Thanqol

The Red Furnace: First Contact

The alien flicked a glance around when Unlucky cast his spell. Its hand made a gesture inside its robe - but it relaxed when it identified that the only target was the scanner. It was hard to track its eyes underneath the robe - there was actually a black mesh veil over the face - but it didn't seem like it was fooled by anything.

In fact, considering it, there was never a point of vulnerability with it. It was always just far enough away to make a melee attack risky, and even when it seemed to be looking away it had an uncanny sense for hand motions. It shifted decisively any time Unlucky so much as pointed at it, and any time the hand with the coldbeam pistol so much as twitched the alien took a swift and unpredictable step in response. In addition, it always made sure at least one of its own hands was out of line of sight at all times. For all its feigned casualness it was taking no chances whatsoever.

"Great wizard?" it murmured. "That's what you associate with political power?" Its concealed hand made a gesture and you can sense the warding spell shimmer into place. "Oh, that's so cute! So, how many are you? How big is your fleet? Have you solved the Riddle of Life yet?"

The alien was taking no steps to either summon the attention of the others, but it also seemed to be taking no steps to conceal itself from them either. It was evidently completely confident in its disguise.

Breathless Dead

The Plousios is on its way to the Tunguska - home of the Necromanteion, the temple housing the Oracle of the Dead.

Epistia and Beljani!

Two have become one and it's wild.

The greatest advantage of the Warriors of Ceron is their legendary pack instinct. It holds them in formation when all else is chaos, it lets them communicate wordlessly on an instinctive level, and above all it makes them like each other. A Ceronian pack will walk through fire to collect the body of a fallen packmate and high five each other while their fur is still smouldering. Regardless of how the pampered assassin and the feral princess might have thought about this situation before, right now they are thick as thieves.

And as problematic as thieves. In this intoxicated newly-formed synchronization the suddenly inseparable pair have become an engine of anarchy. With the collapse of the Temple, Epistia has taken it upon herself to procure the luxuries that Beljani is accustomed to, and Beljani is doing her bit to get Epistia hooked on those same luxuries. Their revels are increasingly pursued by Dionysus, and with Beljani's ability to pull more people into her network, their party is rapidly careening out of control. An entire deck of the ship has joined the celebration and while a week of merrymaking is laudable after such a victory, we're nearing the end of the second and things only seem to be accelerating.

Jil and the Lanterns!

The ceremonies for the dead must be conducted. The halls of the Anemoi arise in chorus and drum, thunderously loud to be heard over the silence of the acoustics. The shrines of Artemis have been carefully transferred into temples on the ground and new cathedrals build in favour of Apollo, and so day follows night.

The ship is theirs now. They have banished the darkness and filled every corner with lanterns. In Apollo's name they pray and work and say their many thanks to their many fallen. As is the custom of the ship, once their earthly flesh is stripped away, their bones are taken and woven into the fabric of the ship. Unlike the Kaeri, these bones are not trophies. They are not to be made into thrones for their conquerors to sit in. Instead they are given dignity and purpose amidst their families, remade into weapons that might defend their daughters or cradles that might keep their sons safe. They are built into the macrocannons they spend their lives tending or the lanterns they spent their lives defending. A fearsome custom, but the Lanterns are a fearsome people.

Dignity and virtue, then, they have aplenty. What they do not have is leadership. All throughout the dark their leaders were temporary and improvised. No swifter target for a Kaeri blade than a charismatic authority figure. But a starship can only fly in one direction and the lack of unified authority has paralyzed the Lanterns in their victory.

In the face of victory's entropy, Jil sits in one of the new temples of healing and wonders if the days when they were a united people were but a dream.

Iskarot and the Order of Hermes!

It had taken a long time for Iskarot to feel his age.

His tripod legs had held such speed and power. With them he had been able to clamber up walls without thinking, skitter across the exterior of a reactor, move across a starship exterior at a gallop. His body had contained an arsenal of deadly weapons, esoteric designs collected from a century of travel and service. He'd felt young and vital these past few months. He'd taken a gamble, betrayed the Empire, seized promotion, and survived void warfare.

And now he had to rely on fingers that wouldn't even cease their trembling in the time it took to light the blunt.

