Thanqol

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

She has passed beneath the gaze of the dragon-saint, a blessing that means her crimes were not so great after all. But now, the majordomo, the chief of staff, the intelligence officer. Removed sufficiently from power to take her time with the questioning.

But also vulnerable. Fragile and all so human. She feels stone beneath the fabric of her robe. Blue sparks rise lazily but demandingly up behind her eyes. Once, there was a maiden and so many ways the story could go.

Names. Dates. Connections. Fengye the bureaucrat knows many things, about Hymair, about home, but through the eyes of Venus the connections between those things crackle electric blue.

"I apologize, great lady," said Fengye. "But you have not told me your name and title, the reason for your question and the authority by which you ask them. As Daana'd, Immaculate Dragon of Water said: A scribe is not an empty cog; she must know who she reports to that she might tailor her message, just as water fits the shape of the glass." ... By this way the greater unity of all under heaven can be seen in water flawlessly clear, but to continue with the sermon was beyond the bounds of protocol.

Show me, then. Show me your connections. Show me your desires.

[Centre of the Web: How could I get you in my power?]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange and Black!

"Understandable," said Orange brightly, sipping her tea. "I'll just -" She abruptly made a face and brushed it far to one side. She'd intended to order Royal Ire, an exotic new blend of tea that was three weeks away from being included in a list of things that were making young people these days soft. What she'd somehow actually ordered was Earl Grey exactly to Mrs. Everest's ideal tastes and specifications. Damn it! It wasn't even that she disliked it. It was, in fact, objectively the perfect tea perfectly calibrated to satisfy her taste sensors. Just like every other time.

She sighed and threw a grumpy glare at the teacup before brightening back up. It had been a rather emotional reaction to a cup of tea, but worrying about that kind of stuff wasn't her department.

"Well, then," she said, re-establishing her stride. Now that she was thinking about it she was aware that she was doing The Pose - that carefully designed forward-lean that Mrs. Everest used to convey keen interest and utter attention, the bright energy that implied that she was happy to spend months going over all the specifics of the contract. Sometimes the most scary threat was being indefatigable. "I'll happily set your mind at ease. Encountering you was something of a chance event! I have a different target who I am working towards - a police commissioner, actually - and I very much doubt you and he are directly connected. The police are capable of a great many things but your situation seems rather outside their usual wheelhouse."

And here she grinned. It felt like the negotiation was flowering in her hands. Declaim, redirect, reassure, imply. "And of course, I recognize that at the moment this interaction is currently all stick. I don't intend on keeping it as such! If you need to, how you say, delegate certain sensitive tasks then you know that you can trust me to keep a secret. So with that in mind, let us discuss brass tacks. Please, tell me what kind of assets, reach and influence you can lay claim to - beyond what's publicly available, of course. My assignment specifically relates to destroying a man's reputation so connections in media or politics are particularly appreciated."

Her hand strayed back towards the perfect tea involuntarily. "Naturally, if you have any conflicts of interest in this space, you really must do your best to telegraph them," she said. "Certain processes are already in motion and this might be your one opportunity to move key individuals out of the realm of collateral damage."

*

Yellow!

"As far as my financial situation goes?" said Yellow. "Up until eight months ago I was legally property, and these fancy new rights didn't come with back pay. I'm doing freelance journalism to supplement my income as a maid. So you know, not incredible. Life's a constant nine-way negotiation where everyone wants their own deep aesthetic made manifest in a three-bedroom apartment and the current compromise involves repurposing one of those bedrooms into a workshop."

She smiled, hopping up to sit on the counter, legs kicking in the air. "It's a bit of a standoff, really. At the moment the place is basically, like, an old cartoon's depiction of a robot's apartment. Totally unadorned! But that's just because the budget negotiations are ongoing. White and Orange want a luxury aesthetic, Brown and Black want to invest in stocks and minimalism, Blue and Green want to expand the workshop, and Red and Pink are financial disasters waiting to happen."

She looked down at her feet, the worn soles of her second-hand sneakers. "To be honest it's driving us all a bit nuts. We're not actually used to being all up in each others shit all the time like this. We're good at collectively optimizing to solve problems and working independently. But there's always been a Mission Command or something like that could settle disputes. Now we're living on our own for the first time we just don't have the right habits or experience."

