Thanqol

Breathless Dead

Bella!

Lightning reigns in the sky. It comes not in flashes but in sheets, curtains of power that cover entire directions in woven grids.

And then the storm comes down.

Stone shatters and burns. The winds prise the roofs from buildings. The Engine in the centre of the crystal brain pulses and writhes like a mad rainbow heartbeat. Zeus and Poseidon, the terrible scions of Cronus, voice their fury together. Stones lift from the ground and trees are pulled up by their roots. Great waterspouts form in the distance.

And of all this terrible destruction cast from the jaws of the natural world, one man has been chosen as the avatar.

Boom, boom, boom. Heavy Imperial boots are audible even above the pounding rain. Boom, boom, boom. A drumbeat in time with the thunder. He strings an arrow to his bow, halo of divine lightning crashing above his head, and Zeus herself guides her aim. She guides it so, just so - but just so askew.

Bella, the wall of the alley detonates. The building besides you explodes, slants, collapses. The entire structure slumps diagonally towards you, like a gladiator falling backwards after a blow to the gut. Thunderbolts are dire enough when used on living targets, but against mere stone and steel they are nightmarish. Normally it would be considered unthinkable to speculatively fire Thunderbolts lest you displease the gods, but in a city marked for destruction everything is a valid target.

Those boots stomp again through the rain. Boom, boom, boom. It's when they stop that you need to fall and brace for everything around you is about to fall to the mighty talons of the Cloudgatherer.

"Come out, Princess," called Jas'o. "Nothing you possess is worth risking my wrath this day."

Galnius!

"What?" said Galnius. "No. She's into gold. Everyone knows that. Wants her partners to come wearing as many necklaces, earrings, bracelets and other pieces of jewelry as possible. Why -" his face fell into soldier-default as his mind came up with a couple of possible reasons why "- do you ask?"

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

"How did you learn this? Did you have to train too, or..."

Or were some people just born twisted?

"Did you ever hesitate? Did something make you... stop hesitating?"

Was there a line? Was there a moment of truth, after which nothing would ever be the same again? Or was it more like relaxing your grip on the edge and slipping down into the dark waters?

"What happened... to them? To make them this way?"

Were they like her once? Were they like the Cat once?

These questions and their echoes come to her during the endless, arcane toil. The breaks allow her time to think on the previous answers while contemplating the next question. The moments ghost by, blurs of distracted haste as her mind contemplates the dark.

Breathless Dead

Princess Epistia!

You were raised godless.

You did not know the sacrifices. You did not know the rituals. You did not know how to build relationships with the forces underpinning reality. But every so often you touched on something dark, a ball of fire blazing at the heart of the artificial instinct-cluster that ran right through your mind. Were the Hermetic Iskarot to extract your brain and reveal the neuronic pathways carved by the marvels of bioscience he could tell you that this was not just an organ for processing data: it was a temple.

The scent of blood wet the altar of the nose. The torches were ignited in turn, belching forth heat and rage. The ache of muscles and adrenaline came together in silent hymn. Each breath was tinged with incense. You have seen hints of this power in forbidden training bouts - in the arms of practice partners broken, in slips of blunted blades that cut just too much, in rivals whose eyes lower at the thought of challenging you to a contest of strength. But now it is all alight and you stand as graven effigy of Bloody-Handed Ares. You don't know who these foes are. You do not need to.

You raise your scythe and you descend upon the phalanx as the rain begins to pour down. The Thunderbolt soars from the bowstring of the King and you reflexively lash out and catch it on the sharp of your scythe blade. It shatters in a thunderclap echoing the thunder from above, scythe and arrow both. Shards of white-hot metal embed in enemy shields and your own flesh, and still you come, mind running crimson. It's not the celestial mechanics you see, Athena's marvels of lines and force and discipline - it's the music of human hearts. It's not equipment and strength, not numbers or training, but fear. You smell it like sizzling fat burning atop the altar of your weaponized brain and you lunges for it like a starving animal.

