Thanqol

Breathless Dead

Primitives often have a hard time grasping divination-based warfare.

The ships of the great empires are, by traditional definitions, blind and deaf. They have no scanners, no computer-assisted modelling programs, no signal emitters or receivers, no ability to detect life signs or lack thereof. Nothing more than Biomantic eyeballs being placed against Ultramateriel telescopes. You can, in fact, hide from the warfleets of the Endless Azure Skies by painting your warships black and turning off all the lights.

But that's where divination comes in. Blind and deaf though the ships of the Skies and Shogunate might be, through communion with the Gods they are able to consistently place themselves into the same broom closets as their enemies. This is powerful sorcery, but brute force: on the one hand, the infinity of space is condensed into a single certainty, on the other, you are not provided with any detail of what you will find at the other end, only with the directions on how to get there and the certainty of a battle at its conclusion.

This has a curious effect when a fleet seeking engagement hunts a ship that seeks to escape. Against primitives the entire fleet might deploy in perfect order around its quarry, but against an enemy working its own acts of prophecy then the strands of fate become entangled. The prey's prophecy tells it that in the future if it goes to this point it will be engaged by the entire enemy fleet; the hunters prophecy then has to change to account for the fact that the prey knows they know, but then the prey's prophecy has to take into account that the hunters know they know they know, and so forth. Presuming the relevant war gods do not hold particular malice or love towards one side or another, this results in a stalemate that must be solved with a sort of bidding.

The aggressor fleet performs the divination, gets a null result from Mars, and determines that there cannot be an engagement on the terms it desires. So it splits off a task force, commits it to going to one of the possible battleground areas, and then it performs the ritual again. This process continues until the fleet has split up sufficiently that the balance of powers has become if not even then within the range of possibility; at that point the gods bring the comparably matched forces together for their fated clash.

So it is that there is no surprise for either side when the Plousios and the Cancellation of Florence Nightingale leave the Deep Void to arrive in the suburban Archer-12 system at the same time. The Archer Constellation is one of many star clusters that has been rearranged so that it forms a constellation visible from Capitas; according to the grand plan of the Endless Azure Skies this entire cluster is to be transformed into a militarized bulwark, a multi-system stellar fortress that can anchor multiple civilian sectors. That is many centuries in the future; right now, Archer-12 is a scattering of luxury mansions, and an archaeological site with a few scattered research bases across the system hard at work on important questions like 'did we destroy these planets/civilizations?' and 'why?'. A dull red sun burns low, unseeded by the stellar macrocytes that make the stars of the Endless Azure Skies burn blue and violet - the star is too small and weak, it needs to be upgraded by fusion with another star before it has the dignity and brightness to be worth seeding. Somewhere in the distant horizon the machinery will be underway to redirect the relevant stellar objects.

The Cancellation is twice the length of the Plousios, and modern: ships of this era are ridiculously large and over-designed, temples to cost blowouts and gold-plating, stuffed full of cutting edge systems and optimized for parade duty and saber rattling. An evolution on the traditional Warsphere design, behold: the Spike-Sphere. Shaped as though a grape had been stuck through the centre with a toothpick, the spike extending out evenly in both directions. The forward part of the spike is an energized blade, the theoretical answer to the ramming techniques that Imperial vessels use to such great effect against Azura warspheres in the Battle of the Trinary Stars. By rotating precisely, the theory goes, the Warsphere will be able to wield this massive blade like a sword, cutting apart enemy vessels as they approach. The aft part of the spike is a massive Imperial-style plasma engine, almost skeletally exposed and vulnerable but giving the Spike-Sphere Imperial acceleration in deep void.

To add vulnerability to vulnerability, this section is also covered in massive nacelles filled with plasma torpedoes. Historically such armories present points of critical vulnerability in Azura formations, requiring fleets to baby their vulnerable munitions trucks. The Spike-Sphere solves that particular issue by making the entire 'tail' disposable; a detonation chain reaction will destroy the entire Engine spike but inflict minimal damage on the central Warsphere itself. In fact, detaching the tail might be a deliberate decision by the Captain: breaking the spherical shape causes a massive reduction in the effectiveness of the Grav-Rail drive, limiting the Spike-Sphere's maneuverability. If the tail is detached or destroyed then the Spike-Sphere will gain a massive increase in agility to help it win its current engagement.

