Balmas

Breathless Dead

The captain of the Dyssia stares, befuddled, as the squall that had beset their naval battle scampers--nay, flounces--from the room, leaving the sails slack on both ships. At entirely the wrong angle to trade broadsides, she notes, rolling or otherwise.

Befuddled. S'a a good word. Very pleasant mouthfeel. The kind of word you can fully visualize in a mirror. Or, for that matter, on the captain of the other ship, likewise stranded across the sea.

Dyssia stares. Hephaestus stares back, clicky-clack claws poised over the keyboard.

… Is Hephaestus a touchy kind of person? She orders the dinghy lowered, and embarks across the gap, doing her best to--

For once in her life, she doesn't want to touch. But there is a typewriter, you see, and the emptiness on the page is staring into her soul like a roommate demanding to know where all the clean dishes have gone.

"It's a bit of a trick question," she admits, edging close enough to see the page but also endeavoring to stay as far away as possible. "For foxgirls--or at least, this particular foxgirl--the answer is less about what the hypothetically perfect crown might be, and more about what this crown is not. Or, you know, rather, everything else that the crown could be. It's about wanting more, next, better, and whatever she has can never satisfy that."

The keyboard clunks and chatters. Honestly, a very satisfying noise, almost visceral, she notes.

"Like, as far as avatars go, she's… Aha, not ideal. But…"

The keyboard clacks and taks and goes silent, waiting.

"The same could be true of… most people, now that I consider it? Like, not to the same degree as Cyanis, and not in the same way but…

"Take me, for instance? When I grew up, the only things I wanted were approval and out. Approval from my peers, and to get away, to get out, to see everything that wasn't here."

Clunk. Kchnk. Silence.

"And then I found out that no, actually, I didn't want that! I wanted justice for everyone the empire had, had keelhauled, had brought into a servitude so pervasive that most people couldn't even see it!"

Silence from her while the keyboard clatters. Further silence while she scooches closer to Hephaestus, not meeting his gaze.

"You know, you've been gone for a long time, haven't you? Or, you know, not gone-gone, but. Not conscious? Not aware?"

Still present. Still harmful. Still capable of influencing someone into doing things that harm themselves, harm others.

She looked so sad.

"And then I came here, and found, you know, other people that want things that can't be bought, can't be sold, can't be transferred! Horsegirls who want to chase each other, push each other! I found out that maybe, what I actually want, is to figure out what's wrong with this planet's water! I found out I want to be inna dance class this Friday at midnight, which is the weirdest time to have a dance class! I found out--"

K-chnk?

She reaches out and takes the typewriter, surprised and pleased by its heft. Solid construction--teak, maybe?--the kind of construction that leaves an imprint when she places it across herself and readies her fingers over the keys.

"What I found out is that maybe desires change. And locking everything into one desire, one want, all the time, all at a hundred percent is… isn't reflective of what people are, what they can be. Found that any empire that locks themselves into that is--"

She shakes herself, and wraps herself fully around Hephaestus. Gets cozy around him. Snuggles, if such a thing were possible with the machine-god. The fate of empires isn't relevant at this moment.

"What I'm saying is, desires change, same as the people who hold them.

"Have you ever asked yourself what you want? Not what other people want you to forge, not what people want to do with your technology, not what you can make to fill a need."

She rips the sheet of paper from the typewriter, feeds a new sheet into the opening, and rolls it up until it's poised for a new line.

"What do you want, Hephaestus?"

Breathless Dead

What does it even mean to kill transfer? Like, transfer is trillions of servitors all laboring in contented bliss for an empire that will never remember their names. But transfer is also hand-made gifts, transfer is leaning over a desk and helping teach someone?

What the world without transfer looks like doesn't fit in her head.

Admittedly, said head is currently also full of a lot of thoughts about how she's entirely lacking in convenient islands right now and how hard she's fucked right now.

Uuuuuuh foxgirl fighting. All her foxgirl fighting techniques are wrong for these foxgirls.

Could she trick Cyanis into--

No, no. A, she doesn't want it, and B, she's pretty sure there's nobody in the world who could want it more than a foxgirl.

Which, uhhhh…

She joins Cyanis at her shoulder and points at a random microwave emitter.

"This needs to be at least 87% more powerful. What is this? You're equipping a princess--"

(princess or Princess? Is she getting the accent right?)

"--and I can't believe you're giving her this subpar equipment to fight with?"

More. Better. More and better! It's a delaying tactic, but she's betting on foxgirl greed being much larger than Hephaestus' patience.

Breathless Dead

The best place to mediate is in the tiger's mouth.

Dyssia eyes the row after row of teeth--shiny silicon soldiers, glistening with saliva, mustered in row after row and filling a mouth that is too large by half--and thinks, just for one second, that the Way sucks so hard.

