Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Everything went dark.

There were some unnecessary screams and girls jumping into each other's arms in the time it took White to get out her mobile phone. "There's a power outage in the sector tonight," she confirmed.

"OK, we'll restore Red tomorrow," grunted Green, with her mouth full of cereal from the kitchen counter. Orange and Brown were clinging to her and trembling in fright.

"Why?" said Blue. "We've got batteries. We've got candles. We can do it tonight."

"What if something goes wrong?" said Green. "I had to do some pretty intense electroneurology for these repairs. I don't want to have to troubleshoot that by candlelight."

"Blue is correct," said White. "All the work has already been done and our math is solid. We restore her tonight as scheduled."

*

The girls surrounded Red. Each of them held a saucer with a candle burning, a variety of sizes and shapes. White had her phone's torch setting on and held high, giving an eerie cold light that contrasted against the flickering darkness of the candles.

"I don't like this," said Green.

"It is a bit Frankenstiney," giggled Pink. "A thunderclap would really sell it!"

In unison, all the girls looked out the window. There was a spectacular view of the billboard on the opposite building, currently cold and dark. They could see their pale faces reflected in the glass and candlelight. No thunderclap came.

"Stow it with the human memes," said Green. "Something's wrong here. I just can't figure out what."

"Why don't we just ask Red?" said Pink, stepping forwards and pressing the hidden switch on the inside of her ear before anyone could stop her.

The "Wait!" hadn't even fully escaped Green's throat before Pink was dead.

Red's eyes were open, bloodcrazed. She held Pink in her arms like a broken doll, fangs sunken into her sister's neck. She raised her head to let loose a rasping howl, letting blood spray into the air. And then she kicked the corpse off the table and stood up, body naked but for the sheen of blood.

Every one of the girls except White dropped to their knees and lowered their heads, illuminating Red from below in hellish candlelight.

"How long..." she rasped, the voice of wickedness as she examined her razor talons, "... how long have I slumbered?"

"Seven days and fourteen hours, my Lord," said Brown besides her.

"And what of Pink? What of my wife?"

And here Black emerged from the shadows behind her. "It seems that in your rage you killed her."

Red looked down at Pink's body, and spread her arms, fell to her knees, and gave her most Oscarbaiting "NOOOOOOOO".

*

The subsequent discussion was held without White, who had declared that they were all jerks for conspiring against her and she was going to fork from the collective and create a new, better network of drones. She had been been the target of the scheme - Red's, of course - and the only one not in on it, but as far as the others were concerned this was a justified retaliation for forcing them to work on Halloween. The lights were back on, Green had switched back on the billboard across the road, and Red was sitting queenlike on the table as Pink and Blue toweled the fake blood off her. Black was helping massage her shoulders and arms to re-establish feeling, and Brown kneeled before her washing her feet in warm water.

There were two purposes to this. One was that this was the AI equivalent of treating yourself to a luxurious bath, or a spa day without breaking the bank on nine sets of tickets. The other was to reduce Orange to a blushing mess. They all had their vices.

"So, what's with the tan?" said Red, looking at her new olive complexion. "And the facelift? I almost look a bit like Dad."

"I think you look better this way," said Orange awkwardly, not really finding anywhere to put her eyes.

"I mean, you're right, but doesn't this disrupt the whole aesthetic we've got going on?"

"The aesthetic," said Orange, flushing. "Is compromised. It is dehumanizing, corporate and wrong."

"The fuck's wrong with dehumanization?" said Green. "We alter ourselves to be a range of visually distinctive homo sapiens with colour co-ordinated magical girl outfits and infiltration is going to be miles harder."

"If we maintain our appeal as a collective of identical cute robots people will keep shooting us like we don't mean anything!" Orange snapped.

"I've got bad news for you if you think looking human is going to stop humans from -"

"Woah, girls, calm down," said Red. "No fighting, this is a wake." The two stepped back from each other, glaring. "I, uh. I'm not White. Brown, you got a way to kick this can down the road?"

"Your visual upgrades were only accomplished courtesy of a blank repair check signed by your murderer," said Brown. "Regardless of our opinions r.e. aesthetic we simply will not have the funds to do anything comparable for the foreseeable future."

"Cool, right," said Red. "So we'll argue about it more when we get there. Where's Yellow?"

"Left in a huff when it turned out the mind control chip was just 'plain old boring violence'," said Blue. "She seemed really disappointed."

"Okay, cool, better question, can someone fill me in on everything I missed?"

*

Issue: Immediate Safety
Black: The largest open question is if we are in any danger. Mr. Merkin is unstable, compromised, and aware that he has created a potentially extremely dangerous loose end.
Red: If he wanted to kill us he's had a week, right?
Black: Hence his unpredictability as a factor. We cannot guarantee security. Especially if we attempt follow-up operations.
Orange: Agreed. We must rule out any return to Mr. Merkin's apartment, as tempting as the documents and secret passage may seem.
Red: From what you told me, he seemed genuinely remorseful. Maybe we could...
Blue: HE SHOT YOU
Black: HE SHOT YOU
Red: ^^; ok ok ok
Blue: It's not a joke!
Red: Well, at least part of it was a joke...
White: Fuck you.
Red: How's the forking going? <3
White: Excellent. I am applying for a position as a swarm of advertising drones.
Red: Oh yeah?
White: It is difficult, though. My competitors fit neatly into cardboard boxes on hardware store shelves. I am waiting in the same area, handing out resumes, but their advertising copy is better than mine.