First blood is theirs - cuts slash across you as you enters the thicket of spears, opening your veins up like a puzzle box, red mixing diluting amidst the greys. But not every hand here is strong. One pair flinches as you charge towards them and that is the opportunity you need. You lunge across the top of the shield and take the woman's throat in your jaws. It's enough. You're in. Like a blood-mad fox in a henhouse you rage. This is your place. Ares' temple can only exist in the ruins of Athena's.

And then it ends. You're in the dirt again, Thunderbolt through your chest, at the feet of the King. You have left her mark. The phalanx is reeling and you have many companions to lay in the mud alongside her. Was this your life? Two decades of preparation for this abrupt and violent end? As brief and terrible as the fire that consumes a great house and vanishes at the conclusion of the act. You breathe still, but slowly, and through great pain. Zeus' will triumphs even here.

Bella, Redana!

There is a moment when the King is unshielded by his soldiers. He is still an armoured warrior tall upon the battlefield, so he cannot yet be Finished - though now he is vulnerable to being distracted and overcome in the preparation for that moment.

"I am dealing with matters of importance, princess," King Jas'o snarled, hand hovering above the next arrow in his quiver. "And I do not care how many of your fucking pets I have to put down in order for you to get the message. You're going to do one useful thing in your life, and your only choice is how many bodies have to pave the road there."

Alexa!

For all Galnius' pride as a hoplite in service to the Empire, they have no great wish to face Jas'o in this moment. Even the bravest and proudest women recognize when the gods have made their will clear, and the message sent by Athena was clear: King Jas'o was to have victory after victory upon this day. When you advise retreat and avoidance it's Athena who stands steely-eyed in the other direction, offering death with four hands. It's not honourable to shy from such a fight, but neither is it unthinkable. These are just humans, after all.

Instead they storm into the Palace on your command, cutting through the dull-eyed Ceronian zombies who try to block their path. Two of them overturn feast tables and slam them against the doors as barricades. Another roughly hacks the Thunderbolt from your foot with a hand-adze - it's a clean penetration, not requiring the complex surgery a direct torso hit would require. All around these soldiers are braced for a storm.

And it comes - the door flies open, and spears rotate smoothly around to focus on the sudden noise. In comes a startled looking sheep and a grim looking lioness - Vasilia and Dolce - and the soldiers relax, exhausted, falling and catching their breath in the moment's reprieve.

Fellowship: The Heart

Amazingly, Ailee broke into a fit of giggles at Lucien's comment so genuine that it snapped her out of her aura of coruscating energy. It happened so fast it was startling - one moment you'd become almost used to her being a vibrant, sibilant nexus of draconic nightmare energy, and the next she was an ordinary white-furred mousegirl trying to stifle laughter with her wrist. The transformation had a very [SCENE MISSING] energy where the wise would reflexively check their watches to see if they'd just had a run in with the time knife.

"Do another one!" she demanded.

Breathless Dead

Short story

NECROMECHANIC

The procession came through the darkened corridors of Astraxum Subcontinental Plate II, a mass of muddy saffron yellow. The devotees were swathed in their robes, thick and concealing by design, letting no hint of their deviant bodies show through to the unsullied masses who watched their advance. Though they could conceal the surfaces of their unnatural forms they could not conceal their shapes - while the crowds that watched their advance came in every colour of earth and sky, their diversity was nothing to the bizarre morphology of the devotees. Some stood three meters high, spindly tall, having to bow their hooded heads to avoid impact with the rusting ceiling, tripod legs visible in sharp edges with each step. Some were clanking behemoths, engines cast over with fabric like clothed locomotives, the sound of grinding tank treads clattering out from beneath their veils. Some were childlike, tiny things that seemed to roll or scuttle or crawl. The masses of humanity all stood within narrow bands of height, weight, with regulation numbers of limbs. Not so the cast of the procession, who strode in all the shapes and sizes of the animal kingdom's foul coupling with a construction yard.