Because for it to work, everyone--everyone!--has to lift where they are. And she's--

She can't look away. Won't look away. Has to curl and bunch and be ready to move at a second's notice because--

Is it weird to feel pity? Here, now, face to face with, with, with this? Not in the sense of the kind of pity you'd spit at someone with barbs in your teeth, would dribble out with honey sweetness, the acidic kindness of someone who, oh honey, bless your heart, let mama show you how it works, but of--

This is want. Want and greed and hunger and biomancy and cruelty, out of which has emerged even greater want and greed and cruelty.

She did look sad, didn't she?

"Get them out," she murmurs, still not looking away. Not panicked, not urgent, just…

Resolute, is perhaps the right word? Everyone has to lift where they stand, after all.

And she's right here, and Hephaestus is right there, and behind her, a host of children is being led by the most trustworthy sheep in the galaxy.

"Get them out," she says again, and lunges for Hephaestus.

Breathless Dead

Dyssia stares at Demeter like--

Well. Um.

It's a cliché, right? You don't think you ever get the chance for the cliché to also be exactly the right phrase?--

Like she's grown a second head.

"You don't… Know. Me."

It's hard to maintain anger when horror is fighting to the front. Horror and…

It's a cocktail of different emotions. Horror, a part of sadness, one part dawning realization, all haphazardly stirred and poured over the rocks of pity.

"You don't know me. Like, at all?"

(What, exactly, is the olive in this metaphor, she wonders?)

"You don't know… anyone?"

It's fascinating and horrifying and more than a little sad to think that--

"You never bothered to know anyone--you already knew who they were supposed to be, and that was always more important. Why bother learning about defects, flaws distracting from the ideal?"

The anger is still there, of course, but fleeing away, the same way you might be angry with a child.

"You're pitiful, do you know that? A pimple on the ass of the galaxy who never got popped properly, and who thinks that pus is the only thing possible because it's the only thing you know. Because if you'd bothered at any point…"

She stares at Demeter, and it's like she can feel them at her back--the faces of those on her journey, behind and warming her. A halo of friends of all sizes, of inside jokes, of laughter, of a home more real than any construct of synthsteel. Faces, hard and soft, warm and withdrawn, flesh and metal.

And like a halo, it rings her, and frames her, and through it she can see just how alone Demeter is, here in the heart of her power, here in the midst of kennel after kennel of children.

"If you'd bothered, at any point, to love anything that didn't come from inside your own head, you'd know that making me barren could never take my family in any way that matters."

Breathless Dead

The screaming

The screaming the screaming thescreamingscreamingscreaming--

… The screaming?

The screaming. The screaming isn't in her ears. It's not in her ears and she blesses the quickness of the quiet sheep that, she notes, is being so quiet that you might miss that he's not here if you stop to listen, if she stops to listen--

She coughs, dry heaves, and spits, "Oh, like [i]your[/i[ shit doesn't stink!"

The words sound phony in her ears. Fake, trembling, like a scared little girl trying to stand up to mommy. But she says them anyway, because…

Keep her here. Keep her angry. Keep her distracted. Keep her paying attention.

Time to dance, once more--dance on the edge of disaster, dance just forward of the crest of the wave, dance without the purple pounding in her temples--

Do you think it hurts to disintegrate, or do you even have time to notice?

"Talking about instincts, responses, programming, pineal glands, camouflage!"

She can feel the rant building, feel the panic rising, feel the urge to shut it down, be normal be--No! No! Louder! Harder! As annoying as possible, weaponizing as many of the--

Think of all the times she's found an invisible line where apparently politeness turns into friendship-ruining rudeness, and push those buttons for all she's worth, and--

"Do you never shut the fuck up? As if you're not dancing on any strings of your own! No, no, of course, how silly! You, alone out of anyone--out of everyone, gods, mortals, administrators, servitors--in the entire universe are truly able to see the whole picture and make the hard decisions that nobody else understands, free of the sin of being manipulated!"

She's not arguing well, but that's the point. She's never going to convince this asshole, but she doesn’t have to. She's coiled like a spring next to a barrel of gunpowder for the moment Demeter moves, but--

Hell, this is fun! She's having fun, see? See her laugh at you, Demeter? See these big rosy cheeks, doesn't it just--Doesn't it just make you wanna smite her? Smite her! Do it!

"As if that fuckin' matters! As if you, and every one of the gods, aren't just as emotionally compromised as we are!"

Breathless Dead

Dyssia does her best not to wince at the claws.

It's not the touch, you understand. Metal and claws and limbs out of an abyssal catalog are part and parcel of dealing with many of the servitor races, and she's eaten enough crabmeat to grow sick of it.

