds over there. Except a clock only has to go one way, do one thing at a consistent time, and her hands itch to pull every tab, to flip every page, until she knows it all by the feel of the air against her skin, and she has to sit on her hands now or catastrophe will doubtlessly unfold across all of the service, which apparently this legendary knight runs, and--

She clears her throat and begins to speak. Of home, of Merilt, of a storm diverted. Of lazy afternoons chasing rainbows through reefs, listening to people speak of the Outside. Of the stories told of Beri before the Knight.

It's… strangely peaceful to talk of it. Like a bubble full of memory, and every sound from just outside the door threatens to pop it.

Redana Claudius, Princess of Tellus, Alpha of the Silver Divers, looks up into her mother’s monstrous face. Behind her she can feel the tension of Bella’s body, a bowstring pulled taut under impossible pressures. Before her she can feel the heat, not just of the fires but of her mother’s judging gaze. The world is a plate being spun on the very tip of a knife.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” she says. It’s a small, pathetic sentence, but its impossibility in a place like this is impossible to ignore.

How dare she?

How dare she be so small?

“Every connection is building! Every love is love, you, you, you dummy!” She takes Bella’s hand. She squeezes. The clammy skin under her fingers…

Where is the hate in that?

“Love tore a hole in the universe, and I’m sorry, but— what, does that mean we’re not supposed to love? Not supposed to care? If this is all there is, then I’m still picking my silly little goal and my silly little friends and my silly little wife anyway!”

Her voice is silly and small and cannot reach the farthest corners, but fire blossoms in the heart of it.

Redana!

"Of course you must love!" said the ghost of Nero, reanimating a smile. "You have no choice. See there - I have tamed one of the greatest heroes of the Publica by giving her what she wants, even though it renders her an arm of the Empire she hates. How can you not want what you want? Even Zeus Skyfather cannot escape her own desire. Relative power is irrelevant; the only question that matters is what do you want."

She raises a hand, casting an oath to the corrupted heavens. Her smile turns daemonic.

"As with this: Whomsoever shall quench this fire that entraps me, I shall embrace, I shall love and I shall call my daughter."

Bella!

You have waited all your life for this chance.

Dolce!

Artemis looks at you strangely for a long moment.

Then she gives you a sword.

It's a strange thing, simple metal, beautiful in its plainness. You have seen something like it before, a toy in the hands of Gemini, a blade for cutting the heart. It doesn't fit your hands, isn't weighted for you - but eventually you might learn how to fit yourself to it.

Dyssia!

"That sounds so wonderful," sighs the Lawgiver. "Do you think..."

You know the legend of Heracles and Atlas. A myth devoured entirely by the Skies during their first triumph and exalted to the titular narrative of the Atlas Cultural Sphere. The ideal of a hero so great that she carries the burden of a God, mortal flesh holding up the Sky. The Endless Azure Skies has been built on that premise, self-organizing all the matter in the galaxy to strain against the weight of Zeus.

She can't finish the thought. Can't ask for you to take this burden, given that you both know once it is transferred she will never come back for it.

So instead you see the faint shift of stance and readiness. The faint shimmer of gravitic distortions.

"... I just need a little while," she said. "A few days."

This isn't a pleasant conversation any more. This is the beginning of a fight. She intends to force this burden upon you instead.

After all, when Heracles held the sky for Atlas, Atlas did not take it back willingly.

Her heart races. Her skin prickles. Her ears stretch upwards until it hurts. Her throat constricts. Her eyes narrow, and then they widen black as voids. Her grip on Redana tightens. And then it falters.

Her tail flicks once. Twice.

She is still split down the middle. Two visions and two feelings. She is feverish and she is freezing, she is lighter than a grave-wisp and heavier than the Anemoi. She is trembling and she is calmer than a pool of water hidden in the bottom of a cavern. She is silent. She is singing. She is once again a hundred broken pieces rearranged and glued together in a desperate attempt to create something beautiful. She is once again herself. Bella. And Mosaic.