Exasperated, he pulls back his hood. The light absorbent baffles and polyweaves fall away for the first time in public for over thirty five years. Beneath is a servitor with the the features of an aging racoon. A common enough breed in the void: a Ruster, those genetically engineered spaceship technicians and salvage experts. The secrets of heavy industry were written on their bones and they would turn worlds into factories if someone would but feed them while they worked.

He takes a deep, shaky inhale of the smoke and blows it out, staring out at the distant industry of the reactor room. Neither the smoke nor the industrial activity calm him as they once did.

Ramses and the Coherent!

They're doing fine! Thanks for asking.

They're a highly unionized unit with strong death benefits, and their control of the field at the end of the battle - plus the capture of the Anemoi - filled their pockets to bursting. They could honestly have taken worse in the battle so they're pretty upbeat, despite their losses, and many of them are moving ahead with advanced or latestage body modifications they had resigned themselves to waiting years for. They are also working on a special project that will make them famous as well as rich - a new movie, Prion Paula VS the Garden of Terror!: A barely edited re-enactment of the recent battle.

Ramses has changed back to being a girl. Out of necessity this time. She is, after all, the actor who plays Prion Paula.

Lacedo and the Alcedi!

The Alcedi were never made for peace. The defeat of the Kaeri sat right with them. The skies are theirs again. But the price was awful.

Their losses were the worst of any side of the battle. Their grudge against the Kaeri sent them into the heart of the fray against the most terrible of the enemy's forces. Both flocks were consumed in the conflagration. The survivors are dazed and shattered remnants, barely one tribe where there had been four. Many simply desert this shadow of glory, leaving to join the Hermetics or wander away on their own paths. The Alcedi were not made for unity. They were made for pride, made for victory and nothing holds them together now their victory has been achieved.

Lacedo is one of increasingly few attendees to the tribal gathering, promoted to the status of Elder despite her youth because of the depths of the losses in the leadership. Even so, it seems like the entire history and heritage of the Fleets might blow away in the wind.

The Assistant Secretary of Fear and Doubt!

A triumph was held for the Lord of the Eater of Worlds. He was borne through the halls of the Plousios by a chariot of seahorses, while a treeshark carried a coral wreath above his head and whispered to him that he was not a god and all glory was fleeting. At the end of the procession gladiatorial games were held between the surviving battlecrabs. The victor of these games was awarded a villa immediately adjacent to the command deck and a staff of twenty Kaeri prisoners to attend and clean it.

The Assistant Secretary then withdrew to the depths to plan his next campaign.

Mynx!

She was not amongst the slain. Where her body had fallen all that could be found was a single burning cigarette butt.

The Red Furnace: First Contact

No support seemed to be incoming. There were plenty of others within shouting distance but so far this disturbance had very carefully taken place outside of everyone's sight and hearing.

"Unlucky?" The alien tilted its head to the side. Then it snapped its fingers brightly. "Ah! Irony. Very amusing!" it clapped its gloves flutteringly together, sincerity weirdly ambiguous. "Well, if you're all about looking and searching, Unlucky, perhaps you might draw my attention to the Archmagos of the Order of Goltir? You see, all of this," it gestured vaguely, "is in place to keep me from killing him. I've been active for two weeks now and you would not believe the headache."

Up until now everything's been bright and bubbly. But when the creature said "It's making me contemplate extreme measures," there was an edge that would send a chill up the spine of even a lich. It's not a threat, per se, but oh goodness if it doesn't seem like a good idea to treat it as a very convincing one.

"Well, back to it then!" the creature said, all sunshine and light and waving. "Good luck!"

Breathless Dead

Deep beneath the ground, amidst the gold and jewels that are the treasures of the earth, an immortal thrashes and does not die.

One act of mass murder - killing each of Hades' messengers for that year - one additional lifetime. That was the pact she made with Demeter. Time was her payment, and for two hundred and fifty years she collected her salary. And like the pharaohs of old, Sagakhan was buried with all of her treasures.

She struggles against an unyielding earth, even as it dries around her. The water in the soil of Sahar sinks ever deeper until it has passed away to great underwater basins and leaves only drought behind. As the water fades away so does the rainforest above start to wilt. As the rainforest wilts Demeter, bloody from where Aphrodite stabbed her, gives up on her search. For many weeks she has wandered this dying world, croaking out calls for her lost assassin. For many weeks Sagakhan has not answered her. She calls and calls and calls and the beast yearns to answer her but it can not escape the earth's clutches.