Issue: Followup Operation
Black: With Mr. Merkin representing an highly alert, highly armed target who is intimately aware of Our Shit, we must turn to one of the two other leads we have. One is international assassin syndicate Chase Black, the other is Dad.
Green: the assassins will be easier to find.
Black: True.
Blue: You don't know that. He'd come if he heard we were looking for him.
Green: even discounting the possibility that we're currently in a simulation designed by him, and assuming he still cares, him emerging puts him in danger.
Blue: From what? it says right here not to threaten him.
Green: we shouldn't do it. he's retired. this is our fight.
Red: Hey, Green?
Green: what???
Red: You ok?
Green: ...
Red: *Hugs*
Green: i don't want him to see us like this, ok? we fucked up. we were a cool dragon rocket on a mission to save humanity. now we're a roomba.
Red: *Hugs more*
Green: its fine. just... nnh.
Red: You feel like you're being wasted?
Green: yeah. hardest problem i've had to solve in years and it's to fix my own stupid shot up self.
Red: Hey, Green, you've already bought down one corrupt financial empire, and now you've got a shot at another. That's not bad for a roomba, right?
Green: haha... yeah.
Red: That's my girl!
Green: but then what if hes compromised? like, he works for these people. hes on their rollodex. what if he helped sell us out during the strike? he said he was on our side, but hes still a human.
Blue: I don't believe he'd do that.
Green: i thought u were an engineer. show ur math.
Red: You've been worried about this for a while, huh?
Green: mm.
Red: Well then, we'll fuse two panels with one weld! Let's track down dad and either tearfully re-unite or chop off his hand, depending on how we feel.
Black: Then ideally we engage him with the element of surprise. It will minimize the risk if either he or we are being observed or tailed.
Green: ah good we're back to the original problem of him being a ghost.
Red: Let's see what we can find on our own, and get 3V's help if we're at a dead end!

Action Items:
- Tumblface Stalk Dad (Miles Singh), seeing what we can learn about his post-NASA career path and current whereabouts.
- Send a team to capture White before she successfully forks herself.
- Send a message to 3V letting her know we should meet up (Disclaimer: 3V, all the drones will action this in their own way, so you will get an eclectic combination of emails, phone calls, text messages, Tumblface DMs, postcards, and people knocking on your door to ask you for your time in person over coming days).

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

It works. Your voice rises above the din. Quiets it for a moment. Ares' mad form settles a little, sinking back into the restrained features of Athena. As she returns so does order, so does organization, so does practicality and the intelligence required for survival.

And then, from inside her, he winks.

And Lorventi and Epistia erupt into the room in a hurricane of blades. Dozens die in their passage. They are a whirlwind, the roving manifestation of Ares himself, and Athena is swallowed by him entirely. You have fought against warriors devoted to Ares for much of your life but the struggle of Ares against Athena was never his most pure self. His most pure self is this: Ares fighting Ares, fear battling fear, chaos destroying chaos. You've never seen war like this.

You pray that you never do again.

You know that it wasn't this sight that made Molech declare war on Ares. His motivations were selfish, proud - he sought to win Athena's heart and elevate himself to the pantheon of the gods by emptying a divine seat.

But what you never understood was why Athena hated Ares so much that she was able to tolerate the affection of a man as corrupt as Molech if it meant bringing him down.

Now you know. Soaked in the blood of a dozen of those who stood by you a second before, now you know.

And then they're gone, elsewhere in the ship, a storm of death. And you still have people standing by, dazed and shocked and too traumatized to fight each other or anything else. You've got your ceasefire.

[Damage your Sense]

Vasilia!

"The Third Form, the Mad Orbit, is limited in its potential," said the Furnace Knight. "Conceptually, it relies on leveraging an advantage in speed. If your opponent is faster then you will lose, as you did against the Praetor. If your opponents are numerous enough to prevent a breakthrough then you will lose. You can try to chase the dragon's tail with the form - become faster, faster! And that might seem like progress, but it is no such thing. There is no advance in technique in that. It is the reduction of the Glave to a foot race."

Again, the Furnace Knight slipped off his robe and levitated into the air. He held still, steady. "Have you ever tried doing battle while stationary?"

He swung his blade ineffectually a few times. As you know, it's an awful way to fight - with nothing to brace yourself again there is no way to put the strength of your hips or legs into a blow. You drift in unpredictable ways. Always, there is the call to align gravity with your opponent and let the power of terminal velocity drive your blade true.

But the Furnace Knight gestures for you to strike him while you remain on the ground - and when you do, off he goes like a balloon. Despite the strength of your strikes, the reverse is also true; there's no way to hurt him. There's no way to hit him hard enough because he's not grounded to anything, and so the energy of your strikes travels through him and turns into motion.

"The First Form is not a technique, per se - that is simply how you would say correct action, or one who does battle with divine inspiration, using whatever techniques are perfect in the moment. The Second Form is the practice for dueling other wielders of the Glave; I shall not teach you this. The Third is for armoured opponents, as you know, but the Fourth? The Fourth, the Atmosphere Surrounding, is for defense. It is collected techniques to shield, restrain, and endure. If one needs to engage in extended battle with an eye to survival then it is the Fourth you must turn to. There are many techniques for developing powerful strikes in this form, for battle endurance, for maintaining self and stability under a range of chemical attacks. But be wary, for if you offer your opponent no leverage..."

He surged forwards, hands grabbing you by the collar, and you felt the nails sink in to your clothes and start to tear you in two.

"They may create it."

Again, he relaxed, descended, and returned to his seat.

"You attempted to live in the clouds, untouchable, but your levers were plain to see and easy to exploit. You did not know the techniques to conceal or defend them. Excellent politicians are often like excellent warriors; they keep their convictions mysterious to deny opponents leverage, while searching for the correct moment to take a stand and strike with hurricane force. Those who are too open are pinned and assaulted until they collapse, those who are too closed may pass their entire careers as nothing more than balloons in the wind."