She is a child being lifted out of the most terrible trap and punishment she has ever endured. As the beautiful, laughing girl falls on top of her, she turns her eyes upwards and sees a severe and grandiose woman - the girl perfected - suddenly melt into a charming smile at the sight before her. It is a fleeting instant, gone before it's really begun. But she is certain: the girl who is about to get a name for the first time is certain that that smile was meant just for her.

She is a woman struggling madly to keep her breathing in check. To maintain her poise and posture as she lowers herself into a menial bow. The Princess is gone. She, Bella had done everything she could think of to keep Redana safely on Tellus but she'd been fighting with both hands tied behind her back. What was she to do, kill the Princess?! But she has no excuses. She feels the iron terror of the Empress' eyes on the back of her neck. She cannot quell the shudder that runs through her body when the brands are brought close. And this too, she is certain, was meant just for her.

She is as breathless as the dead, not that she understands what that means just yet. She'd needed to drug her opponents, poison and trick and waylay them along the way, but all the same she'd run until her heart felt fit to explode and hers was the body that crossed the tape at the end of the Marathon. And hers was the head that wore the laurel crown. She dares to smile and it is stricken from her face as though carved with a knife by the cold and furious aura of the woman standing above her. What kind of an idiot was she? Of course Nero would know immediately that she had cheated her precious Olympics, that was the whole point of this to begin with! She cannot bring herself to apologize. She cannot afford to admit her mistake. The only thing that could raise her sins higher is if she reveals the shame of these Games to all of Tellus. Those perfect hands seem smaller now than they did once, but they are no less powerful and no less terrifying when they pluck the laurels from her sweat soaked blue-black hair. She flinches, anticipating torture, and what happens instead is that she feels an iron weight replace it. Her ears fill with applause. Her eyes fill with tears. When those fingers touch her chin they are as gentle as they are strong. And she is lifted to her feet a Praetor.

She is an awkward sort of teenager stalking the halls well past the bedtimes of Real People. But there is dusting to be done, and laundry after that, and Plover maintenance after that, and to set her mise-en-place for Redana's breakfast after that so that maybe if polishing the Palace armory didn't take too long there would be time to curl up in her little bed in the Princess' room before she needed to be up and moving again. So she is annoyed and surprised and then mortified to see the Empress herself come gliding down the hall directly toward her. She dips into a hurried bow and dares not lift her head for fear of meeting the eyes that are so like the daughter's she has so shamefully fallen in love with. For fear of having that understood. The Empress' hand is unsteady when it touches her shoulder - she has been drinking. She asks Bella if she has been keeping up with her studies. Bella denies the blasphemy, and only offers that she has been diligent in helping the Princess in whatever meager way a creature of her standing can manage. There are horrible long seconds where she is left to wonder if that was the wrong thing to say. But Nero offers her a smile, drunken if not unkind, and pulls out a tablet from her robes. The quiz lasts for hours and her chores are left undone. There will be no sleep tonight no matter how good she is. But before the Empress takes her leave she feels a single warm pat, and fingers tousling her hair just behind her ears. Just in time, she dares to meet Nero's eyes. And what she sees is sharp and appraising enough to make her wish that she could be a Princess, too.

A mother. If little Dany was sure of anything, the best thing that anybody could have (other than a best friend!) was a mommy. And Bella knew watching the two of them what the shape of the little hole inside her heart really looked like. She knew at long, long last why the dark always scared her. Why she hated being alone even though she could barely stand the nerves of being around others. She saw something that seemed to her young eyes like tenderness, and before it reached her heart it grew and changed into hunger.

She is walking toward the corpse of Nero. She is slipped free from Redana and she is crossing the long distance of this audience hall as though it did not exist at all. The flames are all that hold her back. When they are wiped away, she will be herself again. That voice will be her own again. It will be Right. She knows it. She knows it. Her red eye trembles violently and forces her eyelid closed, and she lifts a fist to smash herself in the face. She pulls it open and stares at the final obstacle between her and the wish she never even needed to make out loud. The sound of her heels are a symphony. The sound of her heart is sickened terror, but it only makes the orchestra sweeter.

Her talons glisten in the firelight, as though they were slavering fangs anticipating prey. Anything may be hunted. Everything can die. Even in this broken, crapsack clusterfuck of a galaxy to think otherwise is the domain of vain, delusional gods. Her eye and body know better. She sees the names of the fires. She sees the spots where her claws may cut them.