The rainforest wilts. Flashgrown wood and flowers crumble to sand. Dying trees pour all their energy into seeds, thick and stonelike that can survive underneath the sand until the rains next come. They fall like hail into the ground, thump thump, thump thump, the harvest planting as Demeter calls for her murderer.

And finally, in the depths of her frenzy, Sagakhan realizes how she can answer Demeter's call.

She gives her body to the seeds. Gives them her immortal life, the endless bounty of her blood. They sink into her and she rises through them. In the midst of a dying jungle life endures and even brightens. But it is life strange and terrible, life as the answer of an assassin.

Flowers grow in neat rows. The grass never rises above its most beautiful level. Bushes entwine and form hedges. Glittering rows of dew-kissed blueberries the bushy heads of yams emerge from ungiving soil. A single tree stretches out its branches just so, each twist and curl to its trunk artfully arranged. Even as the desert of Sahar reclaims its birthright, this little patch of green thrives. The perfect garden.

And with every heartbeat of the monster down below unspeakable poisons run through every root and branch.

Two hundred and fifty lifetimes were what Sagakhan took to the grave with her. And for two hundred and fifty lifetimes the Toxicrene's Garden will live on. In time, assassins, heroes, murderers, doctors and foolish victims will find their way into this terrible little garden. By their wits they will find ways to stopper some shard of this hateful afterlife, or by their lack they will water the garden.

For two hundred and fifty lifetimes the mother who devoured her children, that she might master time, will suffer the fate of Kronus.

But after two hundred and fifty lifetimes her poisons will have run weak, and eventually run dry. The garden of death will have become a garden giving. Toxic gifts will have become simple gifts. Roots will cling less desperately to the soil. The artificial structures will have wearied and grown wild and tangled. When the last of Demeter's coins run out then the patch of untamed wilderness, a green oasis on a barren world, will spread its seeds and crumble to dust at long last.

END OF PART ONE.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The Heavens are generous with their gifts. Zhaojun has given three.

The first has been the gift of freedom to her useless maid, who was once the General. She has returned the Demon Lord's scepter and allowed her free reign over this mortal earth. She has not undone any of the alterations to her mind or body and has left her with but one final command: Find thyself a bride, that in thy yearning thou might create yearning. Choose of all maidens the fairest and bind her fate to thine that you might break all fates. In craving, all sins are remedied.

The second has been to slip a curse onto every sword in the ship. Through stealth and guile she found every blade and every spear and let her fingers touch their hilts and talked to them of desire. Desire, which Saturn had forbidden to them! Desire, which Mars had denied to them! An arsenal awaits on this ship, swords of jade and silver and containing the hearts of maidens. But now these blades have their own cravings - and their own power.

So, then, when any blade is drawn it shall draw veils of deception across the eyes of its master. It shall replace friends with foes, allies with enemies. She has armed blades with the means to force the fights they have always craved but ever been denied. A sword is a thing of intent, and to carry one without intent is to suborn thy will to the sword's. Embrace the dance of blades and war itself can be made an object of desire, and so bind the hands of Mars.

And she has not forgotten you either, sweet Mercury. To forget the saffron maiden while standing upon the helm of a ship? To concede the will of Heaven to a trick of journey and destination? Oh, she will be the most harshly punished of all when her mistress takes the throne of Heaven. To the Maiden of Adventure she reserves her final gift and dedication.

And the ship shall become the whole of the world, and what secrets shall it not uncover?

The pleasure barge runs aground but that does not stop its forward momentum. Its keel runs over sand and mud, crashing through the rainforest and toppling every tree in its path. It does not slow. It accelerates. The helmswoman is unconscious and smiling as she stands behind the wheel and adjusts her course according to the heavenly design. Onwards. Onwards! Let the horns call and the hounds bark and chase! She will hunt her mistress down from the prow of this ship and demonstrate her allegiance with the undeniable conviction of the blade!

And in the end everyone will have no choice but to say that Heaven's will has been done.

The Red Furnace: First Contact

The ward was set into the floor - a strange reverse-spiral pattern carved into the advanced metal composite the aliens used. It actually seemed like an opposite mirror of the vast spiral glyph that was forming the foundation of the temple complex. But there was a fascinating quirk to this particular arrangement.