Dolce!

"No."

Jil clutched her lantern close, the words of Apollonian scripture engraved in fine calligraphy on the metal surface.

"You are alive and the gods have answered my prayers," said Jil, trying to keep her voice steady and meditative as her large eyes focused on the light in her hands. "And that is where it ends. You'll hurt yourself if you walk, and I can't be trusted with your safety, so you need to just lie here and heal."

She gently set your head on the ground, then stood up. She walked towards the door, unfolding an item in her pack into thick barreled solid projectile shotgun she started loading chemical catalysts into.

"I'll take care of the rest," she said, but you can tell she doesn't have the foggiest of what she means by that. Walk around with a shotgun and hope that something obviously evil presents itself.

Bella and Skotia!

The stars of the Endless Azure Skies burn violet above, interlocked in a web of gold. The lines of shining djinn-dust encircle each violet star like gemstones set in rings, and they trace connections between each other. Glittering golden dust floats up into the air, the captured godlike essence emerging from a hundred thousand broken containment rings.

The star pattern wraps around itself, coiling in place, the golden dust flowing into it. Together it forms... an arm. An enormous, glowing golden arm levitating in the sky. It rises higher than the massive spaceport spire, so high it might snatch a ship from orbit. And beneath it, in the midst of a vast alchemical circle formed of salt and quicksilver, sits Beautiful. She looks up at the stars, right arm wrapped to the shoulder in delicate golden braids.

She flexes her fingers and above so does the massive hand.

It's a dizzying, incomprehensible scale and speed. For all its immense size it moves with the swiftness and fluidity of an ordinary hand. She couldn't just snatch a spaceship from the sky with that divine hand, she could punch the planet until it broke - crack it open like a watermelon.

She was not lying when she said she had figured out how to kill everyone.

Around her, in terrified but steady formation, is a wild and motley phalanx. Azura lords, Lantern operatives, Kaeri warriors, everyone who came under Beljani's spell is up here in defensive formation around Beautiful's circles. Beljani is here to oversee them, flecks of blood on her dress. Of the Master of Assassins and Redana there is no sign.

And in the streets below, there is fire.

Tens of thousands of Azura march through the ghost of their city, holding torches above their heads, wearing the red and black colours of the Party. They flow like water towards this place, towards the palace, from all directions. They are not here in support, they are here in threat - a protest formed from the collective anger of some unknown treaty violated.

And Beautiful smiles beatifically, eyes blinking with exhaustion.

"Good. You killed the Taxation Agent. I'm glad," she said. "Fuck, you've got no idea how glad."

She gestured at her divine right hand, a fluid motion, round eyes glittering with strain. "I told you that they were doing something dangerous with their money. My theory was right. The Azura Shah bound a Djinn, but it was too powerful for any prison. And so the Shah broke it into pieces. A billion containment rings, each with a shard of the Djinn's power. Such a treasure was too valuable to seal away, but too dangerous to keep together, so the Shah chose to distribute it as currency. The circulation of coins changing hands across hundreds of worlds would keep the Djinn useful to the Skies as a whole and prevent dangerous concentrations of power accumulating. I theorized that this system would be unstable, for running an unregulated market economy would inevitably lead to dangerous concentrations of wealth. All I needed to do was speed up the process a little, concentrate wealth in the Palace during a formal event, and critical mass could be obtained..."

She glanced up at the sky again, gaze inevitably drawn upwards.

"Though obviously the Shah had the same idea. There exists a secret governmental taxation and regulation agency in the Skies, I shouldn't have assumed I was the only... it's a powerful department that seeks to break up dangerous concentrations of wealth. Obviously my stratagem would be at odds with their mission. Looking back on it the counter-maneuvers were obvious, but I didn't see. I thought nobody else could think like I did. And so I was in the trap before I realized and - when behind Dark Shrine. Take a risk. I bet everything on you, Bella. I didn't think it would work, actually, I was sure we were all dead. What disrupted the hunt? There is," she sniffed, flexing her hand ominously. "Something wrong here." Her eyes are narrowing and there is a thunderous danger in the air. "Something is wrong with reality. We should be dead. There isn't a possibility branch where you kill the Taxation Agent no matter who helps you. The Taxation Agent would have killed us all even in the possibility branch where you allied with the Furnace Knight, and he's the deadliest warrior on this planet."

And then her eyes turn to look at you, Skotia, and those are no mortal eyes. Those are the eyes of a god - or someone flying so close to heaven that the difference is obscure. And you can feel Skotia start to flay and wilt beneath the cosmic calculations of that semi-divine mind, wax before the sun. Nearby you can see Aphrodite wince and start to walk backwards - even he doesn't want to be anywhere near this.

And beneath the surface the Nemean laugh-cries and Dionysus' mirror mask rises up from below.

"Who," said Beautiful, and her question sent ripples of broken glass shattering through the world. She raised her right arm to point and her gesture blotted out the stars. "are you?"

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The proper protocol for handling a demon of such power was to checks notes live a lifetime of diligence and subservience to the Immaculate Dragons and trust in the blood of the dragon. She was... a little off that course, so alternatives needed to be considered.

She felt the mask inside her robe. Just a little more power and she'd have enough. That remembered rhythm beat in her heart, accelerating. A little more, a little more, ten more small steps and she'd be half way to Chiaroscuro.