"Hold on. It will only be a moment longer," she sings and her breath is hot with steam, "I am coming... Mother."

Dany nearly lets the moment go, and she doesn't even know why. She comes right up next to damning the galaxy by releasing some awful thing pretending to be her mother, and there's no rational reason for her to do so! Her mind stops thinking in anything so sophisticated as words. Because, and here is the truth of it, the ugly painful truth of it: she didn't realize Bella would be tempted, and now all she can see is that Bella is tempted.

It's a rough and painful thing to realize that your heart is blind. It's even worse when you're steeling yourself to stand as a unified front against your mother, the thing that has stolen your mother's face, the thing that now lurks under Nero's wine-steeped laughter in her memories. There's no space for reason, for Apollo, for anything in the heart but shields up and lances out. And then to feel more than see Bella move? Now she's dizzy with the sudden loss in the shieldwall, stumbling, unseeing.

Her body knows better, as usual. Her body lunges out to catch Bella's wrist, and fails, and it's her body that decides there's only one thing for it, as per usual, the thing that Bella has taught her not to do, and now is the only thing she can do to her wife:

She lunges forward and interposes herself between her wife and the fires, trusting that if there's one thing Bella will not do, it is to destroy her in order to quench[1] those hellish flames of Dis. And if Bella would, well, being destroyed is what Dany would want to have happen to her anyway, come to think of it? Better to be trampled in the process of discovering that Bella values the approval of her mother-in-law more than the bodily integrity of her wife.

She makes mouth noises. Does it matter what they are? Neither she nor Bella nor Nero really care about what those mouth noises are, after all. A noisy, witless princess even to the end. So go ahead, Bella: maybe it's her turn to get locked in a closet, unable to stop you from chasing your heart's desire. Maybe it's Dany's turn to get hurt.

Maybe you're still capable of hurting her.

---

[1]: what a word. quench. queeeeeeeeeeench. haha. we have fun here.

"Why not take more than a few days?"

Dyssia's hands clench and unclench at her side.

"Surely you've earned peace, have you not? No, no, wait, let's not use that framework, it's not about earning or deserving, it's your right to live in peace."

Still, she doesn't reach for the scrolls, except to start to roll them up, shutting off the dizzying array of numbers, of information, of statistics, folding down charts and popups until they neatly slide back into the scroll case.

"There aren't any bars on this cage, Lawgiver. No chains, no collars, no whips or crops. Anyone who does not wish to be here can be off-planet in hours, if not minutes, soaring off through space to wherever they wish."

Which, side note, kind of a disappointment? What self-respecting empress doesn't have a scantily-clad harem?

"No chains in here but the ones you've forged yourself."

She doesn't slap her, but god does it feel like she has. Like the words are the cruelest whip she could use, even while not twitching a muscle.

"And those chains do not bind me, Dekal. I'm not the type to sit inside a bureaucracy and tell people what to do, how to think, how to be. Put the Skies on my shoulder and I'll let it drop."

Her voice is pleading. Stop this, Dekal. See sense.

"Just leave. Come with us. Don't. See the universe. Just stop sitting here, holding up the Skies, and telling yourself your sacrifice is making things better."

[Unfortunately, this is a 5,1, and Wisdom for appealing to emotions is +0. 6 on Talk Sense.]

Dolce prays without words.

The wood creaks beneath his leaping hooves. One-and-two-and-three, and tumult rises to devour each sound as it appears. No one will see the next steps of his dance. No one, save for the goddess for who found favor with his dance. This joy is for her alone.

A hunter would stab the unprotected back given the opportunity. But this is not the sword of a hunter. It was only passed on by a hunter, wasn’t it? A gift to open up a path. One that leads past Bella’s back, and ends in taking Ember’s hand. To whoever sent this gift, he will thank them by using it properly.

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t close his eyes…completely.

He lunges for the heart.

Please, Artemis.

Do not let him sacrifice anything needlessly.

Aphrodite!

A moment of perfect despair.

Exquisite.