The final aspect in this equation is the massive carrier bays on the Spike-Sphere's central structure. Carrier operations have been out of fashion for a while, but Liquid Bronze is bringing them back. A massive, forward projected fighter screen works to prevent speculative attacks against the vulnerable tail and prevent flanking. Together this makes the Cancellation alone a hybrid of all the strengths of Imperial and Azura designs, a fleet unto itself, the herald of a new age for the Endless Azure Skies. As a fun little aside, it would be utterly defenseless against an enemy that had access to starship teleportation, as they would be able to detonate its expensive tail with impunity - but then, this generation of warships is not designed to fight primitives. It is the final answer to problems of the last war, as represented by the Plousios.

(One might wonder what the point of all of this is compared to the traditional Azura answer of 'just bring another Sphere filled with ammunition'. Well, to answer that question one must consider that Warspheres have been destroyed often enough to lose their intimidation factor; they are known quantities and tactics against them have been perfected. But this? Fear of this new face of war will propel the Endless Azure Skies into a new age.)

The Angelshark lurks in the shadow of the fourth planet; it is an ambush predator and will only be effective if it has the advantage of surprise. Two slipgates in the system provide a flow of civilian shipping to render this a functional, if not prosperous, outpost. Right now the Cancellation is holding its ground at a distance - a stall. The fighter screens are currently being flown by drones while the Summerkind eggs are quickened and initial rage spikes are quelled. Once drone pilots are swapped out for elite Summerkind then the Cancellation will be ready to engage; until then it will maintain its distance - something its Imperial Engine allows it to do even in deep void.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"But that's exactly wrong!" cried Lancer. "To take all the glory of the age and attribute it to a specific weapon - that's sick! An act of historical illiteracy, a decision to crush the feats of an entire civilization down into a single point so that it can be wielded by a single person! The whole idea of a legendary hero is an act of violence against the soul of humanity, taking what is great about every age and ripping it out so that one person can carry it!"

Lancer cast aside her rocket launcher and leapt into the air. Beneath her conjured a painted horse, barded with silks of red and yellow. She rushed across the distance, firing arrow after arrow. "To praise Genghis Khan for her use of horse archery denies a civilization's collective efforts at the development of a tactical weapon system!" she leapt from the horse, lunging into close combat, encased in heavy bronze armour and with a shining spear. "To deify Achilles makes men think that they could not fight as he did!" she whirls in green, casting her spear with great force before rolling away, coming up armoured in the bright red battlegear of a Roman legionary. "Men obsessed over Emperors. Emperors obsessed over God! Nobody noticed that Rome had fallen. Nobody had the eyes to see the golden age when they were in it, nobody had the will to restore it when had passed!"

She raises another unrespected javelin to her shoulder. Lancer does not love this specific spear - she loves the culture, the system, the civilization that gave rise to it.

"Humans will read history books with the same carelessness with which they read the lies of poets," said Lancer. "They think they can no more return to those days than they could become Musashi or Alexander. I refuse to accept that! The glory of the past lies exactly where it was left abandoned, waiting for someone to pick it up again!"

Return to Thellamie

Rurik!

"What just happened?" asked Rurik.

Princess Heron could be witty sometimes, but she could also be a conversational brick wall. Moments like this she didn't wisecrack, she just asked basic question after basic question until an obvious target for ultraviolence appeared or was made clear. Whatever Rurik personally thought, the duty he held to the Princess' disguise was far more important than any (scoff) personal flair he might add(1).