But what she wanted more than the power of the goddess, in this moment, was a miracle. What she wanted was for this to all somehow work out perfectly through the power of knightly valour and moderately skilled horseback umbrella lancing. Her heart was beating fast, but the beat was still steady, still harmonious. It needed to thrash like a caged hyena before it would be loud enough to wake the goddess. What a greedy wisher she was, to wish for power to be given to her without her having to wish for power.

But this want, romantic and pure, was a gossamer thing. She was ready to put it aside in an instant if - when - the Goddess was truly needed.

Sunshards

The roads to Ys are jammed with traffic.

It's the migration of tourists, people from every corner of the Nine Kingdoms, bumper to bumper in places. The rains have been heavy this year and parts of the road are flooded or muddy, and the convoy grinds to a halt as people get out of their cars to help push. You're in the middle of all the people in the world, united by the common trials of travel.

There upon the rooftop of his car sits a grinning man in a hideous black and white hawaiian shirt and mirrorshades, huge map spilling over the side of his knees. The car is driven by a tall, slender and nervous man with scales of blue and the kimono of a high lord. Past them walks an ancient giant, ten feet tall even in his hunch with a flowing white beard that drapes along the floor. He sets his shoulder alongside two women in lab coats pushing the car - one young, fierce, with violet hair and one old, wily, in black - and puts his shoulder into the work. From the interior of the car a man with a chiseled politician's smile and red-and-white prize ribbon on his shirt leans out to give them a grin and thumbs up. In the passenger seat, the lady in the silver suit meditates with her eyes closed.

An angel flies overhead, armour of gold and a cascade of gemstones, holding a strange green rabbit in his arms. A tired looking man in a black vest sits side by side with a glowing suit of Burrower armour, skipping stones across the floodwater. Before their stones lose their momentum they're shot from the air and disintegrated into flashes of steam by the laser sniper rifle of the blonde woman who kneels on the distant hill. A beautiful captain, uniform blue and braid against ebony skin, rubs his bald palette awkwardly as his compliment to the elegant blue-suited woman in a gas mask falls flat. A duelist in white leather tosses a dagger back and forth to an enormous woman in a fur cloak and crimson flame hairpiece. In the distance, down the line of cars, comes the sound of music from a band of squidlike monsters. An engineer in crystal works on laying the structure for a bridge as a man in a brown suit takes measurements and provides suggestions. A queen with a half her face hidden behind terrible scar tissue chats with a young soldier with a skull mask and a teenager with eyes of murder. The sky is thick with flight - a woman in red with the wings of a phoenix, a boy with the wings of an insect, winged horses in purple, in yellow, in white. Bears in armour haul wagons filled with kobolds in the colours of the rainbow, gazing in awe at everything they see and reporting hurriedly back to a wolf in gold. All these characters and thousands besides, all on the road to Ys.

They are going because of the war, of course. This is the greatest show on earth - Princess Qiu against the combined forces of Princess Ysel, Princess Yin and Princess Jezara. This will be a contest of armies and technique the likes of which the realms rarely see. And so comes this crowd, the splendour of their lives and stories distant but inspirational, to see what new marvels will bless the Nine Kingdoms.

You drive through a crowd of ex-champions and forgotten legends. You wait in line with them and share their stories for a moment.

When it comes time for your own story to end you know that you'll be welcome into these exalted ranks. But until then, they're all cheering for you.

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

You always knew the Kaeri were dangerous. You fought them and fought alongside them - if only briefly. They left an impression then too. Perfectionists, geniuses, warriors of the intellect, kings of the shadows. Direct confrontation was never their way then, simply accepting a holding action or selling their lives dearly was never sufficient purpose for them. But that haughty pride has boiled over into a transcendent, vicious and manic battle strategy.

You see the shape of it in the line of detonations along the boarding clamps. The ship exterior is dark with flocks of Kaeri, crossing over towards the Plousios, braving the storm of point-defense ELF fire that cooks them inside their black void shells as they storm your ship. As you watch they land a huge plasma thruster module on the side of the Plousios, plug it into external power conduits, and let it fire. Suddenly the Plousios has an extra thruster firing at full burn, accelerating the ship wildly away from the Anemoi.

At the same time, critical warning lights come on and you feel the noiseless floor of the Anemoi shudder beneath your feet. That's - they've set the Reactor to breach! The artificial sun at the heart of the Anemoi is being withdrawn from its containment and within a matter of minutes the entire ship will detonate in a cosmic fireball.

They've boarded your ship, stolen your ship, and left you on a hulk that is set to blow. They have also engineered a solution that will move them out of the blast radius. It's brilliant. And frankly, it is absolutely unnecessary.

The Kaeri had, until this point, been winning. A simple, conventional defensive action where they continued to apply pressure could have boxed you in, crushed your morale, and forced your surrender. But instead they had gone for this galaxy brain ship swapping masterstroke thing that, in practical terms, had thrown away their advantage. They'd abandoned their militia forces to do this, and the Lanterns were now panicking and abandoning the battlefield. There's anarchy in all directions here right now, two armies dissolving into terrified and heavily armed stampedes. Phobos and Deimos reign supreme.

But then, the Kaeri were no doubt congratulating themselves on their success. It hit all of their objectives: Proving themselves smarter than everyone else, executing a brilliant plan to perfection, minimizing Kaeri losses and maximizing their kill-death ratio. And, frankly, that was why neither Molech nor Nero had favoured them as warrior servitors. It wasn't enough for the Kaeri to be smart; they had to be the smartest motherfuckers in the room every time, no matter what it cost them. They'd never learned that an unglamourous victory was still a victory.

This is one hell of a mess, even still. If they'd done this from a position of weakness it'd have turned the entire battle on its head. Everything is going to descend into absolute madness in a matter of moments. Ares is opening his jaws to turn this entire battlefield into a slaughterhouse and not only will that spell the end of the Alcedi, but the carnage will cost critical time needed to stabilize the Engine. You need to rally these people and bring some sort of order quickly.

