Aurora wobbled with some assistance toward the Gate, and crouched behind a rock outcropping with a reasonable view through the opening. Orrin took the place on her left, and Lylis on her right.

Most of the chamber wasn't visible, and it was difficult to tell which areas were simply too distant and dark to see, and which were obscured by foreground rock formations. In the region near the entrance, there were four of the motionless suits of armor, dimly lit by Lylis and Orrin's arrows and masks. All four had slightly different designs, but they were broadly similar: smooth, reflective, full-body heavy plate, helmets and all. It was impossible to tell what, if anything, was on the inside. Lylis had described the suits as "bigger than a man," and in fact they were even bigger than Crafting, nearly twice Aurora's height and with bulk to match. They looked like they would be slow, clumsy and lumbering, if they truly could move, but it was dangerous to make such assumptions.

And it was very likely that they were mobile.

"Bat souls are imprisoned within the metal," Aurora told the twins, quietly.

Unforgivable.

There weren't any visual signs, not even to Aurora's eyes. She simply knew. There was an uncanny wrongness, coupled with helpless pleading, a longing for release, too similar to what Aurora felt when looking at the husks.

"They're just standing in the dark, and don't react to being lit up," Orrin muttered. "No eyes, I guess. Will they even notice us?"

"If they have the instincts of bats, should they react?" Lylis mused. "What would a bat do, if it was lit up very dimly in a dark cave? Just sit there, maybe?"

"I see," Orrin exhaled. "Makes sense. Will your arrows work on them?"

"I don't know," Aurora admitted. "I've had experience with husks, long ago, but never with anything like this. It's possible that my touch will have the same effect, or they might be more robust, even immune. Nothing made by Crafting should be underestimated."

"Understood. So, do we try to funnel them into the open Gate, as a choke point, or...?"

"Let me go first, and take a look around," Aurora instructed. "If there's a trap, it's best if I'm the one to spring it. And if my brother is somewhere in there, it's to our advantage if I appear to have come alone. If I'm attacked, look for an opening, but do not throw your lives away."

She laid one hand on each twin's nearest shoulder, gave both a squeeze, then rose to head through the open Gate.

Despite her best efforts, Aurora's gait was slightly unstable as she struggled forward, a little hunched over and staggered as if she was trying to carry a pack heavier than she could comfortably manage. Unfamiliar twinges of something she tentatively identified as self-consciousness mixed with the emotional ocean trying to crush her. Aurora was supposed to be, had always been, the most graceful existence in the entirety of Creation, conceived by Mother-Father to help imbue the Design with elegance, and to serve as its embodiment, font, custodian and cultivator--goddess--inside the world. But behind her, the twins were witnessing every one of these heavy steps. It was a foolish distraction, a waste of her focus, but...it was not so easy for Aurora to shrug off a display of something so close to clumsiness when part of her core being was a compulsion to embody the ideal of grace. On the bright side, it was important to be able to empathize with people, and experiences like this one could only help.

Thus it was that a shrill screeching, like metal dragged across metal, caught Aurora completely unprepared. She jolted both in surprise and at the harshness of the noise, especially offensive to the ears of Music.

As it turned out, the suits of armor could move. Fortunately, they were slow and clumsy. All four were lumbering straight toward Aurora. There must have been some threshold, not far past the open Gate, that provoked a response.

Engulfed by the souls' resentment, Aurora had been feeling a mounting need to break something since first entering the cavern. As she turned to stagger back toward the Gate, cringing from the awful noise, those embers of crankiness ignited into rage.

She shouldn't need to be here! She belonged on a stage, fluttering for a delighted audience, not staggering across the guano-caked floor of a gloomy cavern flooded with grief and despair! She should be sculpting mountains, or watching artists paint her sunsets, or posing in the latest fashions, not forced to battle her brother's shrieking abominations while she could barely... 

Aurora's steps grew lighter, her gait smoothing into something that bordered on acceptable. Dance looked down at her own feet, and smirked, realizing what was happening: the rage had pushed back just enough to cut the size of that metaphorical pack on her shoulders down to a weight she could manage.

Arrows shot past her. An instant later, the shrieking intensified, louder and even more shrill. Aurora spun back toward her pursuers.

