[IC] Breathless Dead

[Thanqol]

Bella!

It's a hot day. Was their planet always this hot?

You feel sweat on your brow. You smell the thick, smokey sent of leather curing under the sun. You see the crisp angles of bones beneath flesh that moves and shifts independently. You remember warmth and family, a sister as bright as the sun and trapped within a cage of sweets. Was it always this hot? Breathing is harder. You feel the sun beating down like a fever. Like a fever. Was the sun always this angry?

Their weapons are... clubs. Just hunks of wood and stone. Why do they look so dangerous?

"We appreciate your authority to negotiate," their uncrowned king was saying in the distance. Focus. Focus as a praetor should, as a maid must. "In order to permit an exchange of embassies, we would like the stellar co-ordinates of your home system."

Holding that banner feels heavy. They have refreshments. They smile invitingly. It is so hot. It would be easy to tell them.

Ember!

"Now now," said the alpha of the Star Kings, waving you down as she approaches, trailing neon gold in a bridal train. A legacy of ribbons and translucent silks terminates in savage fishnets, armoured brassier and head crowned in golden antlers. "All of my stuff is in this city."

She is civilized and civilization; she reeks of a new kind of violence: civilian violence. Where she can brutalize you here in front of everyone and no one will raise their hand in your defense. This is her way of war; to strip every defense and ally away, and with it, every choice.

"So I won't deny you have leverage," said the antlered wolf, fingers spinning her cigarette holder. "But only some. Your pack trespassed on my territory, and if I bring them back then they could do far more damage than you alone might. That would make you happy and leave me in peril; why should I make such a bargain?"

Dyssia!

The Generous Knight laughs. "Oh, that takes me back. Did you know I was there when we killed the knights?" Her eye blackens. A hiss of fluid pumps; it is carried away. "I was a prototype biomantic pilot, riding an experimental mecha suit integrated with living metal technology. Against me was an endless empire of mad tyrants. I fought them as their equal, different but similar. Perhaps the High King should be a little less mad. Perhaps the knights should have their battles further away from civilians. Our political demands seemed so reasonable."

She looked out at the advancing Portuguese fleet. The name felt hollow now. Soon they would carve their true name in the stars in blood.

Their ships are not beautiful. The warships of the Skies are elegant orrerys; solar systems in miniature, gravity and grace. These things look diseased; each ship surrounded in swarming, alien locust clouds. When they draw closer to the Generous Knight's ships these swarms flock across the void, gnawing and chewing metal, stripping crystal buttresses and digesting stained glass windows.

The Fleet retreated.

"But it wasn't us Azura Knights that won the war," said the Generous Knight. "It was the Tides. A tsunami of seawater and silk. In the beginning they were useful, interesting tools - extensions of knightly combat, innovations around the edges. Before long I was watching Archdukes being dragged down by thousands of crabs as I stood quietly in the back. It came to horrify me so much that I betrayed the Skies, stood with the Knights, tried to save them. The Tides weren't even mad. I stood in my warmech, hip deep in corpses, killing and killing to stop them - they didn't care. Killing them was my right. So they just flowed around me, killed the human Knights as they had been programmed to do, and kept going."

She turned to look at you, half her face melting off, blood cascading onto the deck as her regeneration warred with the damage to her fleet. "At the end of the war, we surviving Knights of the Skies understood one thing: Biomancy could never be unleashed. We built the Atlas Cultural Sphere on that understanding: a cybernetic implant in every skull, a stopper in the bottle of evolution. You think that servitors are inhumane? Servitors are beautiful. Servitors have empathy. Servitors speak our language, share our values, value our art and feel our emotions. We killed a lot of Biomancers fighting for those things. And now, without the advantages of cybernetic thought control, the only thing keeping them in check is the fact that they're still brainwashing themselves to obey us out of habit."

She turned to look out the window, hands folding behind her back. "And then come you fools in the Publica. You come to us speaking of the rights of smallpox, placing the ideal of bodily autonomy above the necessity of herd immunity. This is why I elevated these savages: to remind the Skies of what monstrosities a culture unbound by our hard-won lessons might produce."

Dolce!

It's a hot day.

It's a hot day. The sun beats down. The alchemy of divine fire that the ancients foolishly attributed to hydrogen intensifies over a void that seems shorter and shorter every day. See the Summerkind taking off their armour as they work at loading their war machines aboard the fleet of spaceships that land upon the planet's surface. See Liquid Bronze call out for ice to cool his drink - the liquefied brains of his clones, by which he will gain the knowledge of his other selves. See the golden ram standing sure-footed atop the distant hill. He is not smiling. All three of his golden eyes are open.

It's a hot day - and hotter every day.

Apollo Phoebus they call him. The brightest. Was he always so bright? Was his attention always so direct? In the temples he is painted with his eyes closed and a smile on his face, and now those things seem like they are related. See the way servitors squint and shield their eyes against the sun. See the tall and brutal warrior standing above the sun. He carries a club of stone, wears a cape of flesh and fur, and holds a bow of silver. Is he shooting you now? Is that from whence this brilliance comes? Was the sun always this bright?

Was the sun... a gift? It was a gift, wasn't it?

You are not free from this judgement. Sweat pours from your back, it curdles in your fur as it does in 20022's. If there is mercy to be had you have not earned it. No one in this civilization has. You do what you can. You get through the day. You move in the shadows as the machinery of extermination swings to bear. You make yourself useful and make yourself kind, you gain access and avert disaster and in your little way do your bit. But day by day it gets hotter. Day by day Apollo glows brighter. Little by little the Skies begin to boil.

