[b]Redana![/b]

No one has ever boarded the Eater of Worlds and lived to tell the tale. As a result, artistic depictions of Odoacer's legendary victory have been fueled by guesswork. Portraits of black-armoured Ceronians standing in moist and dripping tunnels, veins and intestines, attacked by ferocious insectoid horrors are common. Shining hoplites wading through seas of bio-muck, all the more glorious for their contrast with the horror of Poseidon. So you clutch your Plover's sword closer as you enter through the atmospheric bubble, prepared for the worst nightmares of the void to be made manifest. Who knows what evil had survived in this rotting carcass? 

You were not expecting blinding, brilliant, radiant [i]sunlight[/i].

The brain of the Eater of Worlds is vast and crystalline and aquatic - and it is shattered by the adamant prow of the Lupincas that runs right through its centre. But its broken wreckage still hangs suspended from the midst of the ceiling-sky, shining with a thousand dazzling lights. In the centre of this immense crystal chandelier is an incomparable light bracketed by lines of black metal. It takes a long moment before you recognize that prince of engines, the heart of the Lupincas removed from its original mount and carried down here into the dead brain of the leviathan and freed from its containment. The bare engine heart shines and fills this interior world with crystalline sunlight.

From the broken brain pours [i]water[/i] - clear, but with an edge of cobalt blue. It cascades through the ruptures in the crystal mind, falling down from the sky in a vast and eternal rainstorm-waterfall. With the artificial sun so close to this storm, light already wild by its refraction through the crystal, you're looking at possibly greatest rainbow in the galaxy.

Seas of blue. Seas of teal. Seas of green. Your eyes adjust. Immense fields of mangroves spread in all directions, thick and tangled roots weaving together to form an almost-surface, broken here and there to reveal glimpses of deep cerulean blue. The air is tropical; hot and wet, unlike anything you've ever experienced in the air-conditioned perfection of Tellus. On and on you go, witness to this most unlikely of jungles, this alien paradise.

And there, ahead, almost at the centre - a hilltop island rising above the flat. Red tiled rooftops and gentle white houses and the unmistakable shape of a temple in white marble. Fields of rice, and wheat, and barley girt by elegant bronze stone walls. No experience other than fairy-tale depictions of castle towns could prepare you to identify what this is. A [i]town[/i]. A town, [i]here[/i], in the belly of the beast. 

[b]Vasilia![/b]

The engine has come to life.

You have power.

You have your target, blissfully unaware of the threat you pose.

Take us through space.

[b]Dolce![/b]

"Idiot!" snapped the Hermetician. "The engine is already running! Imprecise statements mutilate the mind! What you want is forward thrust, which the divine teachings of Hermes direct to be done through the calibration of the stellar compressor and release of sequential plasma valves. However I notice that the compressor is stuck in a maximum output forward position and some sort of emergency handbrake has been jury-rigged by a syphilitic caveman out of spare adamant plates in the valves. Simply repairing the damage caused by these 'repairs' should be enough to take us into all-ahead full."

Redana's repairs aren't [i]that[/i] bad for someone with no formal training, he's just being mean. With the Hermetician irritably snapping at you whenever you do anything incorrect, operating them is within your grasp.

"There is a shipmind here but it's suffered worse than anything," snarled the Hermetician. [i]That's[/i] a surprise - shipminds are artificial geniuses and sages and you couldn't wish for a better navigator. "If I could restore it finding the [i]Raving Direction[/i] from here would be trivial. Parts! I've got less than half of what I need, I need another calculating machine. Where can one be found in this region? The Empress has had them stripped from all Imperial warships to limit their mobility. The old capitol, perhaps?" 

The longer you spend watching the Hermetician rant and fume, the more you become aware that the greatest danger he presents is his temper. This is not, to put it mildly, someone who has any consideration for your request to speak quietly. Even when he's being helpful he's loud and aggressive and sometimes points terrifying guns at you when you're about to make a mistake. 

This isn't a trait of Hermeticians generally - they're also rude, greedy, and deceitful, sure, but [i]this[/i] reminds you more of Azura warbands you've met while with the Starsong Privateers. There's no faster way for negotiations to break down than to try and engage them calmly, rationally and collaboratively, and it's foolish to expect an agreement to hold unchanged. But...

He's not shipjacking you. He's [i]helping[/i] you. He's just doing it in such an aggressive, prideful way that it can be mistaken easily for him being a menace. You think that Vasilia might have actually [i]succeeded[/i] in negotiating a temporary alliance with him, and the biggest danger right now is misreading his compliance as hostility. 

He will also inevitably rebel at some point. Challenging authority is, too, Ares' way. The only thing to do there is to be ready for it.


[b]Alexa![/b]

Someone is standing beside you and listening, but it is not Athena. The rustle of robes is too soft, too natural, and the feeling of feathers brush your neck like the hands of a musician. As Hera touches you in your most vulnerable place your voice falls gentler than you could have given it credit for, and the warrior's heart shifts.

Galnius touches her icon of Apollo reflexively, and that itself tells a story. She's a devotee of virtue and that is something to be deeply wary of. You're dealing with someone who believes virtue takes precedence over other considerations, even loyalty, even pride. She might not be enlightened herself but she expects that from her leaders, and she has demonstrated that she will betray even a king if she believes them unjust. Most dangerous of all, though, is that her ideal of virtue is closely aligned with the Empire's own - you do not see the imagination there to consider a better world.

"Zelok will live," Ganius said gruffly. "Faron... he was right with the gods. Not his own doing, greedy prick, didn't want to offer anything half the time. Had to keep an eye on him or he'd down his entire cup before making a libation. But I wouldn't have any of that in my unit, and even if he must have skipped some sacrifices, at the very least I made sure he was right with Hades. Seemed like the thing to do in this place, and it means he'll at least have a spot in Elysium. Anyway. No grudges," that last was half directed at his own squad. "Anything that happens in Athena's domain is Athena's to decide."

She doesn't say it, but you can tell from the way the soldiers are maintaining absolutely perfect parade-ground decorum in this situation that the reason they're putting up with all this is because they've wordlessly understood what the prize here is. If they are involved in the rescue of Princess Redana they stand to gain honour and promotion from the Empress, perhaps even assignment as the princess' personal honour guard. That's a huge incentive for all of them, but without the princess it's meaningless. What they want you to do more than anything is for you to introduce them to Redana and make sure that their names won't be forgotten when rewards are being handed out.

[b]Bella![/b]

Mynx stares up at you, incomprehensible mind turning over and over as you lie on that spotless floor together. Her eyes flicker left and right, observing one eye and then the other, and they go still when an unasked for spot of wetness touches her cheek. The squirrel shape melts away to reveal her sleek crimson scales, her slender frame, her hands rough and burned from the painful process of learning all of chemistry's ways to hurt. 

Then she leans up directly into that snarl and there's a pinprick pain in your ear as a single fang punctures your skin. Antivenom exchanges for blood, and as the shapeshifter pulls back there's just a tiny spot of red on her teeth for a moment.

"Yikes, Bella, I don't think even I could brew a chill pill strong enough for you right now," she said. "[i]Obviously[/i] I wasn't planning on leaving you behind," she lies(?), "I just wanted to hear you squirm a bit. No need to be such a drama queen about everything."