(1)

And of course, anything he added would be compounding what was already the worst catastrophe of his life. His role was quite simple; he was meant to fill a hole in the world left by the Princess. Just as a bathplug keeps the water from draining out, all he needed to be was the mortar that keeps the dam from breaking. Every part of him was the right shape for this; he had studied for this, he had practiced the art of oratory and stagecraft just so that he could unlearn it in service to the Princess. He had walked along the beach in long rolling strides, letting his voice rise and fall over the crashing waves, until even his stage whispers were audible over the seafoam. He had thought that someday Princess Heron might wish to give an inspirational speech that united the people and dispelled doubt and uncertainty. When he had met her and learned that was not something she seemed likely to do, he had spent just as long learning how to overcome the power of his voice, how to strip confidence and stage presence from his posture, practiced how to mumble through one sentence questions - because the salvation of the world evidently did not need his theater tricks. It only needed this girl with the soul of lightning and the decisiveness to cut to the quick. And all that she, who could move so fast, ever needed was time. He could buy time. He could tread water. He could stand where he was meant and say what he was expected until the work was done and it was time for that thunderbolt to strike again. That was honour, that was sacrifice, to be what the world needed. Princess Heron had already sacrificed so much; time and again she returned to the world to save it, foregoing rest and peace. She did what she had to for the sake of everyone, and the least he could do on the world's behalf is sacrifice a little of his own impulses to buy her the time she needed. Simple gratitude, that's what it was. Simple respect. A gift freely given, just as hers was. It had involved training, realignment of his mystical energy, having to unlearn how to draw his Heartsword - all so nothing like this happened. All so that he never inadvertently unbalanced a mystical ceremony, triggered a supernatural sense, never broke character. For all his focus, he had never been able to buy her a day off with his sacrifice, but he had never added to her troubles, and all the problems he encountered as her were still waiting for her when she finished her other tasks. The idea that he might have broken this ceremony - this moment where Civelia might have enlisted additional help which might indeed bring them closer to collapsing Princess Heron's eternal to-do list into something manageable... What had it been? The dress? He'd known that it was wrong for the occasion, Heron would have known, she always made the final decisions on moments like that - he'd just been so proud of the fade transition. That must have been it, he'd let his pride as a tailor get ahead of his duty - fool! Selfish! Don't let any of this show on your face, veil be damned - use all that stage training for something! All you need to do is stall this out. That's all you ever needed to do. Play the part, no more slip ups. You've waited your whole life for this.

Return to Thellamie

Tsane!

Shut up a second I'm looking at lizards.

These are Void Fireworks. They range from five to thirty centimeters, zygodactylous feet with specialized suction caps, and ultratensile jumping musculature. Their second most notable feature is their obsidian fangs; extremely powerful but extremely brittle, hollow-tipped and capable of suction, a lot in common with a mosquito's proboscis. They can puncture flesh through clothing, and sink into wood or even stone with extended effort. That then leads to their most notable feature: once a Firework is attached it drains the colour from its prey. The subject loses colour from its distant extremities first, cast increasingly into a blue-greyscale[1]. Note that the Firework does not actually drain blood or other fluids despite being inclined to puncture flesh; that seems to be entirely for the purposes of grip, and it can draw from the clothes someone is wearing even if there is no direct fabric bridge to the Fireworks' mouth. Once the prey is completely drained of colour then the Firework will drop off like a filled leech and scuttle to safety.

[1] the Fireworks don't seem to enjoy the colour blue, though they'll eat it if there's nothing better. They really like yellow and incorporate it into their scale patterns.

This whole process is mostly benign. There is a lot of superstition regarding being colour drained and how it enlists you in Sayanastia's army, but that was correlation rather than causation. Her conscription/mind control/corruption was a separate subsystem. These creatures are the shards of one of her great monsters, the Light Eater, and they follow in her wake but are not active contributors to her schemes. Modern medical treatments and careful exposure to the Outside can restore lost colours without too much trouble, but objects are much harder to restore and generally have to be repainted if possible. Which is to say, nobody likes the Fireworks; they're considered pests and people generally try to swat them when they notice them. But that's when the Fireworks' defensive adaptation comes into play.

When a Void Firework is directly threatened or attacked then they perform an emergency expulsion of the colour they've stored. This creates a 1-5 meter radius detonation of ultracolour, like the explosion of a rattlecan full of paint, particularly with a mistlike residue that lingers afterwards. If this gets in living eyes it results in complete blindness until washed out with tears/cold water/eyedrops, and this can occur from the lingering mist residue as well as the initial detonation. Colours applied tend to be a mix of whatever the Firwork was eating at the time, and it has a permanent effect on what it impacts. Applied to skin it looks a lot like a shitty tattoo and will last for several weeks until replacement skin has grown in. The Firework uses the distraction to escape, sacrificing around 60% of its collected meal to save itself and the remainder.