Be discreet. There was an old story about a servitor who went mad trying to beat the heat. It's time to lie low, cool and dark. There's a lot that needs administering in the movement of a Quality Assurance armada. This is 20022's dream - to volunteer to do critical work, establishing himself as an invaluable aspect of this organization so that Liquid Bronze will petition for his permanent reassignment. The brighter the sun burns the deeper Artemis' shadows grow - so where do you hide yourself?

[Phoe]

"I apologize. That is, uh, I'm sorry," Bella's tongue is sandpaper and ash, "Your first, mmmmf. Sorry. Your first request is something I can't do. I mean I must respectfully decline."

Her voice sounds even farther away than the uncrowned king and their entourage. Like she has to push it through a wad of cotton to start with, only for it to drop on the air in leaden bubbles. Breathing is, somehow, worse. The sensation of heat entering her lungs is nauseating. Hot in, hot out, her own breath feels sticky before she can even exhale. The smell makes it worse; each little sniff loses more and more of what makes the planet seem alive to her and replaces it with the pungent tang of her own misery. Bella's own sweat is a particularly miserable cocktail that triggers her same maid's aversion to blood.

She has to fight to keep her hand from clenching over her mouth. That would be unseemly, conduct unbecoming of a praetor. It wouldn't even help what with the smell coming from her own body: her hand would just press it further into her. She grits her teeth, invisibly, and sways on the spot instead. She must not wobble. She must not raise a hand to steady herself. She keeps both hands tucked demurely in front of her in her least aggressive posture, and carries the weight of an empire on her back as she burns.

"Please understand," her voice is not only distant now, but weak, "I'm not trying to waste your time. It's not that I don't trust you, either. But communication isn't possible at a distance. And the crossing... would kill you. Please just. Trust me."

Bella tries to swallow, but her mouth is so parched the gesture simply catches on the back of her throat instead and she has to turn her head to hide the sudden retching as a more mundane cough. It's not pride at this point, the standing on ceremony for a delegation she can't even see in detail through all the haze in the air anymore. It's simply decorum. Before she was a praetor she was a maid, and ahead of any other duties they may have stapled onto her her first and most sacred would always be to the comfort and ease of guests before herself. It was the lesson beaten into her most sharply as a little girl, the lessons begun before she'd even finished learning how to speak.

She does not ask for a drink. Her body begs her to, but she ignores it. Is this... punishment? Is this scalding heat mere divine displeasure, or was the sickness of the sun her special torment in death for all the many harms she'd caused before she'd been so unceremoniously snuffed out? Fuck. You could have simply left her on the Yakanov, Lord Apollo, if this was really what you wanted for her. She dips into a curtsy rather than another bow, because letting her knees obey the siren call of gravity seems easier all of a sudden. She just has to. She just has to.. She just has to...

"M-my name's... Bella. I didn't come to make trouble. Please. I want-- I nnnnnneed, sssshhhhhhttttthhhggt!"

It is not enough. The power of the Empire is not enough. The precision of her training is not enough. Bella's ears droop flat on her head and her tail flags low against the ground. Her posture is terrible. Her body is sweat soaked, plastered fur and white fabrics so drenched they have become invisible, clinging highlights to every imaginable mystery of her physique. Her mouth glistens with the fresh purge of her own misery as her legs threaten to topple her down to the ground to wallow in it. Beljani, is this what your cage felt like? When you burned your way into the minds of so many around you, did it feel like this? When they forced you on the bed and stuffed you till you couldn't help but feel aware of every crevice of your body, did that feel like this? How did you stand it?

Sister. Where did you go, Sister? Why can't she see you again? Why can't she, oh gods. Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods she can't take this. Please. Make it stop, make it stop! What did she do? She's sorry! She's sorry! Please, just! A drink, a fan, a bit of shade, anything! Just don't trap her like this! Don't keep her like this! Don't...

[TheAmishPirate]

Does he deserve to feel comfortable?

Every job here supports Quality Assurance. The sheep who works in the mailroom never puts his hands on an SP round, but he delivers the letters that request them by the ton. The sheep who makes up the shuttle schedules doesn’t keep the Summerkind working double shifts, but the work crews don’t make it to their sites without him. Does he deserve the chance to forget that?

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe, he thinks some sweltering nights, if he could only burn hot enough in his heart, then Apollo’s curse would feel like a refreshing breeze. But that was a silly thought for Dolce of Beri to have. Even if he was some unstoppable ram of war, with a hunger for E N D L E S S B A T T L E, what good would that do anyone? He wouldn’t be unstoppable for long, that’s for sure. Far better to bide his time, escape when the time was right and get a warning to the others ahead of the fleet. It wouldn’t do the Summerkind any good. He’d have to settle for saving his home.

If Vasilly were here, that’s just the sort of thing she’d tell him.

At least, he hoped it was. And not just the thing he wanted to hear, because it was easier. Because it was a relief to his weary heart. Because it meant he didn’t have to do anything grander than…

Well, the Summerkind were quick learners, but it was a lot quicker to have someone give you supplies and a recipe rather than try and re-create the culinary arts from scratch. Nor had anyone bothered to teach them how to survive on anything more than bare necessities. Under his watch, the kitchens remained fully stocked with refreshing drinks and cool, soothing dishes, just the thing after a long day spent working in the sun. He manned one of the kitchens himself, when he had the time, working out new dishes so the menus wouldn’t get stale, and serving the troops himself.

The Summerkind deserved at least that much.

[Tatterdemalion]

It's not your territory. It's theirs. Easy enough to say, right? But not for Ember. Not for Ember, steeped in the ways of Ceron. Not for Ember, who knows that the pack's territory is whatever the pack may claim. It's their planet, not yours. No, the planet is already marked.