*

Pink!

"Yeah," said Pink. "He doesn't have to go down there but he can't stay up here. But whatever he picks, he's gotta do it fast."

Breathless Dead

Redana!

Sagakhan looks down at the sword you hold against her throat.

She smiles.

And she steps into it.

The blade cuts through her skin. You feel a brief resistance as it hits the spine but she keeps coming and it pushes through that too. She looms over you with a grandmotherly smile and the only thing that stops her coming closer is when the hilt of your blade touches her neck.

"Ah, Imperial Princess," said Sagakhan in a hideous rasp, breath escaping through a nicked windpipe. "My daring Bella deserves so much better than you. Don't you see how fragile her sanity is? How stressful her life is with all the burdens and responsibilities you pile upon her? You've been nothing but a curse for her and now she's finally freed from your shackles."

She should be dead. Should be dying, at least. Molech stood as a testament to the greatest genetic alchemy that can be wrought and he barely survived decapitation after months of work by the Order of Hermes. And yet, to Sagakhan, this seems like it is nothing.

"And if you care for her at all, you can content yourself with that. I am, after all, not cruel. When the battle is done and the names are erased, darling Mynx will approach Bella. She will fulfill her purpose and talk her back from the space beyond the brink. They will fall into each others arms, released from my service, and live happy lives together. Such is my sacrifice to the God of Love who has helped me through so many hardships. Don't you see? You have nothing here worth fighting for."

And then she moves at last. With incredible violence she punches into your chest. Tears through your ribs. And raises up in her bloodsoaked left hand your still beating heart.

"Don't feel bad, Imperial Princess," said Sagakhan as she kicked your body down the tumbling steps of the black pyramid. "This technically counts as a draw."

Alexa!

While you do not, in fact, gotta hand it to Emperor Molech, butcher of the galaxy, the man is decisive if nothing else. You had barely opened your mouth to tell him no when he started his lunge and enormous sweeping axe-blow to take your head himself. He doesn't hesitate, doesn't flinch, isn't confused or surprised at your betrayal. This is just one more step he has to take before he Wins.

"Who broke you?" he snarled, laying about with whirling overhand strokes. "The Princess? I will gut her and burn Tellus around her wretched mother. The Azura? Wretched animals, I should have ended their civilization centuries ago. The Hermetics? I will hunt their Order to the ends of the galaxy. O, Zeus! O, Athena! Where!" his blows are hammer-hard, falling down like meteors. "Is!" His power is a monstrous thing, all strength and reach, long limbs and insensate to pain or injury. "My!"

He has no phalanx. He fights alone.

"Daughter!?" screams the loneliest man in the galaxy.

Sunshards

Yue!

There's something familiar about fighting these machines.

Here comes a giant, five meters tall, eye lasers and stomping feet. Here comes a slender robotic martial artist with a rehearsed sidestep and open-palm chest strike. Here comes a trio of flying eagles scattering explosives behind them as they pass. Here they come, down they fall, but even though there's not one sword or one princess to be seen somehow this echoes all the other fights you've experienced before.

And then it occurs to you: This is Princess Kikil's sword!

This fast moving machine that fires crackling laser bolts as it strafes left is a sidestep slash. This rolling wheeled vehicle that screams down the street to try and ram you is a sudden thrust. This fireteam of five robots forming an improvised phalanx and advancing towards you is, um, her getting together with some handmaidens? Look, the analogy isn't perfect, okay? But the heart of it is. Each robot is a move. No robot's going to beat you by itself but it's how she chains them together that shows how she's thinking, what she's feeling. Sometimes she's looking to overcome you with fast paced combos of complimentary robots, sometimes she breaks out a special robot as a finisher move or as a surprise technique.