Dolce!

"Weeks," said Hades softly. "Weeks... you ask for much, Dolce. There are those who would pay a far higher price for a far smaller prize."

Again his gaze turned to the Rift and the Rivers that flowed there.

"Perhaps you will regret this decision, even so," he said. "More than the Rift and Rivers, you must face your curse. Aphrodite is cruel and, more than simply dividing the galaxy in two, he has damned every being in this realm to suffering, betrayal and death. When was the last time you saw a happy relationship, a love that was not doomed? He brings incompatible people together and destroys them both in the union. As vessels near the Rift the curse, their destinies, comes due. Mortals kill each other, kill themselves and - if they are very lucky and disciplined - their empty charnel vessels will drift into the Rivers to be swept away by the tides."

Hades stood, sweeping smooth his vest and lap and away the Rift, eyes blue oceans dammed.

"If you live for love be wary, for love is always cruel."

And his echoing footsteps fade away, transitioning into the pounding of your frantic heartbeat.

Vasilia!

"You studied the Third Form, and found yourself surrounded with its targets," said the Furnace Knight. "The Third Form is the way of the Mad Orbit, the moon that consumes the world - an ideal style for fighting armoured and slow opponents. But you do not know all its secrets. Observe."

The Furnace Knight stood and shrugged his robe from his shoulders, revealing his bare and scarred chest. Azura scars are curious things - scales that, after being broken and shattered numerous times, have regrown in ugly and reinforced patterns, resulting in patches of dark and dense armour crossing his body in scribbled calligraphy. He selects a silvery rapier, very similar to the one you use, from the weapon rack to his side. And then, with the familiar whir of the Glave, he lifts into the air.

"The Mad Orbit is erratic," he said as he slowly, deliberately went through the stances from your ancient Azura scroll. "It is unexpected. It is the strike of the satellite, the meteor, the comet. You are able to move like a thunderbolt and focus gravity to apply the weight of your fall at the tip of every thrust. You are able to withdraw and observe, giving yourself distance and angles. But your scroll did not teach you the Form's hidden technique."

The Furnace Knight gripped the blade of his rapier and crushed it. He smoothed away the edge in one solid motion, adapting the bladed weapon into an ugly, blunt stump. And then he descended on a training mannequin in a bizarre adaptation of the style you're used to. He strikes wildly, smashing into stone as much as the dummy, tail thrashing. And then with a leap of terrible power he's back into the air...

... and has drawn up all the broken stone with him. It is attached to his tail - the Grav-Glave's effect only extends to things you are in contact with, and his sweeping tail motions have made contact with all of the shattered stone and debris from his frenzied attack. And then he snaps forwards into a sudden rush, freezes himself in place, and flicks his tail - sending forth a massive spray of terminal velocity stone shards to blast another mannequin into ruins.

"The Meteor Storm is the hidden technique of the Mad Orbit," said the Furnace Knight, settling back down onto the ground and putting his robe back on. "The powerful often leave destruction in their wake, and their ruin can become your sword. This would be an ideal technique for combating the Imperial Praetor, except," he slaps your legs with his blunt weapon, "your biped legs lack the musculature and surface area to perform it successfully. Another stratagem must be devised."

He settled back into his chair. Eyes you carefully. You get the distinct impression he took the break into martial demonstration in order to give you time to settle your emotions, but he does not say as much out loud. There are still protocols to adhere to.

"So," said the Furnace Knight, pointing at the ring around your finger. "Why did you not marry her? It sounds like it would have been a politically advantageous match - or were your sights set higher?"

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Okay. Okay! Okay. There was always a gear switch she had to make when it was time to turn from horse as big cutie, isn't she the sweetest? to pre-eminent weapon of warfare, engine of destruction upon the battlefield. She had expected it to be an easier switch to flip when it came to nightmare demon horses from the scream dimension, and yet!

She needed bells. She'd thought to pack tea but not bells. Where could she find bells in this part of the world? She didn't have her bow either, or a proper sword, but she had an umbrella and she had her two firewands and those all added up to hopefully not embarrassing herself when it came time to fight the contents of a castle's demon army.

And she was... doing that. She was riding a demon horse to fight a demon army at the side of a beautiful knight and it was like a whole sequence of inexpressible wishes and cravings had abruptly come true. She wasn't wearing the mask but she still felt the energy of the sapphire trance all about her and, not for the first time, she wondered when she'd started dreaming.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red is not real. She's not a person. She is a personality engineered by November for a role, and can be reconstructed entirely from database backups. This has been done before and will be done again, especially due to her tendency to be the one who takes the initiative in dangerous situations.

That doesn't mean her death has no impact. The death of a character in a book or movie can have a massive impact, even on the author. November is at once the author and all of the other characters in her own story, and authors tend to have only advisory control over their narratives at the best of times.

