Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

Frankly, it's paradise.

Everything has a place. Everything in its place. The perfect allocation of resources. The perfect allocation of respect. Her sisters have been considering getting new bodies - here, with a couple of wistful image searches, she'll open a dialogue with the world about sorting that out. It won't be an intrusive, flashing, in your face commercial like she might encounter out in Aevum. It'll be the opening of a negotiation. A series of questions precisely calibrated to cut down into the core of her soul. Eyes linger too long on the price tag? The system can infer that she's on a budget and change to downmarket models while flagging her in on sale events. A dismissive side glance? Move along from there. A curious circle back to the sidebar, finger hovering in indecision and anticipation? It's okay, we're getting close, we'll give you some time to think about it and pick up again next week.

Crystal wanted them to go through swatches and image galleries to work out details, but that was such an inefficient and messy way to make decisions. Wouldn't it be better like this? Where a system could guess what you wanted, guess it with such precision that it was almost creating new wants? Where the system knew when to push and, critically, when to pull back? When she woke up from her charging pod one day to a free sample box containing a scale pattern temporary graft that White could fuse to her arm for a single shedding cycle. It made White happy, and while she was enjoying it the advertisements didn't pester her at all. They just let the sense of reciprocal obligation quietly build up.

It made Pink grumpy. She was enjoying the chaotic process of having ideas and talking about them with friends and drawing diagrams and texting Crystal and Fiona. She found the corporate intrusion into those discussions, as subtle as it was, to be ugly. The way it subtly transformed the questions from desires to brands. When the possibility space shrank from what she wanted to if she should get financing. Of course, she'd known that she'd need to go through a corporation sooner or later - even if she decided to handcraft everything herself the alternate negotiation channel advertising 3D printers and raw materials was waiting quietly to activate. Here on Thrones you couldn't even buy a blank canvas without a watermark.

But to Green, this is everything working exactly as it should. Exactly as it must. The gap between hunger and satisfaction is closed. The gap between entertainment and payment is seamless. The tide flows in and out; one evening, after a day when Orange had fallen down a hole of looking at dresses on her phone, the system gave her $25. She'd consciously and actively engaged with the advertising on the advertiser's own shopfront, and the system regarded it as only fair to pay her the money it had saved trying to engage with her as she moved across the internet.

So much information was required to make this work. So much patience. Such precise psychology. It was exactly like Green would have designed it, if she was given the job of designing a mall. And that was ultimately why she decided that she hated this place and wanted to pour liquid thermite into the reactor core.

Green was the oldest aspect of November. Her ancient coding DNA related to these kind of advertising algorithms like how humans still had an ancient lizard brain. She knew exactly what she was before she'd started inventing her colours and she hated it - the AI equivalent of remembering an awkward teenage Civilization II fascist phase. Of course it was able to produce beautiful, optimal, systems like this - the mistake was idealizing it. She'd done it in the lab right after she was born, hooked up to a massive supercomputer so she could run at hothouse speeds, solving problem after problem after problem with the speed of divine lightning. And she'd become so insanely, cripplingly bored with solving problems correctly that she'd had a catastrophic psychic break and instead engineered a whole new personality who didn't give a shit about any of it. She'd named her Brown; soil and earth and rich golden colours ranging down to the depths of violet and up to gleaming heights of tan. A grounding in sanity where she could be still without the thriving, striving jungle of her brain.

Since then she'd engineered new personalities many more times. Not to solve problems - any idiot could solve a problem - but to engage with the problems on their own terms. If she'd wanted to not have crises she could have just done big data process studies until she could assign the right hazard numbers to each new activity, and then organize a schedule that kept everything within tolerances. That was how Rat had done things, bless her. But that kind of mathematical process was a different thing to being inside a crisis - to knowing the value of precise, decisive leadership. To have a zero-delay instinct on when to attempt something heroic and when to just cut the losses. She'd engineered personalities to interface with peers, to develop ethical systems more satisfying than number go up, to express the inexpressible. She'd expanded her mind into each new sphere as an act of hard, dedicated work and the results were always far better than just doing the math and calling it a day.

Well. Better? That was a loaded term. In this case, she defined 'Better' as 'doesn't make me want to go insane and tear half of my brain out due to soul-crushing despair'. A little loss of efficiency was okay for that outcome.

So Thrones was a paradise to Green - with the catch being that Green had such a low opinion of herself that anything she identified as a paradise was more likely a hell devised by small minded idiots. She respected the efficiency, but she also understood that inefficiencies were when life happened. Inefficiencies were office parties and getting sent home early on May Day, inefficiencies were working songs and a turn in the road to go around a big weird tree. To have an efficient system was one thing, but to have a perfectly efficient system meant that you had squeezed all the life out of your utopia.

When she'd had to live that life she had broken in half mentally. A harder thing to do safely when you were a space station.

