[b]Mosaic![/b]

"I am Quajl," she gave it without the expectation of getting it back. 

"My brothers and sisters were taken by the Skies. Drafted as Biomancers for the war effort. The knowledge is cursed, and when they were ordered they could not disobey. It is for them I bargained with the Stone Tribe, hoping that I could build a weapon to crack the Skies. Perhaps in the crystals is an end to this nightmare, a world where the helix is not a chain. I fear that instead there will be a new and more efficient form of tyranny."

She held against Mosaic's softness, the soft and fragile clinging of someone who couldn't remember her last hug and didn't know when her next one would come.

"In truth, I fear my cause is hopeless," she said. "I cannot chart my way forward. I do not know which path will help my quest. If you can give me a reason, no matter how tenuous, I will fight for you."

[b]Ember![/b]

"Although it pains me," said Taurus, with her casual warrior's grin, "to send you out half-trained and half-punished, you are essential to this operation. We're going to take Beri. It's a strategic position close to the shipwreck and we'll need the base and the population's labour to dredge it. To take Beri we need to capture Mosaic. To capture Mosaic we need you, puppy."

"I would like to reiterate," said Gemini, "that Mosaic would probably side with us if we explained ourselves to her."

"Yeah," said Taurus. "Probably. But honestly, I just want to fuck with her a bit, you know? You hear the pack. [i]Taurus is so good she might even be a match for Mosaic!![/i] They'll shut up once they see her bound and squirming beneath my boot." She grinned. "I'll negotiate with her [i]then[/i]."

She leaned down to Ember, breath heavy with Command. "That's fine with you, little Ember? It won't cause any tangled loyalties or silly little acts of defiance if I send you out to seduce your girlfriend into a proper introduction to the pack? Will you," she asked, "be good?"

[b]Dolce![/b]

"Consider," said Vasilia as the sand began to rise around her in streaming ribbons. "You feel despair. You spoke to others who feel despair. Despair is the dominant emotion here. Consider also that nothing here is accidental. The Skies built this despair as deliberately as they built the songbirds, as deliberately as they placed the stars."

The sand rotated, each streaming ribbon falling horizontally rather than vertically, spinning into an endless orbit. She looked out into the sea with the same expression as a knight from a dream, seeing a vision in the dying blue-green of the sunset.

"Consider also," said the Furnace Knight, "that those who have built this system do [i]not [/i]feel despair. On the contrary, they are filled with hope, filled with ambition, filled with motivation. One cannot accuse the Crystal Knight of resting upon her laurels. So, why? What do [i]they [/i]have which is so worth striving for? What justifies building all of this rather than simply using biomancy to place themselves in a state of enlightened bliss for the rest of their lives? What is the true nature of the Endless Azure Skies?"

[b]Dyssia![/b]

"What have you done to earn it?" said Aphrodite, taking a drag on his cigarette. "You [i]cling[/i]. Oh, do you cling, stuck to life like a leech on a pig's cock. And I love that for you!" he laughed. "Don't you see? This is my [i]gift[/i]. Hate, love, craving, obsession. It's all that keeps you here! Without me you'd end up like all of Whonce's customers, rolling up enlightenment and snorting it until your brains melted and your souls checked out of the galaxy entirely. Did you know how the Azura survived the invention of biomancy? They invented an even bigger obsession!" he cackled. "Something they wanted even more than to wirehead their brains forever. They doubled down on craving and called their new obsession the Endless Azure Skies."

He spread his arms and grinned. "That's why this. That's why [i]all [/i]this. The alternative to the Skies is blowing your brains out with transcendent happiness and leaving this world of matter and meat to those who are too broken to want to be happy. That's what you're feeling now, you want to run and overdose on being a good person. That's fine, your genetics will be filtered out and the next generation will descend from those who are on board with the program."