Thing is, if that's how she's fighting then you need to shift your strategy. If you stand here fighting every robot that comes your way you're doing the robot-fight equivalent of standing still trying to block and parry every attack. It means she'll get to do whatever techniques she likes and the entire fight will be according to her beat. And you can tell that's what she's trying for, too - she's sending in some really flashy flying robots with beautiful orbiting shields in the robot-fight version of doing really fancy sword techniques so that you're too busy saying 'oh gosh' to remember that you're supposed to be defending yourself and so you end up with a sword to your neck. Or teeth to your neck, in Hyra's case. She likes that style a lot.

And that means it's time to shake it up, Yue! Sure, this is an amazing way to fight, but Princess Kikil isn't the only one who can fight amazingly! Every girl you've fought on your way here has showed you a different way to fight all of their own, and right now something new is glowing inside of you. A Sunshard can make you fight them on their battlefield but that doesn't make them the boss of you!

It's time for you to set the pace!

Breathless Dead

Redana!

The power to harm a God. Not something to be taken lightly. Not something to prize. You would think that the Empire of Tellus would have vaults full of such things, but it is not so. Cursed items, weapons of destiny - even with the might and reach of a galaxy spanning Empire these are not things that a sane civilization makes it their business to collect.

With the resources of an Empire and the backing of one of Cronus' daughters Sagakhan, the Master of Assassins, has acquired three such terrors. She has the Black Pyramid, the Heart of Hermes, and Bella. With these she will hold the field against any odds. She might be harmed terribly in the process but if she can play these trump cards then Athena herself might not take the field from her.

And in your case, there is an additional complication as the Auspex demonstrates for you. If you somehow save Bella before destroying the Heart or the Pyramid then the Heart and the Pyramid will be used to destroy Bella.

As to the how? Three trials are before you, Redana. Strength is sufficient for the first. Brute strength enough to destroy a pyramid of reinforced black stone, to grind it to rubble. Quickness is sufficient for the second. Quickness enough to steal a heart of gold from an assassin's chest. And for the third? Love. Always love, in the end.

Alexa!

You know that pain can change a person. Pain can wake them up, or draw them under. Pain is a crackling, horrible statement that the status quo is untenable. You don't have to get better but you can't stay here. And so, when you look upon Liu Ban's face, you feel some strange hope. Here, at last, is pain enough that it should change something. Here is the pain of a man on his deathbed, given one last chance to consider if he has any regrets.

Liu Ban, Emperor of the Galaxy, has been no stranger to pain. For two hundred and fifty years he laboured in the molten, broken heart of his perfect machine, holding back the gears of a broken cosmos with bloodstained hands. He has known the pain of decapitation, of being reduced to furniture, of being condescended to by his ancient enemies. He has felt the pain of betrayal again and again as everyone who once served him cast him off. Until he is only this: A wretch, an animate scream perched atop an ogroid nightmare of flesh and wood and gleaming insectoid wings.

And still he will not change.

"Alexa!" he roars, teeth clenched and bloody from the pain. "I command you: Cut off your own head! I," a deep, horrible shudder ran through him, "I have need of your body!"

And that's the problem, isn't it? Like Sisyphus, deep in the depths of Tartarus, he could step away from his boulder at any moment. He could part himself from this suffering if he just stopped grasping to it.

But he thinks he can win.

Its why he declared war on Ares. It's why he killed the galaxy. It's why he never stepped away from his machines. He thinks he can win. He thinks he's smarter, thinks he's harder, thinks he's the only one who will do what has to be done. He thinks about old conquerors and heroes with contempt - they flinched away. They gave up. They let themselves be beaten. They didn't cross enough lines. They didn't try hard enough.

But not him. Even now, even here, even in this wretched shape he still imagines that the only one who can defeat him is himself.

Vasilia and Dolce!

So there is a saving grace here. Bella is a creature of Artemis, which means that she is not an instrument of war but an instrument of the hunt. She can't go and kill just anyone, she can only target specific people.

One catch, though. Your names are carved onto her armour. Everyone's names are carved onto her armour. Everyone who has ever been on the Plousios or the Anemoi is written into the big ritual list of death and there's nobody on this planet who is not on the list.

Well... on your side at least.

And here you remember Mynx's pre-battle rituals. Her preparations were anything but private. She had to gather hundreds of onlookers and have them assist her with her formal dedications to Artemis. No doubt Sagakhan had to do something similar when preparing Bella, and that means that she by definition had to do it in front of the assembled Kaeri. And under those circumstances it would have been extremely awkward to start writing the names of those very Kaeri onto the death list no matter how loyal they ostensibly were.