That is all to say, they are regarded by the general public as extremely obnoxious pests that can completely ruin an outfit and presentation. The emergent implications are rarely considered. If these creatures emerged from the breaking of the Light Eater, what does that say for Sayanastia's other great defeated monsters? Is the trend for Void Fireworks to get larger or smaller over time, and does that indicate consolidation, continued fragmentation, or true speciation? Did they come into being with native migratory instincts that carried them to different waystones, or are they actively trying to follow Sayanastia out of residual loyalty? Collectively, are they more or less effective than the Light Eater itself?

And what's really cool is that these ones have little dragonfly wings. Associated atrophy of their jumping musculature. The Light Eater only had wings in its second stage - what does that mean? The elemental affinities of the Light Eater changed when it changed form, she needs to set up an experiment to confirm if that's the case with these too.

And - alright, fine. Work mode for a second. Glance at the situation - the idiots are bugging Kalentia for cures, dad's doing the ceremony bit, Sayanastia is not obviously gearing up for an attack. That meant whoever was going to attack the ceremony - and it was going to be someone - was doing the bare minimum to cover their tracks. Rather than looking into it, Tsane rolls up her left sleeve and draws a couple of glyphs on her skin with rainbow markers. Red, switching to purple, switching to cyan, switching to bone yellow, swirling and circling symbols. When the shit hit the fan she was going to be ready.

Once that was done, she turned her attention back to the Void Fireworks. She had another few minutes to do what she was really interested in before the proverbial phone rang again. Every second was precious.

Breathless Dead

Ember!

The regalia, it must be confessed, has more chain than fabric.

The prismatic heavens roar and crash. Nebulae flash and groan with the sparks of protostars struggling to ignite. Gravity tears and distorts, hurricane winds of oxygen and hydrogen course through the void. Mix every strand of light together and you get white; mix every colour of paint together and you get black. Here in Poseidon's realm you feel the rainbow darkness across your scarcely protected body.

In the distance you see the thundering of eight hooves; a horse in scale to the Eater of Worlds as a horse is in scale to a turtle. The horse, the rider, and the cyclopean eye - all scale beyond imagining. Necessarily vast because imagination has grown far indeed.

Teardrops fall from his eye, each containing runes. The ones you see read CIVILIZATION IS BUT THE EXPORT OF ENTROPY.

Against this storm the Plousios is small indeed, and you are smaller. But the ocean has a mouth to consume everything offered to it, no matter how vast, no matter how insignificant. And as the storm flashes your dragon arises from its depths. It is golden, sleek, fast, ascending from the depths below to catch you and your ship below. Out of respect for your divine beauty, Poseidon has sent a divine beast: an Angelshark.

The regalia has more chain than fabric. Unfortunately most of the fabric involved goes towards covering the mouth. Yet, you must negotiate with this creature nevertheless.

Dolce!

"Then it is necessary for you to take the assassin you are offered," said Artemis. "Her line is named for Diomedes, a warrior from ancient times. Have you heard of him? I'd be surprised if you had - he is overshadowed in every telling of his story despite being the one who objectively accomplished the greatest feats of all his peers. I think that even those of my kin who met him have forgotten him, and that they were relieved to have done so."

Artemis licked her finger and turned the page on her newspaper. "I remember the past, though. And I suggest you learn it too. There is always a delay between an arrow being fired and it hitting its target, and the length of the shot can be surprisingly flexible. Firing from out of someone's recollection can be just as dangerous as firing from outside of their line of sight."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

In her left hand she holds her second javelin. In her right she holds a book. Lancer's emerald rimmed glasses glint as she shakes an escaped tress of brown hair out of her eyes. All of her attention is on the book as she hefts, and throws.

Another weak and halfhearted throw, as idle as the first.

It is almost a relief. After the barrage of Bohemond, the assault of the Handmaidens and the ferocity of Berserker it is pleasant to be fighting someone who is clearly your inferior. Whoever Lancer was in life, she was no legendary hero. The skill on display here slew no dragons.

