The tittering turns to groans: oh, another lecture about conspicuous consumption, another naggy scold tut-tutting about how good they have it and they should be miserable just for existing. Fools to think that this would be entertaining.

Misery smiles with more teeth than necessary, feeling cool air on her gums. Oh, they’ll be entertained soon enough. She’s spiraling closer to truth, and the things she’s saying, she doesn’t have to pretend she means them. “Worse still, I see now the reasons for this years-long truce, this appeasement of the Heretics. This Capital is full of abominations, these perversions of the natural order. Are you cloning saints now? Are you defying the edicts against sullying the mind and body, edicts which were laid down by the Demiurge and brought to us by the Eight Messiahs? I see you trying to induce sainthood in children, to defy the Larex Forge by making blessing where there is none. Is that what you choose to call holy? Are you no different from the Heretics? I am shocked by what I have witnessed on this station. No, not shocked. I should say, disgusted. You disgust me.”

Silence now. A quick survey of her immediate surrounds: fear and anger within the cage of the dais. The Empress Dowager is furious and plotting her death. The Emperor is about to piss himself. The Duke, paralyzed by her audacity, says and does nothing. But the princess: a light blazes in her eyes and her unreadable expression is fevered. Is she smiling? It looks like she’s smiling.

At her feet the white holystone sings with unusual resonance. Her mother’s amulet is an ember under the armor, but its heat only gives Misery more strength. Ruin towers over the dais, shining with holy light, tall as a building and just as terrible. “Do what you need to do, Misery Nomaki.”

She says: “What the Demiurge gives, the Demiurge takes away. You were tasked to be stewards of the Faithful, to protect and care for those whose lives were entrusted to you. You failed. For your transgressions you will be punished.”

There’s holy obsidian in the ground of the Grand Amphitheater. Aegises to protect the audience from the battling mechs, to section the field, to project obstacles. One wraps around the edge of the viewing stands, blanketing the watching ranks of nobility in a sense of safety, an incorruptible separation from the drama playing out before them. They trust the holy obsidian. As a child Misery once stole a finger of holy obsidian by chipping it off an abandoned warehouse. For hours she hid in her favorite hollow under their family reef and twisted at the skinny gray until it yielded its secrets. The barriers produced by holy obsidian are made of energy unknown to humanity, divine light. In her quiet hollow Misery discovered all the stone’s hidden teeth.

It’s time to show the world what she learned.