"I wanted to solve this amicably. Was that not clear? That is why I allowed you to walk freely enough to see the purity of my home for yourselves. It is why I showed you my daughters, that your withered hearts might heal with their radiant laughter. It is why I called out to you, when I might have simply snapped my fingers and buried you both in a tomb, or burned you to ashes where you stand. And yet I spoke."
Bella Aurelia shakes her head with theatrical sadness. When she shrugs, her gleaming hair tumbles ever which way about her back as she lifts her sickening, twisted sword aloft.
"Why ignore me so? It is very rude, you realize, to crawl about and scheme my downfall right in front of me. Across history, far better people than yourselves have lost their heads for much less. You are very lucky I am so magnanimous."
She slams her blade into the white ground, and once again you see the pristine and featureless white floor melt into black tar, alive with the sound of hot pitch and the smell of cigar smoke and some strange old, corroded scent that smells like an ancient mess of some description, only half cleaned and then abandoned to the rot of long years and millions of miles. Is it Mistakes? Regret? It's too blasted out by bleach and tobacco to tell. But just by smelling it, you feel as though the gravity of this place has intensified by tenfold or more.
Struggle all you wish, but you will feel the touch of your knees to the floor. And while you drop, the surging black muck washes you apart even as it consumes a hundred different Bellas into black nothing. It rolls in choking waves and splashes down to carve deep wells in what had been the ground. Where it crests, high walls form themselves into a maze too tall and winding to see out of, no matter where one tries to look from.
"Yes, I love you even now. I shall love you forever. That is why I will not kill you. I am going to fix you first, and then I shall take you inside my heart to live forever."
She flourishes her crimson cloak and vanishes with the wind.
*****
Redana!
Considering that you are buried somewhere in a maze, the corridors here are unusually wide and spacious. The floor beneath you is covered with plush, golden carpeting which might be lovely if it were not simply so much more of the same two colors that already made you sick to your secret heart. This isn't how things were on Tellus. Nero's palace is both meaner and more beautiful than this... ballroom? And yes, if you look around at the flickering evercandles and the various white clothed tables with their glittering golden dinnerware all pushed aside for an evening's festivities, that is clearly where you are. A pale shadow of an imitation of a haunted memory.
It's wrong. All of it is wrong. The walls here feel afraid. As if accepting any part of the true Tellus into this place, or indeed anything other than this singular, banal, ultra clean prettiness would risk her sense of safety. Because that is what Bella really wants. That's what she craves, the secret wish of her heart that was strong enough to break all of her bonds and promises for. She wants a place where--
"I will admit, I didn't expect you to break apart like this. I forgot how fractured your heart really is."
It's still the same voice, but at least it sounds correct coming from the shape in front of you. Undeniably Bella, she stands in the center of the dance floor wearing curve hugging, glorious gown that Beautiful had once sewn for her to wear on Salib. The open back still shows off skin that glitters like diamonds. The rose shaped scars she bears are still there, still turned into pure beauty by the deft touch of paint and makeup. Her fingers are still tipped with jeweled talons, gripped tight around a champagne flute.
Her lips split open into a wide but very party friendly smile, one that only shows the sharpness of its teeth to the person she is speaking to. She had a plan she was following back then. Back when she danced with Skotia. But she wanted to dance with her Princess, didn't she? She sought her out above everyone. Is she following a plan now, too?
She snaps her fingers, and the room fills not with music, but the stomping of two hundred heavy boots.
From all corners they surge in: tall warriors in sleek, body conforming armor plating all in black and white. Like a heavy soldier's version of the dresses Bella used to wear all around the palace. They all have the same chin, the same lips, the same eyes covered by the same v-shaped visor clipped around the back of their heads under the exact same blue-black three plaited braid. They all carry identical heat lances as well, long weapons designed to incapacitate an enemy not merely through simple thrusts but by burning their internal organs until the body neared shutdown state trying to repair it all.
Each and every one of them stands at attention where they finish reaching their assigned posts. They lift their spears in perfect unison by way of salute to the beautifully dressed catgirl standing in their center. With one hand she sips her drink in delicate refinement. With the other, she clicks her fingers together and all of those 200 spears point downward at you, Redana.
"Don't worry, my love. I am here to heal you."
Ember!
Everything is brighter than a sun in here. The pathway is so straight and narrow it's honestly insulting. Did she worry you'd get lost if it bent at all? Or is this about--
"I want you to know that I don't appreciate this at all."
And that's all the warning you get before a hand grabs you by the skull and smashes you into a wall. Your vision fills with starbusts and red spots as your face gets dragged not at all gracefully along the length of the hallway. You are not let go so much as thrown to the ground.
"I don't want to see my wife trying to trick me. I don't want to see her even believe it is possible. Would I not know you in an instant, no matter how you dressed yourself up? There is losing yourself inside of me, and there is... I don't even have the words for it."
When your vision clears, there is only one Bella standing in front of you. She is dressed as simply as it is possible for her to be dressed: in nothing but a plain, fraying, and oversized t-shirt that keeps slipping down her shoulder to reveal how absolutely naked she is underneath it. She glares down at you with a look of contempt so vile it could wilt flowers.
"This will take some time. But it is worth doing correctly, so I may have the wife that I deserve. This is for our future, Princess Redana Claudius."
Her claws grip a large chunk of twisted metal that drips alternately with blood and oils that do not quite obscure the rather childishly painted skull that is slowly disappearing between her crushing claws.
Bella's shoulder rears back, and she hurtles the scrapped Plover's head at your own with the force of a thunderbolt.
Skotia!