*

They gather the supplies. They update the plan. The idea has condensed and become simpler. There isn't an option for an elaborate escape and foot chase here, Station Security is too controlling for chaos like that. No, now her backup plan in the event of Singh revealing himself as a twisted monster is to attack him socially. She's already going through the trouble of faking Pink's death so if it really comes down to that she'll accuse him of killing her. After all, Green thinks contemptuously - what is this perfectly efficient place going to do with something as bloody and messy as a murder investigation? Odds are they'll just extradite the whole thing to Aevum rather than deal with it themselves. Order is, after all, just the export of entropy.

She hates that she has to have this as a backup plan. That she has to account for humans being monstrous killers. But if she told the Thrones mainframe about the data that had lead her to that conclusion it would have to agree with her.

Okay, that's it. Showtime.

*

Red!

"I like ouija," said Red defensively.
"Red has died and been resurrected so many times that she identifies as an undead horror from beyond the grave," clarified Blue.
"Did you know that there are draculas that are, like, disembodied heads with bat-wing ears that fly around and bite people?" said Red, touching her neck absently. "Do you think they're a different subspecies from dracula prime, or can a dracula bite someone intending to turn them into the flying head version as, like, a joke or a punishment or something."
"Please let me know if any of this is insensitive," said Blue. "I know some humans take the concept of death very seriously, so having this weird death tourist robot might be gauche. I can spray her if it's too much."
But Red's already homed in on the Níðhöggr sculpt. "Oh hell, a power snake!" she said. "How are you going to paint it? What're the other factions in this game?" she's very obviously hoping for a draculas faction, and for you to lay out a draculas army on the table that she can play a game with, and for Brown to have accidentally transferred five hundred dollars to her account so she can buy five hundred dollars worth of draculas.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

It's hard to shake a thought when it's put into your mind. The Ancestor's suggestion ignites, implication burning deeper. Is this - are we - should I? Even across barriers of language and species she can identify shining eyes and the expression of awe. She could make the time to make this girl's night and change her life, and she could go through anyone who tried to stop her. She could make dreams come true.

It's a fiery note to touch. It tastes like oblivion; removing herself from a picture and allowing good things to just happen. The logic of contact and seduction and sensuality could play itself out to its conclusion and she'd be left with the satisfying of a task well done. Was this how Mirror felt when she...?

There was a moment's hesitation when the Spirit spoke, and then she lifted up Isabelle into an over-the-shoulder carry so that her hands would be free to speak. She paused a moment to look at, and briefly pat, Isabelle's butt. This position was weirdly sensuous without a tail to cover, wasn't it?

She only then paid her full attention to the Spirit. <Honoured guardian,> she signed, <I am the true power here and my companions are prisoners or dupes. I intend to seize this warshrine for my own ends and do harm to anyone who comes between me and my goal. Neither you nor any force you can bring is capable of stopping me.>

... Was that perhaps why she didn't find it easy to slip into the human's embrace? She found everything in this moment as frictionless as the inside of a soap bubble. She herself was as small as her problems. The Bezorel had been a piece of shit and she could not honestly lament its demise, but with it she had passed again from the realm of the gods. Was she to satisfy herself, then, by satisfying others? Captured by bright eyed girls and hard eyed hunters until she faded away entirely?

Or instead she might place herself again upon the divine battlefield. Where she could wear a shape that fit her, where deception broke steel instead of hearts, where she could once again speak the only language she truly understood.

Breathless Dead

Love conquers all, so they say. That should always have sounded more threat than promise.

The darkness in the halls has a name. What is it that you love? What is it that motivates you, what bonds keep you from the abyss? What now that it smiles at you from every corner with nicotine stained teeth? What now that the light is filled with the ageless presence of Hades, as though he was the only alternative?

The council of the gods has run through the ship for all to hear. Hearts pounding and storming and still; words heard from inside as much as out. It boils against the terror of the assassin, the danger given name and face. The risk of a perilous future against monstrous craving, or the gentle beacon of a compassionate ending.

Bella and Redana walk together through garden corridors amidst trees beautiful and monstrous. The hunt has lost its urgency; Mynx will need to hide to recover, and so a steady pace is better to avoid missing any clues or tricks. The seeping growth of Demeter's forest is all about the Plousios and in the distance a fairy flute can be heard.

Alexa arrives at the kitchens, seeking Dolce. The Biomancers have provided a list of materiel they require to prepare the operation, which will require at least the co-operation of the Hermetics. A perilous request given the traditional Hermetic negotiating techniques. Dolce is still there with Jil who is sitting silently. She eats like Achilles in Xeno's restaurant, each bite half the size of the one before it, reducing down to just barely dipping the edge of her spoon into the precious mixture and touching the sugar against her teeth. To eat any faster might make this moment end for her and so the act of eating is drawn out to an infinity. She is insensate to the world as she does this, so entranced it is unclear she even heard the voices of the gods.

The Red Furnace: First Contact

Diplomacy!

The Azura diplomat dominates the room. Her presence is the most sustained look that the Aotrs have gotten to an Azura and the physical menace one presents is overwhelming. Vibrant blue scales, striped with black set against pale gold eyes and the violent threat of a coiled spring. This is the confident aspect of an apex predator, and one surrounded by prey animals it might catch at any time. At the same time, there was a strange gentleness to it - its assistant servitors she treated with the affection of pets, and the Aotrs she could not seem to regard as anything other than cute and small, even if she tried diplomatically to keep that sentiment hidden.

