Thanqol

Fellowship: The Heart

"Your arguments were the bloated ego-filled pomposity of someone who axiomically assumed that given the span of eternity he'd someday learn to magic his way out of a rotting hemp sack," said Ailee Sundish. "And while in most cases I would agree that the mathematical concept of infinity does by nature suggest that anything is possible, the Hamptonshire Constant states that the kind of person who has a mid-life crisis at eighty five, realizes that they've done nothing with all the resources of Grand Jelt's greatest university at their fingertips, and so decides to walk directly into the chomping teeth of the nearest consortium of evil clowns, has such a lack of talent that they can cancel out even the positive effects of infinity."

She rolled her neck, getting to her feet and rather rudely rubbing the hand covered in Jackdaw's barf off on Hamptonshire's hideous armour. She's basically doing him a favour if it causes him to wash it.

"Anyway, congrats on finally learning what I figured out on day two at the university. Shame you stopped there, but hey, by coming down here and dressing like the contents of a sick bucket after a hotdog and mayonnaise eating contest you're still probably the smartest of all my former teachers. So, can I get some directions? I want to leave this place and I figure you're the kind of person to know where the door is even if it's just so you can wistfully stare at it and imagine how cool it'd be if you had the courage to go through it."

She wasn't quite this rude to her teachers when she was in school - she had to walk the intensely frustrating line of showing them the bare minimum amount of respect required to not get expelled, and in some cases that was still quite a lot of respect. It felt good to be honest at last.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

One avalanche barely ends before the next begins. Marianne steps over her feeble insecurities like a queen, straight towards the harshest possible articulation of her gentle objection. Where Set speaks in visions and hope Marianne speaks in decree - the royal voice, the raised finger, the scepter that sends knights away on quests. Unanimous, Marianne? Perhaps as those who dwell within the sea unanimously consent to the operation of the tides by adapting their whole lives to those mighty flows. Do you think you do not frighten, Marianne, when you attempt to frighten? Canada has consumed the empty place behind the mirror, a void at her core that is filled with every gesture, every expression, every embrace. Once again she is swept up by those royal arms and brought to a place she did not expect...

And once again she is dumped unceremoniously to the ground as Marianne takes her leave.

And once again Set's words pile on top of her, burying her under an avalanche of data and questions before her knees have even stopped shaking.

"Fine! Things are fine!" she blurts. "It was - it was pretty fine. Everyone is fine. Except for all the people who I didn't save, which was one hundred percent of them - but apart from that it was fine. How are you?" She smiles to show that everything you're thinking about her is probably just a misunderstanding.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

The two old soldiers exchanged a Deep Look, and then turned their attention to their marbles. Hades' sky-blue eyes glittered with every roll and curl of the marbles across the rough dirt surface. Click, click, click - and now there were three colours on the field - an invading, encircling red, a static, defensive black, and a single pearl of white in the centre of it all.

"Far be it from me to contradict royalty," said Sands, taking the role of red and breaking black's formation. "But the promise of a safe return is not something even a princess can offer, least of all to one marked by Athena."
"After all, our princess doesn't seek simple adventure," said Leon, clacking a marble back into one of the chinks caused in the scattered armour. "She seeks war as we once did. She's practiced since she was a child to fight, and who could stop her? Violence is in the blood of Ceron."
"A child of Hades," murmured Sands, pressing the attack, cutting a line through the formation of black and bisecting it. "Favoured of Athena. War and death. Does that sound like someone destined for safe returns and a life of peace?"
"Her mother doesn't think so," said Leon, sacrificing the broken part of his formation to scatter several of red's threatening marbles, limiting the vectors red can attack from. "Her mother gave all of our lives in service to the Empire. Her mother rammed the Lupincas into the brow of the World Eater, and when we awoke in Elysium she had us forswear the Lady Athena."
"We had done our duty, she said," said Sands, making a last doomed attack on the still-too-solid formation. "Athena and Empire can ask no more from us, we who slew the leviathan with our dying breaths."
"She will not react kindly to Athena's attempt to snatch her daughter away to perish in the endless war of stars," said Leon, perfectly striking away the last few feints of red and ending the battle with the precious white sphere intact and immaculate.

