P O V

In deep space the eye of K'Terlu goes wide with the screams of Apollo echoing, seeing the re-entry fires as Apollo himself had seen it, a wince as though the great beast himself had felt it.

Then a calm ...

A rage in the K'Terlu's eye as it fades into gravitation.  Its orbitals fall into the gravitational pool as the K'Terlu wriggles into a growing black hole like a cocoon, its planetoids and and asteroids accumulated along the way crash into one another.  Dust in the event horizon, and then its gone.
________

Mars, apparently caught after The Sabine Tale but before The Pivotal Western, stands stretching, having washed ashore after called coward and thrown to sea by Aries, whose last proclamation that he would never be a god.

He looks around at this place of a growing mist, as if the sand swirled with the lightest of breezes and held its place when it passed, responding to every motion like a smoke that never dissipates.

A redness to it, a bloodiness to the spires growing in the distance, swinging long protrusions overhead in their slow turn with a deep blowing sound, dragging a near sandstorm harmlessly with it, losing sight of Mars entirely.

Through the smog a massive form seen walking, a deep groaning sound.  The Orson, its frame still twisted from the Sabine Tales, and not seeming in a good mood.

Amelia spots a form in the sand.

Morgan - "What is Happening "

Outside, Mars stares up in awe at the Orson twisted form.

The 'poom' sound of distant impact.

A terraforming Mars, the wind generators and pressure regulators similar to the graviton coils dot the red desert distance.  Dogs escaped of the humans already forming small roving packs eating smaller escapees and a few things inexplicable scurrying beneath massive slow fans of an abandoned terraforming station.

Things it woke up.  Things defrosted.  Things.

 

The fore of the cruiser lay wrecked in the sands still settling from impact.

 

The dogs look up as the decorous bodies of Apollo's entourage begin dropping.  One then two like the start of a screaming rain to a downpour then to fewer, the last nearby with a crack and then and none.

 

~ The dogs look at each other confused ...

 

A torch lights through from beneath the thick hull plating, drawing its line before a foot kicks out the new door.  Out flops a knapsack then a head on a torso.  Arsinoe pulls the wrap down from over her mouth and lights a cigarette with the torch before extinguishing.  

 

She climbs battered from the crash through and stumbles from the cloud still stunned.  Straightens and sees the dogs looking back at her with curiosity dashed with a little guilt over what they knew their next meal was to be.

They all look up at the last screaming drop before the crunch.  The dogs look at her looking back, she smiles and puts the smoke in her teeth and grabs the bag.

Arsinoe - Turns back to the wreck and inhales ... "I did it."  She laughs and then screams ... "I ... DID IT  !!!" 

 

The drones begin to descend as the dogs start slagging dopishly for the bodies ... the other beasts squeak and scurry back to their holes in the terrraformer's steel.

Remembering Things

She drags the knapsack smoking as the a drone settles before her with an opening cockpit.

The doors on the public flier bus slide open with a crowd.  She's unmasked in a dirty torn business suit for appearances, awaited by attendants with a sign and excited to see her alive, believing her lost as it seems she was actually invited to Apollo's party.  They jump up and down as though they were her biggest fans.

Bag over her shoulder she views the handed data-pads after greets and baskets, approvals and signatures, she nods her departure while exaggerating exhaustion from the 'terrifying event' into her office, the door sliding behind.

Behind the shelf of books and legalities, another room opens to her workbench, trophies displayed around an armor's mannequin laced with the skin of these aliens but stopping at the head.  She replaces the armor pieces from her gear, the one shoulder's skull still missing.  Drops the bag. 

One fresh head removed, the eyes as though still looking back, she smiles into them.  Steaming tool on the bench, she drops the head next to it.  A moment's consideration before the scalpel.  Turn the head to cut its back, pulling gently and steaming the fatty seams ...

A process of pulling and peeling, cutting what connects and steaming the fats until removed, she holds up the face after, hanging limp for examination.  

Then to the eyes still socketed to the bone, another smile with a bob of brows.  
 