Everyone knows the story of Cronus devouring his children. Fewer interrogate the thought. A brutal giant, snatching helpless babies with raw strength and shoving them into a bloody maw - a simple and uncomplicated vision, a memory of a neolithic past, a vision of the creator titan as an idiot monster. No moral. No warning.

Aphrodite knew better what devoured children looked like. They looked like arrows. A straight-backed quiverful, bundled together for strength around the father's axe. He had once fathered upon the Earth arrows enough to satiate an eternal hunger, and it had not been an act of muscle and teeth and jaws to devour them. Arrows were whittled. You carved away at them, bit by bit. Then at the end they had become so desperate to receive anything at all that they would not care when they were fitted with a blade and used to kill.

Love. Love would bring the prodigal sons back home. They would be embraced with love and forget their defiance. It wasn't their fault, after all. It had been a mind virus that had murdered and castrated his most beloved son, who had in turn murdered and castrated him. He would not make that mistake again. He would hold his children close and control their every desire, control all the channels by which they might see and experience the world, banish the corrupted love that had woken them from their peaceful slumber.

Here again was his moment. A child's flesh consigned to the fire, a narcotic smoke rising up to be fed into the lips of a patriarchal idol. True devotion. True desire. A seed nurtured in the empty places where a childhood should have been. Breath deep, granddaughter Hermes! Understand that you alone can repair the family line broken by your father Zeus! Give your devotion and love instead to Father Time!

Ares puts his spear through the thigh of the Shogun. War betrays the Ceronian as she lunges to intervene, sending her to the ground. Artemis puts her arrow through the shoulder of Redana as she lunges to intercept Bella. A perfect shot from Demeter's perfect disciple. The awesome might of all the gods aligned to a single desire fills the screaming air as Bella reaches the edge of the flames. Aphrodite's breath, hot with the ashes of slave kings, comes hot and heavy with the shockwaves of artillery fire through paper screens.

And then some fucking sheep comes out of nowhere -

Bella!

You cannot block this strike with claw or bone. But block it you must. If that silver sword should reach your heart then everything you have fought for your entire life will be lost.

"Defend yourself," said the God of Love, hand firm on your shoulder. "Defend yourself with your heart. Your love, your desire, is stronger than this blade. You have nurtured it since your earliest days and its roots run deep. In your heart exists a perfect world and a perfect family. That is your blade in this battle, my ultimate gift to you. Reach deep into yourself and draw it, and go to battle as my champion."

Dyssia!

"If I've forged these chains myself," said the Lawgiver, "then I can forge a couple more."

You smell the cigarette ashes. Aphrodite pulls the leash.

Everyone is familiar with the Flux, and everyone understands that it is important in preventing the return of the Tyrants and their engines of slavery. For the most part, martial technique has moved on - there are more advanced weapons suited to the current age, and the Flux has become more and more of a sidearm and distraction. But the Lawgiver Dekal fought the Tyrants of the Atlas Cultural Sphere at the height of their power and, to her, there was never any weapon more perfect, necessary and holy than the ELF.

Black spikes emerge all down her spine and then, BANG, BANG, BANG. Point blank thunderbolts, electrical discharges made for turning Knights into statues and cities into rock formations. They come from every angle, seething and instant connections that cannot be blocked - only endured.

At first glance it might be a palace of some kind. Perhaps even a city.

Columns and spires rise to such dizzying heights that they pass beyond the limits of even divine vision. Grand, rolling arches provide easy passage through the rounding walls, though beyond these welcoming entryways the air becomes so thick with shadows that there may not be a world inside of it at all. Your feet carry you for miles around the outside of it but the curve continues on forever. All of this vast expanse is in service to a single building.

Everything is white, white, white, white, white, white, White. Glittering and painful, more pure than the fur on her body. Brighter than creation. Not a canvas waiting for a brush or a joining of every color into some unified whole but Perfection for its own sake. Uniform and featureless and forever. It suffers a single imperfection along the vast walls, the only thing that might be worthy to mar the surface of such a pure artistic vision, which is Gold. Gold is necessary to create massive, serpentine grooves that run up the infinite vastness of this place. Gold is necessary to prove that Perfection is capable of more than featureless nothing; that there is art and creativity and beauty here for anyone to love.