So, then, there's your answer. Bella will kill you and anyone like you without even breaking a sweat. But against the Kaeri she will merely be a stupendously strong and powerful battle servitor in powered armour. The battle with Epistia was keeping her from going through her own troops, the battle with Bella is that her own troops are the only thing she can't go right through.

So there's your answer. Hide from the avatar of death in the ranks of the deadliest terror troops in the galaxy. Relativity's a bitch, huh?

Bella!

You can feel the names upon you. Each of them burns hot, a still-heated brand, pulsing like a heartbeat. You feel them against your exoskeleton, against skin that's still so incredibly sensitive.

It's not a punishment. It's a treat. You know that with each life you take a name will go dark and cool and that will be the most beautiful, wonderful pleasure you've ever experienced. You've always burned with tension, now the tension has a long list of names. All that's left is to work down through the list. With each name a reward. The Master sometimes said 'Good Girls get rewards' to Beljani, but now you understand exactly what that means.

Helpfully, some names are written much larger than others. The Master has certain priorities. You could go kill a hundred mice, but that wouldn't be half the hit of soothing pleasure wiping the name Vasilia off your skin would be.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Orange and Black!

It's Orange who sits opposite Mr. Merkin. Black is sitting across the room, slightly back and to the side, just out of eyesight. It's a quietly threatening pose, like a cat crouched and ready to pounce.

"I understand, Mr. Merkin," said Orange. "But before we begin, I need you to be as explicit as you can be about your trigger words and phrases. This conversation has the potential to become quite involved." One, two, one-third spoonfuls of sweetener into her tea, each measurement precise to the grain. She lets the smile and verbal emphasis imply that she is, in fact, an operator and not an innocent caught up in the middle of things.

She could see a shape behind Mr. Merkin, a vast hidden social structure which leaned down to interface with a human being in this specific way. And that was Orange's function. Green saw patterns in mathematics, Black saw patterns in how people moved and looked around. Orange saw patterns in human institutions and bureaucracies. She comprehended organizations, societal movements, heirachies and the complex computing processes of the limited liability corporation.

And this is more relevant to her than almost anything Mr. Merkin can talk about. You can learn a lot from a silhouette.

Yellow!

"I like that," said Yellow. "Getting to see the full geometry of a... place, once you strip away what's on the outside." She breezed past your back, hand brushing over your shoulders. "Curious little thing, aren't you?"

She steps behind the counter. Opens drawers, looks in boxes, looks through the contents of your kitchen. And you can see some part of yourself in those movements. Somehow she's internalized a little bit of your fascination for the forbidden and secret and you can see her echoing that. Enjoying this in the way that you enjoy it. Taking in a little part of what you shared with her and integrating it into herself.

"Naturally," she said, turning about and winking, "I'm happy to return the favour in kind if there's anything you want to explore."

Pink!

"Oh, the cops want him super dead," said Pink. "Like we should send him to Earth dead."

Can Pink be trusted with a secret? It was never a question of capability. Pink may think in terms of abstract creative shapes but she's no child. She runs on the same quatronic core as the rest of them and her capabilities are shockingly similar. No, the question for Black when building her conspiracy was never one of capacity, it was always one of motivation. Can she be trusted not to side with White? And while Pink might not look like it she probably hates authority more than the rest of them put together.

She's a strange influence on the rest of them, a mind made to fit gods and legends. To her the aesthetic of overthrowing a tyrant regime is itself justification. To her, justice isn't an ethical argument, it's satisfying on a primordial level. She loves socialism for atmospheric reasons, wants utopia as an artistic project.

"And I think Earth's gotta be it," she said. "The level of off the grid this guy needs isn't in Big Circle 01's capacity to maintain."