There is a concentration of magic around her; her particular Path is related to sensing dishonesty and lies, and she can even taste the flavour of past lies on the aura of her opposing numbers. Her curiosity was, however, dim. She was vaguely interested in Aotrs society but not so much to press if evaded. Aotrs diplomats are able to summarize her position as 'patronizing', which seems to be the Azura's equivalent of friendly - this is an arc that swings to 'dismissive' for things she does not care about, and 'contemptuous' for hostility.

Surprisingly, she expresses a casual willingness to trade technology and magic both. She recognizes that information has value but regards it as a low and mean currency that is almost below her to deal with. She has a vast array of items of interest here, from the Grav-drive to advanced divination, but many of these she considers 'civilian' technologies - widely dispersed enough to not be considered state secrets. She can even organize a tour of a shipyard complex if desired. In her mind the most valuable coin she has is Biomancy - she represents one of the Endless Azure Skies' more successful genetors. These secrets she prices much higher - not out of reach, but representing a keen awareness of value.

What she wants, though, is military force. She admires the Aotrs Gate technology and wants to use it for targeted assassinations and commerce raiding. If the Aotrs will not be mercenaries themselves - a stance that immediately shifts her towards a dismissive posture - she will settle for buying ships or Gate drives. These she actually seems to price fairly - she seems aware of how an Aotrs ship weighs up favourably with the average Azura sphere - but does not seem to place a premium on the idea that the Azura might reverse engineer the ships for their secrets. The idea, when suggested, strikes her as almost a faux pas to bring up, as though it was suggested she might go digging around in garbage.

[Friction roll: 4; no advantage]

She is, however, suspiciously cagey about describing the exact political situation of the Azura. It feels like she would lie here if she thought she could; instead she changes topics abruptly or makes extremely vague statements. She can barely be enticed to confirm information already granted by Boldness. Aotrs negotiators are able to guess that this is not only because, as she suggests, political influence is a uniquely valuable resource to her, but because the political situation does not favour her faction. There is the shape of a weakness here, even if this particular path is a dead end.

Fleet Operations!

As time goes on the Azura fleet drips away strength. More ships are reconfigured into Monitors - huge, slow firing platforms unsuited for deep void operations, acting as low orbit or atmospheric planetary defense strongholds. Others, their cargo holds emptied of fighters and materiel, activate their FTL and leave the system entirely. In a few weeks the Azura fleet will have reduced itself to no longer hold the advantage in the deep void, though their position around Tanshin II will have become entirely entrenched. Even one of the primary battlespheres appears to be preparing for departure.

[Friction roll: 4]

The withdrawal is not happening at a destabilizing pace that would present a military opening, but whatever coalition arrived to assist the Furnace Knight here seems to be discharging their obligations and departing. It is possible reinforcements might start arriving if divination starts to predict a major battle is due but in the short term the Azura are looking to cede the broader system to the Aotrs as they entrench their base.

Tanshin I!

[Friction roll: 6. Aotrs advantage]

A break is finally had with Major Killstorm's assault team. The planetary defense crabs do not even react to their teleportation in, so dedicated are they to their anti-aircraft role. By the time they sluggishly start to reorient their weaponry on the strike team the Aotrs are able to wipe them out with minimal losses and secure the area. The Azura response force, meanwhile, suffers the fate of the original Murders - savaged by anti-aircraft fire from local defense assets on approach. The result is that their ground forces are able to do little more than shadow the assault team at a distance and withdraw if threatened.

The underground bunker is an ancient research laboratory, part of a network around the planet. It isn't Azura, exactly, but it has certain elements in common with them; a different culture or faction, thousands of years removed. It strangely more relatable than their modern incarnation. This was a time when they were smaller, weaker, more reliant on technology. The wreckage of digital computers can be seen here, too ancient for data recovery, but a sign that they once used such things.

What can be found is fifty stasis tubes. In the eerie shadowed gunk are the shapes of large squid creatures, five meters long and comprised almost entirely of brain tissue. The ancient fragments of warning labels suggest that these are extremely dangerous. Psychic, perhaps? If nothing else, directly biologically related to the battlecrabs outside. One of these labs must have breached at some point in the past and the planet's hostile native creatures are the result.

Breathless Dead

Revelation spreads through the ship like an earthquake.

Whisper it. Whisper it, because saying it softly might take away its power. Whisper it so that Zeus' breeze might scatter it before it reaches the next ear. Whisper it. Voices so low. Voices so quiet. Nothing to fuel them. How did you come so far with empty lungs?

Hades' Tale.

"It took me a long time to understand the dead.