"I once said something rather stupid to you. I have regretted it ever since. What were the words again? Something about masters and their pets?"
Bella Aurelia has come in person to address this particular intruder. She is the hero of a new, more modern Empire who needs neither mask nor hidden name to shine so brightly that the stars do not dare to challenge her. Her cloak flutters in stage winds and her smile glints in stage lighting, though neither force is even present here. Her every motion is overexaggerated and a cruel sort of playful; at once Bella's smirking confidence and a horrible desperation to live up to Nero's charisma which she clearly worries she lacks. When she points her finger it's as flamboyant as a Prion Paula villain. When she turns her body it is with total awareness of where her cloak and her tassels and her jewels will settle.
When she thrusts with her sword, it is with swift and unannounced brutality. That it clashes with Skotia's own is of no concern to her. She grins broadly and watches the hero's weapon twist from a simple but beautiful piece of steel to a glittering alabaster blade with a crossguard in the shape of eagle's wings. And no sooner does it transform than does it burn the hands to blisters even just to grip it. Swinging it is impossible. It may not even be sharp.
Desire. That is the name of Aurelia's sword. Desire so strong it will seize and devour every other want it touches. Desire so desperate it does not trust itself to survive if it does not smother all other flames. All consuming, all powerful Desire. She pivots upward with a graceful stroke, this time aiming for the mask.
"Whatever it was, I wish to take it back. You did say you would die for me, correct? Thank you, that means a lot to me. By all means then: you may begin."
Dolce!
Once upon a time, a sheep stepped into the corpse of a monster. It was hot, and it was wet, and it was in its way quite terrifying if you had a mind to think of such things. The sheep's lioness wife did not. She marched boldly down the platform with the confident smirk of a pirate on just one adventure out of the many, many she'd already had. And ran directly into the buzzsaw that was a lonely maid.
The sheep watched his wife tumble uselessly into the swampy ground. He watched her sword shatter under the pressure of the maid's claws. He listened to her, all she liked in fact, while she stormed and complained about the maid's total lack of tact and grace and beauty and kindness and any other positive quality that might have rendered her worthy to be the best friend of the Princess who had hired these brave hero pirates in the first place.
He did all of these things, but even as he did them, he saw that the maid wore bells. Bells in her hair, bells woven into her lace patterned skirts, bells in the collar wrapped around her neck. And he also saw that she was being punished. Fearful as he was of the music she wore on her body, he bowed to her. And he remembered her name for always.
That same maid sits across the table from him now. The exact same one, down to the number of stitches in her clothing. She still has that disgusted look on her face, as though even removed from the Eater of Worlds she still had its smell clogging her nose. With effort, she manages to wipe her expression clean, and watches him with forced calmness instead. Two golden eyes watch him with the wariness of a predator who fears she has been caught.
The sensation of those eyes pours in from all around the room, though no other versions of her seem present here. But there are many shadows in this place, here and nowhere else in all the labyrinth, and all throughout them there is the seeming of more cats' eyes.
"Why did you attack me? What possible reason could you have for bringing violence into my heart? You even said you do not believe I am myself. I do not understand. You have always been kind to me, in ways I wish to repay you for now. That is why, for the present..."
She lifts her hands above the table to show the flat caps on her talons. She plucks one free and scratches the table with the claw hidden underneath, and then applies her jewelry again. Her hands disappear under the table, and she smiles with the kind of careful professionalism that any service worker would know at a glance.
"I am simply asking you to drop your sword. There is no need to pierce my heart with it, I promise you. I just want to be a mother, Dolce. But what kind of mother could I be without one of my own? The woman who originally called herself such was a monster who quite literally tried to eat me. Children deserve better than that. They need love, and warmth, and a clean stable place they can always come back to when the world bares its fangs. Surely you agree with me?"
She pushes a cup of coffee across the table. Not a can, the way it ought to be, but a cup and saucer in the only colors this place knows.
...Dany.
The young, bandaged Bella has followed you here. Even though her broken body cannot move on its own. She cannot leave her chair. She simply was in one place and now is in this one. She regards you coolly, with the practiced eyes of a child too used to rejection who has nevertheless been told to ask for better.
"I don't think you and I have much to say to each other, do we? I am only here because I thought you might get bored. I haven't left you anywhere to go. No windows, no doors. See, I don't need to deal with you, I just need you to stay put while I--"
Bella's head turns suddenly. The pounding noise coming from elsewhere in the labyrinth feels faint, too distant to matter. The horrible animistic howl does not. Something is in pain. Something is furious. The child Bella shivers, and pulls herself tight against her chair.
"...No. No. This isn't right. Something's--"
Her tiny body dangles limply from a monster's wrist. A hulking brute wrapped in massive plates of her own bone and twisting spines steps through the rubble she has just blown apart and shivers with a cold pleasure against her steaming body. The many long braids of her hair dance across her back from inside the faceless mask of her terrifying helmet. She flicks the corpse away as though it weighed less than paper, and points a still slick and dripping claw toward the only other person she can see.
XIII curls her spine so far backwards it feels like she must have broken it, and lets out another blood curdling howl. This close, it's like being inside of a nightmare. The noise itself is louder than SP fire, but the truly horrible part is quality of it all, the savage hurt that it both promises to inflict and resents having born all its life. It's a noise that no human could make. Only a beast, only a monster can roar so horribly, so, so... wet.
"Re. Da. Na...."
She slumps forward, with her claws twitching eagerly. Her tail flicks in anticipation of the pounce. Her body is tension and her breath is red mist and her voice is ugly, guttural laughter.
You have to run, Dany. You have to get out of here now. Or you're going to die, just like Bella did.