Her hand freed, she brushes the escaped hair behind her ear. It does not fit into her elaborate braids but it is enough for her to take another sip of wine, conjure another javelin and with her eyes never leaving her book for a second, she takes another throw. It has the force of her Class container behind it, more than mortal strength, but nothing from her own legend adds to this. Time enough to gain position, to gain every advantage, to bring this play battle to a close against this unserious competitor before -

- her emerald eyes flick up from her book. It tumbles from her emerald-painted nails towards the ground. Her leg sweeps out to the left, sweeping out her dress into a flowing cascade, bringing her down into a crouch.

Her left eye winks shut. It helps her focus through the sights.

Her next javelin is a FGM-148.

Missiles streak up into the sky, pivoting on a dime and raining down a cascade of anti-armour shaped charges. Explosions and fire fall like rain.

"Did you know?" said Lancer, silhouetted by fire as she picked her book up, snapped the page back open, and hefted her rocket launcher over her shoulder. "that these weapons were so effective at destroying the atheist Soviet Union that the Church worshipped them as saints?" Lancer's eye flicked up from her book to look through the sight again, and she thumbed the trigger from top fire to direct fire. "Once again, they ascribe religious meaning to a perfectly serviceable spear."

Return to Thellamie

Rurik!

There is how Rurik, Seneschal of the Hero, would handle the problem. That would be a matter of discipline and diplomacy within the household, a moment for intervention with a firm voice and intimidating stares. He would break things up, calm things down, and generally do everything Civelia wished he would do. Tragically, Rurik was not present, and Civelia had allowed her faith in him as a man to blind her to his duty as a Handmaiden.

What would Princess Heron do in this situation? Why, she would go over to Cair, put the remainder of the soap in her mouth, kabedon the Lunarian and flirt with her while chewing. "Hey babe," he said. "I'm sorry to say you're not the only one who's Fallen Far recently~"

Now, Rurik was not Heron. The disguise was very good but there was a certain... je ne sais quoi that made the Princess more than the sum of her Handmaidens. In particular, Rurik could never quite disguise his eyes, which had a kind of perpetual ferocity to them that made everything he said come across as a mafioso's threat. Under those circumstances, his kabedon felt more like the beginning of an actual mugging instead of a sexy mugging.

(In the back of his mind, he is prioritizing the ceremony over this. In his mind, he does the Heron move which makes the girl go weak at the knees and then ditches her mid-swoon. In his mind, he gets the soap out of the situation in one quick bite and it doesn't taste like anything and he doesn't start involuntarily blowing soap bubbles while fighting down the urge to scream for the team healer while standing dutifully for the ceremony. In his mind, Rurik is a dutiful and loyal Handmaiden, and not a braincell timeshare investor.)

Breathless Dead

Ember!

Within the light of Mars it is time to discuss maps and logistics.

Liquid Bronze's fleet is on an intercept course. Five Imperial-era battleships, one modern supercarrier, and a support fleet of fifty smaller Warspheres, cruisers and destroyers. A precise tally of their resources is irrelevant; in terms of force applied to this problem their numbers are effectively infinite. That is not to say they operate without constraints.

First and foremost, they are the hunters and have limited ability to force an engagement. This means that Liquid Bronze has split up his fleet into twenty different battlegroups. Any one battlegroup might make an even match for the Plousios, but the cold Martian logic implies that a fair fight will cause so much damage to both sides and attract sufficient notice that the rest of the force will be able to close in on the damaged survivor.
Secondly, they will be operating at the end of their supply tethers. Liquid Bronze, in a desire to settle the matter quickly, has only allotted space for two of his battlegroups to be resupplying at any given moment; that means the rest will be running lean. Any expenditures of exotic resources will be difficult to replenish in the field.
Finally, the political context is a limiting factor on Liquid Bronze's activities. That was how Dyssia's Pix originally escaped their own Decommissioning - the Biomancers do not have unlimited remit to disrupt inhabited and productive planets in their search for rogue agents, and the relationship with various sector governors may be strained. The death of the Crystal Knight is both a positive and negative in this regard; she was personally invested in your destruction, but she was also capable of reining in the Biomancer-General if he went too far.

