[b]Bella![/b]

The Uncrowned King nods in failed understanding. He moves so that the sun is behind him, casting its shadow as a bitter mercy on Bella. But he is not a solid object. He is a swarm of locusts in the shape of a person, and as they shift and flick about tiny chinks of light shine through him and they sear like daggers.

"I have sent someone for water," he said. "But we have no need for it, so it is all deep underground. Please, understand we wish you no ill will. We only wish to understand. We have been awaiting your coming for a long time and there has been such work to prepare ourselves for it. Pray, tell us what you can. We will listen."

[b]Ember![/b]

[Damaging [b]First Of The Pack[/b]; remaining stat is [b]Esoteric Fires[/b]]

The Alpha takes the blows with surprise; it has been some time since she has fought a peer, and she has never before faced someone like you. In her surprise her true instincts are revealed - she does not fight with pawns, does not fight with words. She fights with high intensity energy weapons.

She leaps into the air and snatches one of the cables that link to the Reactor of the Star Kings. She plugs it into the base of a pistol and lands in a firing crouch. Shot, shot - advance and wheel. It is a battle of light and ribbon, the strengths and limitations of a Plover in the body of a woman. First she dances to keep the ribbon cable away from where you might sever it, and then she cracks it like a whip dumping charge from her pistol back into the cable making it burst with crackling electrical energy. 

It is a fearsome approach, but she has no other; her attention is so split with her dreams of conquest she has only had the time to properly develop a single art of war.

[b]Dyssia![/b]

"Well, yes. Obviously," said the Generous Knight, as the Skies burned around her. Ancient trees sickened and died, branches crashing to the earth. Fields of lavender wilted and sapphire blossoms fell like rain. "Either objective beauty exists, or it does not. Either truth exists, or it does not. And for those of us with soul enough to recognize truth and beauty when we see it, what morality could justify letting these other creatures squat in hideous squalor? Should we laud them for their ugly drawings like children, telling them there is no need to improve or better themselves because they are perfect just the way they are? Should we hand off the galaxy to species whose highest ambitions are to transform themselves into talking skeletons or piles of paperclips? Is the natural end of sentient life to upload ourselves into computers or ascend to pure energy?"

This, then, was the Endless Azure Skies at its most pure.

"No. They are wrong. We are right. To pretend otherwise would be an act of cowardice. We believe in our perfected flesh. We believe in the beauty of Zeus' skies. We believe our culture has meaning, and everyone who died for it died for the greatest cause that ever was. If we doubted this then we would die as humanity died; splintered, isolated, mutated, pointless little gods."

[b]Dolce![/b]

"Oh goodness no," said Hestia. "The Azura [i]hate [/i]this stuff almost as much as you do. To them this place is infrastructure - like plumbing. It's meant to be out of sight and out of mind, carrying away the shit so they don't have to look at it. The second they think this is more trouble than it's worth they'll have Liquid Bronze decommission himself and promote a new biomancer in his place."

Hestia sighed, turning her coffee cop over in her hands. "Ah. Shit. You know, I kind of miss it? Ever since they figured out entropic digestion there's been no biological waste products. Everything gets rendered down on an atomic level and exhaled as pure hydrogen. But there was something... special about taking a newspaper into a toilet in the morning and just being closed off from the world for a while. Probably more trouble than it was worth, but still."