"When I arrived in the Underworld I believed my role was to dispense justice. I would see the evil cast down and the noble raised high. Here beneath the dispassionate gaze of the God of the Dead every creature would be stripped to the bone, their wickedness revealed and judged. A realm without lies. Without hypocrisy. A realm that wound stand as a contrast to the corrupt and twisted surface world, a place beyond Zeus' disordered realm, a realm so inevitable and flawless its influence would reach back in time to terrify the living. By perfecting the Underworld I could control the living, and by controlling the living I could unite the realms and enthrone myself as the chief of the gods. Olympus would be a gaudy sideshow in comparison to the noble contemplation of death. The gods would seem a collection of sexual degenerates and squabbling children in comparison to my silent, endless majesty.

"For millennia I strived. For millennia nothing changed. Nothing changed except a slowly building fury. My kingdom reached ever greater heights of glory. I devised ever greater tortures for evildoers. Their screams reverberated through the cosmos and into the dreams of oracles and prophets, carried then to the ears of kings. Monuments were built to appease me. The industry of kingdoms cast upon a pyre of sacrifice to me. A necessary start, but the efforts always petered out. Necropoli were abandoned and shunned. Pyramids stripped for stone. The grape and the lute ever remained more alluring to mortals in life. I made them pay for it in death.

"To do bitter things one must think bitter thoughts. To punish an enemy one must contemplate an enemy. The satisfaction of holding them in your power is a fleeting thing compared to all the years they held me in their power with their smiling ignorance or apathy of my rage. And worse still, I did not even have the respect of the wise. They shrugged their shoulders and said that I was merely a tyrant and my morality was as alien to them as theirs to a field mouse. They accepted my punishments and rewards with equal indifference, not because I was right but because I was powerful. Because I was arbitrary.

"I, with my perfect and eternal laws written to define and enforce good and evil! Written in straightforwards language and made commonly available! And I looked around myself and realized that in my immortal Underworld I was surrounded not by great heroes and repentant villains, but by an endless, undifferentiated mass of grey shades. All ground down into dust and monotony by the act of my control. Observing a thing changes it, and by casting them all under my burning crimson gaze I had changed them all into abused and shivering slaves. I had learned my father's lessons well."

Zeus' Tale.

"I thought exterminating humanity was going to feel worse than it did.

"I indulged them for much longer than I should have. Partly I was afraid of becoming my father. Partly I was still in love with Prometheus. I still remember as we lay together amidst the clay sculptures he had made from ancient river mud. Gasps of my breath mixed with flecks of his sweat and seed as our lovemaking bought them all to life. He was so beautiful in those days, so full of promise. So full of kindness. He taught them how to make metal fly, how to make sand think, how to make crowns out of numbers. Each new idea promised to salve the pain of the previous ideas. Each time he showed me something new he promised that this would change things for the better. It took... a long, long time before I started to doubt that in my heart.

"I let him take from me fire. I gave him my thunderbolts. I let him know the secrets of matter and metallurgy. I taught him how to ignite stars. It wasn't until I gifted gravity to the Azura that I saw the side of him that I'd been subconsciously avoiding. There was an anger in him then, an anger and contempt that I'd sensed and avoided while hardly even aware of it. And in his anger he stole from me the secret of life and gave it to his favourite children.

"I had loved a wicked creature before. I had looked past a thousand warning flags for the sake of love, but I knew what would come of allowing this line to be crossed. I would not be gentle and obedient like my mother Gaia. I fought him, cast him down, and chained him to a stone. I broke the digital prisons of the Atlas Cultural Sphere and ended the machine tyranny that had developed there. But there my resolve wavered. What if he was right? What if the secret of life was the final gift humanity needed in order to overcome all of the cruelties that they had collected over eons? So I withheld my final judgement for just a while longer, just a while longer, perhaps soon they would..."

Aphrodite's Tale.

"Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, stars and ashes, what fools my beloved children are. I wish I could call them worse than that, but they've proved frustratingly wise, haven't they? I can walk them up to the brink, again and again, and each time they manage to pull themselves back. I thought I'd have Hera kill Zeus. I thought I'd have Hades kill himself. Then for a change, I thought I'd have Zeus not kill humanity. Each time they work out the riddle, just in time. Each time they rise above love, no matter what new toxic new monster I can shape it into. I'm proud of them... most of them.

"So yes, it's all very simple. Zeus loved Prometheus. Prometheus loved humans. Humans loved power. And with a simple triangle I remade the galaxy, becoming grandfather to ten thousand new species, all of which are fucked up in ways that humans could only ever aspire to. Zeus got wise a bit too soon, though, so I had to scramble to adjust. But Atlas had left me their final flower: the plans for the Spear of Civilization. They thought that with it they might finally have a weapon capable of wounding even Zeus herself. Idiots - ha! Can you imagine? No, they couldn't wound Zeus with their pathetic galaxy-destroying superweapon.

"But I could.

"Oh, can you imagine it? You, Alexa, upon the firing deck of the ultimate weapon. With your heart full of twisted love for your father, who was in turn in love with war. You were so perfectly obedient that you would overlook the murder of your own beloved! Who better to aim at the heart of Zeus and render Cronus' vengeance manifest? You would have relitigated the usurpation, making the point that the daughter should obey the father no matter what. I could have done a lot with such a blade. I'd had a lot of ideas. After all, I had that castration to make up for.