The plan at the moment is to hide inside a star. This will not end the chase, but it will transition it into an advantageous defensive siege. This is a valuable delaying maneuver - Liquid Bronze's insufficiently supplied ships will not be able to spare the exotic cooling materials required to engage on anything but the worst terms. Given his impatience, it is predicted he will force an immediate engagement despite the risk, and a humiliating defeat will be valuable in destabilizing his position. And that is the only endgame that makes sense for this kind of hunt: against a foe with infinite resources it must become politically untenable to continue to the pursuit.

This means, then, engaging the battlegroup containing his supercarrier, The Cancellation of Florence Nightingale directly. Damage to that glorious ship on the field of battle would be an affront to Mars; if it is to fail, it must be at the hands of a nightmare beyond the normal context of the battlefield. And so it is that you have decided to call on your divine uncle Poseidon whose terrible hooves shake the stars themselves. For this kind of blessing a rare and treasured sacrifice must be prepared.

What do you have that is rare and treasured, Ember? (Hypothetically, would you describe yourself as rare and treasured?)

Dolce!

"Love, then?" said Artemis, again with a distant dagger-smile. "You think that's what it comes down to? I don't believe it. Not from you. You had love before this adventure began and you'll have love after it. Love isn't what sent you out your door. Love isn't what made you throw in with a renegade Princess and the God of the Dead. Love isn't what made you step into the Lethe, risking everything you ever were. No, Dolce, you give yourself too little credit - it's not anything as simple as love that drives you. Everything you are doing, every decision you've made, from the first day you left the comfort and safety of the Manor, was driven by something far deeper and more powerful than mere love. And though you don't want to give up on your love, on your softness, on your sense of morality - I think what you're really hoping is that it won't be necessary to do that."

Artemis leaned forwards. Demeter is in the background, smiling. To Demeter, Artemis is an ally. She doesn't see the knife even when it is this close.

"I can't promise that it won't be necessary to risk any or all of those things," said Artemis. "But what I can promise is that I will prevent you from sacrificing anything unnecessarily. If - and this is the only prayer I require - you tell me I'm right. You don't need to say what truly drives you," Demeter is tilling the soil, earth running through her fingers, searching for seeds. "You just need to tell me that you need to finish what you have started."

Return to Thellamie

It can be hard to remember what her anger had felt like.

She remembers the Dark; the dreaming dragon-place. She remembers the warmth and the quiet, the murmur of sleeping breaths, the shift and rustle of scales, the heat of hearts. She remembers her dreams in full; they still fill her, still animate her, unforgotten by waking. The problem was that waking made her smaller. She became too small to fit those dreams in her head. Once she had been as big as they were, now it was like looking at a forest from inside it.

She remembers the Light. A dreaming infinity had inevitably heaved forth its opposite. It had risen above the dark in at the top of an endless pyramid, and it had said I AM. At first the pyramid had been made of light, but the Light had said I AM, and the pyramid had become stone instead. The pyramid had dominated the void, but then the Light had said I AM, and it had broken itself from the sky. Each time it had declared itself to be it forced everything to be other than it was. Each time it had made her smaller. Each time it had broken her further and further away from her dreams. And they had been such good dreams too...

She feels the anger inside her. It lies like a stone, smooth and hot and mirror-polished. There was no flaw in that structure, no weakness in her argument. She had been right. She had suffered injustice. How dare it wake her? The edifice of rage was still there in full, a fury she felt in her teeth. She could still feel the jaw-shattering impact from when she'd gotten those teeth on the light and answered its helpless I AM with a screaming, biting YOU SHOULD NOT BE. She'd crushed it, splintered it, torn open the stone pyramid that had supported it and filled it with every hatred she could imagine.