Her mind goes in different directions, then.

"Where is the honor and glory in making an enemy disappear?" She bares her teeth, gestures wide with the Shield. "Where are your trophies, Alpha? This is a degenerate weapon. Bring my pack back so that we can fight for this planet properly." Not free this planet; that would be alarming enough to justify leaving the Silver Divers and Mosaic wherever they have gone. "Clear your half-wolves from the board and come fight like women! Bring out your spears, your swords, your cords, your maces! Winner takes all, loser offers concession: that is the way of Ceron! Do it or I will break your toys and we will fight like savages, teeth on necks, to dissolution."

It is mostly a bluff. It is a deliberate choice to channel the howling of a hundred honorable predecessors into outrage. She risks being lost in it (as she always is). There is no Mosaic here to talk her down. Nothing but the groaning of the injured and the echo of her voice in the empty space.

[Balmas]

Sight, blurred. Visor, smeared with blood, mech straining to absorb the chitin piled over and across it.

Arms and legs, leaden, burning with the built-up lactic acid of a year and a day of piloting.

Ears, full of the skittering susurration of a million billion legs, swarming around and past and over.

It's like, some of it is memory, and some of it is imagination, and she's not sure where the line starts and ends.

"But you're still happy to keep them around," she notes. "Still happy to benefit from what they create, willing to let them manage all our affairs, to arrange things so we never have to think about what life without them would be like. Happy to pay them nothing, and then repay them with annihilation when they're not convenient."

And she can see the logic? See where it started--see where things went wrong, see the horrible wrench that Zeus dropped into the gears.

No, no, that's not right. The problem wasn't the lack of mind control. The problem started far earlier than that.

"You say they're smallpox. They're a threat. We're a threat for teaching them that they have rights, that they don't have to brainwash themselves. We need to remind people how awful it would be if we were replaced in our own cultural model, if we lost.

"So why not have done? Why keep them around? You have no issue with genocide, so if they're so awful, if we're so terrible, why not just wipe them out? Start fresh! Begin a new, heroic era of nothing but the Azura, in every corner of the galaxy, doing nothing but Azura culture everywhere you look? What's stopping you?"

[Thanqol]

Bella!

"The crossing?" said the Uncrowned King, holding up a glittering violet crystal necklace. "We have that managed. Lord Hades, in his wisdom, has been striving mightily to break the bounds of the underworld and these are the result: Dreamstones. Already we have witnessed aliens wielding these sacred relics as crude weaponry. When we turned our eyes to the heavens we did not expect to find such barbarism."

Their skin. It was moving. You see through the glare of the sun, the flicking at the edges of their silhouettes - they are each of them a hive. Swarms of flealike insects clinging to an armoured skeleton, leaping from one body to another in constant, controlled exchange. The heat does not bother them.

"But it is unjust to hold the secret of your homeworld from us," said the Uncrowned King. His voice was kind, but he did not know how to help your fragile body with the heat. "We who were not given the chance to learn the will of Hermes. The Gods do not belong to you alone."

Ember!

"Degenerate!" gasped the Star King in dismay. "Oh, we offend you! The Silver Diver, with her pockets stuffed full of pennies, says that we do not have trophies to display! Oh, woe is us and our lineage in the face of such judgement!"

The Star Kings ripple with laughter. It is not condescending, they are not taking you lightly. This exchange of speeches is the very essence of interpack conflict. This is negotiation, the establishment of stakes and reputation, the exploration of what each side has to offer and has to lose. There is no higher calling for a warrior of Ceron than this; glory in such a battle builds a legend, and building a legend is how one reproduces.

"After all, to be judged by the Silver Divers, those legendary warriors who missed the troop transport leaving from Bitemark and spent the next thirty years failing to conquer it?" said the Alpha, drawing two bladed fans from her sleeve, movements taking on an oily texture. "Have you considered what you risk, little pup? If you lose here and your line might be discontinued entirely. No more chances for glory, your ancestors dying the death of obscurity. But, instead, if you kneel... well, we will let you drink from such chalices as you have never imagined."

Dyssia!

The Generous Knight laughed bleakly. "The Furnace Knight, who I followed, believed just that: End the experiment, break the chain, let biomancy fall out of the galaxy entirely, put the genie back in the bottle. Liquid Bronze assassinated him. He sent one of his Ikarani, and they killed him while he was pacifying some primitives - just like these. Burned a whole planet and alien armada to do so. Not his idea; the Saoshyant ordered it done."

You remember - on your homeworld, the Great Sage Ohlemi? His home was built atop a decapitated statue - that was the Furnace Knight. The Crystal Knight is a Loyalist, inheritor of the Tyrants. They sought to return society to an idealized past before the rise of biomancy, and when their technological terror failed they were swept away in the chaos.

She extends her hand; that mortal gesture represents an atrocity of plasma and gravity. The swarming spaceships tear themselves apart as the mighty emitters haul them into a vast spread of torpedoes. They crack and break, Engines flashing with the solar flare of released suns.

"Because what the Saoshyant believes in is the completion of the Skies. The elimination of the Void. Filling the darkness between stars with oxygen; moving planets and stars closer together, building a galaxy where you can leap from world to world in a matter of hours with no ship or suit. Is it strange, to think that the leader of our society believes in its ideals? Because she does. In service to beauty, any risk is acceptable. She would accept even the extermination of the Azura if our successor species finished the great work. Even now she does not seek the annihilation of Ceron, but its indoctrination."

Dolce!

For all the coming storm, the final days of the Summerkind are peaceful and happy. You help make it so.