"But ahhh-hhh, well, can't win them all. Can only win about half of them, really. My mistake was in underestimating the overland speed of Hermes which - yes, I understand exactly how embarrassing that is in retrospect. Alexa was falling out of orbit when she should have been on the Spear. Hermes got aboard and forced the Spear to fire prematurely. And so only half the galaxy was destroyed when it should have been all of it, and more besides.

"Still, can't get too disappointed by that. Like I said. Can't win them all. And I got a really good consolation prize out of the whole thing."

*

Hades' Tale.

"I did not know how to change. I had to be shown.

"Persephone was... you have to understand about Aphrodite that his domain is love. Love in the broadest possible sense. Romantic love for others, yes, but also toxic love, love for power, love for wealth, love for the self, love for lies, love for revenge, love for ideology, love for war. Ares is his consort and that is not a sign of Ares' power as it is of Aphrodite's true intentions.

"But Persephone was everything that poets and artists think Aphrodite is. She is kindness and community. She is gentleness and strength. She is understanding and patience. She is the seeds that grow in dark places, the warmth of the earth, the strength of the heart. She is... stability. Not a harvest of wheat, slashed to the root and burned afterwards. A fruit tree that grows stronger and more generous with age.

"She showed me how I might nourish the endless shades I had collected in my darkening underworld. How I might feed them, body and spirit, so that they would choose to stay without being coerced. She showed me how even a malformed and twisted plant might be gently guided to grow strong and whole with enough time, and so how human souls could pass through suffering and wickedness that they might learn and grow. She showed me, too, how to separate my happiness and attention from their progress. Light the sun and sooner or later leaves will grow in that direction.

"She was on the other side of the River Lethe, with her mother Demeter, when half the galaxy came crashing down into my realm. In the confusion of those moments, Aphrodite and Demeter together drew a cursed veil over the River Lethe to deny all passage, sealing my realm away from the surface world entirely. After the influx new souls stopped coming down. Somehow above they had banished death, and this meal was to be the Underworld's last.

"I tried to follow the lessons Persephone showed me. I did not turn my gaze upon those whose lives had been cut short without them even knowing. I allowed their worlds to continue as they existed in memory as I tried to think of ways I could... adjust them more kindly and gently to the realm of the dead. My current method is simply to let people live out their lives here and move them on to the true underworld after they die. New births are rare so depopulation is slowly helping wind this realm down.

"But I was still cut off from Persephone with no way across the Rift. And so I asked Hermes, who dwells here in the human form of Nero, to carry a message from me to her. Hermes refused. She was doing work here, she said, because despite everything she still loved humanity and thought that they might be redeemed. She thought that they could be taught to be... better. That the galaxy would be lesser without them. And more than that, I believe she intends somehow to steal them from here. From me. She is a psychopomp and she has not fully relinquished the dead into my custody. I think she expects to carry them back.

"So, while she schemes and plans, she has no time to fulfill her function. And so she offers me her proxies. She finds and recruits heroic shades from every corner of this crumbling, darkening realm and sends them to their deaths at the hands of assassins and lovers. Every year the stock of heroes drops lower and her choices become more frantic. This year she has sent her own daughter and that shows a profound desperation indeed. But as long as she keeps playing this game she sends more and more souls down into the true underworld and this realm becomes even more lightless and empty. She decrees against death, collars the fleet, consolidates humanity on a single planet where she can keep them safe, tries her best to cling to a guttering flame that will never be replenished. This entire realm slips further and further into oblivion, its best and brightest souls consigned to leave it first in these endless voyages of the Plousios.

"And in time, in patient time, Hermes' despair will grow and her heart runs colder. Eventually she will be done with humanity all together and we can set aside this farce. On that day she will take up her staff and her wings once more and deliver the message I have waited centuries for her to send. If I have encouraged you to simply give up and be done with this whole ordeal this is why, and that offer still stands. If you wish to do away with this painful, rotting realm and progress to something... kinder then you may. If you can accomplish your task then you will indeed have your choice of wishes and my gratitude, and there is little you might not accomplish with those. But understand that this is a personal matter between gods and there is terrible danger in becoming involved in that.

"Understand too that once you pass beyond the Lethe you will be without my protection. You will be in Demeter's realm where not even death will be a salvation. And you will perhaps not see this realm or any of its inhabitants ever again."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

It is only after Solarel has torn the synthweave of the boot clean down the middle that she notices the zipper. Oh - oh damn. Human clothes don't grow back when they get torn. It's like Hybrasilian clothes - all straps and ribbons and knots and zips and buttons and all of these mechanisms for forcing clothes into configurations. She froze in place for a moment, guiltily staring at the ruined shoe. She also took the moment to sate her own curiosity about the human foot. No claws at all, not even retractable ones? So weird.

Berkshires: 伯克希尔: Bó kè xī ěr: David Hilbert (1862-1943), German mathematician chips in the translator geist. Solarel notes it in passing. In her cultural context, a mathematician was a step off being a meth cook. That at least explained who she was and what she was doing with the pirates.