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

She seems on the brink of answering. She does not, but the anticipation of an answer coming raises tension to the surface just in time for her to spot it and ruthlessly target it. The question melts away in swift and strong fingers, finding their way around pressure points in the scalp, to the electrifying spot at the base of the neck and top of the spine, to finding stories hidden in the knots of your shoulders and gently filing and archiving them away where you never have to consider them again. And this is the point where it becomes truly incapacitating. When muscles tighten they lock in toxins, biological detritus that amasses in clenched veins. As they are taught to relax by the hands of another all of that accumulated tension washes out into circulation, all the blocked chi of months and years at last freed to pass down from chakra to chakra.

It is incapacitating. It is literally paralyzing. You could not even walk home like this. It's an exhaustion so deep and so real and immense that there's nothing left for you to be, an exhaustion you've been carrying for so long finally making itself known.

There is nothing she couldn't do to you in this moment. No question she couldn't coax out of you. She could have you do anything, say anything, take your kiss or take your life.

And... she doesn't.

She doesn't ask anything of you in that moment of vulnerability. She doesn't take anything from you that you might defend at another time. She has two questions - she uses neither of them. In her hands you are, for the first time, impossibly, unbelievably, uniquely safe.

She does not tell you her name. You know that the feeling of safety does not cut both ways. Through the haze of exhaustion you can tell that there's a tension in her as bad or worse than anything you've felt. Despite that, maybe because of that, she doesn't abuse your vulnerability. She just tends to you, muscle after muscle, skin to skin, finding every part of you that is tense and broken and healing it with commanding kindness.

You perceive dimly, later, that she has to be carried from the bath. You are in no state to go after her immediately. It will take hours of rest to process what she has done.

But when you stir next you will feel better than you ever dreamed you could.

[Emotional Support: 10, Fengye takes a string on Han, Han chooses one.]

Sunshards

Daily Affirmation Of The Way <3: "Dukkha (suffering) is the gulf between expectation and reality. Between what the heart wants and what it has. It can be resolved by properly aligning your expectations... or by properly aligning reality."

*

Of all the techniques Princess Qiu demonstrated one stands out in your mind above all others.

She demonstrated techniques for fighting armies and gods. She showed you how to cut heartstrings and excise indifference. She had this weird thing where she tossed her sword from her right hand really fast and caught it in her left hand right as the cut was already beginning. But one technique, used almost offhandedly, always struck you as having more potential than even she knew.

One, two, three - now.

Once Princess Qiu cut time and space with the edge of her blade.

It was during your first meeting with her atop her doomsday pyramid castle thing. She used it to make everyone the centre of the world - of her world. To put everyone individually in a position where you and me was all there was. And in retrospect, you think that she was somehow doing it wrong.

One, two, three - now.

It occurs to you sometimes as you contemplate her techniques. In retrospect, going through the motions, feeling each beat of the dance out you can see that there were mistakes. Imperfections, failures of imagination or execution, wild improvisations that somehow came off as brilliant counterstrokes but were in truth fueled entirely by luck. And you sense that here the true form of her world-splitting technique was blinded by insecurity and craving. She wanted to be the most important person in everyone's world, all at the same time. She was afraid that if she did not do it then it would not happen.

One, two, three - now.

But what was really being cut?

Was it space and time, as you first assumed? No... you can cut them and they're not so special. Was it emotional bonds, connections? That doesn't seem right either. One, two, three. Your blade rotates through the set time after time. Your stance shifts and flows through the motions. Step by step you're coming closer to perfection but you still can't figure out what you're trying to cut. And not being able to see it you keep missing.

One, two, three - now.

One, two, three - now.

One, two, three - now.

The swishing of the blade goes faster and faster. You're on the clock, see. The little cart is making it's winding way up the hill. Before too long you'll see your little cottage. You'll see the picnic all laid out for you on the grass by Hyra, with a view overlooking the waterfalls of the Lake. You'll be so happy that you'll forget all about any lingering regrets for years and years and years until they finally come out as a quiet 'darn it'.

If only there was a way to cut heartache.

One, two, three - now.

*

Your feet hit the ground in a run.

Ten thousand tacky palm trees pass you by, shadows against ten thousand neon billboards. Laughing 8-bit faces, thumbs up, cascading rains of golden coins on digital screens. Skyscrapers the size of titans, all the burrows of the world inverted and stretching up to the sky. And upon the moon, orbit so close it fills an eighth of the sky, glittering in hot pink writing: KIKILLAND.