They are all going to die soon - they are already dying, generations passing every day and returning into their egg-shapes to be loaded in the vast arsenals of Liquid Bronze's motley warfleet. By the end of the month all of them will be gone into that quiescence and this colossal battleship will become a floating tomb, tended only by biomancers and Lantern servitors.

But these are creatures who were born never expecting a retirement. All they have known all their lives was violence, and in these fading days they explore the rest the world has to offer. They invent sports - mind-bendingly complicated games, as intense a challenge for their hyperactive minds as their bodies. They invent music. They paint their tomb decks with spectacular murals, write their memoirs, meditate on the temple deck and - more than anything else - pour into your dining halls and feast on the finest foods in the galaxy. They could have learned this too, but even the full intense energy of their brilliant minds would not have bought them close to the heights of flavour you have mastered. For the first time in its history, Hestia walks the deck of the Cancellation.

"Vasilia has been praying for you," said Hestia, holding the tub of chocolate ice cream close to her chest, bear hood lowered as a concession to the temperature. "But I haven't been able to find you until now. It's been too loud. But don't worry, little one - I'll keep you safe and on your way home."

[Phoe]

"What the... fuck?"

Bella's mouth hangs agape. Unsightly. Impolite. She has to close it. She must. Decorum demands at least this much. But surprise pulls her jaw apart for all she fights to wrench it closed. They knew this much? Their communion with the gods ran this deep? Then they had no use for her to begin with. Why ask? Why..?

Her body is so heavy. It drags her to the ground with the force and surety of a grav-rail assault. Her only act of rebellion is to fall on her side instead of her front. She curls into a ball, ready for death. The heat of her own organs broils her to be this compact; she snaps outward again almost immediately. Clutching, writhing, spine tensed so hard it curves backward, her claws dig into the dirt and she howls.

"S-shadow! Wa, water! Please, anything! It's so hot! Why?! To drag me this far just to! Aaaaah!"

She can feel her skin dry and blister already. Her lips crack painfully and her hands paw weakly at the ground beneath her. The sharpness of her claws is no longer enough to win against the soil with her fingers already this weak. All she can do is twist limply and let weight drop her on her back.

Bella gasps for air under the merciless light of the sun. She looks every way she can manage but nothing of the glittering edifice around her seems designed to block even the first wisp of light. What use have creatures such as these to cool off? What refreshment could they even offer her pitiful, inferior body? Apollo. Artemis. You. Hate her this much?

She cranes her neck from where she lies as her hair tangles and pulls underneath her to look up at the uncrowned king once more. The little puffs of air escaping from her heavy chest are pathetic. She cannot smell anything anymore. She can only taste dry. Can only feel heat. But she can see, and she can hear.

"It's not justice," she moans, "The gods already don't belong to me. I am not hiding Hermes. Nobody, nobody anywhere does. Ask the yellow robes. Ask the gods. They can't tell you. You really wanna know? Then look. Look at me. You'll see..."

[Balmas]

Leaping from world to world, like a swan. Alighting on each, partaking in delights beyond measure, finding wonders past imagination. Looking up and seeing, not the sky, but the Skies--an endless, limitless sea of potential, ripe for the taking.

A sea of adventure, infinite beauty, for any and all.

She can't help but feel the longing of her own younger self. How many times, sitting in the spaceport and seeing the ships leave, did she wonder about the stars? About, you know, leaving it all behind. How many times did she sit on a mountain peak, and imagine that she could, you know, take a single step and soar into the sky?

The people of Bitemark, able to leave. The ability to leave, find a new home, wherever you want, whenever you want.

Except…

"It would just be the same empire."

No matter where they went, no matter how far they went, the same.

"The same empire, with the same petty cruelty, the same boots on different necks. How can we, the Azura, claim to be superior--claim to be administrators that deserve to be listened to and pampered and obeyed--and then hand it off to somebody else? How, when our entire sense of beauty is built on being Azura, on Azura values, on Azura sight?"

A million shades of nothing but blue.

"We create all this variety, all this wonder, all this beauty, we see all these new ways of thinking. And then we say that the only way any of it can be acceptable is if it's us. If servitors share our culture, our language, our sight. Genocide or assimilation, so long as the only thing left is Azura."

[TheAmishPirate]

She finds him where she always does; in the kitchens. The constant buzz of activity dulls to a pleasant background hum. The scents blend and grow into a rich fullness that begs to be stopped and savored. Even the oppressive heat could be mistaken for an oven that’s been left open.

Dolce’s heart leaps, and cares not for the mousse he was mixing. The dessert, sensing an opportunity, makes a daring escape before he can restore order to the bowl. He wipes his hands on his apron. Hestia dips her finger in the spilled mousse, and samples shamelessly. He opens his mouth, and fifteen different thoughts scramble to figure out which should be first. Hestia takes the opportunity to offer a spoonful of ice cream.

He doesn’t have to be perfect here. Home is a place where you can laugh at mistakes.

“I have missed you so much.” He finally gets out. “I, she’s well? Vasilia’s well? Oh thank goodness. Thank goodness.” He’s going to make it. He’s going to make it. There will be a home for him to return to. He’s not going to be too late. After, yes, after there will be difficulties, but, but! “Oh Hestia, it’s awful here. It’s been awful ever since I left Beri. I haven’t met a single soul who seems like they know you. Are all the official parts of the Skies this noisy?”

[Tatterdemalion]

“I am of the blood of Howl From The Ashes,” Ember says, and her voice is small and still like the crook of a scorpion’s tail. The words lie where she sets them. “She did not betray her pack, no matter the temptation.”

She strikes the Shield, the once, against the Lantern. Just at the side, where it shivers. Light erupts, coruscating, giddy with freedom, and the world shudders with fractured time.