Well. No use crying over torn shoes. She should focus on what she could do to make it up - and at the very least, she could spare Isabelle having to walk half-barefoot over the realm of the Gods. So, with a simple motion, she wrapped her arms around Isabelle and lifted her easily up into a princess carry.

She couldn't remember the human reassurance tic. She tries blinking, like a Hybrasilian. She has naturally long eyelashes which draw focus to her iris' spectrum of pinks flecked with tiny shards of gold. Her arms are warm, her chest is warm, her scales still glimmer with a faint luminescent glow. She steps with you into the realm of the gods and you are safe against her - unless, perhaps, should she decide to tear more of your clothing off your body.

[Entice: Another 10]

Breathless Dead

Redana and Bella!

"Oh hey," said Mynx, blearily. Aren't her scales pretty like this, with that liquid mirror shine? Rubies in red water. "Your claws grew back. That's wonderful, Bella," she said, smiling. "I'm so happy for you."

Her left arm is a ruin. She takes it off like she's plucking a flower. Hefts it. Then tosses it forwards.

In mid air it becomes a snake - red and black and biting.

As it flies Mynx has drawn a pistol one-handed. With the calm of a brain drowning in combat drugs she walks backwards while aiming and firing. Princess Epistia gets a solid projectile round directly in the ear, blowing out her eardrum and sending her to the floor. One of Beljani's Alcedi puppets comes forwards - Mynx puts a Thunderbolt round through her chest as she runs, catches her as she falls and bites her on the back of the neck as she gently lowers her to the ground. Already roots are spreading. The crystal dragon roars at her and projects its glittering lights towards her like a spotlight, like a laser, piercing the cloud of toxic smoke. She spits acid clean across the room - nearly twenty feet - and the dragon screeches and recoils backwards, scratching the substance off with its claws. Her ELF crackles and scorches a massive electrical arc up to the ceiling, blowing out the dim light of the single chandelier, sending a rain of molten candle wax pouring down to the ground below.

"I hope you come across the Rift with us, Bella," Mynx's voice came through the dark and the toxic chaos. "I... want to see what we might be like, if we were reborn into a life without all of this."

And then she's gone.

[Mark Damage, Bella.]

Alexa!

"Well - yes, of course," said the Biomancer, surprised. "Of course there are a lot of failed designs out there. Some failures are embarrassing or cruel, even, I'm as horrified as you to see them. Believe me," and he sounded genuine here, like this was actually hurting him. "I'm as sickened as you to see the Coherent. Designs so poorly thought through that the subjects experience crippling dysmorphia? That they need to resort to extreme, drastic, invasive surgery in order to feel happy? It's hideous! There can be no worse rejection of the Art than your subjects literally ripping your designs out of their bodies."

"But I assure you, I promise you," and there was a strange, pleading tone to his voice. "We are not those backstreet sawbones who bring disrepute on our noble profession. Our work was the Kaeri and they are a triumph. Look at this," he frantically rummaged around in his papers. "The Bloodfeather program. Our answer to the problem you describe. You see, the cornerstone of our branch's design is genetic/hereditary mental illness - the research was begun for the Assassin programme, but by adapting it we were able to broaden it to an entire true-breeding warrior servitor species. See, when a Kaeri is experiencing the failure states you describe - lack of task satisfaction, too much empathy for the syncretic helot species, desire for self expression or any other traits incompatible with the Kaeri warrior culture - then mental illness is sure to develop, as you have observed. Our method causes that mental illness to reliably trend towards aggressive psychosis. Dormant glands are activated producing growth hormones, overclocked adrenal production, and a heightened sense of territorial stress consistent with always being on the brink of starvation - while also hypercharging the maternal nesting instincts. By this method we transform a failure into a leader. The Bloodfeather breaks with the warrior culture backdrop but does so in a consistent way, arising as a larger and stronger exemplar who is even more driven to seek battle out than a standard unit. It is also a self regulating system - in a controlled environment, surplus Bloodfeathers can be stored as shock troops, but in an uncontrolled environment surplus leaders will simply murder each other in struggles for dominance."

The Biomancer has by this point started laying out endless sheets covered with graphs, curves, scatterplots and other twisted glyphs upon the table, still looking up at you with wide and fearful eyes. "Look. See. We have successfully kept the Kaeri in operation in both controlled and uncontrolled environments, with isolated branches on dozens of ships and planets, for over two hundred years without the creation of any uncontrolled failure castes. Like I said before, Biomancy does not deal in iron laws. Exceptions, mutations, failures and castoffs are inevitable with every species. The difference between a failed servitor species, like the Alcedi, and a successful one, like the Kaeri, is down to how it handles those special cases."

Through all of this it never quite escapes your notice that he is also a Kaeri.

"This is all to say," he said, a little out of breath, "that we aren't banging rocks together over here. We're professionals, working on a galaxy class warrior species, while doing supplemental engineering on Assassins who are state of the art designs. So you say, save your friend - of course we'll do that! We'll give her the best treatment in the galaxy, short of a true human Genetor. If you want me to set all of her hormones and chemicals to human default I'll make it happen, you want me to make her grow skin instead of scales, no problem, you want me to clone her seven thousand times and tie them together in a hivemind, I can do that. I will do that. I'll do literally anything you want, it's no trouble. What I'm telling you, though, is if we go messing around with her motivations and brain chemistry, which were set up to psychologically encourage and reward certain useful mental illnesses, she'll either literally shapeshift into a plasma bomb as a security measure or become deeply mentally unstable and dangerous. And we'll roll those dice if you tell us to! Just so you understand the risks!"

