[i]To you, lord of the deeps,
let there be praise and fearful awe.
Who has seen the nebula’s heart?
Who has run a hook through the Eater’s beak?
Surely that man has not been born,
the one who knows the deep places
that you have dominion over;
the deep places and the unknowable dark.[/i]

***

Fingers clench firmly on the grips as Redana’s face breaks into a helpless grin. Here it is. Another beauty, a pearl found shining in the mouth of glorious Poseidon. This is not the still, stately glory that she saw as she worked her way to the Eater of Worlds. This is energy, wild and violent and joyous, like the mania of Dionysus. This is no flotsam and jetsam; this is a storm-wracked tomb, the resting place of a mighty weapon about to be repurposed once more.

The plovers have no tethers here. It would be a death sentence; the tempest would whirl them around, make nooses and garrotes of them, shearing limbs and shattering cockpits. They will have to trust their engines, trust their cooperation, and trust that they will not suddenly be ambushed by ELF weaponry. They seem to be alone, out here in the storm, but— they haven’t seen Bella in a long time, and the Azora are quick raiders. To lose power here is to be lost.

And doesn’t that just make Redana’s heart race? When the jump’s called, she’s the first one from the starting gate, as sure-footed as if this was another Olympic sprint. She vaults into her uncle’s arms and tumbles, wild-eyed and grinning, down through the hurricane.

There is no straight path; each plover will have to take their own spiraling route down to the [i]Achae[/i]. All Redana can do, as her Plover shudders and whines around her, is lean in hard, sinister grip slammed shut, engine roaring as she angles herself against the winds. Her teeth rattle in her skull. Her head throbs as the world outside goes lavender and indigo and hot flaming pink, flashing straight to the back of her eye. And her stress bleeds through her mouth, her laughter surely at risk of depressurizing the cockpit for how densely it fills the space.

Eventually, after a short infinity, she lunges out, the bulk of the [i]Achae[/i] filling her entire world, her boarding hook skidding, seeking purchase, until it catches just long enough for Redana to reorient herself. She presses herself against the bulk, then begins to grope her way down the length of the ship, her boosters whining and hissing as they continue to force her down, to give her an artificial gravity, to keep her from being torn off the back of the [i]Achae[/i] as if she were a tick on an animal’s back.

The journey will be long for each and every one of them, falling one by one onto the hulk. The calculations to deliver them all to the veal directly would have required, well, Magos Birmingham, who she has been assured is [i]very[/i] good with calculations. If she ever meets him, she’ll have to apologize for stealing all of his subordinates, but, in her defense... they are her vassals. Apparently. Because she is the daughter of Nero, who is to be revered as Hermes herself. Which makes her... Hermesette? Hermesind? There’s a title for the daughter of Hermes, if she could just remember which one. Though [i]Princess[/i] is a very broad and all-encompassing title in and of itself. A noble name. Her name. And yet she works alongside them, because...

Because she’s not her mother, the woman who regretted ever leaving Arcadia. She’s her own self. And Redana Claudius doesn’t want to be up on the dais waiting for her generals to come to a conclusion. She doesn’t want to be up on the bridge, letting her Auspex track the infinitesimal forms of Plovers on the vast hide of the [i]Achae[/i]. She wants to be here, where there’s work to be done. That’s simple. That’s easy. That’s good. The work is the work.

When they meet together at the prow, there will be work to be done. Hours of it. There will be a rhythm to it, hooks rising and falling, severing the appointed mounts and the pins the size of tree-trunks. There will be so much of it! Then, when the prow sloughs off under its own weight, nine Plovers will use it to cut through the storm until they all break free of the giant’s grip[1].

When Redana returns to the [i]Plousios,[/i] she will have pushed herself to the brink of what even she, human that she is, can do. She will ache from the stresses she has forced her body to undergo. Her arms will throb with Plover’s Grip, her gloves sticky with sweat and her golden hair plastered to her pale forehead. And she will know she kept pace with the Coherents, and she will be proud enough to cry.

But that’s not yet. Now? Now is one limb in front of the other, all while the tempest roars around her, her visibility ahead cut down to almost nothing, her Auspex slowly counting down the number of steps it will take for her to reach her destination, and the rain making oracle patterns on the windshield that only her uncle could read, each one lasting only a moment before becoming something new and true and incomprehensible. Now is only the joy of the Princess.

***

[1]: Then a more stately pace back to the [i]Plousios.[/i] It is inauspicious for a new war-beak to taste its own ship’s blood first.