All futile. She had not said, 'You are not'. No matter how she'd ripped and torn and cursed and raged she still had no answer for that desperate, proud declaration I AM. It was, and she had hated it; her hate was consequence of and proof that it was. She had scrubbed the mold and in so doing spread its spores. Everywhere it had grown. It announced itself more subtly now but it was still there. From the sky, still stained blue from the broken light her jaws had made, all the way down to this infuriating little puppet demanding her attention. Pardon me - just as she had broken light into the spectrum, so she had broken the raw declaration of I AM into this twist of sound that meant the same thing. And then, the delegation - not only was she supposed to give this man the right of veto over her dreaming infinity, she was supposed to acknowledge this box. It declared with its existence I AM just as surely as the Light once had, and by its existence it demanded her attention. Just another assault on her senses, another distraction, another reason to rage. Another reason to destroy. Another thing to wish she could be free from. Another opportunity for failure. Spurn the gift, infuse it with her reality by hating it. A failed stratagem that had taken her so far away from the peace she had sought to win.

She hadn't been wrong. The stone was perfect; a gleaming marble of internally reinforcing logic. She could roll around in it for a thousand years and find no flaw in it. She had been right to be furious. It was an injustice that no amount of fury could solve the problem. The only way left to her passed through surrender, injustice and madness.

She let her left hand take on the aspect of her dragon talons (the right was tricky; too close to Civelia even now) and she tore off the paper. Looked at the soap. Another declaration, another demand - now she was to acknowledge Civelia, now she was to force her mind down paths of memory and wit and insult to decode the statement, another long moment where she was not free to think as she wished to think or be as she wished to be. A gift.

She opened her mouth and took a bite of the soap.

"Uh, Yana?" Kalentia said. "Uh, that's not for eating."
"I know," said Sayanastia. "I am making a point."
"O-oh. Can I ask... what it is?" said Kalentia.
"No," said Sayanastia.
"Oh! Oh, you really don't have to take another bite," said Kalentia. "I'm sure your point is made."
"I am," said Sayanastia grimly, "committed to this course."
"Because that really doesn't look that - oh no - it really doesn't look like you're enjoying it."
"I am not," said Sayanastia. "This was a mistake."
"Then are you going to stop - oh, well, I guess not."
"I will not give her the satisfaction," said Sayanastia.
"But I don't understand, what point are you trying to make?"
"I don't want to talk about it. It was stupid. I overthought things and - well."
"Oh, okay. Uh..."
"What?"
"Do you want help?"
"What?"
"Well, it can't be healthy to eat that much soap on your own -"
"I am a dragon."
"Okay yes. Okay. It's just that, um, you've asked me to use healing magic to help with your digestion before, so I think you've got a regular intestinal setup -"
"Fine! Eat some if you must."
"Okay! Thank you!"
"Don't mention it."
"Oh wow, this is really bad."
"I know."
"And you ate like half of it on your own?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I'm not going to be able to get more than a few bites of this down I think."
"That's fine. Just give it back here."
"Hey guys, whatcha eating?"
"Oh, hi Cair - we're just eating some soap -"
"Word? Let me try."
"Oh - oh you shouldn't -"
"Oh wow. Terrible."
"You don't have to -"
"Nah, what kind of friend would I be if I let you eat all this soap on your own?"
"We are not friends." said Sayanastia.
"Uh doy, how do you think people get to be friends?"
"Hrmmmm."
"Hey Tsane! Wanna eat some soap?"
"No."
"C'mon, it's a team building activity!"
"I am leaving."
"No problem, let me see if Fally wants some -"

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Okay," said Aeglesia. She took a deep breath and banged her sword against the edge of her shield. "Okay! Here I go!"

*

"You can - duck!" shrieked Fallweaver as the spear came in.

It was a halfhearted throw, entirely lacking in killing intent - it wouldn't have made contact even without the warning. The balance of it was off - something was tied to the end. A flask? Lancer grins, modern clothes starting to burn away in emerald light to reveal the elaborate armour of an Emperor.

"So, Saber, I was thinking," she said, foot sliding wide, tracing a long arc through the rough dirt in front of her with the javelin she was holding. "We're not allowed to directly interfere in that Princess battle - but there's nothing that says we can't have a friendly duel of our own at the same time. And if," Lancer said, tying a leather wineskin to the end of the javelin, "we happen to get a little drunk while we fight, and if that has implications for our accuracy, then I don't see how anything that comes of that would be our fault."

She took a deep draught of wine herself. Then her easy grin hardened and her stance became sharp and focused. Still playful, but with an edge. The play for her Master's affection had not gone unnoticed and this was her opportunity to establish her superiority.