[i]The eye is the blade. The compliment is the strike.[/i]

It had surprised Solarel to learn that the knights of the Evercity took the words of the Sage to mean that compliments should be cutting, incisive, mocking. Out in the wilds, with divine peril around every corner, it meant something very different.

She dropped from the rooftop. Spirit armaments glowed around her hands. One fist of silver and the other of gold; if the right one didn't get you the left one would.

She passed through the nanobot drone - it was barely substantial - and yet her hands [i]gripped[/i]. From the centre of the swirling mass she pulled the geist down with her momentum, that tangle of startled code. Just as she was about to slam it into the floor she [i]twisted [/i]in mid air, getting her feet under her with the grace of someone who had spent far too many hours staring at videos of sleepy Hybrasilians falling off things. She impacts on the balls of her feet, the shock of energy running up through her body, and as the glow of heat washed out around her she pushed the geist against the wall and slammed her open palm into place immediately besides it. Kabe... [b][i]don[/i][/b]!!

"Hey," said Solarel, looming and terrifying and glorious. "You're doing an [i]amazing [/i]job. You're meant for so much more than this. What's your name?"

How, then, does one survive in a networked landscape? When even the least creature might be protected by unknowable spirits and gods? When the balance of force and knowledge was infinitely against the mortal? One has to give the machine what it cannot give itself. Love. Meaning. Attention. No mortal can defeat an angry god, but Solarel might yet seduce Kathresis.

[Entice: [b]9[/b]]