All four suits of armor were still steadily plodding forward, funneled toward the Gate by rocky mounds on either side. The nearest, twenty paces away, had two arrows of light protruding from its chest. Aurora watched, and saw what she had hoped to see: the residue of her touch, lingering inside the arrows, was eating away at the armor like lye on rot, working to remove the mutilation of the Design's beauty that these abominations represented. But unsurprisingly, Crafting's soul prisons weren't nearly so fragile as spontaneously-aggregated husks of dust and water. There wasn't enough of Aurora in the arrows to finish the task.

"Guhuhuhuh!"

Lower in pitch than her usual laugh, that one came straight from her belly. 

"The arrows are effective near the impact point!" she called. "Make it safer for me to get close! Aim for the joints! Bring them down!"

Aurora channeled, and enveloped her vessel with dawnlight. The area nearby was thereby lit brightly enough that she wouldn't trip, but more importantly, the Goddess of Beauty never put on a show without looking good.

There would be no handsprings, flips, or pirouettes in this performance, but nothing so flashy would be required to lay a hand on such plodding targets.

Two more rays of light flashed over Aurora's head. An instant later, the moving armor with arrows in its chest now had one in each knee. It staggered to a full stop.

Presumably attracted by the commotion, a husk flapped clumsily over the rocks on Aurora's left, and dove toward her. She spun away. In the end, what she dodged was not the husk itself, but the spray of tainted water that splashed to the ground after a red arrow scored a direct hit.

That incident was an important warning. If there were millions of those husks in this chamber, Aurora's party of three could not afford to spend so long methodically breaking through these metal monsters that an unmanageably large swarm had time to gather, and overrun them. 

Aurora hastened toward the nearest suit of armor, which had fallen to its knees while she'd been distracted by the husk. As she approached, a flash of pink struck the knee of the next closest, about ten paces further from the Gate. Like when the first had been hit, the second's metal-on-metal screeches grew louder and shriller.

When she closed within range of the leading armor's flailing arms, Aurora could feel its shrieking, in her teeth and bones, but couldn't hear it. The vessel of the Goddess of Music couldn't be deafened permanently, but Aurora's rage redoubled nonetheless. She ducked past a lateral swipe, twisted around a groundward strike from the other arm, and pressed her palm against the armor's torso. It recoiled, as if her touch burned, but there would be no escape.

The Goddess of Beauty dug deep, gathering all of herself that could be spared. Throughout Creation, for just an instant, the aurorae vanished, the constellations lost their luster, the chirping of crickets dulled to a monotone droning, and gems paused their glittering, as the source of all beauty reclaimed much of what she normally dedicated to making the world a home worth living in. To this flood of divinity, Aurora added her feelings of frustration, outrage, and resentment. All of it, everything that the Goddess of Beauty was, surged into the profane armor, channeled with absolutely no restraint whatsoever.

Were it mundane, the metal would simply have its nicks and scratches restored, the dust and guano polished away, and otherwise become in all respects an exceptionally attractive suit of the most exquisite shining armor. Instead, the vibrations in Aurora's teeth and bones abruptly ceased, and the blight on the Design atomized into scintillating vapor, cycling through all the colors of the rainbow as it breezed away from her palm. 

"Nnnnng," Aurora groaned. Deeply cathartic.

The liberated soul burst skyward, released at long last to Aurora's sister. A sorely-needed cleansing and fresh story awaited.

Recalling so much power into her vessel had immediately restored Aurora's hearing, so her ears were once again assaulted by the shrieking of metal-on-metal. Being deafened had been something of a blessing in disguise.

She glanced over her shoulder to check on the twins.

It looked like Orrin was holding his fire, scanning the air for diving husks. Lylis was lining up another shot at the nearest remaining suit of armor--not an easy one. Still ten paces away from Aurora, it was writhing and flailing on its knees as the rainbow cloud glittered past, like the cloud was scalding steam. Both legs had already been disabled by rays of pink light, and while Aurora considered how to approach, another slammed into its shoulder joint. Shortly later, a flash of red knocked a charging husk out of the air, soon after it crested the rock to the left.

Raising her hands above her head, Aurora gave the twins a quick one-goddess round of applause, and hurried over to liberate another soul.

---

Lylis had never once entered a shrine in her life, but she knew the songs and stories that everyone knew. In the ones starring the Goddess of Beauty, she dressed in pretty dresses, sang pretty songs, danced pretty dances, smiled pretty smiles, waved pretty waves--in short, the popular tales painted a certain picture of what being 'Beauty-blessed' entailed.

