This was not Aurora's most divine moment: butt in guano, back against the cavern wall, limply struggling to draw breaths with her lungs crushed beneath an ocean of anguish.

"Emotional pain? You mean from the 'fog'?" Lylis worried. "The resentment is stronger?"

An understatement.

"It's...crushing," Aurora strained. "Resentment. Grief. Despair."

The resentment filled her with a need to hurt something. The grief tried to curl her into a whimpering ball. The despair made any action but staring ahead at nothing into an insurmountable trial, sucking the strength from her limbs. A mortal would be unconscious. Braindead. Thus, butt in guano, back on wall, struggling to breathe.

In the meantime, the Gate sat wide open, exposing a direct path to whatever accursed source festered on the other side.

"I know what we agreed," Orrin said, using his arms to dry his face. "I just...after seeing...everything you are, I..."

He shook his head.

"You followed...your conscience," Aurora reassured him. "I will never...fault anyone for that."

If only her brother listened to his.

"I beg your pardon," Orrin apologized. "For presuming."

Aurora couldn't tell if he would have apologized to any mortal woman in the same way, or if it was specifically a matter of blasphemy. Regardless...

"Nothing...to pardon," she told him. "With Lylis...get your bow, and...check the 'shadows.' Then return to me. Careful."

"Are you sure you're going to be alright?" Lylis pressed. The bulk of her attention remained on the Gate's tunnel.

"I won't get worse," Aurora promised. "The Gate is open. Hurry."

Although both twins hesitated, they did eventually head toward Orrin's bow. While she waited, Aurora closed her eyes, and tried to fortify herself against a crushing ocean of anguish that didn't belong to her. 

Thwimp-thwimp.

The snapping of bowstrings jolted Aurora's eyes open, but neither of her companions was visible from the cavity Orrin had placed her in. Thankfully, Lylis swiftly called out an update.

"Another flew through the tunnel. We both hit it."

Orrin added a description.

"They're...shaped like bats, roughly, except..." He hesitated. "They're made of, like...black jelly? But when the arrows hit them, the water all drains out, suddenly, and leaves a husk of dry, crumbly soot. That's what gets pinned to the wall."

Aurora took some time to mourn the brother who had made skates for her. 

There were almost certainly many, many more such husks, beyond the Gate, most of them probably too crude for flight. As far as Aurora knew, not a single soul had suffered this fate since they worked out all the kinks, before the first humans awakened. Not until this tragedy. 

Soon, Lylis and Orrin returned to her.

"This...is what happens...when souls can't reach my sister," Aurora explained. "When they are denied the rebirth...that is their sacred right. They yearn to be...filled with Life's water again...to start anew, in new bodies...to begin new stories...to add fresh sounds, and colors. Instead, they stagnate, and their yearning...turns them into this."

How could they not resent their fates? 

"Millions of them, deeper inside, I suspect." Saying those words, when she was already swamped by grief, finally brought tears. For Aurora, that meant her eyes and lashes glistened, but her cheeks remained unstained, any droplets that might have fallen instead dissipating into a twinkling mist. "Millions of stories...that should not have ended. Millions of new ones...that never started. A rot on the Design. So much death, lingering...that it has defiled Life's water."

And the perpetrator knew better! He knew that souls needed to reach their sister to be cleansed and reborn. He knew that the fashioning of souls was reserved to Mother-Father. He knew his crime mutilated the Design and its sacred beauty.

"My brother...needs a scolding. He knows...that I would think so."

Rage pushed back against the crushing anguish, but Aurora's own sorrow undid any progress that might have been made.

"He knows...that I would try to send him to it!" 

And try she would, but Aurora had no idea how a fluttering dancer, no matter her agility, could ever land a meaningful blow through the armor of the Crafting God. And any weapon her brother would deem worthy of wielding himself probably weighed more than she did. No, the handle would probably weigh more than she did. 

"Is he here?" Lylis growled. "Now?"

Aurora shook her head.

"I doubt it. This place...is probably long abandoned. Festering. If he still comes here...feeling this...then he is truly...irredeemable."

"Are you sure he could feel it?" 

"No," Aurora admitted. "But I don't see why I should, if he can't."

Lylis and Orrin looked at each other.