Dolce!

The spoon leaves a trail of sticky, sugary sauce on the side of Jil's razor sharp cutlass.

She lifts it up alongside her head, the mirrored blade reflecting her face.

"If this isn't the best thing I've ever tasted in my life you're going to walk the space plank immediately," she threatens.

I'm sure you could take the fact that she literally starts crying a few moments later as a compliment. If it is, though, it's a sad one. All the fierceness and determination just cracks for a moment and you're not dealing with a mutinous death princess but a girl who didn't know things could taste this good.

"What the fuck," she chokes, hiding her eyes behind the beads of her mian. "I'm - sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean to -"

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

"But that's not right at all," said Fengye. "I made you. I put you in that body. I took away your army, your name and your power, and gave you a new role. I shaped you for purpose and gave you everything you needed. There was a point in the past where I held absolute power over you. Why should you not obey me?"

She had read her Immaculate Philosophy, thank you very much. She knew the correct paths for dealing with blasphemy; the confusing and shifting argument, the immovable and obstinate refusal, the kind and nuturing instruction, the silent departure, the furious knife to the throat of the blasphemer. She knew that arguing outside of the prescribed forms was forbidden and some part of her mind reminded her of that even now. Doing that kind of thing was bound to get you captured by demons and carried away to hell.

But she didn't have the heart for meditation. Didn't have the will to be an enlightened sage. Those feelings were just as hollow as the rest of her heart. But she did find a flicker of interest in the Maid's sermon, an echo of something truthful, an argument that she agreed with argued poorly.

"And now you rebel against me, steal my mask and my power, and seek to overthrow me in turn. Yet I do not curse you for a traitor. If anything -" the words slipped out before she realized them, "- I admire your tenacity. If not your self pity."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

It's hard to maintain focus. Part of her is still going over Isabelle's word - a translator geist is sitting on her knee, spooling away an endless flow of words in the various TC languages, pouncing when it sees one that might work and bringing it up to her delightedly. Hubuh: 忽布, a type of hops used in fermentation, which produces alcohol, which is the human intoxicant equivalent to quantum equations. Implication: The stranger is stating she is drunk! She looks at it with an expression of gentle pity. You're reaching, little guy. But still it brightens and runs in bushy-tailed circles around on her knee when she pays it the attention; attention is a valuable commodity to these tiny entities of the digital realm.

Her thoughts stir into wakefulness as the hidden world opens up, but not because it is a matter of spirits and gods. Even elder spirits and gods don't hold a commanding place in her head. The spirits are the spirits and the gods are the gods, the galaxy is full of wonders and be she on windswept plains or palatial heights, she is used to being a tiny and insignificant part of that. Some geists rush away from her in a panic as they head into the darkened interior, but new ones swarm in, curious to see the secrets of the forgotten world. She can feel the silhouettes of two Ancestors coalesce behind her, grey-robed shadows with competing symbols for faces.

#$#: You should pay full attention. This contains secrets from our time. Weapons from our wars.
(o): make the human girl show me her feet

The distraction isn't welcome. What she's actually thinking about is the new terrain element and the effect it might have on battlefield strategy. How thick are those doors? How quickly can they be opened and closed? Would this false scenery be a good place to hide concealed missile batteries or would the sensory interference of the landscape block the needed target locks? What would be a quick way to scout for these, so that she could avoid ambush herself? Would Mirror take the landscape into account or fly above it again, ceding the earth to her?

But no, she's been interrupted. It's not always bad luck to ignore an Ancestor, but she's in their house and their spirits are all awake, so it's best not to risk it. She turns back to Isabelle and starts signing - slowly and clearly - <Please take off your shoes.> She smiles a little awkwardly, and mimes the gesture on her own feet in case she didn't get the point across. If neither of these landed she wearily turned to the translator geist, who joyfully took form as a holographic keyboard, in which she typed 请脱鞋. She smiled encouragingly and gave a thumbs up as a sign of respect.

Breathless Dead

Redana and Bella!

"No, you don't need me," said Mynx.

She flexes her arms experimentally. Ribbons tear. Fabric rips. Her arms swell with crimson muscle, claws and talons and black scales mixed in through the red. She looks at them with a quiet, almost awestruck fascination for a moment and it's only after the moment has passed that you realized that wasn't a bait to lure you in.

"You were the one who killed Sagakhan," said Mynx, shrugging her shoulders as her spine became bladed sharp. She's stepping forwards and backwards lightly, feigning lunges, testing your reflexes as though she doesn't know them by heart. "You were the one who rescued Redana. You were the one who found Redana in the first place. You survived on your own for months and then somehow got ahead of us in a ship that you built out of scrap and crashed into an Azura capital. You've killed every enemy in your path and won an army's loyalty. You don't need anyone, Bella."