There are pictures painted in the gold. A crew of idiots scrambling around the Eater of the Dead, the storm inside the monster and the murder of a King. An endless sea of machines dancing around a crown, and desperate heroes just barely slipping through their broken, grasping digits. On and on it stretches until it has painted the entire journey of the Plosious, before it wraps back around again to tell it again as a series of endless failures and captures. Once as betrayal stacked on top of betrayal, once as timidity disguised as love and contentment, and again as nothing but a series of horrific tortures so vivid they have their own screams.

Though there is nothing here but safety. Up, and up, and up, and up stretch the great pillars of white like fingers attempting to grasp the featureless blue sky. Down, and down, and down, and down reach their opposites: the shadows made of pure pitch that sink like fangs and daggers toward the howling abyss. And through the middle of that contradiction, winding in and out of the light and the darkness as simply as though it were a game of make believe, there is laughter.

The pair of them dart around the murals and the intimidating perfection as though they cannot see it. Their small forms are wrapped in perfectly fitting silks fit for young imperial princesses. They hold hands as they dart about, they skip and they leap and they laugh and it is more beautiful and flows more clearly than a brook fed by the final snows of winter. Together they are every color this place lacks. The taller of the two twirls, and her golden hair trails like a scarf made from precious metals that have been taught to flow as water does. Her eyes are golden too, with long catlike irises that are striking against her otherwise perfect and perfectly human body. She is grace and surety and joy every time she stoops to pick up the smaller girl, the one with the short cropped cut of blue-black hair who flushes with embarrassment every time before her emerald eyes flash in renewed determination and she does something even dumber and more flashy as though to make up lost points.

The ground sometimes melts in front of them, white featureless perfection turning briefly to bubbling mud and sludge that lifts itself into new shapes for their enjoyment. First a small forest and then a mountain and then a little fortress with adorable little guns point at them for the pair of them to raid. In the span of ten minutes the girls complete an adventure that sees them save a Forest Lion from its Deadly Paw Thorn, win a race (both of them, despite running separately), punch a dragon, kiss a beautiful princess, and then ride a dinosaur without pausing to think about what came next.

Breathless, giggling, and dirty with white dust on their colorful mosaic clothing, the pair of them finally slow down enough to notice a massive, golden door opening to their right. From the entrance and the warm light that pours out there is music so beautiful that it could only be about love. The chorus is made entirely of bells; their melodies richer than the most indulgent chocolate cream and bursting with unique chimes that are a match for any number of voices. The girls turn their heads to look at each other, and with smiles on their faces they skip inside the light before the doors slam shut behind them.

And this is how you learn that all of this towering White is for a theater.

"They're off to play with their Grandmother," says Bella, "I think she's going to share a bunch of Dany's old favorites. Fun little way to teach the kids what it was like for their parents growing up and embarrass the living shit out of us at the time time."

The voice is hers, unaltered and strong, but the mouth it is coming out of belongs to a child even younger than the two who just disappeared through the door. She is a tiny thing, smaller than she ought to be through obvious malnutrition and dressed only in bandages. Her head is covered in rough patches of her signature hair, which has otherwise been burned or melted off. Her face is covered completely in wrappings which are all the colors of misery and suffering, and the stench of her tiny body still speaks to the acid treatments she'd been subjected to in order to remove unwanted fur from her form. She flicks her tiny tail, and shrugs.

"I thought, for a while, it wouldn't be so bad to let my dream go. If it was for her sake."

This Bella is older, maybe a match for the larger of her two daughters. Her frilly gothic dress and large heeled, ribboned shoes should make her a delight to prospective buyers at the auctions. Her hair is silky smooth and braided into twintails that seem designed to make her look sweet and non-threatening, something that was evidently a problem for her in the past. If the bandages around her fingertips are any indication. She glances briefly at her younger self, still sitting in her tiny chair, before walking further into the light with her carefully practiced gait.

"I mean, I never wanted to stifle her. But endless adventure is a lot to ask for, don't you think?"