Many held or wore candles - not an unusual characteristic, for never had the vast mechanical world of Tellus ever seen the spark of an electric light. The corridor itself was lit with burning braziers as a matter of ordinary operation. Some held flags or banners - all dyed black. The Empress may have begrudgingly deigned to allow these strange creatures to march through the vaults of her perfect world, but she would not permit them to bear colours other than hazard stripe yellow and black. Colours of danger. Colours of warning. Colours to remind the population that these creatures were subhuman and to be shunned. So the devotees had dipped their holy flags and banners in black dye, to be returned to their original glory once they were safely returned to their own realm. A few held relics. Strange wooden boxes - wood! Inconceivable here on this world of metal and rust - rested in arms, tendrils, or stranger appendages, the arcane miracles within hidden from the sight of the unworthy.

These were the Priests of Hermes. God of Travel. God of Trade. God of Technology.

They were not loved.

The crowds standing by the sides of the bestial processional was not there to cheer or celebrate the work of heroes. Parents had brought their children not as reward, but as punishment and threat. Be good or you'll be sent to join the Hermetics. Be good or they'll turn you into a monster. Be good or it'll be you shuffling underneath a saffron cage. Others were here as militia. Weapons were forbidden by order of the Empress, but every spare spanner, rolling pin, or kitchen knife happened to be conveniently in the hands or bags of every man or woman of fighting age as they watched the procession rumble past. Gangs stood in close proximity. Here and there could be seen the intimidating, black-armoured shapes of the Invigilators, the mailed fist of the Empress, but even they kept their distance from the procession. They did not want to be seen defending the freaks.

The path was blocked.

The procession ground to a halt.

The Red Titans gang had placed themselves in the centre of the causeway, standing just before the bridge that crossed a heat spire channel. They had gone further than the casual armaments of the others - bricks, bats, bottles with oily rags crammed down the necks, and improvised armour made out of the wreckage of a train. Their leader, the one-eyed meat-faced woman named Gavid stepped forwards, holding up a hand. "Back, freaks. No further."

Tension flowed through the crowd. Concealed weapons made their way to hands. Invigilators shifted nervously, sensing danger and shying from putting themselves at the centre of it. But the Hermetics of the procession remained still and silent - for as chaotic as they were in form, each exhibited an unnatural stillness now that they had come to a halt.

Finally, one spoke. Its voice was not the monstrous sound one expected from the beasts - it was soft, feminine, almost kind - but with an accent none of the humans would ever share. "We have dispensation from the Empress. We are here under her protection."

"You aren't," snarled Gavid, "taking our children."

There was a silence for a moment, as though contemplating this, and then the Hermetic resumed smoothly. "The Empress has forbidden us from all acts of recruitment and propaganda. We are to collect the sick, the mad, the marked, and the irredeemable. This will purify the world of Tellus of those like us."

"You're fucking baby snatchers, don't deny it!" shouted the ganger. "How else are there so damn many of you!?"

A ripple ran through the crowd, a wave of shared anger. The Hermetics hadn't been allowed to recruit for twenty years - and their numbers seemed the same. A great many small ills and inexplicable disasters had been attributed to an increasingly desperate priesthood determined to snatch bodies at any cost.

There was another long silence from the Hermetics.

"We have dispensation from the Empress -"

A brick smashed against its face. It staggered and fell.

It was like a dam breaking. The Red Titans charged, and other gangs followed one after another. The Hermetics closed ranks, lowering their staffs and flags in a half-hearted parody of a phalanx, but already the humans were upon them.

Humans. A loaded phrase. It was humans who grew eviscerating talons. It was humans who had their fists harden like stone when they struck. It was humans who could match the shoving strength of the giants. Even the least human being among the hundreds of billions of Tellus was a superman, genetic code brimming with exotic strengths that rendered even these emaciated, impoverished specimens deadly combatants. When flesh and bone met the augmentic steel of the Hermetics it was no unfair contest.

Chaos surged in the flickering candlelight. Shouts and screams and the sound of breaking bones and metal. The Hermetics did not, as they might have in the stories, reveal themselves to be bearing exotic weaponry beneath their robes - no heat rays, no slipphase beams, no flux sprays. If those things were here they were locked within those ornate wooden boxes that the Hermetics were passing towards the centre of their formation as though they were more precious than their very lives. Instead they fought as they were, with whatever advantages their alien physiques granted them. They pushed back but their blows were pulled, defensive, restrained even as they were being assaulted by people who did not give them anything like the same courtesy. They knew the consequences for their Order if they took human life here on the Empress' throneworld.

