[b]Redana![/b]

"Two questions," said Beautiful. Then she punched a hand clean through a loose panel in the ship's wall next to her, pulled out a solid projectile pistol concealed within, and fired it at your feet.

(The last time she'd been active, she'd instructed a priestess to conceal a weapon near her chamber, marked with a glyph of her own design. Her mind had decoded the glyph as instructions on the basic operation and effects of a SP pistol.

Under normal circumstances, Sagakhan or Mynx would have checked for exactly this.)

There is a flash and a bang, an overwhelming, awful explosion into every sense at once. While you're coughing and spluttering, vision hazy and deafened, you get a kick in the forehead that sends you careening backwards.

"One," said Beautiful, "what's a Tellus? Is it important? Normally people chant all that stuff at me while I'm waking up, there's meant to be this huge ritual and everything which is basically a couple hundred people reading different encyclopedia chapters at me all at once, so I'm kind of running on DNA right now."

She snap-reloads the pistol and aims it at you in a perfect firing position. Taking a SP round to the forehead never killed anyone but holy [i]shit[/i] does it suck. 

"Two," she said, voice ice cold. "Who is Bella? Why do I remember that name?"

[b]Alexa![/b]

Lacedo cannot speak. She is silent. She is still. 

It took three hundred years to develop that thought. It took a minute to speak it. Who knows how long it will take for it to unpack in the Alcedi's mind?

But for now there's nothing but the thought. Every so often she makes a breath like she's going to speak, to argue or to agree or say [i]anything[/i], but each time the scale of the thinking she hasn't done yet tapers it off into silence. By tomorrow she still won't be ready. Maybe when a week passes, or two...

But she does stop trying to rally the Alcedi. And without her leadership in this moment the Fleets and all their glory pass into history.

[b]Dolce![/b]

"Oh, uh, Zeus' tits, little guy," said Ramses. "Listen, have you ever met an Order of Hermes Magos? We live and work on [i]their[/i] ships most of the time. One of them literally built a corridor of ever burning flame just to reduce the rate we knocked on his door asking for cybersurgery. So we mostly take care of ourselves until the orders come down from above. So, like, the way I figure it, if I waste your time with unimportant stuff you'll get mad at us and cut us off entirely."

She coughed. "I actually was hoping these designs would build up some favour, but it seems like they're having the opposite effect so... uh, I should go?"

[b]Bella![/b]

"The crabs are like animals," came a voice as smooth and strong as a riptide. A beautiful merman steps out of a tidal pool, fish tail seamlessly parting and shifting into two human legs. His face has the cruel beauty of an elf, a shock of deep violet hair woven with kelp, onyx and amethyst. He smiles and gestures and a pair of crabs come forward to wrap a spectacular robe of cream and red silk around his shoulders, patterned with elaborate whorls and waves. He doesn't bother to do it up.

He turns to a massive battlecrab that approaches him. He smiles affectionately, letting his hand run across the front of its shell, affectionately scratching the eyestalks. It clacks its claws in what might be happiness. "It is not a perfect metaphor. Really, the crabs are more like our hands. They can think, but they cannot want. They can act but they cannot know. They are part of us, and yet separate. We must treat them with kindness as we must treat ourselves with kindness."

He turns back to face you and then smoothly bows. He shows respect without any understanding of courtly manners, instead showing genuflection while watching your eyes through the water's reflection for the twitch that indicates he has given the proper amount. "When humanity sought to leave distant Earth, it was the Lord Poseidon's will that the ocean would not be left behind. So he drank it all and spat it out in the shape of a man, and they lay together until they conceived twelve children. Those children, the Tides, were as the hecatonchires once were - the hundred handed children of Gaia. But one mind could not control all those many hands, so the Tides split themselves like starfish. Some parts of them grew into swords, some grew into hearts. Some are creatures for appreciating all the finest things the galaxy has to offer, some are to deliver the cups to their lips, but all are the same creature. But as the Tides grew larger and more complex, their aspects became more specialized. It is only here, in the aftermath of the trauma of death, reduced to barely ten thousand nodes and less than a hundred minds, do we again call upon the most ancient names of power. It is only now that it is worth creating more... generalist incarnations."

He smiled, and at last looked up and made eye contact. His eyes were orange; pink and yellow and salmon and...

"I am Eyes of Coral," said the merman. "One of several who claim that title in this region. To claim a Name is to claim a throne, and one must defeat and subordinate the pretenders before one can come into the fullness of its power. Right now we are entrapped in a hell of our own creation; we are of the lineage of a trauma incarnation. Too scared to leave the defensive crouch, too angry to let the knife slip from our hands, too broken to trust. Do not think Fear and Doubt a cruel or poor leader; he is the ghost of a starship through our brain pan. With him we are craven and obedient, without him... who knows how we might lash out?"

Eyes of Coral looked warily up at the crab. It had no fear in its eyes as it clacked its claws.

"As to what we are capable of, within a timeframe practical to you, we could build an entire million-soul battleship from scratch," he said. "Or take one apart. As to what we want? To be healthy and whole, to reckon with our trauma and learn to grow again. This eternal inquisition of the self is no way to live."