After what she had just witnessed, Lylis felt lied to. The Goddess of Beauty clothed herself in dawn to push back the shadows of a poisoned cavern, called out tactical instructions, danced past the clumsy blows of unnatural monsters many times her size, and grinned vicious grins while her palm scattered them into glittering ash. Aurora might be a dancer improvising her way through a battle, but regardless, she had proven the truth of her own words, even if she herself didn't see it that way.

'A beauty can also be a badass.' 

Lylis was aware that, the way things were headed, she was going to be a major character in a new saga starring the Goddess of Beauty. After spending hours speaking with Aurora, she had realized that she needed to decide exactly what message that character would send to girls born 'Beauty-blessed' three thousand years in the future, and to those who would typecast them. Was 'Lylis Beauty-blessed' going to be someone who turned away from it, tried to minimize it, so she could be a badass instead? Someone who let gawking and gasping and fawning scare her away from wearing pretty dresses? Would keeping her hair long be the sole outlet she ever allowed herself? Or would Lylis be a character who proved that it was possible to be both a beauty--unabashedly--and a badass?

Just now, watching Aurora, she had made her decision.

There would never again be a girl born dainty who thought wearing pretty dresses would mean she could never be anything more than pretty, because everyone would know the story of the heroine who vanquished evil with arrows as pink as her hair, who helped the Goddess of Beauty save the world from fallen gods, and wore all the pretty dresses she pleased when she was taking a break from slaying monsters.

So far, Lylis had spent the majority of her life trying to minimize the number of eyes drawn to her, mostly in vain--her hair and basic hygiene were non-negotiable, and that was all it ever took. Once this fiasco was dealt with, and they were headed back to Irienne...no longer. It was time to go as far in the opposite direction as possible, and hopefully, Aurora would be happy to help. And her philosophy, about not minding the gawking, staying mindful of the power of a wave-and-smile...Lylis would give it a try. But that was for later.

She and Orrin moved to join Aurora, who had dimmed the light enveloping her after obliterating--glitterizing?--the last suit of armor. Rather, the last of the four near the entrance: that shrill metal-on-metal sound could still be heard in the distance. While she waited for them, Aurora was raising and lowering her heels, and flexing her arms and fists, either trying to stay limber or savoring her partially-restored limberness.

"Good work, both of you," Aurora greeted them, when they caught up. "Before you ask, no, my brother would not go down nearly so easily. These abominations are literally too hideous to exist. And they're exceptionally slow and clumsy." Bat souls in humanoid heavy armor--how could they be anything else? "It's an ideal matchup for me, so to speak."

"What made you able to move, so suddenly?" Orrin wondered.

"Rage at what my brother has done," Aurora answered flatly. "Rage at needing to be here. The souls' own resentment feeds it, amplifies it, enough to push back against the anguish, at the cost of..." She surveyed the bands of multicolored glitter-ashes still suspended in the air. "...Those abominations paid the cost. The souls went to my sister."

Aurora breathed in deeply then sharply exhaled. Lylis and Orrin braced themselves, but it was only a breath.

"If my brother is here, there's still a chance he'll think it's only me. Stay hidden until I signal."

In this area near the Gate, outcroppings of rock on either side kept them from seeing anything but the ceiling. Lylis and her brother slipped into cover near the outlet, and kept watch for husks while Aurora continued onward. She climbed a small mound and took a look around, eventually sending butterflies of sunlight fluttering around the chamber.

Lylis could see a twinkly mist beginning to emanate from the goddess' eyes, the same as when she had first described the fate of the trapped souls. After Aurora waved them over, Orrin and Lylis joined her atop the mound, and looked out on a scene straight from a nightmare.

In the nearer part of the chamber, there were a few dozen suits of armor in scattered locations, some moving and others not, some not even standing, a fraction broadly similar in design to the ones they had just destroyed. Lylis' impression was that most, perhaps all, were old models: relics of iterative development, prototypes and rejects. Off to the right, hundreds of paces away, there was another Gate embedded in the chamber wall, this one still shut.

But the nightmarish part was in the far end of the chamber. It was a kind of pit, the nearest rim less than a hundred paces from their current vantage point. Inside, less than a man's height below the lip, was a roiling mass of black jelly, millions of husks too crude to do much more than flail against each other.

"Crafting's workshop, presumably," Aurora said, pointing to the closed Gate with a hand as immaculate as ever. "If he's here, that's where we'll find him. Before that, I have a requiem to sing."

The Goddess of Beauty staggered forward, the mist from her eyes trailing behind her, twinkling in midair.

"You will feel like you're inside a dream," she warned. "Please do your best to stay lucid, and keep me safe."