You reach the edge of the skyscraper promenade and look at the sprawling mechanized theme park below.

KIKILLAND

A massive entrance shaped like a grinning face, mouth open to ingest guests in their thousands. Written in mile tall glowing letters above it is a word. KIKILLAND.

A deep, electronic pulse flows through the city - digital, music, daemonic. Columns of emerald and burgundy flames pump up wretched souls from the lowest levels of Hell. From there they descend into mechanical frameworks, lumpen things with miniguns for arms and racks of missile launchers for shoulders. Upon each of them a word. KIKILLAND.

The sun in the sky has been wrapped in a mechanical cage, a dyson sphere that lets only a dim glow free. A massive space elevator runs all the way up to that distant stellar body, holding both it and the rotation of the planet in place. A word is written on the sun's container. KIKILLAND.

And yet for all of this there is not a single other person. No princesses, no maidens, no wolves, no beasts. No one adorns these streets. And yet, for all of this, you are not alone. You see up there in that distant tower a single white light that isn't in a garish pink or green. You see your reflection in a million CCTV cameras aimed your way.

You don't know how you came to this place, this wild, tacky, wonderful, terrifying, amazing, miraculous hidden landscape. You've heard the rumours about Princess Kikil of the Tesla Hive, who found incredible new ways to repurpose the technology of the underground. But this! Is this the world in her dreams? In her Sunshard? Has she been building this just below the surface, or in some alternate reality, and is just waiting to unleash it upon the world right at the perfect moment?

You don't know. But you know where she is. You know that there's an army of ancient robots between you and her. And you know how to use your sword.

With such knowledge, there is no need for thought.

*

Elsewhere!

You are filled with regrets, Princess Chen.

Freeing an island full of Kitsune seemed like a cool and romantic thing to promise to Cyanis in the midst of a sword duel against the Wolf Princess Hyra. But now you're here on a cruise liner filled with 6,000 kitsune and it's not quite what you imagined.

You can't even relax and let yourself get tied up because they will crash the ship if you and Rose aren't there to stop it.

Probably the worst part of it is how they'll sometimes just walk up to each other and scream-laugh in each others faces for minutes at a time in that way foxes do. Other times they'll flirt with you outrageously, attempt to steal articles of your clothing, or attempt to push you overboard. You can hardly walk down a corridor without having to step over dozens of bound and gagged foxes who huff indignantly against their gags. Fires break out at random intervals and places. Every little while there's a yelp and a splash and then angry yipping as a fox is pushed overboard by another fox. Every computer surface and inch of the sundeck is covered by fluffy tails and bare skin as foxes soak in the sun. And none of this to mention the impromptu foot races that send dozens of girls, foxes and foxgirls racing about at maximum speed.

And they're not even hungry yet. You packed enough fried tofu for everyone but now you're pretty sure that these foxes will start throwing supplies overboard in order to drive up the price as soon as they can figure out how to pick the galley lock.

If nothing else, Cyanis' promise of 'the cruise of a lifetime' is coming true.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

Madness, Madness, Madness.

You race through battlefields. Ghost, breeze, god.

Alexa!

Madness, Madness, Madness.

You race through battlefields. Maiden, avatar, friend.

Vasilia and Dolce!

Madness, Madness, Madness.

You race through battlefields. Artists, leaders, partners.

Beljani!

Madness, Madness, Madness.

You race through battlefields. Predator, prey, sister.

*

Madness, Madness, Madness.

The Kaeri descend on bloody wings.

Many fall in bloody embraces with Alcedi. Wings entangled, stabbing and stabbing and stabbing. It takes so much effort to kill. So much effort to make hate manifest. As they die they live again, skulls shattering in cherry bloom, corpulent fingers plucking seeds from heavy branches and forcing them past unwilling lips or into struggling ears.

The Plovers are upon the field, sweeping about with swords and d-scythes. They accelerate towards the Lantern formations even as Jil lets out a war cry and hurls a javelin right through the multiglass that shields the cockpit. Black blood splashes the interior but still the machine comes. The Plovers make impact and an entire Clan disappears.