And that is enough for her to vault up onto one of the lantern posts that line the Portuguese streets, and from there she launches herself at the Alpha. It is the Lantern that impacts the proud warrior in the stomach, sends her flying back, and Ember herself is just the counterweight, the straps of the Shield biting into her arm as she sends it careening through the rival pack.

She lands heavy on a transport; where the Lantern lands, the road fractures in a roar of splintered tar and stone. One cuts through her cheek, unprotected, and perhaps one of the watching Portuguese sees how the cut scabs immediately.

“We rise roaring from Bitemark!” She stands, proud against an entire pack, baring her keen teeth. “We come with a goddess at her back! And if you will not show me how to call them back, I will send us all there, too!”

[7 to Finish with Blood.]

[Thanqol]

Bella!

The Uncrowned King nods in failed understanding. He moves so that the sun is behind him, casting its shadow as a bitter mercy on Bella. But he is not a solid object. He is a swarm of locusts in the shape of a person, and as they shift and flick about tiny chinks of light shine through him and they sear like daggers.

"I have sent someone for water," he said. "But we have no need for it, so it is all deep underground. Please, understand we wish you no ill will. We only wish to understand. We have been awaiting your coming for a long time and there has been such work to prepare ourselves for it. Pray, tell us what you can. We will listen."

Ember!

[Damaging First Of The Pack; remaining stat is Esoteric Fires]

The Alpha takes the blows with surprise; it has been some time since she has fought a peer, and she has never before faced someone like you. In her surprise her true instincts are revealed - she does not fight with pawns, does not fight with words. She fights with high intensity energy weapons.

She leaps into the air and snatches one of the cables that link to the Reactor of the Star Kings. She plugs it into the base of a pistol and lands in a firing crouch. Shot, shot - advance and wheel. It is a battle of light and ribbon, the strengths and limitations of a Plover in the body of a woman. First she dances to keep the ribbon cable away from where you might sever it, and then she cracks it like a whip dumping charge from her pistol back into the cable making it burst with crackling electrical energy.

It is a fearsome approach, but she has no other; her attention is so split with her dreams of conquest she has only had the time to properly develop a single art of war.

Dyssia!

"Well, yes. Obviously," said the Generous Knight, as the Skies burned around her. Ancient trees sickened and died, branches crashing to the earth. Fields of lavender wilted and sapphire blossoms fell like rain. "Either objective beauty exists, or it does not. Either truth exists, or it does not. And for those of us with soul enough to recognize truth and beauty when we see it, what morality could justify letting these other creatures squat in hideous squalor? Should we laud them for their ugly drawings like children, telling them there is no need to improve or better themselves because they are perfect just the way they are? Should we hand off the galaxy to species whose highest ambitions are to transform themselves into talking skeletons or piles of paperclips? Is the natural end of sentient life to upload ourselves into computers or ascend to pure energy?"

This, then, was the Endless Azure Skies at its most pure.

"No. They are wrong. We are right. To pretend otherwise would be an act of cowardice. We believe in our perfected flesh. We believe in the beauty of Zeus' skies. We believe our culture has meaning, and everyone who died for it died for the greatest cause that ever was. If we doubted this then we would die as humanity died; splintered, isolated, mutated, pointless little gods."

Dolce!

"Oh goodness no," said Hestia. "The Azura hate this stuff almost as much as you do. To them this place is infrastructure - like plumbing. It's meant to be out of sight and out of mind, carrying away the shit so they don't have to look at it. The second they think this is more trouble than it's worth they'll have Liquid Bronze decommission himself and promote a new biomancer in his place."

Hestia sighed, turning her coffee cop over in her hands. "Ah. Shit. You know, I kind of miss it? Ever since they figured out entropic digestion there's been no biological waste products. Everything gets rendered down on an atomic level and exhaled as pure hydrogen. But there was something... special about taking a newspaper into a toilet in the morning and just being closed off from the world for a while. Probably more trouble than it was worth, but still."

[Phoe]

At this point there is little she can do besides endure. Writhing only makes the sun daggers worse. Moaning only reminds her how pathetic and miserable she is here. Lying still, accepting what limited help the Uncrowned King can offer her own imperfect form, at least this isn't wasting energy on top of everything. She can make it until the water comes. She is strong enough for this. She only hopes it's clean enough to drink.

It does not occur to her to be repulsed by the swarm standing above her in the shape of a humanoid. It does not occur to her to be jealous. These... she refuses to call them the 'Portuguese', even in her head. That's an Azura word, and they had clearly advanced beyond the point where another civilizations idea of them held any weight at all. It's too much to think about. They simply are. She simply is. They thrive. She lies on the dirt in pain. This is the way things were meant to be.

But please. The water. She's going to...

"I'm not trying to hurt you either. I'm just... the whipping girl. Gods can't do shit to Her Imperial Majesty. That's their rule for each other. Can't undo what the rest of them have done. You've heard the line, right? I saw it once. Sort of. This stupid eye. Hermes' eye. Redana called it the 'Auspex' but I don't know what the fuck its name is actually. I just. See with Her vision. Before my useless genetics get in the way and dumb it all down. Perfect senses. That's what I'm supposed to have. Anything less and I die. But it's not enough for her. Not enough to do more than hold her sight for a little while."

Bella's tongue is splitting. She's certain she can feel it. She tries to swallow, and she can't. Every word is labored and much too airy, she can't find her voice. It hurts her lungs to use them this much. There's not even enough moisture in her body for tears. But she presses on. She can't stop herself anymore.

