[i]Mistress and slave are strong united. Never forget they are separate.[/i]

This is the joy of machines. Control is frictionless. Easier to move than her own body. To walk the mountain isn't about strength and speed, of those the machine is always the greater. It is about finding the chink in the armour that lets you make that strength and speed yours. Once you have tamed a machine, even for a second, it is yours. It will spill all its secrets, give all its strength, let you run your hands through every hidden place and remake it in your own image. It would be yours until someone took it away.

[i]Unless you were Mirror.[/i] The thought intruded across her trance like a shiver, an unwelcome fragment of intellect in a time of physicality. She'd stolen the God-Smiting Whip and it had obeyed Mirror anyway. She'd taken Mirror captive and wound up wrapped around her finger. How had that happened?

She tried to brush the thought away and return to her hypnotic trance. The plan was direct. While wrapped in the center of the nanocloud of her good little geist, soft dusty skin brushing her scales, she would pass by the Kathresis. When she was close she'd leap upon it and climb its back. She would displace the spirit through fire and the threat of digital swords. And then, if she had learned the lessons of Zaldar well, she would next judge the world through divine eyes.