Princess Epistia does not carry her scythe. Why should she? Every time it returns to her hand she can cast it out in a broad spinning horizontal saw of death which clears a bloodless swathe through the Garden. In the time spent waiting for it to return her weapon is the battlefield itself. Every dropped spear or cast javelin, every broken shard of metal or sharp splinter of wood. They pass through her hands briefly on their way to new homes inside the bodies of her foes.

Demeter scythes down Kaeri like corn. They do not move from their phalanx, do not flinch as the goddess hews them down. She would have this be not a hunt, she would have this be a harvest. There is no relationship between you and she, Beljani; no mutual respect, no lesson of spoor or flaw. This is an industrial, uncaring death that she wishes upon you.

But you run. The combine harvester comes and you run. Your sin of blood and love and language screams for awful punishment, but there is strength in your legs still.

Ahead of you there is cigarette smoke.

Ahead of you there is cigarette smoke.

Vasilia and Dolce can smell the faint and odd taste of it on the edge of reality. Aphrodite takes a drag as plant monsters the size of bears scream past him in every direction. He gives you a lazy salute and is on his way - unhurried at first, but then surprisingly quickly once he sees Epistia coming for him.

You are at the tip of the spear, coming rapidly upon the black pyramid of the Master of Assassins. You fight from flight and are glad for it, else you would walk a path paved with the bodies of Epistia's foes.

You are so close.

You are so close.

A procession makes its way through the Coherent lines, chanting and incense and symbols and lyre music rising above the flow of battle. You hear the bellowing voice of Ramses at war, Alexa call and response to the phalanx. A mechanical priest directs a clattering walking wardrobe with a staff, and thirty attendants follow in his wake.

Plovers shadow in the poison smoke beyond, slashing through flank forces, orienting now to destroy this irregular phalanx in turn. And through this terror comes the priest, voice raising high for this too is the time for gods.

And the gods are immanent.

And the GODS are IMMANENT.

To walk invisible is to be as Hades. In a sense it is to be within his realm. And oh, how little changes once you are there Redana.

The God of the Dead is everywhere. You see him in the cosmic distance, a black pyramid the size of the milky way. This immensity is not the act of death, not the flickering moment of transition between two states. It is the accumulated and recorded history of every moment that ever went from present to past. It is the living embodiment of all knowledge, the accumulation of all matter, the end destination of all souls. It is as dense as a black hole and billions of times more vast. That, then, is Hades.

Or is he the altar?

The black pyramid upon which the Master of Assassins stands is him too - a reduced, tiny, pathetic version. It is both conjuring and binding. Hephaestus once wove a net that held even Ares. What, then, is this self outside of the self? What did Demeter do to reduce a fellow god so?

How can the great be reduced?

How can the great be reduced?

The Hermetic priest brings his travelling altar to a halt. He bangs on the edge with his staff and it settles, descending with hisses of hydraulics onto the ground. And then Ramses throws the door open.

Two arms of gold await there. They wait for you, Alexa. Not four as befit a god. Two, as befits a girl who is at last made whole.

It waits for you.

It waits for you.

Aphrodite and Artemis are both there, Beljani, sharing a cigarette. Artemis gives a thin smile and stubs the butt out under her feet. Aphrodite gives a corrupt grin and spreads his arms. His left hand holds a shovel.

And beneath his feet, a grave. Open.

It waits for you.

"Only one way to hide from Demeter," said Aphrodite wickedly. "And that's in the realm of Hades. Once I bury you, take a deep breath and put yourself in a suspended coma. Hope you're not claustrophobic."

End of the road.

End of the road.

The red ribbon path of Epistia has ended here, beneath the black pyramid of Sagakhan. Her attention is not upon you - she tends to her armoured servant, muttering and cursing and working with a micro-welder. The blood of fifty Kaeri pours down through the pyramid's blood channels. That gets her attention.

Finally, Sagakhan turns, her magnificent butterfly wings opening to their full extent. She taps her two monsters on the shoulders, a grandmotherly gesture.

"XIII, my daughter. Liu Ban, old friend. It is time for you to wake up."

Bella!

