[b]Dolce![/b] The skulls hit the table. One of them chips. They're fascinating, almost childlike - you feel like you could crush one into powder with your fists if you set your mind to it. It's hard to imagine how a creature could even survive with bones that fragile. "Incredible, aren't they?" said the Crystal Knight to Princess Redana. "An independently evolved, intelligent species - growing up only three gates from here! I could hardly believe our fortune when we discovered them. Entirely untouched by Biomancy, barely above the late medieval period. What a treasure! You can keep these, of course, they're gifts - I have plenty more." The house of Triden was a place of maps. Not maps of the world as it was, maps of the world as it would be. Fascinating, beautiful, interconnected - every valley a garden, every city a paradise. They covered the walls, the ceilings, the floors - the master cartographer drifted without gravity, brush illustrating in incredible detail the future of Bitemark. She only looked up at the Crystal Knight vaguely, but Princess Redana was giving her full tight-lipped attention. "You might think that a novel alien species might be worthless," the Crystal Knight went on. "Not so! See, while evolution may have laws, it also has surprises - things that develop in isolation can sometimes have some genuinely novel ways of going about things. This is valuable inspiration for Biomancers who oftentimes," she made a face, "get stuck in the rut of Afane sealife or Earth vertebrate mammals. An alien world means entirely new paradigms for servitor species! But more than that, it means entirely new paradigms for sociology! Many people forget that sociology is the other half of biomancy, but getting to see an entirely unique lifeform's methods for social cohesion cannot help but be fascinating." She picked up one of the skulls which still had a metal circlet wrapped around its head. A crown? "For instance, humans," she grinned, "have a tendency to band together against external threats, and fall to entropy in conditions of stress. Most human servitors are human patterned in this same way. But these little darlings - we call them Dredges - we believe to be the opposite. We're running a test. I landed on the planet, went around to every Dredge king or queen or emperor of note, killed them in front of their entire court, and declared I would return in seven years to fight whatever warrior or army the kingdom set against me. And now we're going to watch what happens! The Biomancers theorize that this relatively minor intervention will cause a total system collapse without me even having to return. Imagine building a servitor species that doesn't need a whole invasion fleet to Decommission - one Azura showing up and saying 'boo!' would cause them to panic so hard that their civilization collapsed on its own. Wonderful!" The air between the Crystal Knight and Princess Redana could have frozen. But that was the point. You could see it in the curl of her tail, in the easy flex of fingers across that strange silver belt attachment. The Crystal Knight was provoking the Imperial Princess to a duel which would remove her from the safety of Zeus' laws of hospitality. One atrocity became the means to perform another. 20022 saw it too. He gave a firm, polite cough. The spell was broken and the Crystal Knight's eye snapped around, cerulean-teal, slitted, and furious. "[i]What[/i]!?" she hissed. 20022 bowed politely. "Lord Governor," said 20022. "We were not expecting you. We have a meeting scheduled with Imperial Princess Redana." "[i]We[/i]?" hissed the Crystal Knight. She loomed. Azura were huge and she was no exception, a battle-scarred warrior, turquoise scales chipped and broken, coils and coils and coils. "I know [i]you[/i], meddler, but who is [i]this[/i]?" It was impossible to break her gaze, Dolce. It was impossible to know if she was coming closer or if she'd activated her Grav-Rail and was lifting you, weightless, from the ground. She was transfixing and everything else dropped away. "You smell fresh," she purred. The anger had gone. She was all smile. Just one smile, unchanging. "You smell [i]alive[/i]. You haven't internalized the Skies like your friend, so what are you? His apprentice? His replacement?" she was close now. When she smiled you could see her fangs as her tail wrapped around your legs. "If so, you'll be seeing a [i]lot [/i]of me. That's why I'm hoping we can get off on the right," [i]squeeze[/i], "foot. Don't you think ♥?" [b]Dyssia![/b] Your eyes slip, and you see the gods. First amongst them is Demeter. She stands upon the barren world with Hades' stolen scythe in her hand. She stands astride the gate of Death and none may pass below her. Blood splashes the soil and immediately she raises it up. The drones are simple creatures, barely more than fungi, and where their shells crack and their life spills she causes the eruptions of grasses, mushrooms and minor insects. The basic building blocks of an ecosystem, the first lurches of evolution on this hurricane stone forest. Swarms of algae vomit forth unending tides of oxygen as they drip from mucous-soaked rocks down into fast flowing rivers and stagnant streams. Life has come to this planet and she will never, ever let it leave. Where one of the Pix fall, worthier blood conjures worthier life. A dead soldier produces a hound, or an eagle, or a flock of doves. One glorious hero who catches her eye especially she raises as a crab. The more drones the Pix kill, the richer the ecosystem they will live in in their 'afterlife'. You know that it has been centuries since death has walked the galaxy, but the way this consumptive, violent war seems to be a particularly horrifying form of terraforming a desolate rock into a tropical rainforest is still not internalized on an emotional level. This is not right - but it is a Blessing. Kind are the gods. Mars is here too. Husband to Demeter, he nevertheless oversees the Pix exclusively, walking amongst them with encouragement and smiles, a word here, a flash of steel there. Sometimes he seems to be calmly professional, other times inspiringly stupid, wearing a big smile and a thumbs up as he clotheshangers half a dozen drones to give some staggered Pix a chance to regain their feet and their formation. If any analogy ever felt right it's that he seems like a plastic action figure, stiff and rigid and bodyslamming enemies into submission - or a plastic miniature on a battlefield of pure tactical skill where his absurdity belies genuine brilliance. A toy soldier god of a toy soldier species, all wound up and kicking ass for justice and survival. To lose the favour of Mars so entirely, then, should be a disaster for the Wayang. They are at odds with the God of War and, whatever else this is, it is a war. Their drones pay the price in the tens of thousands. But still they work, still they pray, and still they offer. But if not to Mars, then who? You see Aphrodite in the distance amongst them. He gives you a smile and a wave of his cigarette. Then he looks at his silver wristwatch. That is when you hear the tick [color=black]HATE[/color] tick [color=black]HATE[/color] tick [color=black]HATE[/color] ... something important is not happening ... tick [color=black]HATE[/color] tick [color=black]HATE[/color] tick [color=black]HATE[/color] ... salvation is not getting any closer these deaths buy no time everything is pointless ... the pounding of the clock. an old, mechanical, clockwork thing, wound up springs and gears. the gears of time itself, grinding away in that old fashioned pocketwatch. When Zeus struck down her monstrous father she imprisoned him in linear time. All his bones were broken and he was pulled long and thin. Where once he was all consuming, formless and eternal now he was, beat after beat, crushed into a comprehensible shape. Once no one could escape him. Now with every passing second he has to let them free from his grasp. The only part of him that survived was his monstrous, severed phallus, containing within it all his nightmarish lusts. And this one above all. The Biomancers created the Pix. Now they are killing them. And Cronus cannot help but love those who devour their children.