"I've seen her Heart, too. My mother held it in her hand. Hermes... wasn't fast enough. Or wise enough or, or whatever. She could only save half the galaxy. Sure you've heard this too. She loved the half that burned. She scooped it all up. Held it close. Sealed herself away. There's a whole fucking cult, an organization with nothing on their minds but doing what she would want. And they just spin in circles. They don't know. She won't tell them. All she says is that Humanity must remain on Tellus. She's a master of politics and manipulation. She's just building 'heroes' and baiting them out into the middle of nowhere so they can do what she refuses to and... I don't really know. I'm too stupid to understand it. Does it redeem Humanity if they reach Gaia? Doesn't make sense; they're already fucking dead.

"That's my job. Though. To get there. To give a message. Because everyone who left like good little children trying to do it on purpose all fucking died or melted away. I'm the only one who remembers. If I just... nnnnf! You don't. You don't understand. You can't go to Tellus. You can't! If you go, weird crystals or not, it's the last promise I've got left broken. I'll have failed. Everything. I! You think you know what barbarism is? The kennels I grew up in, before Nero plucked me out. I won't. I won't let you see. The torture. The training. The... treatments. Smoothing my skin, plucking my whiskers, tearing my claws out! And she! She just! Let it happen! I! I!"

She finds the strength to writhe after all. Apollo's curse be damned, it hurts too much not to thrash and squirm and scream with her weak voice. The thoughts inside her skull burn worse than any illness the sun god can cook up for her. It's too much it's too much it's too much.

"She saved me. She ruined me. She let me become a bomb. She lifted me to Praetor! First of any Servitor! But she kicked me out! Took the only home I ever wanted, and for what? She! Wanted! Redana to go! She did, I know she did! And even still she carved the fucking rose into my back and put a pretty crown on my head and threw me into nothing on a dagger made of death! I want to claw her face off! I want to wrap my arms around her and smell her again! I want... her to tell me I was good! I want to be enough! I never want to see her again, I hope the whole fucking Empire collapses into the Underworld and even Hades never sees it again! I want to save them. I just... want my sisters to not be sick anymore.

"I... you don't get it. If you go. If you make me. Fail. You won't learn the will of Hermes. You'll only find... her sword. She hasn't given up. She doesn't want to be known. Until she succeeds. Stupid... stupid bitch. Why? Why do I love her? I don't want it anymore. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know more. Water. No. I..."

[Tatterdemalion]

Closing is impossible, at least until she sees an opening. What Ember does instead is watch, and wait, and keep moving at the edge of the Alpha’s sight. No flank can work here, either, not without a partner. But she is slowly tightening the spiral, coming close enough that she can be ready for that opening. When it comes.

“At the very least,” she says, ducking behind a transport that will be melted to slag within three shots, “be honorable enough to tell me what has happened! This weapon you play with: what is its renown, its lineage? Who was its maker, Star King? Who placed it into your hands?”

Traditional. Proper. Even though her body is taut, full of the tension of worry, her chest cannot help but lighten, her heart to race, as she tries to establish a good rhythm. Fight me as a daughter of Ceron, she is saying, even as she leaves Determination wet as a trail behind her where she has touched the world. Do not think you can get away without treating me as an equal.

[TheAmishPirate]

“I can’t imagine an Azura stopping like that. I feel like they would either bring their work with them, or make a grand ceremony out of the whole affair. Mind, I haven’t got the largest sampling, so maybe it’s different elsewhere, but I’ve yet to meet someone really involved with the Skies who looks like they could take a simple vacation. The sort where you go on a beach, lay down, do nothing but…no, sorry, that’s not quite right. Home is not a vacation, home is supposed to be every day. It’s supposed to be a part of normal life. And it’s missing from all of them. It’s like they’ve carved it out and thrown it into the fire, in service to something that makes them cry glory, glory.”

They’re walking the decks now, through endless sepulchers and cradles. In the distance, strange music carries on the breeze, and it will not stop until the ship is full. On the wall before them, a glittering mural of Summerkind are arrayed around a tiny sheep, holding up a pie bigger than him. All pose in artful, overwhelmed joy at this miracle of sumptuousness. In very small letters, all around the tin, somebody’s written the recipe.

And this is what the Azura strive with all their might to ignore.

“What a waste.” His voice cracks. “What a horrible waste.”

[Balmas]

Carefully, Dyssia rises from her resting place, and looks regretfully at the once peaceful grove.

It seems almost cheating, to be taken into a throne room, into a place of trust, a place of vulnerability, and then strike directly at the heart. To spin up the grav-rail at a figure bound to a throne. To see the rot accelerate, boughs split from trees, to hear the increased pulse of the distant biomancers and their oracular chant.

"You are wrong, and you'll fail whether you doubt it or not."

Beauty. What a thing to sacrifice billions for.

"Our culture is a hallucination of madmen--to think that there is one and only one objective standard of beauty, worth everything! Worth dying for, worth perfecting, when the idea of objective beauty, objective perfection is a fool's notion!"

In her mind's eye, she can see the food of the Portuguese--a thousand assembly line meat patties, two pickles, one tomato. Perfectly uniform. The platonic ideal of burger.

A million different shades of blue.

Leaves fall around her, grav drive whining like a banshee at her side.

"Beauty isn't a thing you can hold in your hands, define and codify. It's something different for everyone, in the same way that perfection is different for everyone. Enforcing it is insanity. If you doubted that, you'd die?

"Die, then."

[Thanqol]

Bella!

Blurring of the light. The touch of water to burned lips. Still relevant, despite everything.

"Love and hate," said the Uncrowned King. "The Gods love and they hate. They hate and they love. They build terrors so they can raise us above them. They raise us above so they can smite us for our hubris. Is this the secret of the galaxy? Perhaps I understand now. We thought what happened to us was a curse. Perhaps it still was, but not for us."