"Forgive my boldness, but..." Lylis hesitated. "I think, maybe, you've been labeled 'Beauty' for so long that you've partially internalized it, and...discount the rest of what you are. Maybe there isn't a single pithy word for...everything you were talking about earlier, but that doesn't mean you aren't also...all of that." Lylis cringed at her own words. "What I'm trying to say is, sure, maybe it doesn't make sense for the Goddess of Beauty to be the only one who can feel...what you're feeling, but Beauty is only part of who you are."

Aurora blinked, and thought it over.

In all her days, and the time before days, never once had she ever sensed a fog of resentment or been disabled by the crush of anguish. True, she'd never been near millions of victims before, not victims of this magnitude, but it was difficult to believe that she would never have experienced a single instance of some mysterious, innate ability, unique to her, which allowed her to sense...

Oh.

Even a goddess could be an idiot, sometimes.

"Thank you, Lylis," Aurora exhaled. "I should have made the connection myself."

"To what? What connection?" Even under the circumstances, Lylis' enthusiasm managed to get a smile out of Aurora.

"I can feel the...the thrill of my audience, when I perform. And...when I'm greeting large crowds, I feel the excitement, and awe. I...just didn't make the connection. It's normally so different." A crowd of millions resenting their existence, succumbing to grief and despair, was not a thing that happened in Aurora's presence. Ever. "So, my brother could be here...and feel nothing."

If he was immune, while she was currently nowhere near getting her butt off the guano...what a disaster.

"We saw what you are," Orrin stated softly. "I don't believe a defective god stands any chance against a fully divine goddess."

Aurora met his eyes. He gasped sharply, and subtly recoiled, but did not look away. Strangely, he appeared to see no contradiction between what he had said and Aurora's current butt-in-guano predicament.

"Is your faith in me...so strong...that you would risk a battle with a god?"

"Yes." Two simultaneous answers, unhesitant and firm, but spoken softly.

Across the world and across the ages, mortals praised Aurora for her beauty, grace, and artistry. Worship of the Goddess of Beauty, Fashion, Dance, Theater, Art, and Music was widespread. Every significant city had a shrine--at least one. Statues and paintings and mosaics of her lined the halls of every conservatory. But this was different. Different enough to make Aurora's own heart flutter.

She hoped that the twins hadn't just thrown their lives away.

"Then please...can someone carry me...through the Gate? My limbs...have no strength."

Hopefully, her brother wasn't here. If he was, and they encountered him, while Aurora was like this...

"Pardon me," Orrin muttered.

Gingerly, he slid his arms under Aurora's knees and shoulder blades and, with no apparent difficulty, solved her insurmountable butt-in-guano problem.

Thwimp.

"Clean hit," Lylis reported, already re-nocking. "Can you help me retrieve my arrows, before we go through? If I need to shoot a million of these things, I can't waste any."

---

The tunnel on the far side of the Gate seemed more-or-less comparable to the entrance, aside from the soul jelly things. Lylis crept forward carefully in the lead. To keep their presence as subtle as possible, only the pale pink glow of her arrows and mask lit her path, mostly in case they happened upon a guilty god who didn't yet know they were coming.

She glanced behind her. It was truly remarkable how Aurora made getting carried look like she was posing for a dramatic painting entitled something like Hero Rescuing the Goddess of Beauty.

"The souls are hostile, right?" Lylis murmured, belatedly. "I've been shooting on sight."

"Yes. Like...abused animals. Release them, to my sister. Rebirth. New stories."

"Your arrows...re-kill them?"

"Yes. Their false bodies...are mockeries of the Design. That ugliness...can't survive my touch. They'll go to my sister. Whatever blocked them, before...is gone."

Lylis nodded to herself, reassured, and crept forward, staying low and on the balls of her feet. Not even Orrin was better at infiltration, stalking, and ambush.

It was helpful that the bat-souls were only mindlessly charging on sight--no waiting to attack from behind, no group tactics, no attempts to evade or escape. All Lylis needed to do was keep her eyes forward, stay alert, and hit her targets. And make sure she didn't hit them at a range and angle where she might be splashed when the soul jelly lost its water--no need to find out how toxic it may or may not be after Aurora's arrows did their job.

Seeing no sign of any danger ahead, Lylis waved Orrin forward.

"Your brother, Crafting--he was the big one, on the door?" Orrin murmured. "Lower right?"

"Yes, largest of us. Massive blacksmith. Arms thicker than my waist."

And with dexterity matching his strength, according to every account Lylis had ever seen.

"In stories, he...like he works molten metal, with his bare hands," Orrin followed up. "Is that exaggerated?"