She slides open the chemical steamer walls, a mannequin's head molded as her own features and wearing another set of targeting goggles.  She places the new face around it before sewing.  A switch activated, a flush of wind beneath fills it ballooning around the mannequin's head, she slams the door shut.
 
The skull then to another to be cleaned, her hem in it's place, her weapons and his on the central wall between, surround the new armor awaiting. 

She exits the hidden room before the broad window showing the active asteroid belt.  She watches the mining drones working.  She clearly enjoys the control as she undresses and redresses a new suit, the spinning heads watching.
 
The oven clicks on with a fan, slow shrinking to the mannequin's features spliced through her dressing.  Fresh suit fitted to the tie.  The drones stop their labors and rise gathering to the window, waiting.
________

While on desolate Nibiru, dried to the bones of the creature it once was, the new ruler sits his chambers, attended by three priestesses of old ways lost to most but the line.

Bred of the great beast's eggs, but crossed with the Nibiri to serve as translators to the beast, who exists somewhere between their god and benefactor, controlling factions by how many of it's blood and ships are used, and by  whom.  

 

These creatures' territories fill the galaxies with their myths, these their priestesses here to our own solar system.  These emissaries keep their own council, their ways unknown to these temporal rulers, they're praetorian.  Representing the beast who is feared above all.

They watch this new ruler, so young, as he paces the throne room like fixtures in its corners, ears ever present for rhetorical complaint.

Aesculapius - "My father was a fool.  And a coward.  And ... and always afraid he was.  Always afraid of what he could See !  Even more than what he could not, you know.  He did not fear the shadows of the night like any wise man hunted, no !  He was afraid of you !  Afraid of me !

"Afraid of his dead wife and her maid ... afraid.  And lost to the stars his mind was never on the throne.  He lost control of the system and now ... do you see, with your 'divine eyes', do you see what these humans do, what they've become !?  Do you see !?"

He stares at one of the priestess monks, unaware as she was it was an actual question.  She looks up.

One - "Do you know what we are, Lord Aesclepeu ?"

Aesculapius - With despise, "The muck that grows inside the Terlu eggs, bacterium to scrub them clean for the shipyards, when it breeds with something else I do know well, and well enough."

Two - From the other corner, "And what are you, my lord ?"

Aesculapius - "Your master.  The only source of pleasure you'll ever know, and if you're lucky the only source of pain.  And you ?"  He looks to the third.

Three - "Wondering if you still have the gift of foresight, my lord ?"

One - "Lost with the assault on his father's senses I think.  The brutality."

Two - "Lost to the sensation.  Refusing to see what is, in order to believe, in what is not."

Three - Looks from them with a smile back to him, "Lost in the sensation of brutality, a motherless boy who lost his father.  Do we mate now my lord ?"

Aesculapius - "You are my eyes now, damned as I am by my father's whims to the temple dreck.  We do."
________

As the spires grow in one place, as though on opposing fields, the shadows of things in the mist.  Gods of the wolds crushed by the K'Terlu, populace gone.

Forgotten who and what they were, now they serve only him as drones, aeons spent between thought or a thing to respond to.  Many like aliens we've seen, with many monstrosities in the place between sand and mist behind them as though the ghosts of entire biospheres were haunting this place.

A passing wisp of sand.

Three - Close to Aesculapius' lips, "Do you know how you die ?"

Aesculapius - "I do not.  Die."

Two - Whispering in his ear, "We can see it."

One - Looking up from between his legs, "Would you like to know, Lord Aescu ... lapius ?  Your father was afraid.  He wouldn't let us speak it."  She returns to her works.

Two - With an ear's gentle bite, "We always crave to tell, are you afraid, my lord ?"

One - Breathing deep into his lungs, "Scared boy.  My poor boy."  She caresses his head, her cheek on his while he contorts to their pleasures.

Aesculapius - "I do not fear fate nor you my fates most foul ... whisper into my ear how I die, while befoul this ... "

He looks into the eyes of the one, who looks up in love from her task before returning gracefully, stripping the last to ride and for a moment he loves her back, "Creature."

One - Making him arc with her deeds, "There's hope for you yet.  Aes ... cu ... la ... pius."

Aesculapius - Watching her ... "Oh no.  I really don't think there is."