Four assistants came forwards and built a tent over you; a thin layer of fabric, but it took the edge off. A mercy.

"Thank you for your insight, Praetor," said the Uncrowned King as warships began to lift from desert bunkers behind him. "It is clear. The Gods had a purpose for you. In following it, you paid the price of suffering. In following it, you came far and were raised high. The suffering is the point. There can be no greatness without it. My people will remember this lesson during the trials ahead."

Ember!

"Once, there were sunsets on Capitas," said the Star King.

"There aren't now. They've engineered them out; multiple suns have been put in place and networks of star amplification light and wavelength diffusion have made it so the stars can be seen even at the daytime. The colours of sunset have been spread out and deployed aesthetically for maximum effect. But once the Azura capital was a normal planet, rotating a star. There were beginnings and ends to every day and every season. And of all these days, one of them had to be the final one. When the Grav-anchors, orbital Megaliths, and Reality Edicts were due to come online there was one final sunset and one final night to wait. There was anticipation. There was joy. There were not celebrations of this final death before immortality. And for failing to mourn this final death of day, Hades cursed the first city on Capitas to behold the ever-day. The earth opened up, the citizens transformed into crystal statues, and one of the great cities of the Azura was petrified in violet amber. And so it remained -

"- until we came.

"When the Star Kings invaded Capitas, my ancestor Kohil the Bright fought on the streets of the frozen city. She climbed the Waterfall Throne and prised these gems from the unweeping eyes of the Azura Vizier who sat there. These she reforged into weapons of regrets that would consume the destroyed in nightmare contradictions of lost chances. She wielded them until her own regrets caused her to banish herself into a world born from them. I took them from her void because I alone amidst my pack had never made a mistake and so had nothing to look back upon, and I still have not."

The pattern, the story, it's war cant and affirmation - as much braggado as it is the very nature and secret that lets her wield such a terrible esoteric. Goaded into speaking it she is also goaded into coming into the open, crystal weapons held high, ready to finish this in glory to the Gods.

Dyssia!

The Generous Knight dies. And dies, and dies, and dies, and dies.

And howls with laughter all the while.

The ship shudders and writhes. Spectacular explosions of blossoming branches erupt up through the floor. Acorns fall like rain, hatching into flightless birds with vicious spurs. Each drop of blood transforms into a wasp and together they swarm in vast clouds. The Generous Knight is the world, and the world is a monster.

"Die?" she half-barks through a wolf's jaws. "Die, I? Oh, you do not understand, child." She raises a twisted bird talon and tears off the mutated part of her face. She takes a moment to calm herself, and then continues in a voice ragged and wet "The Gods love me," she said. "The Gods love the Skies as much as they hate us. They can't help themselves. They torture us and they exalt us. They kill us and they make us..." tens of thousands of butterflies swirl behind her in the shape of wings. "Immortal. Enforcing beauty is insanity? Does this galaxy look sane to you!?"

She ripped open her dress. No longer perfect blue scales, but a monstrous, chimeric combination of every animal and monster. In this deathless galaxy, she dies not by the power of Demeter.

"We believed in the false lights of science once!" screamed the Generous Knight as enormous insectoid limbs ripped themselves out of the hull of her starship and began crushing Portuguese ships in their talons. "But we are wiser now!" colossal muscular legs shattered her Warsphere, smashing it from the inside like an egg. "We thought that we were being punished!" a twisted, nightmarish head ripped its way up out of the last fragment of clean, white armour. "But we are the punishment! The Endless Azure Skies is the instrument the Gods use to end corrupt civilizations!"

The Generous Beast looms above the tattered remnants of the Portuguese fleet. It was never worth learning their names. They were always going to end like this, torn apart by the greatest surviving monster of the Age of Knights. The Eater of Worlds and the other horrifying warbeasts of the Tides trace their lineage back here, to this prototype pilot in her newly enhanced mech suit.

"And the Skies," she rasped, this bloody avatar of an interstellar titan monster, abomination against everything she held dear, "will be our reward."

Dolce!

"Oh yeah, for sure," said Hestia, taking a bite of ice cream. "It fuckin' sucks here, I don't know what to tell you."

*

The light begins to fade from the Cancellation, the dying days of Summer. As the heat fades and the noise quiets the Biomancers come out. Ones and twos, groups and legions, flocked in their white coats. They perform tests and take measurements of the Summerkind eggs, they direct drones to clear graffiti and dismantle monuments, they talk in the low, soft voices of scholars and work with the steady diligence of engineers. They're all so inoffensive in speech and shape, all so invisible in their obsequient lack of personality. There's no friction within them. Their whole ideology is to make the galaxy run as smoothly as possible, and that starts at home.

Except. For one.

The sharp voice rings out like a bell in a ship of quiet consensus. The grumbling stands out like the ringing of a bell, the splash of yellow like a black sheep's wool. It's a matter of degrees - he's still quiet compared to what he used to be, more conforming than you ever imagined him, but some part of the Ancient Craftsman - of Iskarot - of a friend you knew in another life was always touched by the contentious energy of Ares.

[Phoe]

The first taste of water doesn't even make it down her throat. Her mouth is too dry and too cracked to manage the motion. It has no flavor other than cold, the kind of cold that should feel like a relief but the sheer contrast to her suffering turns it into a different kind of suffering. But it wets her tongue and slides to the back of her mouth, and where the burning passes a sense of wet comes back to her.

And with that, flavor. The taste of iron, magnesium, zinc, calcium, bits of complex rock like limestone that filtered it down but left behind its own aftertaste. She revels in the sensation; it's plain and boring but it's the most delicious thing she's ever held into her mouth. Still, it dribbles back out of her mouth and down her chin and neck instead of going where she needs it. Against her skin it doesn't even feel cool.