Hades looks you in the eye - and as he does you can see Athena's frustrated hand pulling away from Sands' red - and a victorious Aphrodite smiling a scowl in black. It is Aphrodite who has been invoked by Queen Hatchan as her daughter's gaoler. It is Aphrodite who will work against you with all his viciousness if you try to rescue her.

(And by the same token... you might not be Athena's only piece on the board)

Alexa, Dolce, Vasilia!

The shuttle flies into the Leviathan's interior. The splendor of the crystal sun ignites the world; the impossible mangroves and cascading waterfalls alight for you as they did for Redana - but your vision is not as pure as hers. Imperial shuttlecraft are here too - huge and brutal, rectangular shapes that speak of uncompromising strength, defiant of concepts like wind resistance. They maneuver like shopping trolleys but bristle with solid projectile cannons that open fire even though they are out of effective range. Shells fall short, shattering trees and sending explosions and gouts of blinding, poisonous gases into the air.

The make and aesthetic of the Plousios shuttlecraft isn't Imperial - it's stranger, sleeker, older, a device that somehow speaks to the ocean as much as it does to the void. You can guess where Redana has gone but there is a lot of distance between you and there, especially if you want to delay King Jas'o's landers from settling there and deploying their phalanxes.

Bella!

It's only through your hand, so close to Mynx's jugular vein that you feel the dizzying pounding of her heart. She almost keeps it off her face entirely but when she tries to speak it's from a dry mouth and it comes out as an inarticulate squeak. When you pull her up she stumbles trying to keep her unfamiliar legs underneath her. It's not often you get to leave the shapeshifter totally speechless, totally defenseless, but you've done it here. Payback for the poisoning indeed.

"I don't know why -" she starts, and then stops, and swallows. Didn't even have the courage to finish that one this time around. She tries humming a few bars of the Admiral's theme song as you walk across the hangar bay to help focus her head a bit.

Then the Codexia almost cartwheels out, pointing her spear at you, perfect smile gleaming so white it's a bit like looking at an engine wash. Codexia make a... sound when they move, like a '!' sound, like an action hero in a cheap drama might make when appearing on a scene unexpectedly. "Halt!" she said, cupping her chin with an L-shaped hand to further emphasize the gleam of her smile. "Admiral!" she said. "Catgirl!" she continued. "Death priest!" Ivory Smile gave a nervous little wave from the background.

"Codexia," said Mynx, hand half straying up to touch her mouth.

"Admiral!" the Codexia repeated.

"Codexia...?" Mynx said a little more firmly.

"Thoth, Admiral!" said the Codexia.

"Codexia Thoth," said Mynx.

"Admiral Odoacer!" said Codexia Thoth.

"Go away," said Mynx.

"Okay!" said Codexia Thoth, saluting and stepping away.

Across the hall you can see Athena storming towards the Codexia with fury in her grey eyes - and then you see her stumble, trip, and fall to one knee as her legs entangle in red ribbons. She turns her spear upon them in a fury - and Aphrodite by your side mutters, "Go. Now."

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada staggers blearily into the room, surrounded by the refractive, broken light of a half formed shield forming in response to the sudden danger that had grabbed her in the dark. It's a device formed of pure conceptual power - the shattered reality of her own darkening reflection, her purest self, but even this legendary barricade is no defense against the crashing tidal wave of words that slams into her and pins her against the wall as securely as any chain of the Annunaki. Set is talking.

If her mighty shield is no proof against the flood, then neither are her shining eyes a deadly enough weapon to cut through the onslaught. A gaze that could stun a charging salamander glances pointlessly off of Anathet's forehead as she goes through pages like an industrial scanner. Perhaps that melodic voice is trying to get a word in edgewise but that is a mistake - what 'um' or 'er' or 'excuse me' could disturb a world where djinn are dying, gods are falling, and the earth is saved through the publication of sufficiently accurate textbooks?

And then it stops, and Canada starts like she's just realized that this is a test and she should have been taking notes instead of mentally inventorying bruises. "Uh," she gapes for a second. "Gee-lll-gee - Gilgamesh? Like the dude with the gold? Didn't he live eight thousand years ago or something?" She trails off and goes a little bit red. Thanks for your contribution, Canada! Super insightful! While Anathet was studying the true nature of the ancient alien invasion that defines this planet's history, you were studying the blade.

