[b]The Party![/b]

The music is anarchic, communal. Anyone can join their voice or instrument to the beat, and anyone can leave. The music changes moment to moment as people flow into and out of it, the skills and responsibilities distributed. This is not a place where all gather to watch a single specialist work their trade; it is emergent, organic, communal. 

The Alcedi have their drums, deep and pounding like crashing waves. The booming, echoing backbeat of all the other sounds, the rhythm that controls every other breath. They fall into and out of playing as their strength demands, falling exhausted and sweat-soaked away from their instruments so another might take up the sticks and keep the ocean crashing. In counterpoint to the uniting, warlike power of their sound the Coherent wield a diversity of sounds, instruments picked up from every corner of the galaxy and mastered using unique combinations of limbs and lungs. Oftentimes they echo the voices of the singers - the songs share easily. The Coherent have work and formation shanties which have simple, compatible rhythms with Alcedi rowing songs. The drunken choir booms out in time and in different languages, the words of the songs falling in tangled embrace, flowing into each other. A new pidgin language is already emerging as the songs hybridize along with the music. The sound has a logic of its own, and way is given to which words fit the rhyme or rhythm regardless of their origin.

[b]Alexa![/b]

Oh, there are monsters, and there are monsters, and there are [i]monsters[/i]...

The Biomancer offers his hand to shake through the bars of the cell. Ramrod straight back. Broad shoulders. Big smile. His clothing the shape of a rectangle run through with jagged triangles, like teeth in a beak. He radiates respectability. Dignity. Intelligence. A sort of natural, easy, respectability. This is someone who will listen to reason. This is someone who will follow directions. This is someone you can trust to hold up their end of a bargain. This is someone who stands adjacent to power, real power, and knows how to be useful to it.

Biomancy is the secret art of humanity, the greatest and most terrible of their masteries. Through biomancy new species can be designed to specification. Life can be made to grow slow or fast, languages made to come easily or only after great pain and struggle, pain and pleasure made to mean different things. To a Biomancer, empathy is a switch to be flipped at a species level. Social instincts can be extracted, distilled, purified. Phobias can be added, ancestral terrors placed into minds to make the shining sun seem as paralyzingly horrific as the gaze of a cat. All this and more, blending human and animal until only the most useful parts of each remained.

"Katraph Sanchez, at your service," said the Kaeri Biomancer with an accent like a city flash-built on a savannah. "We were waiting for your call. Of course we're delighted to help, anything you need. We can begin immediately. Has our laboratory been damaged?"

[b]Dolce![/b]

"Wait, the Eater of Worlds?" said Jil. "And - Gaia? That's not a joke, you're actually looking for Gaia? I thought that was an incredibly obvious lie. Like, you're looking for Ceron, right? The place with the all-conquering army? You're - you're serious about this, you're actually getting a wish, like an 'anything you want' [i]wish[/i]?"

That's a lot of information. She chews it over for a moment, but then sets it aside - it's too big to think through. There's a more direct thing to focus on, and she's never allowed big concepts to distract her.

"But to your question, yes. Fuck yes, I'd do this to get rich, and fuck you for thinking I wouldn't. Where I come from I could get murdered for breathing too loud, and my bones made into a chandelier. I've stepped over a lot of bodies and I'd step over a lot more to make sure that the clans can have plenty and safety, and I don't give a single fuck about preserving Nero or anyone else if they stand between me and that."

Her fists are clenched in determination and her jaw set, before she wavers and says less confidently, "Besides, how far away could the end be? The Rift is coming up soon so we must be getting close to Gaia. There's just not that much galaxy left, and we've already killed everyone coming to stop us. This is the end of the journey, right?"