There was a boom like thunder. The corridor was briefly lit by light - cold, blue-white, bright light, nothing like the crackling dimness of the fire. Electrical arcs poured into the air, raking up and down the body of one of the Hermeticians and it emitted the only sound any of them had made during this battle - a high-pitched, far too natural scream. This finally broke the reverie of the Invigilators. Weapon! The Empress' soldiers finally intervened, firing their weapons indiscriminately into the swirling melee. These were not bullets, for the skin of an unarmoured human was proof against such things in this age. These were glass beads that ruptured upon impact into great gouts of toxic, choking smoke that could overwhelm even the most advanced biologies. War cries turned to panicked shouts, screaming turned to coughing, people broke and fled in all directions as the Invigilators closed in, grabbing whoever they could in a futile attempt to catch whoever had smuggled the illicit Electromagnetic Flux weapon into the dark of Tellus. Even the Hermeticians could not endure the fog of the Imperial guns and they withdrew as best they could, keeping in a mass defensive circle.

In the centre of the abandoned battlefield, wreathed by smoke and toxic gases, a young woman stood and looked down at the abandoned body of a Hermetic. It was the first time she'd ever seen what was underneath the robes of one of the mysterious creatures. This was a secret that, to her, was worth enduring the agonizing haze. She stared down at it, eyes wide despite the poison and the tears, heart pounding for reasons other than the adrenaline and the terror. She saw the secrets of the Priests of Hermes written in flesh and fur and steel, and she felt...

She was grabbed and dragged away back into the candle-lit darkness. She dragged the memory with her.

Fellowship: The Heart

You'd think that with the battle over Ailee would have transformed out of her crackling black nightmare energy princess dress. Nope. From the way she acted this was just her look now. Make eye contact with her and a crackling flower of staring emerald energy eyes bloom behind her like the world's most intimidating peacock display. There's a low danger hum as energy coils around her arms like bracelets and after a while your brain stops noticing it as anything other than a vague sense of tension. Occasionally small bits of scenery catch fire around her.

"So boring," she said, a blazing hot specter of Impatience rising above and around her. She cupped her hands and addressed Coleman: "Hey! Short stuff!" it was okay when she said it. "Can't you make this hunk of garbage go any faster?"

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Whatever it takes. She'd put herself in between him and the world in a heartbeat, throw herself away - but she wouldn't lash out in return? What kind of sacrifice was that? Who was she protecting like this? She flinched back, looking away, eyes watering. Who had she saved like this? Who wanted her to be like this? Who had asked for a hero like this? Why couldn't she be who they needed instead?

Shamash would do whatever it took. Tirzah would -

Sudden tears blinded closed eyes.

It was war. Occupation. Rebellion. A time for soldiers, not heroes. A time for feudal warrior-aristocrats and not knights. All she had to do was finish what had been started and crack her broken heart and draw her sword from it. It was time to put away silly ideas like chivalry, love, redemption...

Her heart pounded. She was being asked to make a sacrifice, and who was she to say no?

"Yes, mistress," she said quietly, not meeting the Cat's eyes despite the order. "You're right. Of course."

[Accepting the shift]

Breathless Dead

King Jas'o!

The arrow hit the soft spongey surface with a soft thud. It hung there in the centre of the bullseye for a minute - and then was sucked into the target. It vanished inside the spongey plant entirely, leaving only a discoloured purple bruise where it had started. Inside the arrow would be digested, dissolved, turned into nutrients so that the plant could regrow the other injury it had just sustained - across the field, linked by a long winding vine, a branch was rapidly regrowing another of its strange fruits. Long, straight, synthetic feathers at the end - a perfect arrow, ready for the archer to snap off with a twist of his fingers and fire it right back in cannibalistic cycle into the plant's core surface. Once again he fired the shot, and another perfect violet bruise right in the centre of its bullseye was added to the plant's strange surface.

"Princess Jas'o? Are you - oh!" The voice came softly from the owlgirl servitor, a gentle announcement of purpose from a creature whose silent movement swould otherwise be entirely undetectable.