"I mean, uh... I don't actually -" she coughed and reddened a bit more. "Can you explain how this helps us, um, practically? They didn't, you know, beat us by pretending to be gods so much as by... you know... beating us."

Fellowship: The Heart

You were under the mistaken impression that Ailee had been hitting you before. You were wrong - now she hits you, an open-palmed slap across the face. "Jackdaw! What the hell do you think you're doing!?" she snaps, snatching the stick from the semiconscious fox's fingers. "E-NUN-CEE-ATE! Defend! For heavens' sakes, this is what you get for blowing off my adventurer training!"

Ailee's 'adventurer training' had involved her bursting into your room in the middle of the night, putting a pistol in your mouth as you were struggling to wake up, and screaming at you to perfectly enunciate a defensive abjuration. In fairness, she'd put herself through the same 'testing' - more than once she'd had a weirdly fluent conversation with you with a mouth full of literal marbles and she'd only accidentally swallowed and almost choked on a marble once.

Today was not a day for small mercies - mercy made for poorly trained wizards!

[Assisting Jackdaw, moving that result to an 8.]

Chuubo's GMD: Love and Shattered Alchemy

Jasper pouts. Cute!? She is glamorous! She is elegant! She is... she is tall! Tall people aren't cute! Besides, lines of that nature were independently written by two different songsmiths and capable of inducing swooning when deployed by far lesser spirits than her! A line such as that coming from her should have caused at least three of the onlookers in this restaurant to faint, at the very least!

"Hmph!" she hmph!s, but she can't even maintain her attempt at dignity for more than a second because Dulcinea is finally revealing what to do with the ramen and she's fascinated. Up she gets from her chair and orbits around the table, eyes wide, observing everything from as many angles as possible. And the writing! With a magical brush that didn't need to be dipped in ink! She observes every minute gesture of etiquette and pose, the posture, the stance, the control of the fluid that keeps it away from the notebook. She is going to get this right!

She sits again, folding into her chair like a flower retracting. She picks up the chopsticks, lowers her head, and performs an absolutely perfect mirrored slurp of ramen soup exactly as Dulcinea demonstrated. She keeps her off hand in the same place as Dulcinea's notebook and, sure enough, her control is so fine that not a single drop of broth touches it. She sits back, a droplet of soup on the edge of her mouth, and gives a haughty, proud look. Try laughing at her now, demon queen!

And then the taste hits her and she chokes, gasps, and coughs, eyes widening. "What!?" she said. "What is - it's like you fit a savannah into the ocean!" She can't even chastise herself for her lack of poetry in this moment because she's busy reaching into the bowl with her bare hands to pick up the mass of ramen and stare at it - it was uncomfortably warm by this world's standards, and it dripped down her fingers in an incoherent mass. "The water is contaminated with the essence of the forest," she said. "But that doesn't come across at all to my hands or my eyes. But when I -" she took an unglamourous chomp of the mass of noodles she was holding in her hand, "- taste it," she continues, mouth full, "it unravels! It's the most impure thing I've ever experienced!"

She blushes as she realizes, at last, just why the devil queen laughed at her. Oh, how naive she must have sounded just now - thinking that she could talk to a devil about temptation. What power could a pure heart have against a creature that ground all of the forests and seas together? She was really out of her depth. Blushing more intensely, she set down the mass of ramen that hadn't already escaped from her hand into the bowl and picked up her chopsticks again in imitation of Dulcinea.

"It-it's good," she said weakly, watching the devil's expression with a new humility. "The mouthfeel is like the oil of liquidized fire. The saltiness is reminiscent of mountains broken into crystal. Umami is, uh, no I don't. My first impression is that there is an unknown heat at my core that feels like a wood-root fire, consuming and transforming me. As you command - this is the egg? - I will obey."

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

"Oh, it's the opposite actually," mumbled Canada as she gently tried to tip-toe around all the kneeling people. It was really hard because this cell was not very large and they took up a lot of floor space and she really didn't want to step on anyone right now because that kind of thing left people with a complex. "It's actually righteousness that is beautiful. Uh. You know, spiritually," she had to push the two Salamanders gently aside and they fell into each other with sighs. "Unrighteous hearts pollute physical beauty and make it, you know, scary. Um."

This part was always so awkward.

