[b]The Plousios![/b]

The ship is its own city. For a long time it has stood empty, halls and gardens and parks and monuments acquiring rust and starfish. Now things are different. Now there is labour on hand to clean and refurbish a throne room and now there are warriors enough to fill it. They organize themselves by tribe and by rank and in their diversity and splendour they speak the language of power.

The Assistant Secretary of Fear and Doubt is perhaps the most visually impressive of the leaders, enshrined upon a palanquin born aloft by four mighty battlecrabs. He is sprawled in an opulent mess of jewels, fat as only an octopus can be fat, tentacles wafting in the air as he relaxes. As a fragment of the Eater of Worlds the replication of that mighty creature's ecosystem exists inside him and he has spawned over a hundred aquatic creatures, including a small cluster of subservient octoscribes who diligently take notes on scroll paper as they adjust and maintain the swarming creatures he commands. None of these creatures is underdressed merely because they are inhuman, however. Poseidon has guided them through the flooded sections of the ships to find fine banners and robes and fabrics with which to wrap themselves. They stand as the finest dressed and wealthiest creatures present, inheritors to a galactic legacy.

Next in splendour is Galnius and their Imperial soldiers, armoured in shining metals and with cloaks of Imperial red. Though they are humans, and though they are proud, they have shocked those who did not think highly of them by recruiting. Princess Epistia of Ceron has joined their ranks, having sought the fellowship of the greatest warriors aboard the ship, and they have trained and armoured her. Even proud praetorians such as these would not find themselves too far stretched to acknowledge a divinely blessed warrior of Ceron into their ranks, but Galnius has actually gone even further than that. Their numbers have increased to thirty, a tally that includes the finest recruits from the Coherent, the Alcedi, some recruits they picked up from smaller waystations along the way, and even a Hermetic Magi. The power they wield is drawn from their ambition and their courtly graces more than their numbers, 

The Magi of the Order of Hermes are next. Though they huddle both together and apart in the disorganized way of rival academics, and though the encoded markings of their robes are inscrutable to those beyond them, their wealth and might is plain in the artifacts they carry. Sacred stasis-crypts containing deadly spears, floating spheres chained with plasma, an elaborate grandfather clock stuffed with cotton that it may not tick, their mobile roadshow of battlefield antiques inspires curiosity and dread in equal parts. Were a fight to break out here while the Order might not win they could certainly guarantee that no one else did either.

[b]Vasilia[/b] - you are among the Magi, for Magos Iskarot has fulfilled your wish and granted you a purpose. You are to carry an egg - black, speckled with blue, sitting snug inside a brass box that maintains a heat just high enough to be uncomfortable. It is a simple duty but nothing about the Magos' manner indicated that it was in any way a condescending one. He has not told you what might be within an egg like this but its heft, its weight, the sense of destiny that hangs off it. This is a duty too important to be entrusted to a common caretaker, but too mild to give to a warrior destined for the heart of battle.  

The Coherent are but a short way behind them. No disciplined phalanx like Galnius' praetorians are they; watch as they slouch and mug like a gang of roughs who have snuck into a fancy party. It is perhaps the most evident here that these are not phalanx soldiers, though they would no doubt be able to manage an approximation if called on. Neither are they sleek and armoured skirmishers optimized for tactical deployments. These are labourers, free and unchained. They might build you a pyramid or tear one down, but they know the value of their strength and will not trade it for empty promises.

Finally, the Alcedi flocks, downcast and humiliated. They are bitter and restive that it was not they who triumphed in their ritual conflicts, that they sail aboard a warship they do not lead. That they have no victories of note, no chancellors of rank, no earned place aboard the command staff, that their wealth and organization pales compared to those around them, that even Zeus is disappointed with their failure to seize power and confirm their value. But someone always must be last in line, and the hungry eyes of the flocks wait for opportunities.

Above all is Redana, sitting upon a throne with an Apollonian halo around her golden hair and a gown of white. There is no pretense with her and there is no need to be. She is as natural as the engine, a lifetime of lessons making the perfect leader.

"We are entering the Endless Azure Skies," she said. "And what We find there will be strange. They are the binders of djinn, the wielders of philosophy, and the survivors of many rounds of coups, revolutions and political disorder. Even those of Our crew who have visited their realms cannot say for certain how power is distributed there, and so nothing can be taken for granted. Empty yourselves of expectation. We may fight or We may dance but We shall do so according to the designs of the Gods, in whose hands We place our offerings and Our fates."

[b]Alexa[/b] - you may be a long way away from sentry duty, but you recognize Mynx when you see her. So many days, so many hours, listening to her and Redana practicing the same speeches, the same tricks of oration, repeated back to each other like mirrors so they could judge each other's progress. This isn't even Mynx trying to impersonate Redana, though - this is Mynx trying to set an example for Redana to copy.

"And so I commend the specifics of our course and approach to the Captain," said Redana, gesturing [b]Dolce[/b] forwards. And oh gosh, Dolce, you're being asked to give a speech and a plan to this room full of armed and deadly warriors! Who knew Captaining would involve public speaking!?

[b]XIII![/b]

You climb to the top of the world. 

The spaceport stretches to beyond the atmosphere, where it opens like a flower. Ten docking petals, each able to service an entire Cruiser. If one were to examine the raw mathematics of it, this structure does not compare to the Hexdock, a vast megastructure outside the Defense Envelope of Tellus that allows the servicing and maintenance of the tens of thousands of warships in the Grand Armada. But the Hexdock was something to be glimpsed through windows, as distant and unreal as a painting. This wonder may be lesser than the greatest works of gigaengineering in the cosmos, but it's a mountain that is here, now, that you can climb. 

If there is a limitation in the Azura imagination it is no doubt climbing. To move [i]up[/i] a surface like this is beyond the reach of those sleek bodies and so they have unconsciously discounted it. If they need to scale a surface like this they would do so with the sleek precision of their gravitational spherecraft. So there are no ladders on the exterior of the stardock, but so too is their no need for ladders. This surface is rough, uneven, irregular, filled with unlocked access panels and cabling extensions wrought with the carelessness of those who thought this approach inaccessible. Plenty of handholds, then, and plenty of places to stand.

You partly climb as you ascend, and partly you run up that sheer vertical surface. Perhaps too you fly, if just a little, your sweat-soaked ears twitching as they hear the gasps from observers below who never imagined that a tower like this could be scaled so swiftly and so well. You race up the stem of the flower and feel the way that gravity changes beneath your feet. Imperial spaceships have artificial gravity, charged metal plates, but they are used simply to keep down as down, no more thought required. The Azura spheres both project their own gravity and respond to the gravity they pass within. You feel the waves of it wash over you once, twice, and then your instincts are ready - and you pounce.

And with that pounce into the aftershock of a passing Azura sphere you fall upwards. You fall upwards thirty stories and hit the side of the tower at a sprint as the wave passes. Up you run, clinging to the side as spheres pass downwards and leaping into their wakes as they ascend. Through flying, through falling, through sprinting, through climbing, you soar to the top of the world.

And you arrive a full eight minutes before the loading ramp of the Anemoi begins to open.

Eight minutes of ultimate, dizzying, triumphant adrenaline atop a tower with a view of oceans below and mountains as peers. Eight minutes where the fire that's burning inside you is running so hot that if you're not going to run you will at least need to scream in triumph. Eight minutes of victory, eight minutes that are [i]yours[/i], your prize, unbound by any empress or god, shared with no one, your reward for having raced a [i]starship[/i] and won. Eight minutes for you alone to be happy.