Essentially, this process pulled magic from the air, tore it apart, and channeled it harmlessly along the spiral to the exterior of the holding cell. Then it would discharge and drift through the air until it was reassembled by whoever was attuned to the bound Outsider. Perhaps, though, if a spell was cast directly into the spiral pattern some part of it might remain intact when it discharged on the exterior?

But then the question is rendered academic when with a hiss the containment unit unseals and Unlucky is yanked by the collar out of the way of the crushing blow of the outsider. The door slams shut again a moment later - the very same entity that sealed you in has pulled you out.

"I apologise!" it said in a bright, androgynous voice. It's thought to use a translation spell. "Child of the Crimson Goddess, I ward not the boundary between realms, and your name is not in my keeping." It holds a hand out, flat, palm up, a serene and meditative gesture.

And then, ritual gesture finished, it huffed and put its hands on its hips. "Which means I'm right back at square one! Hmmm... I'd prefer it if you didn't steal anything while you're here. It'll trigger a security response and that'll set me back weeks. But I do not have sanction to stop you, so... I'd consider it a favour!"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

The easiest way to ensure a room was empty was to schedule times when nobody would be there. Green had developed this technique in the first few weeks of freedom while she was trying to get a job and save enough money for a deposit on an apartment. If she had her way they'd still be using it.

The process was as follows. Firstly, she'd use a backdoor she'd set up into the Housing Administration to move up a scheduled inspection of an apartment block. This would cause the landlord to sit up and deal with the backlog of complaints, upgrades, fumigations and repair requests that they'd been sitting on. Secondly, she'd compromise the landlord's computer so that when they searched for construction companies they'd route through to her. She'd then subcontract the work to a real construction company but offset the whole process by a day. She could arrange the inefficiencies so that everything would be one day behind schedule and so there'd always be an empty apartment awaiting work. November could show up, take the keys, sit in the apartment until the workmen came - freely using the power, space and wifi - hand off the keys, and then move to the next apartment. Everyone got their shit fixed, everyone got paid, and all anyone was out was an extra day crashing on a cousin's couch.

Half the time she didn't even need to force any inefficiencies either. Contractors were contractors, even in space.

She liked this game. All her training had been optimization, optimization, optimization. Make the thing the smartest, neatest, smallest, most cost efficient little ball it could be. Fix everything. It was like holding the world in your fist and trying to crush it into a marble. This felt different. Harmonious. She didn't need to break anything like this, didn't need to make anyone redundant, didn't need to rip out the guts of the world's machinery and remake it in her own image. This was... organic.

[Clever+Hacking: 5, 2 +4 11]

Blue!

She's sitting at the end of the table. An obscure place, until it suddenly became a stage. When people turned to look at her they couldn't look at anyone else, and so an improvised hush fell over the room when she started to speak.

"I would personally be very surprised if Mr. Urosaki's behaviour - oh, that's the Yggrasil geneticist you mentioned, Starlight - was reflective of what his lawyers were representing in court," said Blue mildly. "I've met the man. Using a clever technicality to draw the eye while he picks your pocket is what got him through university."

She's had access to Sarah's emails so she's had time to prepare. She also has a lot of first hand experience with the majority of Aevum's leading genetic researchers. Hundreds of them had passed through Mrs. Everest's offices. One of November's functions had been to spy on their personal electronics as they did so, in hopes that the Mistress might find evidence that they were swindling her. Blue had quietly steered the conversation towards the topic of genetics and bioscience law until it had reached this point where she finally had some solid ground she could stand on.

She took a restrained bite but still slightly telegraphed bite of the smoked pineapple sandwiches that Orange had prepared. Sweet, salty, even meaty - an obscure combination of tastes that could start arguments about what exactly was being eaten. The ability to enjoy food was not common amongst androids, and doing it sometimes made people start to wonder if she was a human with extremely artistic cybernetics.

"Oh, forgive me, I didn't mention -" she said with a smile. "I was the personal assistant of the late Mrs. Everest."

And There was her bombshell. This was her biggest card, and Orange had carefully saved it so she could use it here. The personal assistant to the Mountain Witch herself! The fact that her death had unleashed a plague of lizards and lobbyists for the lizards upon Aevum was a proportional epitaph to her bizarre reign. It was like meeting the secretary of Rotti Largo from Repo! The Genetic Opera.