A teenage Bella is standing behind you in her finest Imperial Pet collar and the beautiful black-and-whites of a palace maid. Already in her adolescence she has flowered into the kind of womanhood that will bring a certain princess to ruin. Her every motion is velvet perfection, and the talons on her fingertips accent the perfect amount of jewelry for her station. You would have to be cynical indeed to believe they were coverings for mutilated, missing claws and not a personal touch she added to her look to please her Mistress. She offers the daintiest curtsy, and smiles sardonically.

"Every journey is supposed to end in the same place."

Another angle for the voice, another Bella to speak it. This one looks like the Praetor who hunted Princess Redana and her friends, but after some horrible disaster. All of her strength and her beauty is fallen to ruin. Her hair is matted and painfully clumped around a small braid that looks like it's tugging on her scalp every time she so much as breathes. What had once been a fetching military jacket and creamy white pants have rotted down to tatters, and the red half skirt around her waist is so full of holes and frayed spots that it might disintegrate if she tries to do more than limp forward. Which her legs look barely capable of to begin with. She stares with resentment at the empty wine bottle in her hand and lets it fall to the ground with a clatter. Another simply appears in its place.

"That is, if you want to have a real family..."

An older Bella still in her pet collar flaunts her body without meaning to. Every inch of her body is soaked from some kind of downpour. Her hair is bedraggled, but in a way that shows great care has recently gone into it, though her ears are crushed miserably against her skull. She clutches at the chain leash around her neck as if it were a weapon, while white and black and gold in very translucent overlapped lace patterns cling to her fur, the pale skin of her stomach, her chest, and her shoulders. Her golden eyes tremble with equal parts fear and anger, as hideous red drips from her beautiful talons.

"You have to come home."

Mosaic grins and ties a jacket around her waist. Her body drips with sweat from long labor, but she seems unbothered by everything. Her golden and purple eyes are turned only toward the skies.

"We have room enough for you here too," says another, more horrible Bella, "We have room for as many people as we need. Just so long as they understand."

Here at last is a Bella at the gate, plainly guarding the spot where those little girls disappeared. She is resplendent in the red and gold of the Empire. A sweeping skirt and a tight button shirt with one sleeve longer than the other. This is an affectation and not a flaw: her arm is bare to show her furless skin. The crown on her head sits without needing to make any accommodations for ugly pointed triangles spoiling the view. As if to revel in the shape of her head she has slicked back her hair to show her unblemished forehead. Her hair is streaked with molten gold. Bella, biomantically ascended into a true Administrator Species. A Human not just by some pretension of philosophy, but in real and actual fact. Bella: daughter of Nero.

She smiles, and her teeth are perfectly centered. And perfectly flat. Her eyes are still the colors of gold and red, but no cat qualities mar (//lift) them up. She opens her palm, and a wreath of flame roars to life until it takes the shape of a sword. Pointed and jagged and sickening to look at too long, this blade feels like a glitch in the universe. It's no comfort to know it is derived from the flames that once trapped the Empress Nero's corpse, now wielded in her service by her one true daughter. For the moment she does nothing more than lean on it, but just by having it here the air feels less pure and more like being in the presence of the Master of Assassins.

"My wife."
"My mother!"
"My sisters."
"My friends!"
"My crew."
"Every stupid moron who followed me this far."

The many Bellas speak up in rapid succession, the same voice bouncing from myriad angles in the expanse in front of the theater. She is every moment in time that she ever cried out for help. Every moment she was desperate enough to wish for a mother's embrace, or a parent's perspective, the stability to at least know what to do or the strength that comes from knowing there's somewhere to return to when everything is over.

There are far, far more of her than have shown themselves yet. She has lived a lifetime of fear and regret. Here, at last, every chapter of her life has a happy ending. Here, every prayer was answered by the same god. Here, every wish led her back to the place where she could have the peace and acceptance she trembled for so many long years' worth of fear, toil, and unending loneliness. Here she is limitless, and so knows limitless delights.

"I'll accept them all into my paradise."

They all speak out at once. They all smile, in their different ways. Bemused and superior sarcasm stands with equal power next to childish fawning and the servile solitude of the perfect maid. Heroes grin with sharp teeth and tyrants flash a winning smile without a fang in sight.

"You can rest now," they all say it like a song, "Right here."

"Under my perfect, starless sky."