She steps off the boat and onto the dock like a goddess in new skin. Or like a new goddess, just birthed from the wind and the fire and the storm. Her eyes are the water, her body the earth and the clouds in the sky.

She steps off the boat and onto the dock in silence, and the other passengers part around her like a stream around a rock. They still eye her and her weapon distrustfully as they had throughout most of the journey, but Theofos is clean and strapped to her side. They only fear her because that is her purpose: to instill fear in other. And to kill them. That is how she's made, like a predator.

Perhaps they should fear the lioness in her bones, even though it still rides the high of the kill. It purrs, stretching lavishly and contentedly beneath her skin, full. For the time being.

Now there is a whole sea between her, vast and deep and dark, and the empty temple of dead gods she has left behind. Now there is a world between her and the memories of her lover and her child. But no sea, no world, could separate her from the truth. Could separate her from her anger, vicious and righteous as it is.

The docks are silent and dark, but in the distance stands a castle so bright with warm, flickering light it appears as though it's on fire. And in the air embers rise above it, small pinpoints of hot light. She moves toward it, lithe and graceful and powerful, and the shadows fall across her like a second skin.

Inside the walls she finds where all the life has gone. It has gathered on the streets and in the courtyards and the square. There are bodies everywhere she goes and they push and press and brush up against her and it reminds her so much of battle that the lioness in her stirs out of curiousity, coming alive and awake. There are fires, huge and roaring and the heat on her skin is the heat of everyone and of the flames all at once.

She pushes through the crowd and tries to forget the last battle she had ever fought. Tries to ignore that any one of these equines could be the one who put a spear through her ribs. In her eyes is a caged wild thing, feral and desperate to escape. Her hand is clasped about the handle of her axe out of reflex, but the mortal side of her wars with the immortal. The spear did not kill her, but she had still died.

Then Antiope sees the first lantern, up close.

"Speaking."