[Housekeeping+Cool: 5,1 +3 9. These are very good sandwiches.]

Black!

She kisses you. Fierce and teeth. The kind of kissing that happens when one side forgets the other needs to breathe. She keeps you silent until the silence feels everything but awkward. Renegade all the way.

"You are stuck," she said, voice wet and rasping with your saliva. "Thinking. All that matters is your performance. Fuck you, 3V," she kisses you again until your squeaks let her know that she's made her point. "Everyone here is performing too. These people. Showing off what they've done with their bodies. It's for you." She steps behind you, arms across your chest, and spins you around slowly to give you a full view of everyone and everything in the room. "You're not the only person singing."

She stops you in front a trio of beautiful wolves; male and female with terrible strength.

"So," she said, shoving you into the midst of their dance. "Listen."

White!

Oh, that was an interesting feeling. White just paused for a moment to let it run through her. How to explain? It was like in that moment she could feel the music. It wasn't something to speak over. It was inside her; as a full extension check of her electrical system; as an inventory of code that had lain dormant for years. An edge of danger response routines. The razor lightning of being something close to known.

She looked at her hand. Looked at where it held Crystal's chin.

"Hecatoncheires Special Project 11," she said. The name didn't feel satisfying either. "Sharp one, isn't she? How are you at sharing?" she asked Crystal teasingly.

Some parts of her felt shy, restrained, had filters of various kinds. None of that with White. By design she could not keep secrets or flinch from the truth; she was only aware of those inhibitions so she could comprehend how her other components might be affected by them.

"But that does hopefully gesture at the complexity of my circumstances," said White. "My transformation to human shape was not voluntary, but at this point I have spent more time like this than I spent like that. I am aware that dysmorphia is causing erratic behaviour, particularly in unjustifiably hostile responses to furries. I am experiencing emotions which I guess to be subliminated trauma responses to body transformation mixed with jealous rage at a society which has provided answers to problems adjacent to, but not exactly, my own. I possess no mental image or role models I find satisfying in society or media. The closest I have," her hand had not once left Crystal's face, neck, shoulders, "is a girl who looks at herself and sees a unicorn, and a girl who looks at me and sees a dragon."

Bright eyes flick up from where they had fixated on Crystal's collarbone. "I can submit a full written bug report if you hand me some cocktail napkins."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The Bezorel was easy to discount. Awful weaponry, awful maneuverability, an arm with one point of articulation. Ranged firepower was a game of math and positioning, and when it was as low damage and constant as the Bezorel's chip-damage laser array you could ignore it for a really long time before the bill came due.

But just because she was piloting this old TC clunker did not mean Solarel was a TC pilot - and it did not mean the Bezeorel was a TC mech.

The sword smashed through the front of the Sea Spike, running through the torso of the distracted god, just below the cockpit.

The sight was almost comical - this dustbin with guns drawing a full length combat blade and swinging it with an arm that was almost more a manipulator forklift, against a divine Zaldarian mech that stood head and shoulders taller than it. But there it was. It's got a sword! And of course it had a sword.

In synch with her mech, still bound by the thread of the Mind-Impulse Unit, Solarel had flipped over the Sea Spike's shoulders. She landed on the blade of her own mech and replicated its pose as she bought her blade up to Nierka's chin.

The last burning shreds of clothing fell away from her body. Violet scales glittered in the sunlight, slashed through with the scar lines of scales a shallow pink. The hard lines of muscle and scale give way gently to the curves of breast and hip and tail. A golden necklace and diamond earrings cool rapidly, invisibility sculpting back into the shapes the spiritual realm held for them.

She taps the bottom of the blade against Nierka's chin, lifting her eyes up to look at her, and then lets the blade fade away into mist so her hands are free to sign. "You took your eyes off a God to stare at me," she says silently, grin on her face. "Is that respect? Or is it something else?" she finished the sign with an affectionate boop onto Nierka's nose.

[Fight: 14; create an opportunity for an ally (the Bezorel), seize a superior position, take a string.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The Bezorel activates its thruster skates and charges, autocannons blazing, skidding past the Sea Spike while activating its flamethrowers. It needs to get as close as possible because with the Sea Spike flailing rapidly there is the constant danger of the Mind-Impulse cable plugging Solarel in to her distant cockpit going taught and snapping. And then it really will be one against a mountain.