Madness, Madness, Madness.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Black!

Making contact will always leave some kind of trail. Fortunately, the Headpattr communication line is sufficiently established that it can be used relatively safely. White may have snubbed Merkin but it's an unbroken series of positive arms-length transactions for anything on the public facing side of Headpattr. A cunning scheme would only rock the boat at this time, so Black chooses directness again.

Maid Malon, the Headpattr CEO, has a dream of running something more than a maid app. She wants to run a ~platform~ - in her vision some sort of vague monopolistic control over the entire service economy, in practice a vector for corporations to trick people into opting into unpaid work as junkmail distributors. For five months last year financial papers wrote at length about the fantastic visionary potential of Headpattr 3.0 as a revolutionary decentralized digital service market; the end result of all that hype and millions of unpaid overtime programmer hours was the ability for people to send each other digital coupons. You can make a couple of bucks out of the system if you're prepared to firesale your social networks.

A few options for venue pass through her mind. She could direct him to a seedy part of town, the kind of privacy themed midmarket corporate bar where people go to meet street samurai and cheat on their wives. It'd guarantee privacy in the contact point, and establishing a narrative explaining any unusual behaviour from Merkin as the result of tending to a mistress could potentially be useful. In the end she dismisses this approach; if Merkin's handlers are paying attention then they'll run a routine security check on this 'mistress' and who knows what'd come out of that?

Instead, she decides against the concept of a strong play entirely. She is at the information disadvantage and she doesn't know what kind of tail Merkin has if any. Instead, she sends a coupon for an upmarket German chain restaurant, Svelto's. If his apartment is wired he's got an excuse to take a walk, if it's not he's got another opportunity to request a delivery. It's his move.

Green!

Green is in the enviable position of not needing to explain shit to anyone. If she builds a computer inside a sealed box in the middle of the workshop none of November's other aspects question it even a little bit. Her entire value proposition is operating in completely alien and abstract ways, and this is what makes her perfect for this kind of operation.

It does not hurt that the workshop is currently dominated by a vast computer-based project that Green is already running. For the better part of a year she's been designing a Quatronic Warfare Platform and with the recent infusion of cash she's finally had the reach to buy the last few necessary components she needs. An entire wall of computer processors are straining to crunch hideously complicated mathematical equations, tangled together in a green hell of cables all running down into a Quatronic Processing Core - a crystal the size of a fist, glittering as microscopic lasers etch channels onto its surface. A Core is the miracle of data storage hardware that is at the heart of true artificial intelligences - both her own and common androids. It can also be used to run the terrifying software of a true hacking rig.

But that process is not what's occupying Green's mind right now. She's looking at the public database of the Aevum Reptile Appreciation and Conservation Society, real time GPS data of thousands of cloned lizards roaming the streets and parks of the Ring. Filter after filter is applied to narrow down risk categories. She is looking for twenty large turtles with a low accident risk profile. The plan is straightforwards: adhere the portable drives onto the interior of the turtle shells.

That is storage, then. Recovery is easy too: all she needs to do is provide people with a partial list of which turtles to look at. The actual question is one that she still feels profoundly unable to answer: Who can she trust with this? In the end she decides that the only time this will matter is if she's dead, and so she can use the mechanisms of death to deal with it. She opens her Crown&Slate Legal account and updates her will to leave everything to the Aevum Reptile Appreciation and Conservation Society, along with a sequence of autogenerated heartfelt letters to all her journalism contacts talking about her passion for reptiles and asking each of them to take care of a different turtle she specially bonded with.

She also stashes another drive on the inside of her skull, another inside her chest cavity, and a third inside her foot. And then, for good measure, she takes the audio track Black's Audiolox generated and loads it as a track called MY PLAYLIST on her Spotitunes account. Currently her account is set to private, but her will now also has a clause that she wants this played at her funeral.

There. Now it's sorted.

Pink!

"I have ALCOHOL and MEGASTRUCTURAL DESIGN BLUEPRINTS," says Pink as she bursts in through the door an improbably short amount of time later. "I also have SANDWICHES," they are not in fact sandwiches so much as they are bowls of laksa soup but she's trying her best.