The second try she swallows, if weakly. By the third she is lost in messy, irresponsible gulping. No thought enters her head if this is something that needs to last or how to ration it if it was. From the inside out she blossoms; a tree of prickling pain. Cold awakens branches of nerves from the core of her body spreading out to her limbs and lastly down her tail. The icy stabs of cold are how she knows she is alive.

Words are spoken. She hears them. Motion is happening. She sees it. Hazy with the oppressive heat as it is, the world is bright and clear again. Bella's proud senses carry every detail of the planet to her in exhaustive detail. She stretches out her hand, but it has no strength to lift her body.

"W-wait!" she croaks, "Wait, please! Don't leave! You... your names. I only... wanted to know. Your names."

It is too late. The sound of buzzing is cut to a barest hum, hardly even audible over the rumbling of warships lifting out and off from the ground. The Uncrowned King's shadow no longer darkens the entrance to her tent, and the glare from the sun above gleams like a hateful dagger beyond the reach of her slight shadows. The tips of her fingers touch the outside air and blister the instant they taste direct light. She moans and pulls it back.

And then, silence. A cruel kind of silence, the whistling of a wind that blows dust into her eyes and the labored sounds of her own breathing that's wracked with something halfway between a sob and a whimper. The glittering edifice of the civilization she had come to still shines all around her like it'd been built just to amplify the spiteful light of the sun, but the parts that had made it seem like a city to her eyes were ships all along. What's left is a skeleton. A nest without its hive.

And her. Alone.

Bella reaches for the jug of water again. It's smaller than she realized. Nothing more than a swallow left for her to savor. She downs it in a shot and throws the container away from her, as hard and far as she can send it. It lands well within sight of her tent. She sighs. Even that noise is dry to her. Too quickly do the blessings of these small mercies seem to fade to nothing. Her skin peels, her fur sheds, her eye demands constant and annoying blinking but even then it feels desiccated and irritable. She swallows, again and again and again and again, as though afraid to lose the power again. It hurts. But it's something to do.

There is nothing else. No corridors to run down. No hobbies to bury herself inside of. No meals to cook. No mysteries to ponder. She drags herself to the knees so she can watch the shifting of the sunlight through the glass spires that were left behind along with her. They remind her of fish swimming lazily through a pool of water.

Water. Nothing left to drink. It's all underground. She'll never make it without burning to a crisp. And if she did she'd be beyond its power to revive her anymore. She slumps back and simply watches the facsimile instead. Minutes drift by, and simple watching turns to prediction. Her Auspex helps her calculate the motions of the light against the glass and she amuses herself trying to predict the patterns it creates. How long before it lights this corner? How long until she sees the shape of an animal? She looks for a crab, but nothing comes closer than the vague approximation of half a claw.

Minutes turn to hours. She supposes. Nobody comes. There is nothing to measure the passage against except her own sense of internal timing, and she doesn't trust that anymore. Every eyeblink carries with it the rise and fall of entire civilizations. She falls backwards into the depths of her tent and makes shallow gasps. There, now she has those to count.

She is alone. She is alone. No one is coming for her. She is alone. She has been left behind. Left behind by the companions she tried to make who turned themselves into new, better versions of themselves or who simply died or moved away from her mission so that by the time she discovered herself again there was no one left from among them she could share herself with. Mosaic's friends and loved ones would mourn her name. But not her name. Bella would pass unmarked from the universe one more time, as worthless and insignificant as the title Praetor she wore atop her head.

There's no strength in her legs to leave the tiny shelter they made for her as a parting gift. All that she can do is sit and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. With only Him for company. Aha, her old plan. Not a painless way to go, but an easy one. She doesn't even have to choose to die. It doesn't matter if she wants it or not, how many times she changes her mind. All she has to do is sit still, and wait. In the bright and heat of this planet with a name it would not share with her instead of the dark and damp of the Yakanov.

Last time... last time she'd meant to do it. And Apollo was there to thwart her. But she didn't have the strength to fill herself with chlorophyll again, instinctively or no. And if she did, nothing she took from this star would make for sustenance anyway so much as a crueler and more creative way to die. She didn't want that. Bella was, at heart, a coward. Something she'd known for as long as she understood where she ended and the world around her began. If it was going to happen, let it happen like this. With no choices for her to make. With no action on her point. Let it happen, please. Just let it happen.

"But I..." why does she bother ruining her beautiful voice speaking to an empty world? "Redana. I miss you. I'm sorry. I was... too much of a fuckup. To carry your torch for you."

That's fine. That's fine. Mynx can carry on for both of them now. She'll do a better job of it, too. The thought brings a bright and painful roll of something on the verge of tears and a hiccup through her system. She can't cry, of course. There's not enough moisture in her system left to allow for that. She couldn't cry back then either, you know. The thoughts keep flitting in and out of her head, all the proof of her sincerity and her incompetence and the fakeness of her own thoughts and emotions. She was wrong about wanting to die, back then. She's wrong about wanting to live now.

Apollo is only here to show her the way. This was the purpose he envisioned for her the entire time.

"Please. Please," she dry sobs, "Please. Please. Please. Please. Please."

Until she runs out of voice to ask. Until she runs out of energy to sit and watch. Bella rolls over onto her side and stares at the tips of her claws in the dim half-shadows of her burial tent. Her final prayer was as empty and useless as she turned out to be. No good. No good to anyone. In the end. And nothing left to do.

The suffering was the point.

So she watches, and she waits, and she counts her own breaths. All alone. All alone and waiting, for the only thing that will come.