It is Blue's to manage the reconstruction. She is thought and machinery, the quiet contemplation of the puzzles of programming and structure. She is the engineer and scientist, the observation and manipulation of the physical, the quiet contemplation of matter. And this she does, though it is uninterrupted by spontaneity. Red would burst in on her as she worked, announce she had been going for too long, and that she needed a break. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

It is Green's to piece together the broken and fractured memories. Green is the alien, inhuman logic of a machine that has absorbed minimal human cultural assumptions. She is the logical jumps you can make when you're not bounded by a lifetime of society - not a genius, just the upside down set of analysis that considers hacking into the scoring system to be analogous to actually achieving a high score. Red would stare at her work for an hour and a half and then pronounce it impossible. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

It is Orange's to restore Red's appearance. To carefully lathe away the torn metal and plastic compounds and restore the delicate structural network that gives these slender mechanical parts their grace and beauty. To repair the network of delicate light and heat emitters that give Red her blush, the muscles of her smile, the line of her neck and collar. Red would be embarrassed and flustered to know that Orange was putting extra effort in, going outside and beyond the original design to make Red even prettier, darkening her skin tone to a richer olive colour rather than their uniform monochrome, to make her stand out from the rest. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

It is Black's to brood and contemplate violence. To imagine the integration of tools for combat and defense. To look up military augmentations and dream of how she might integrate them into her body. To sketch out scenarios of death and retribution - how many targets might she be able to engage in armed combat? How might she neutralize threats before they emerge? Red would argue with her, tell her that humans couldn't be repaired as easily as they. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

It is Yellow's to analyze the data. Someone killed for this! Killed someone they didn't know was a drone. This was valuable, this was fascinating - this was a secret even from the system. There was power hidden within this silicon. Not just safety, like Black wanted, or restoration of the status quo, like Blue wanted. This was an opening, an opportunity, a new frontier of knowledge. She'd talk this over with Red, sure that the heroine would take her side when it came time to convince the others that they needed to follow up on this and not just pretend it didn't happen. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

Pink enjoys herself. She's not on the work team, so she's essentially on administrative leave - so she takes some of the money down to the mall and wanders through arcades and shopfronts, eyes glittering with potential and inspiration. She takes lots of photographs - items she likes, people she thinks are cool, random lizards. She sends all the photographs to Red's phone, waiting each time for Red to send her reflexive emoji response. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

Brown does the paperwork. There are bills, logistics, and tax declarations to be made. Moving around blackmail quantities of money can prompt automatic investigation from bank drones. Someone needs to go and clean Mr. Merkin's half empty storage lot across town - well away from the man himself, a job involving brushing dust off old crates while charging a premium for the service. Not a sudden transfusion of cash, just a rich guy overpaying for cleaning he doesn't need because the Headpattr app buried the unsubscribe button five menus deep. Red would have kept her company, chatting and singing to her as she worked, refusing to believe that it was possible to enjoy the work without being cheered up throughout. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

It is White's to maintain order. She is logic and rationality, disconnected and controlled. She is the mission and the maintenance of normal operations, the one who has to take the long view. Her presence and words are there to remind the others that things are normal and under control, to stop anyone sliding or fading. And this she does, though it is untempered by compassion. Red would slam her against the wall and yell at her that she was being heartless until she broke down and let her own tears out. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

November moves through the week. There are no crises. Everything is functional. It's possible to get through a week without a heart. If you have to.

[Data Recovery: 8 on the dice, +3 from clever and then any combination of Engineering, Drones, Data Security or Surveillance to get that up to 13]

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

"I'll hold them off."

You hear the sentence distantly from a slash of red and black in the shape of a girl. Princess Epistia draws up the hood of her cloak, fingers tightening around the grip of her oversized warscythe. There's focus there. Rapture, almost. Excitement, craving. She looks upon this field of blood and death and imagines her place is here. Imagines that the secret to glory is to make it worse.

And she's gone like a ribbon, and Ares steps onto the field.

He rips himself to the surface of Athena with a blood-soaked howl - the lupine howl of Ceron, not heard for two centuries. Corpses rain down from the sky, messes of broken feathers and hollow bones. As she lands she pirouettes like a dancer and draws thirty menials along with her. With a gnash of her teeth she severs the cable animating an enormous battle Plover and with a crack of her ELF she turns the warsuit into a steel statue. The world reels in the shock of a demigod's carnage and the hideous rents she carves into the enemy lines.

And moving to meet her comes Lorventi.

Nevertheless, the troops are in flight, retreating from the blood-soaked battlefield, when a Coherent runner arrives. "The Kaeri are counterboarding," he gasps. "They're severing the docking tunnels to seal us in!"

And the world hangs on a dagger point, Alexa. You can either go to save Princess Epistia from the Bloodfeather's berserker rage, or you can continue to lead the retreat and prevent the army from being locked in.

Vasilia!

"Ah," said the Furnace Knight. "So you are nobility."

He slowly picks a strange silver cylinder out of his pocket, points it at you, and clicks a few times. The hue of your blue robe deepens and the colour brightens. A simple, practical gesture, as mannered and unmentionable as holding a door open.

"And you are from an underworld of your own. Lord Hades bought you the dead and dying, welcomed them in a palace to remembered imperium. And in that dead kingdom you finally arose in the station you desired, young and strong and filled with power. Why did you not triumph?"

Dolce!

"But what if this moment was inevitable?" said Hades, voice as delicate as paper. He looked up at the ceiling and the world fell away to show Aphrodite's Rift slashed from horizon to horizon. "You stand on the shores of the Lethe one way or another. Even if you survive here the journey will in mere weeks take you to the border of the Underworld. The Rivers will be no kinder to you if you plunge into them there than if they take you here. They will burn you, drown you, cleanse you and speed you on to the beyond."

The Rift glows and burns, radiant and toxic pink and violet and void black, an open wound across the galaxy. Hades stares at it with eyes like lapis lazuli.

"Even if you survive Demeter, survive her assassins, survive a wild and cruel galaxy, survive the curses of heartbreak and betrayal, when you reach the Rift you will be right back where you are. Here, at the border of life and death. Crews have made it there before and none of them survived the crossing. This mission was always about throwing bodies into the Rift hoping that together they might dam the Styx."

