Ah. She has been stolen, that is it. Stolen into service - and that is only fair. Solarel too fell for an Empress. Solarel too tried to steal the stars on her behalf. She understands. They had both found new swords to fall upon since last they'd fought.

Her hands trace the Makhaira under arms, around thighs. Gently, gently, gently. The thick cords of muscles, the crackling neural electricity of the spine. She knew every reactive armour plate, every sloped ballistic curve and ammunition storage rack. She had penetrated this armour before, unraveling its secrets around her fingers before Naelkai had done the same. The lace and bows of nanoweave, gentle gossamer threads of repair solution wrapping reinforced steel cable, soft to the touch. The promise of recovery, an invisible dress that made scarcity and durability irrelevant concerns to the followers of Zaldar.

It was that very lace she worked on now. Gentle touches, loving touches, the caress of silver geists and software updates. Uploading a new shape into the Makhaira's repair nanoswarm, node by node. Wrapping loop after loop of silken threads around wrists and breasts and legs. Gently, gently... up until her darling knight took damage. Then the thread would pull tight, a gentle weave of thread tightening into a shibari. All of that knightly durability turned back on itself. The automated repair swarms would remember a shape where wrist was bound to ankle and hair was bound to tail and a submissive inner heart would be revealed for all to see.

It would still require a blow. To trigger the repair process, and have it proceed so quickly that Akaithon would not notice the binding until it was complete. It would still come down to the lance.

"You desire a [i]gift[/i]?" Solarel said. "She had me [i]robbed[/i], Akai. Attacked by the Varangian Guard outside of my God and exiled from Roevg, in defiance of all of the Knightly codes of the Evercity. I understood you standing by, out of love," a barbarian lilt, understanding was not the same as respecting, "but I did not think that you would then call the fruits of treachery a lover's gift." 

"But then," she added, gently kissing the nanoswarm, sending a silver ripple along it before withdrawing back to the Kathresis, "it is the way of the high riders to take the noble path after every exploring every possible alternative, and then toasting their virtue for so doing."

[Who's the Monster? [b]7[/b]
- Your words sting; they take a Condition.]