"So, uh. You can attain this kind of beauty in yourself!" said Canada, trying to be inspirational. "You just need to bring your heart into alignment. So I'm going to leave you here to think about it, okay? Be kind to each other."

She waved uncomfortably as she locked the cell door.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"Oh, thank you so much for the compliment young lady," said the Ceronian with a kind civility that almost makes you wonder if you're somehow incognito. "Sit! Zeus bids us to always be glad at guests, and we are honoured to respect the laws of mighty Hades' sister. Have some lime soda!"
"Hold up a moment Sands," said Leon. "Do Zeus' laws still apply here?"
"Oh, that is a fascinating point," said Sands. "We've not had a guest before... we should check!"

The two of them turn away from you, back to their game of marbles. "Hades, brilliant lord, you who reign over this, the Kingdom of Elysium and to whom we honour above all others. Do the laws of Zeus apply in your kingdom?" Sands flicked a marble and both rheumy old eyes watch intently as they click-clacked against each other.

Hades knelt down, staring at the game with intense fascination. He reached his fingers out to adjust the course of a marble ever so slightly.

"Ah - they do!" said Leon. "Praise be, lord Hades, and respect to your regal sister of Olyumpus. In your name, and hers, we welcome you to Elysium. It must have been a glorious death indeed to bring you here with us."
"She doesn't look dead," said Sands.
"Neither do you!"
"Oh, what a lovely compliment~" said Sands, who was old enough to appear at least dead-adjacent. "But she's on a mission from Hades, she must be dead."
"Didn't you hear her mention Athena? That's a god for the living."
"Oh, just think about how long it took you to get out of that habit."

The lime soda is a thick and deep flavour. Its creation was unskilled; there is too much bitterness, not enough of the refinedly sweet perfection of the Imperial kitchens. Just an ordinary person doing their best, but enough to refresh on a hot afternoon as the old warriors bicker. You might notice a shaking of the sun, the shadows crazed for a tiny second, but the distances are so vast that whatever violence caused it is distant from here.

"Oh! Where are my manners. I'm Leon, this is Sands. As you know, we were warriors of Ceron before we were gathered here in Elysium after death by Lord Hades," said Leon brightly.

Hades, sitting across the game of marbles, makes casual eye contact with you and gives a gentle shrug. He's giving no opinion on this, even though your auspex seems to clearly think that these two are very much alive.

"Princess Epistia is the daughter of Queen Hatchan," Leon went on. "We all dote on her of course but she's always so moody, just like her father," he laughed. Hades' cheeks turned a soft shade of pink and he gave another idle shrug, this one a little more forced. "She doesn't understand just how valuable peace is! She's always wanting to go off and fight like we used to. I told her, princess! This is the kind of place you fight for! But then, I never listened to my grandfather either."

"The queen wants her to settle down," said Sands. "And it makes sense she does. This place is favoured by Hades because she's here. He covers the fields in flowers, makes exotic crops bloom, brings forth diamonds and gems from beneath the earth to cheer her - and even if she doesn't appreciate them it's good luck to have someone like that around."

"And now Hades has even brought you here!" laughed Leon. "Someone the same age! And a princess too! Why, I think that you two would make a gorgeous couple!"

Vasilia!

Don't celebrate your triumph too soon - a lot of escape vessels got off the Veterosk before it broke, and you can see even now most of them drifting towards the Eater of Worlds. The King may have lost his ship but his military is still about - though widely scattered and deeply disorganized amidst all the chaos. Your ship has ridden through it better than any other.

But you can hear the muttering of Poseidon's voice as he draws lines in the air with malformed hands. Great sweeping lines trace winds and waves and the storm darkens between here and the Armada. It would require great courage or great callousness to order ships through that tempest.

Which means that the Admiral will still be coming, of course. But you at least have a little time.

Alexa!

Ares finally lowers his tools, eyes alight, his molten-metal body rippling and cooling into grey slate. He gives an intoxicated grin and a lazy salute - and then he runs cold. His skin stops steaming. His eyes cloud over. Twenty fingers run through his wild hair, and then scissors cut it neatly short again. Red burns away to blue and Athena smooths out her uniform with a single gesture. It never happened, of course. She is the victor, she would never lose control like that.