No, it's the. Intimacy is perhaps the wrong word? Intimacy, but in a way that is not deserved. Intimate, in the way that a knife pressed slowly between your ribs is intimate. Overly personal, like finding a tongue unexpectedly shoved in your mouth.

Biomancy! The curse of her existence, the tool of her childhood, not exactly her greatest mistake because it was not hers alone, but one that years as a Knight taught her to loathe!

The Kennels burn, door firmly locked, and she does nothing to stop it.

=========================================

Dyssia hauls open the door, barely pausing to notice Demeter. There are roars behind that door, and she's never been one to wait when someone is crying.

She strides--soars? Slithers?--with purpose through the Kennels, ignoring the way her nose rebels at the scents of viscera and blood. Strides through, beats the Biomancers bloody, tips the vats of acid, pspspst's the servitors from their boxes, breaks the chains, and leads the prisoners, blinking, into the light.

=========================================

There are blessings here, even if they come from a poisoned source! Long life, great strength, the ability to change and define as you like!

Nuggets of good, trapped in a fine cesspool of the kind of shit that made the Skies--that trapped endless generations in only being happy while devouring mountains into processed minerals, that imprisoned billions of souls in obsidian crystals to maintain the network of megastructures all for--for what? To make a face in the sky? To let some king have in high definition the same thing that people have been doing for aeons with two dots and a line?

Are long life, iron skin, and lungs that can breathe in space worth…

Somewhere, the Pix are conquering. She knows it, distantly, in the back of her mind. They're an administrator species now, thank you so very much.

There are blessings here. She can do it better than those that came before. Kinder, smarter, with freedom for everyone to choose as they will what they will be. Dyssia throws open the door.

=========================================

Dyssia stares at Demeter and does her level best not to hyperventilate at the futures in her head.

She hates making decisions. Hates, rather, making the kind of decisions that entire futures hinge on. Hates Demeter, in this moment, for deciding that she, of all people, is the only person in the room capable of making this decision. Hates the claws, hates the gall, flirts with a future that involves stomping on the legs of the throne, one at a time.

"What one god does," she says pensively, mulling over the thoughts as she says them, "no other god may undo. So if Hermes does destroy biomancy here, it's gone.

"…For good. Everywhere."

She's realizing, now, that she's not going to get her wish. Not directly, anyway.

Thoughts flit across the screen of her mind--thoughts of girls with swords, a crowd rising up in support of one another.

"And for what it's worth, that seems like a good thing?"

She's watching Demeter now--not in the way of a dog, watching for a raised hand, but in the way of a crow baiting an animal.

"We don't need it. It's outmoded. Obsolete. Harmful. Everything it does can be had elsewhere. Why wouldn't I let, how did you say it? Oh yes. Why wouldn't I let 'dear little Hermes' continue? Why would I listen to you when these people have shown, very well, that they're better off without all of this?"

There are roars behind that door, is why. But if she can keep Demeter focused here…

Breathless Dead

"Oh, sure when she burns down her palace, it's fine and dandy and a cultural touchstone, but when I knock over a brazier--"

She doesn't want to think about how many people are pouring out of the sky--about the dropships and the legions and the sheer number of--

All on one planet! All of them crammed into one planet like clowns in a car!

She doesn't want to think about the future--about all of these people, drenched in their ways, dripping all over this, this, this precious difference to everything else in the galaxy. Hope, that's the key. Hope in the people of this world, hope in the system they've built, hope in their resilience--
It's silly, right? This is a maze, this isnt' the palace she burned, it's a fortress, it's glorious, and still she has to remind herself that she can't rely on memory to guide her.

… It's beautiful. It is! Not just beautiful in the way of a pyromaniac hypnotized by a flame, but--those flowers! Could she recreate them? Would that be--is that wrong, to want that?

There's an army approaching this planet, escaping their own. There's a palace ablaze. And for just a second, the thought flits into her mind of a different beach, and a different impossible defense, and--

Trust. Trust and hope in the people of this planet. Trust in the unity they show, not of biomancy or coercion or inborn instinct, but of genuine *goodness* and empathy.

Nero is the key.

She dives into the palace, but stops on the way to pat out a smoldering rose and pocket it for later.

Breathless Dead

Dyssia stops.

She stops. She stares.

And with a hoot, she starts to laugh! To laugh uproariously, tears in her eyes, laughs like a child!

Because she's wrong! She's wrong, and the Azure Skies are wrong, and in a single instant it's like seeing--

It's seeing a cart rolling along on a set of round wheels after building nothing but square wheels your entire life!

"Biomancy!" she gasps, in between a fit of giggles and a gasp of air. "Biomancy could never!"