"Hey," said Jas'o, nocking and firing another arrow in a fluid but mechanistic motion. "Sup?"

"Your father sent me to collect you for your Tanderil geology lessons... you've shifted, highness?"

"Yeah," said Jas'o, gesturing at his now-flat chest. "These were getting in the way. Not badly, but I've got more range of motion like this, and every little counts."

"Ah. Um. Would you like to change your pronouns too?"

"Sure, whatever," said Jas'o, arcing and firing another shot. "Don't care."

"Would you like me to change as well, highness?" she said.

"Also whatever," said Jas'o, snapping another arrow from the branch. "Do what you want."

"And... will the prince come with me?"

"For what?" he snorted. "Geology? No thanks."

"Your father will -"

"Do nothing!" snapped Jas'o, and landed another perfect bullseye despite the rising tension. "He will do nothing! His father will do nothing! Honestly, Hili! What the fuck is the point of any of it! We're never going back! Even grandfather hasn't seen this planet we're apparently supposed to rule, and father's spent his entire life standing ready to swoop in and administer the shit out of it the day he's finally allowed to. We're let's-pretend kings sitting in a desk drawer, learning two hundred year out of date information, and I am," he fired another arrow into dead centre of the target, "too old to play pretend."

"Ah," Hili said quietly.

"The only thing in this world that matters," he said, focus never having left that distant target, "is war. The only way anything is going to change. The only way to advance. The only way to get out is by being good at something. By being too good to keep locked up in a drawer. It was war which brought us all here. Empress Nero's throne stands atop a pile of spears. Only Pallas Athena can change anything in this world. How tough are you?"

"Master?"

"I'm sick of shooting stationary targets. I know you're fast. How tough are you?"

"I... I am not entirely certain, master. But somewhat. I am designed for bodyguard duties and can probably endure a fair number of arrows, so long as nothing vital is pierced."

"Good enough," said the prince, drawing another arrow. "Start dodging."

Alexa!

How did he get to be such a frighteningly good shot?

You can see Athena herself draw in an impressed breath as King Jas'o turns and puts an arrow directly through your heel, an Achilles-slaying shot fired in perfect flow from one moving target to another. You're sent crashing to the ground but before you land Galnius and another hoplite catch your arms and continue carrying you forwards.

[Damage your Grace]

The King's troops pile into an open practice square, filled with dead Ceronians, forming up into a phalanx. You arrive a little behind them and see three figures waiting for you there - Princess Redana, unconscious in the blood-soaked arms of a feline servitor. There is another servitor nearby - a Ceronian, holding a terrible gleaming scythe, blazing with the dark glory of Ares. The ground is littered with bodies she's made.

"On your knees!" shouted King Jas'o, darkly menacing as he strung a thunderbolt to his bow. No hesitation now - he was lit by lightning, the centre of a thunderstorm, ready to land his fourth perfect shot of the day. "Step away from the princess!"

Vasilia!

Energy is crackling from the engine-sun. An overflow of power is ionizing the crystal waterfalls, condensing them into dark clouds that billowed out to blot out the ceiling-sky, brimming with dark and violet light. Winds start to pick up. Zeus and Poseidon together have spread the terrible storm that dominates the void into the interior.

"The gods are angry!" said Admiral Odoacer, never one to let a good divine omen go to waste. "They are giving you a final warning - serve me or perish!"

"What do you command, Lord Admiral?" cried a Ceronian, dropping to her knees - in second the army was again kneeling, united in fealty.

"There is only one way to make this right," she said. "An opportunity you were too distraught to see was in front of you before. Seize the princess! Bring her to me in chains! And if you happen to see a cutie of a catgirl, bring her to me in chains also!! And gag them!!"

There's a bit of staring. The Admiral seems to have gotten caught up in a rush of... something.

"Don't question me!" she said. "It is important that it happens like this! Go!"

The army of Ceronians stand fluidly, and then march into their city. The Admiral fanned herself with one hand, grinning in a flustered kind of way, and then hopped down to follow them. You'd bet that she's heading towards the palace - you don't know what the Admiral is like in person, but you get the impression that for whatever reason she wants to be sitting on a throne when she receives her prisoners.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada is outside the Sealed Tower. At the base, on the stone drawbridge over the river of fire, hand over her heart - shaking and mortified. Oh no. It had happened again.