Between Dolce's quick actions and your endurance the chaos has calmed rapidly. There are no dead, there is no battle, and Athena steps away for there is nothing for her to do here. You've got a moment to brush yourselves and each other down as you head for the launch bay.

Bella!

"Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow - I'm just trying to help, Bella," said Mynx. "It is the mark of an expert actress to be able to talk about the most dirty and provocative subjects without letting one's true feelings slip. Why, if I was less of a creep my skills would atrophy and we'd both be - ow! Bella!"

She huffs and folds her arms, an incongruously childish and petulant look on a face so old and severe.

"But - hm! Fine. Another question then. If you were to pick up a beautiful woman, how would you like to do it? Sweeping off their feet into a princess carry? The squealing humiliation of hefting them over one shoulder? The dark and smouldering one-handed grip to the throat while you hold them aloft?"

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

"You won't get away with this," said Canada, squirming against the chains. "When I get out - eek!"

She was in the habit of downplaying her looks. She couldn't deny the tactical advantage they presented (and how nice it felt to be pretty), but she was a knight first and should wield a weapon like that cautiously. And show respect to her opponents by allowing them to battle as warriors, and hopefully be respected in exchange. And because the flirting of villains in general and Annunaki in specific didn't really follow boundaries and - eep! No! S-stay back!

Her hair was loosened from its practical ponytail into a long cascading raven waterfall, perfectly falling towards her left and pooling on her shoulder. Her face was cleaned revealing the glow of health, cheeks slightly flushed, eyes naturally shadowed. Her rough slave jacket is discarded, revealing an athletic anatomy that couldn't quite conceal it's natural softness...

To answer Arákh's question, there's a lot to work with. But most compelling of all are the eyes. They reflect a different world, a flawless world. To look deeply into them is to see your best possible self and that is the most intoxicating thing of all.

[Unleash: 12]

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

She'd been given a smartphone as a gift for her seventeenth birthday - something that had diligently held pride of place at the top of every christmas list for half a decade, finally realized now that the threat of going on strike from her job at her parent's cafe was becoming credible. What she hadn't expected to find was that the device was far more interesting with the screen off than with the screen on.

The reflective surface was fascinating. With the screen on the millions of tiny pixel-lights filled the world with light, but when it was off there seemed to be a hollow in the world occupied by a shadowy version of herself. She sensed potential in that deep place and she grew so used to keeping the phone off that she took out the battery.

That's when it deepened. Now the hollow of light had a physical hollow in it too, an empty shell, a void of being - all the more pure for its emptiness. She opened it up and took more things out - the SIM card, the wiring, the processor, drawn along by strange logic. Something moved in the deep and she could see it - and once she took out the phone's speakers she could hear it too. Methodically she unpacked the phone, discarding the casing so she was holding just the liquid-crystal screen as a single glowing reflective part in her hand. Then she peeled off the protective film.

And finally she removed the screen itself, leaving only the reflection.

ANAH KEL ANNUNKI ZENT KARI MAR ANUN CAPHTOR UNKIROS TAIRAN VERDA KALIS KEL VARKALONT

Piece by piece she had freed the reflection from every physical constraint that chained it. She stood before the solar lion that had been caged within the shadows of the mirror and it burned white and gold and violet. She saw it with eyes that had seen it in every shadowed surface for a lifetime but never realized. It raised its mighty left paw and with razor talons it repaid her in kind. Down those talons came and they ripped away her ugliness. Her selfishness. Her sloth. Every part of her she regarded as a failing was undone in a moment of radiant cleansing and the vision of the mirror finally aligned with the vision of the heart.

As the lion stepped from the mirror into her the dark reflection snapped in two. They fell into the world, sharp and jagged and almost-physical. Sword and shield. Two different visions of her own self were contained within, but for that moment when she held them up, they were in balance.

She'd come a long way from that moment of perfection.

She'd scourged herself of her weakness once, but now she knew that wasn't the same thing as being strong. She had been her most perfect self, but it hadn't been enough and she had failed to live up to it. And now here she was, squirming against a wall, wondering if the Annunaki knew enough about her to call forth the lion and have it finish its work by tearing out that troublesome edge of defiance.

Or if they had other ways to scourge the feeling out of her.

She struggled harder, wrists and ankles squirming uselessly against her chains.