Not cooperation as the Pix know it! Not as a result of competition, a form of excellence, everyone striving to fit the same ideal! Not cooperation as the result of fear, or coercion, or pheromones, or instincts, or--

It's strange! It's glorious! It's looking at a society and realizing that all along, what you thought was the peak of scientific ability was actually a whisper of a shade of an echo of the real thing! Iron skin and titanium lungs and synthetic muscles, all of it worthless in the face of--

People, everywhere, being different and having different skills and choosing, every single one, to give nothing more or less than anything they can, because it's right and it's helpful and that's a good enough reason! From each according to their ability, to each according to their need!

It's humbling and amazing to realize that after all this time, she *still* has so much to learn! She could spend the rest of her life here learning--what was it called? A daily affirmation of the way?--

But first! First, Nero needs to be stopped!

Breathless Dead

Tellus!

Dyssia's eyes flick back and forth, comparing spire and pyramid and skyline against Redana's stories. It's everything Dany ever described, everything Dyssia imagined, and yet--

Nothing could have prepared her for it. Prepared her for the smell, the air, the everything. It's so much worse, and already, she can feel the purple leaking in, hear the drums, feel the--

There's so many people she needs to protect! So many lives, so many villages, so many--! The horsegirls! The lakes! The people she loves already, here with the people she's learning to value! They need--!

They need her! They need a knight, a hero, a savior, a--

The thought slams to a halt like a train through a line of schoolbuses.

Pause. Draw back. Look, actually look, and actually think. Don't just react, don't embody the moment, don't listen to DAH dun dun duduDAH--

Do they?

Do they actually?

Or a diplomat, or a priest, or an orator or a smith? A grav-rail wizard? A logistics manager? Any of the rest? How often have they needed any of that in the scant few days she's been here? How often does not-a-Princess Yin (Princess Yin, Princess Yin) need that?

This is a world where a girl with a sword can cut a ship in half, and act confused and befuddled that you can't.

The drums aren't just quiet. They're waiting. Listening,, she realizes, with the kind of expectation that sucks up all the sound in the room.

She turns, scans, finds the mad mask staring at her. Meets the gaze, her eyes entirely clear, entirely free of the tinge of indigo.

Offers it a bow. Thank you, old friend. Thank you for helping her so long.

And begins to sway.

This is not the dance she is used to. Not the frantic button mashing of that first holdout with the Pix, or of delaying an army on a beach. This is not a world of stillness, frozen redshifts and blueshifts. She does not fight as a berserker, but as--

As just Dyssia. Not trying to save a world, not trying to crush an empire all on her own, or with just a few friends, or with a harem of foxgirls.

Here is enough. Now is enough. Let others lift where they stand, and she will do the same, here with her friends.

Breathless Dead

Dyssia leans on the small windowsill in the truck, and relishes all the small sensations.

It's a thoroughly new mode of transport to her! The vibrations, the little jolts and moans, and sensation of dirt and rust under her scales, the warm smells filling her nostrils, the patterns of stripes on the worn fabric seats!

It's strange that this should be so enjoyable. It's the power of the novel! She's soared through near vacuum, witnessed the birth of constellations, flung herself at a planet hard enough to leave impact craters, all-but-spaghettified herself in the search of speed! She's danced through the air, trailing an orbit of friends! She's felt the whine of a tiger under her--

All of them, outdone by a little truck whose exhaust rattles whenever it hits a bump.

Sublime.

She stretches back, eyes towards the sky, and speaks of feeling lonely. Of being a round peg in a world of square holes? You get used to it, if you're good at lying--used to shaving yourself down until you fit in the hole, kinda, if you squint, if you don't pay attention to the pain, if you're good at lying to yourself.

She talks of losing a home. Of being scared and alone, of the Pix, how--oh, it's silly now, now that she knows them, but back then she just--

It's scary too, right? Scary and lonely, not understanding.

Talks about how when you're that scared and lonely, it's easy to throw yourself into-- Into anything! Any purpose! And it's not that the purpose is bad or that it doesn't need doing, but it's also something that can never be finished--not realistically, not entirely, and it's always something there to pour into yourself.

And anyway, she told you that story so that she could tell you this one:

About finding that--

It's not just about finding a family, right? Or about finding a new home of your own, one of your own choosing?

Though they're all of that and more! Home, in a way that no brick and mortar or ship of steel could be.

But also of--

Even now, she doesn't have the words. Of finding yourself, right? Of finding peace, not by trying to fill the void with a purpose, or with an antithesis, but with--

It's like, being lonely is about wanting. Wanting to be accepted, or wanting to be wanted, or wanting others to think of you. And you can try to fill that void with purpose, or with antithesis, or with crusade or conformity.

But isn't it so much better to simply not have the void in the first place?