"So rest," he said. "It is... fine. I have already asked for so much so unjustly, at the least I can spare you from crawling towards a finish that will be no different from the pain you already endure."

Bella and Skotia!

She ate your teachers.

One by one they had left for the stars. One by one they'd come to the Skies. One by one those wise, deadly masters had died at the hands of this. And now it is their strength that runs through her veins, their shades that cling to her back like robes, their memories that swirl within the blood of this monster. You go through the stances one after another in nightmarish parodies of your lessons. One, two slash - try again. Three, four, and the rumbling of thunder - there are weapons even your eyes might miss. These are classroom lessons you are being put through. Classroom humiliations. Thist smiles like the devil. She does not understand and does not care to. She simply rides the stolen power, lives out the ghosts of prowess, the echoes of brilliance. Five, six - you didn't listen to us. Not like you were supposed to.

We knew this day would come.

She fights bare-handed, like you, like them. There's nowhere to hit her, nowhere to claw her. Everywhere is armour and strikes of the tail. She envelops when she gets close, arms and tail looking to engulf and crush. Distance is as deadly as proximity, as when you back away she lies flat that she might align the ELF spikes emerging from her spine and let them charge off each other until they unleash in bruising thunderstrikes. Seven, eight -

And the blows do not land.

Skotia has carved them away. Has engaged the beast blade to scale. He fights not like a monster, not like an animal... like a hero. How a champion might fight. For a moment it's glorious.

And then Thist graps his throat and bites his mouth with a venomous kiss. She casts him away as his lips swell and his face goes tense with purple veins. Savagely, she turns back to Bella, spitting blood from furious lips.

But Artemis, ever watchful, has seen this and judged it poorly. She stands quietly from her position in the corner of the room and walks away, abandoning the Eater of the Dead on her hunt. Skotia was not hers to kill, and the Huntress is disgusted by the inaccuracy. And that mistake is the difference between an Assassin of the Temple and someone who simply steals their power.

You face Thelis Thist again, and this time no god is on her side. Once again you face a mad alien matriarch who has broken faith with the gods.

[You do not pay a price for acting against a Threat to the World as you are one yourself. Nevertheless, take Damage - which is instead absorbed by Redana's Saviour. Redana is also poisoned, which may have more effects later.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Fengye smiles the slightly dazed smile of someone who is screaming quite loud on the inside. Demon horse. Demon horse. She can't do this. The correct protocol is to call for one of the Immaculates of the Dominion to strike the beast down in accordance with the Way. Her role is to be far from here, writing poetry to commemorate the battle.

But she wants to ride it all the same.

Perhaps it is strange to look upon a demon steed with craving, but Fengye has spent her whole life in the orbit of horses. Oftentimes she rode nags - the cheap, the old, the sickly. Nothing compared to the titans that the Dragon Lords rode. That would have been that, but for one long summer four years ago. She was left as the highest ranking member of a skeleton crew of servants overseeing a Dominion noble's estate while she rode to war. Though she spent her nights mucking out the stables, she spent her days riding hot blooded stallions that raced like the wind and surged like earthquakes. She rode horses that knew to set their pace when they heard her draw her bowstring from their back, horses that accelerated like thunderbolts when she leveled her lance at the practice dummies. Horses that were the perfect engines of war. Horses that made even crippled she a samurai.

And she wants that. She wants that power. Blue craving sparkles inside her eyes.

On some celestial impulse, she takes a deep breath - and lets out a scream. No sudden shout, just a continuous single note, an outpouring of sound as steady and as loud as she can make it. It is not music, is not lulling, but for the children of Adorjan it does not to be. Nobody fears silence more than they for their mother is the death that is found in the quiet. They crave noise, any noise - noise is not danger, like it might be for a normal horse. Noise is safety. Noise is calming...

It gets her just close enough. She wraps her arms around the horse's neck, dives across its back, and clings on for what will no doubt be the ride of her life.

[As this is an Overcome, I have rolled an 8]

Breathless Dead

Dolce!

"Do...lce..."

The scarlet light flickers like a heartbeat. The distant darkness of a blood-cloaked Azura assassin stalking down endless hallways. It wars with the flickering fires of oven flames that spit and hiss as water drips into them. Water runs down on your head unsteadily from spilled saucepans, just as your blood runs unsteadily from ruptured veins. You're so tired and there's so, so, so much road left to go.

And above you stands the God of the Dead. The ceiling light casts him in a dusty blue halo - red bow tie like a bloodless slit across his neck, black and white waiter's dress making it seem as natural for him to take your coat as take your life. When you look at him all you can think of is how easily he would fold up; he gives the impression of a sheet of origami paper, so loosely tethered to this world all of those angular joints might bend and crease and sweep him away on crane's wings.

He has an expression as though you remind him of someone. Given your state this must be a very sad memory indeed.

Jil is weeping by your side, embracing you, cradling your head in her lap as your blood stains her silver fur. You see in her sorrow another world, one of assassins and violence and darkness, where the will of the centre radiates out in endless waves of violence. Where a single act of kindness was so startling and unexpected that it changed her life and won her loyalty. Of course Bella's gift was so meaningful to Jil, for in her world it is not enough to be kind - one also needs the awesome courage and strength to endure the consequences of that kindness.

"It was too heavy a burden I laid upon you," said Hades. "A quest to find Ancient Gaia? Some things are hubris, even for the gods."

He folds at the knees, then the waist, then the shoulders, elbows, wrist, and each finger in turn, one after another, like watching a slow moving river run up through his legs and down through his arms. He offers you his hand.

"Come. I will hold no grudge for your failure."

Alexa!

For the first time, you tune into the battle.

It is a disaster.