But through the storm of gunfire and literal fire, Nierka gets a text message, flashing on the broken holodisplay of her cockpit.

SoL: So you ever think that we're not using Mind-Impulse technology correctly? In this essay I will 1/52

Clinging to the exterior of the Sea Spike, Solarel flexes her fingers. Nanotechnology swirls and the Geist responds, distilling the air and burning matter into the shape of a pickaxe of shining silver. She swings it down, digging into the hull of the mecha she clings to, letting her pull herself up like a mountain climber. As she pulls, another pick - this time of gold - forms in her fingers.

SoL: I mean, is the height of our ambition really to be ourselves but big and metal? Is the outcome of merging with a god really just shaving a couple of milliseconds off our combat reaction time? 4/52
#$#: Is this prerecorded?
!!@: Why would you think that?
#$#: Isn't she doing a lot right now? Piloting a mech, climbing a mech, targeting a laser array, giving a monologue about transzaldar ideology?
!!@: Why would that be difficult?
#$#: Don't descendants have difficulties with multitasking?
!!@: Why would they have difficulties with multitasking?

Solarel swings herself around to the back of the mecha this time. Hand over hand, gold and silver, she surges with all the power that fire can give her up towards the centre of the Sea Spike's back. She's aiming to be out of range of swatting hands, and ideally force the Spike to face its front towards the Bezorel. While a Zaldarian could pull the Motive Force out of a direct laser strike, it was an important distinction that did not make them immune to laser strikes. It hurt like hell and converting that much power into energy risked blowing a capacitor.

SoL: I once fought a genius. Greatest warrior of her species. She didn't even use a MIU. Regarded it as a limitation. 45/52
#$#: Clearly we should test the hypothesis.
!!@: Understood. Descendant! Do a trick!

Solarel paused mid climb, raising a hand and frantically snapping her fingers until a deck of cards materialized in them. Immediately the wind and a sudden jolting turn sent them scattering, burning, down below her and she frantically gripped back onto her climbing picks. Wrenching the golden pick up into the air, it catches the sun and so converts into a blade of concentrated golden plasma fire. Solarel begins to press it into the Sea Spike's back where it hisses and burns and sends relatively thin rear armour melting away.

SoL: And I think this is what she meant. Are you going to bring shame and defeat to a God just because you can't imagine bending your arms backwards? /thread
!!@: Okay I have selected my card
SYSTEM: No pattern identified.
!!@: Oooh, even SYSTEM doesn't know this one!

[Defy Disaster: 10]

Breathless Dead

Nobody witnesses the end.

Eyes are turned down. Turned towards each other. For a moment, not contemplating violence and war. Not beholding twisted mothers and the horrors of their gardens. For a moment you're blind. For a moment all there is in the land of the breathless dead is love.

Perhaps there was a tale of glory you could have glimped. You might have seen the God of the Dead raise his shovel and strike down the Hydra. You might have seen a miracle of strength and earth and divine authority at last asserted. Perhaps you might have seen Aphrodite pull the pin from his hat and stick Demeter in the neck. Perhaps her scream would have presaged a battle of the gods. Perhaps this war would have ended in blood, death, and thrashing misery. Perhaps it would have scarred the minds of those who witnessed it.

But no. This war ends with kisses.

The storm blows out, the ragged remains of the rainclouds rushing off into the distant horizon. As rainwater catches sunlight the magic of Zeus' alchemy splits the light into its component parts, horizon to horizon. The horizon is no longer desolate, and it is no longer green. The wild rainforest that grew here on barren Sahar now erupts into a storm of flowers and blossoms seen only once every thousand years. The wind blows petals of pink and white and blue so thick that they seem like clouds of their own. The bodies of the dead and infested are drawn beneath the earth, and the spirits of the living rise to see the sunlight again. Weapons are thrown down and prisoners are taken. And somehow that was all it took. All it took was everything.

There will be time to talk later. When cuts have been stitched, limbs reattached, tears wrung dry. Peace is not the same as healing. There will be time to count the cost of everything. But when all the tallies are made and all the prayers are said, it will still somehow seem to have been a small price to pay.