Thwimp. Splish. Lylis pinned another charging husk to the cavern wall, and crept over to retrieve her arrow.

"It's the truth," Aurora confirmed. "But don't worry. He's too proud...of his strength, and smithing skill...to 'cheat.' If we must fight him, he'll use...weapons of strength, and armor. A huge greatsword or hammer...in one hand...a shield on the other arm...and heavy armor. All ornate."

"You have a chance against him?" Lylis checked. "Better than Justice?"

"Justice would destroy me...the second he decided to. But against Crafting...normally, it'd be like...butterfly against rhino."

Lylis thought for a moment.

"Your strikes can't hurt him, but you're agile enough to dodge everything?"

"Right."

"But we're here, too," Orrin pointed out.

"Mmhmm."

...Lylis' poor brother must be under some serious pressure, carrying the literal source of all beauty in his arms.

"Do you have any ideas what Crafting's purpose might be?" Orrin asked.

"Two ideas. Only Mother-Father makes souls. He might be covetous...want to make them himself. Or, he might want to make something, using souls. Probably both. The Design permits neither."

Thwimp. Splish.

---

"There's a Gate here," Aurora warned suddenly. Her voice was much less strained than it had been. "At the entrance to that chamber ahead. It's already open."

Orrin watched Lylis, yet again, creep ahead to scout things out. They'd made slow and steady progress, passing stray bat-soul dust things along the way, some able to fly with varying levels of grace, most shambling on the ground.

"We're close," Aurora declared. "Thank you, Orrin, for bringing me this far. I would have needed to crawl. But time's up. I need to grit my teeth and stand."

Putting her down would reduce the burden on Orrin's heart more than his arms. He tilted Aurora's silk-and-chitin boots toward the ground, and she cautiously put her weight on her feet. There was a bit of wobbling, but her knees held.

"Remember: don't throw your life away," she urged, still bracing herself on his arm. "Leave me and run, if necessary."

Orrin understood the logic perfectly well. He also knew he wouldn't have it in him.

"You said this is...your container," he recalled, partially dodging the topic. "Is the real you...behind your eyes?"

"Yes. My vessel is the body of a mortal woman in most ways, but one difference is the brain is replaced with a container that...Hmm." Aurora's lips pursed in thought. "Now that you mention it, that's probably what he adapted, to trap souls..."

As interesting as that was, Orrin was more worried about exactly how indestructible Aurora was.

"There's no chance that container could be damaged? Even by your brother? Any of your siblings?"

She smiled.

"The container can be damaged--not easily--but that would only eject me to the Void. Fully intact! Believe me, Learning thoroughly verified that! Heeheehee!"

...Orrin distinctly recalled beseeching the Creator for mercy, right before he spent most of an hour carrying this personification of Beauty.

"Laughing's a good sign," she chirped.

Aurora clenched the hand of her free arm into a fist, then flexed the arm itself.

The only warning Orrin got for the next part of her self-checkup was a sudden sharp intake of air.

"Ho ha hei hee hii. Mii mee mei ma mo. Rooooo. Kiiiii. Good, good. And I think I can wobble around."

She took some tentative steps, then tested rising to the balls of her feet, heels a finger off the ground, then two, then three.

Up ahead, instead of giving the signal to join her, Lylis started creeping back to them. 

"Good to see," she murmured to Aurora, once she was close. "There's a large chamber ahead. I can see what look like suits of heavy armor, larger than a man, standing around. They might just be propped up, but...I get a 'standing guard' feeling from them, you know? Like they're only standing still, not immobile."

"Perhaps my brother succeeded, to an extent, at fashioning counterfeit souls," Aurora guessed. "'Living' armor seems like something he would want to make. What are they guarding?"

"I can't see enough of the chamber to know. It's possible that they're not actively guarding anything specific, just waiting until they're needed."

Aurora nodded thoughtfully.

"I can sense that the main source is very close," she said. "I bet there are millions of bat souls trapped in this chamber."

"Do you have a plan?" Lylis asked her. "I was joking about shooting a million of them."

"Only one," Aurora replied. "Let me make sure I'm ready, before I go for it."

Orrin smiled at the irony, as he and Lylis hurriedly sat down before Aurora's voice stole the strength from their limbs.

"In the depths of their despair,

They've lost all hope that someone hears.

They cry a most important prayer,

That finds no list'ning ears.

But heard I have, so here I've come,

To sing those souls a requiem."