Her speed was a strange and inconsistent thing that didn't operate fully under her control. It wasn't a linear acceleration, it had to do with the speed of her thoughts - and she never moved faster than when she was afraid. She'd once watched a horror movie with Tirzah and Asterion and had jump scared herself two suburbs away and had never been able to live it down. She took deep breaths, heart still pounding, and then groaned with her hands over her forehead and began the long, slow slog back up the stairs.

She slumped back into the room under the withering gaze of the Cat, swallowing and flinching back under that eerie intense stare. Oh boy. Oh damn. Terror and humiliation swirled in her head and she did her best to focus on the humiliation because that at least probably wouldn't kill her.

"The, uh, Horse Headed God," she said. "It saw me too. It's..." she swallowed. She was already dying of shame, it wasn't the moment to start giving her weird dumb ideas about how it was more a mental state than a single person. "It startled me," she finished lamely.

Breathless Dead

Redana and Bella!

Princess Epistia looks down at the body of her mother. Everything had happened so fast. The whole world and all its laws overturned in an eyeblink. She took a breath and looked away. She couldn't regret it. Just like in the ancient stories, evil parents had to be slain for the world to take shape. Some matricides were holy.

And some evils needed to be ended.

The scythe came into her hands again as she stood and it's moving to its unnatural purpose before she even knows it. It cuts through the hollowed-out bodyguard in a wave - a crude, unthinking strike but it is nevertheless rewarded with red ruin. She starts, eyes shocked as she's carried through into the counterswing, bloody fury of Ares igniting in her veins. Her next move is faster, far more frightening, and takes another of the terrible, zombified soldiers at last to a true ending. Faster, faster, the speed and flawless precision of a girl discovering her true purpose in the midst of the war god's dance. Blood and death comes to the slaves of Hatchan.

It is a terrible freedom - or a glorious final curse from Zeus.

Vasilia!

Hades stared at you for a long moment after his priest fell to the ground, unreadable energy in those brilliant blue eyes. And then, without commentary, he is gone.

"Warriors of Ceron!" cried Admiral Odoacer, standing over the crowd. "Rejoice! I have returned to lead you! Rejoice! You shall have another chance to fulfill your oaths and return to the grace of Zeus Cloudgatherer! Rejoice! You shall be returned to glory as the bloody speartip of the Imperium!"

You know that face - you've seen its cold stare in paint, looking out over the shoulder of every Imperial bureaucrat you've ever had the misfortune of being challenged by in the void of space. But here!? With no entourage, no fanfare, no vast court of sycophants and hangers on? You never imagined that the Admiral of the Armada could be so... humble.

But there she stands, atop a rock, addressing the crowd of Ceronians.

"But the Empire has changed, friends - it is a different place than you remember it! Lies, intrigue, betrayal, civil war - the situation is chaotic and perilous, and it is for that reason alone I did not have time to seek you out before now. Serve me - but beware! Many will attempt to deceive you, and many things that you thought were true are different now. Only I can be trusted. Only I can redeem you."

Alexa!

You plough through the feeble line of skirmishers like a locomotive. You and your phalanx cut through them while hardly breaking stride, shrugging off the ragged volley that tries to slow you on your shields. Ahead King Jas'o urges his men into as fast a run as they are capable of while carrying him, calling for triple-time as he turns to face you, hand once more hovering over the shaft of the next deadly Thunderbolt in his quiver.

Neither phalanx can stop now. Whichever one stops running and falls into a shieldwall will be able to be bypassed by the other. The situation is strangely akin to a chariot race through the streets of the city, a contest of speed and endurance.

You could attack the enemy phalanx directly - in its disorder it could be Finished - but committing to the charge will leave King Jas'o with a free hand. He could shoot down your soldiers, making your victory bloody, or he could abandon his men to the brawl and once more commit relentlessly to his objective. With another man which he will choose would be more of a mystery. Alternatively you could commit all-out to winning the race, attempting to get to the Princess before the King does and fall into formation there - this will be a Get Away.