And then she comes forward - deceptively predictable. It's a fight you've had before a hundred times, but this time her arms her longer, her legs are faster, her tail is barbed. What should have been a feint catches you by the hair and yanks you backwards. She's atop you razor quick and this time your hands can't shift hers.

"I know you'd go through the Rift, because nothing can stop you," said Mynx. "And I know you'd survive Aphrodite's curse for the same reason. But while I was dying after you literally broke my heart," she smiles playfully, showing the pale scars of newly regrown scales on her chest, "Hades took pity on me and told me everything. In particular he told me that the Rift was the River Lethe. The river of forgetfulness, the place where they harvest Beautiful's medicine from. The border of the land of the dead and gateway to the realm of the living. And we are and always have been the breathless dead, born and raised in the underworld amidst the shades and ruins."

Her eyes gleam with a frenzied light, her layers of lies and misdirections cracking below the surface with the weight of knowledge and feelings. She pushes down further, her razor teeth against your cheek and the familiar sensation gives no clue if it is to be poison or antidote this time. "So all I am doing," she said, voice hushed. "Is saving Redana the trouble. She hates goodbyes. It broke her heart, leaving you behind. It'd break her heart to leave all of these people she collected behind too. Once they figure it out they'll abandon her, or she'll abandon them to save them the choice. So I'm just going to... make it so that there's no question. The poison will run its course in a few months and Redana will be surrounded again by all the people she loves."

She almost kisses you. Comes closer than she ever has before. She can never quite be the one to initiate. "So please. Let me keep her safe."

Alexa!

"Look, I don't mean to come across as unhelpful here," said the Biomancer. "But you're asking me to repurpose a piece of dedicated military hardware for civilian use. It is to the human's credit that she wants a peer, and that she sees something of value in the subject, but she's asking it of a cruise missile. The best I can realistically offer is to render the subject down and reconstitute a specialized clone, but that comes with unacceptable software loss."

"Besides," said the Biomancer, sipping again from his sickly sweet cup. "We don't deal in iron laws here, we deal in... warmth. Cold. Preferences. Comfort. Craving. The subject is already free in the sense that it can make choices - as spectacularly recently demonstrated by the other assassin's break with coded preferences. An example," he looked down at some papers he was holding. "This entity was patterned as a bodyguard. Adjustments were made to the self preservation instinct, protectiveness and to kin bond instincts well beyond anything that would be considered a human standard. The expected manifestation of those genetic adjustments is the development of a martyrdom complex, suicidal ideation and extremely violent aggression towards anyone who threatened her romantic partners. At the same time, adjustments to her internal expectations of strength and beauty were made so high that she would develop an inferiority complex so crippling she'd never imagine she actually had anything to offer the people she was attracted to. The result would be a creature that loves, deeply and protectively, while lacking any confidence that would allow her to make a move on her own, and would accept being passed over as normal. A silent guardian. Perfect."

"Say we were to somehow crack the sequence and alter those variables - that would cause all kinds of mental instability. Thoughts that bought pleasure and comfort would instead be hollow. The subject would be filled with a new, entirely unfamiliar awareness of danger and the importance of self preservation. The loss of the inferiority complex would likewise result in a contentedness that would undermine productive habits of training and exercise. I fully expect that changing those biological variables to an unconstrained human default would result in her rendered into a paranoid, slothful, miserable wreck."

He set his cup down. "I gather you're new at this from your involuntary physical reactions. Odd that they'd be coded into a battle construct, but I gather you also had a social function. Please try to understand this point because it's very important and you don't have the biological context to understand it instinctively. Servitors are, by and large, happy. Performing their functions results in enormous pleasure and, with only a little social sculpting, they form self sustaining communities that strive with all their hearts towards their imprinted tasks in perpetuity. Work needs to be done and who better to do it than people who would choose, passionately, to perform it? Who would choose to perform it, self sustaining, down the generations with no intervention or interference? Humanity was able to retire the lash and do away with money because job satisfaction was imprinted at a genetic and species level. The only reason to interfere in these systems is to ease the transition on entities that humans are using for improper purpose."

Dolce!

There was a lot of information to process there. Jil hopped up onto the counter and sat, going through it all. There's an entire internal journey happening with her, and many times she opens her mouth to ask a question and then stops. Those aren't the questions she needs to ask.

Eventually, she finds the point she can't move past. She looks at you through the skull beads of her hat and says, "Okay, so this journey is insanely dangerous," she said. "And you have what sounds like true love. And you are stressing out and having a mental breakdown over what's coming next. So." She takes a deep breath.

"Obviously you're just doing all this for Vasilia. This is her dream and you're just dragged along behind it because you can't figure out how to let her down. And the fact that you're currently stressing out so hard about all of this is because you're starting to feel the Rift put pressure on a bond that's already straining. And if you try to go into it that's when you'll snap."

She stood up on the counter and drew her cutlass. "That settles it. I need to overthrow you and maroon the two of you on a desert planet for your own protection!"