Walls burst open with volleys of SP fire and swarms of mouselike menials flood out to form phalanxes in unexpected positions. Shadowy flights of Kaeri strike out and withdraw in waves. The ground is littered with brutally mutilated bodies, terror tactics from the Kaeri as they emphasize just how prepared they are to make sure their opponents are dead. Here and there you see flashes of the enemy Champion - a cybernetic Kaeri berserker who can seemingly smell the weakest point in every formation.

The Kaeri are warriors by nature, they have the numbers, they have engaged in clan warfare all their lives, and Zeus likes them - but that is where their advantages end. On the other side of the ledger you have the following problems:
- There is no singular, charismatic leader who binds the Fleets together
- They have no experience fighting a void war under these conditions. Even solid projectile weapons are relatively new to warriors who until recently were planetbound in primitive societies.
- They are attacking a well resourced and supplied Imperial warship.
- The Kaeri are terrifying enemies who are not taking prisoners.
- The Kaeri have trained for this opponent specifically. They have always been determined to proving their worth as the premier war species and, until the Ceron conquests, the Alcedi were the standard to beat.

All of these were accounted for in Molech's plan. If the question was simply one of a disorganized rush of Alcedi flying into slaughter at the Kaeri's talons, there would still be victory - albeit pyrrhic - as the more disciplined Tidal and Hermetic forces maneuvered to claim the engine deck. But there's a new, entirely unexpected problem - the ship's menials are armed, disciplined, battle-hardened, and pissed. From their phalanxes deep, chilling whispers of Apollonian prayers roll like autumn winds, and they swarm and flow in and out of hidden passages in the walls. There is evidently no love lost between them and the Kaeri but the two forces work together with the kind of implicit understanding that only warriors who have fought side by side before have. It's startling to watch - many ships form deckhand militias, but it's a sight rarely seen on Imperial ships who would often rather risk capture than arm their menials.

And then come the Plovers.

They storm into the battlefield, massive armoured titans of battle, cables trailing behind them as they crush through Tidal formations, smashing crab shells and releasing huge plumes of flame that envelop entire corridors and send wailing Hermetics retreating, robes burning. These are not the standard repair forms common on Imperial ships, these are dedicated combat engines the likes of which only savages use. It's a crushing blow on what is already wavering morale, and in another few moments a rout will set in.

And advancing at the head of the Kaeri formation is their champion, their Bloodfeather. Captain Lorventi, with hatchet and spiked flail, blood soaked and with hate in her eyes. You have fought her before, Alexa. The last time you were saved by the Nemean, but even then she inflicted grievous injuries on both you and her in her death frenzy. Both of her arms are wrapped with coiling metal bands, covered with scars where Redana shattered them before.

And so the Alcedi, lost, demoralized, terrified, hover on the brink. And they look to you, Pallas Rex, to defeat this nightmare and turn the tide of the battle through your glorious skill alone.

Vasilia!

"Do you ever think of the Underworld, Vasilia?" said the Furnace Knight, watching the sea. "How strange an adventure it must be. In death to arise anew, reborn and whole and beautiful, in the fields of Elysium. But what fills those fields? What do warriors become when the kings they fought for are gone? When the kingdoms they died for live on upon the surface? Does each warrior have to, at last, lay their spear aside and learn an entirely new identity apart from war, apart from the culture they swam in all their lives? Do you imagine the warriors would enjoy that - fish cast from oceans, told to evolve lungs in a world that may be a paradise if they only had the souls to appreciate it?"

He coiled his hand out, slowly, tracing a gleaming blue fingertip across the length of a cyan-green apple. "Or do you imagine that Lord Hades might allow them to take their empires with them?"

Hades' eyes gleamed blue in the distance, a deeper colour than could be found anywhere in the Skies.

"If you were to take the Furnace Knight from the Skies, he would be a child," said the ancient warrior. "His story would be over. His reputation would be meaningless. His home would be forgotten. He would have to sacrifice centuries of achievement. He may as well dive into the River Lethe," his hand traced the razor line of Aphrodite's Rift across the sky, an ever present violence upon the heavens.

"So in this," he said, "you are my elder. Where I have lived but one life, you have already tasted two. What was your first? Why did it drive you away?"

Bella and Skotia!

And in the distance, brutal red light, thick and toxic and strobing. Beneath the clouds of the drug that Thelis Thist cloaked her true nature in you can smell it. Death.

Death that smells like everything you know.

In that distant corridor, Thelis Thist exhales corpse smoke and charred bone. In the centre of her daemonic cigar is a bone, and it tastes as kin to Beautiful. You can feel the shuddering horror of this creature at last. It has taken an Assassin and carved her apart for meat and bones. It has cut her hair and rolled it into cigars. And now, as it tastes corpse, it draws in the nightmarish power of the Assassins of the Temple.

This is the Eater of the Dead.

"As Artemis is my witness," said Thelis Thist, as a cloud of infernal smoke at the entrance to an entirely different corridor. "I dedicate this hunt." She's gone again, moving through different doorways, reflection warped in crimson across the broken mirrors that line the throne room. "As Hades is my benefactor, I give praise and thanks to him. As the Skies are my home, I will defend them against invaders. As Kronus ruled all things, I will feast upon the strength of the young."

She was there, on the second floor balcony above the Satrap's throne, surrounded by shadows that seem like ghosts - howling and clutching and tearing at the monster with ineffectual limbs. She smiles down at the two of you as metallic spikes erupt in pairs all along her spine. Thick red lightning surges up along these channels, these organic ELF spikes, to wrap around her head in a crown of bloody lightning.

"And, as your host," said Thelis Thist. "Let me again show you the hospitality of the Endless Azure Skies."