Thanqol

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Words, words, words. The Evercity was full of words. Just as full of questions. Why this? Why that? Why are you not the person in my head? Why are you not the person who fits my scheme? Say the words that let me know if I should love you or hate you. Say the words to let me know I'm a good girl, a good knight, who never did anything wrong. Anything is okay so long as there are the right words in place.

Speak Not, said the sage. It was so much easier if you took out all the words and let her life express itself in a sequence of actions. A sequence of fights. Just watch the fights. Just watch the way she fights, please. Can't you see that Tactics are impossible without love? That Tactics are all she is good for?

Blades of silver and gold, gift from spirit and empress, rest on the edge of her hands. She's ready to cut her way free in a whirl of blades, leaving Akaithon a hobbled and limping wreck, easy prey for the lance. A flawless checkmate, an ice cold tactical takedown that would leave her victorious and... Akaithon would still not understand.

She was going to have to draw this out.

"Akai. Why are you so stupid." She said. Not bitterly, not with any sense of meanness. Just, thinking. How to explain to someone who only spoke the language of words. The burden of translation was entirely on Solarel here. Typical high rider. As she thought she put the Kathresis' foot against the back of the Makhaira's head and activated her thruster at full burn. It was a kick in the head, a white-hot blowtorch burning a hole through the sensor crest and propelling her out of reach, but it was a thoughtful kick in the head. Don't you see that, at least? Don't you see that by targeting this part of your God she's trying to get you to think in a certain way... ugh, no, it'd take more than a kick to the head to get through Akai's skull.

She took the moment of full burn scramble to think. Kick to the head and sabotaged repair protocol or no, arm's reach was lethal range and Akai's reflexes were amazing. She needed as much distance as she could get.

"Akai. What is important?" she said, as she burned for distance, darting through the debris. "For you it's... peoples. Nations. Empire. You see the City. Everywhere you look. You see the politics. You see the crown. You ask, where do this person's loyalties lie? You think, she rides a lesser God, she must be in trouble. You think if it is not encrusted in gemstones it is not valuable. You think... you think Speak Not is the same as saying nothing."

She gets her distance and burn-flips around, bringing up the lance in a resumption of her form at the very start of the duel, in the exact spatial co-ordinates she had begun from.

"That is... not how it is in the stormlands," she said. "I would sit. And watch the Gods. Unpiloted, feral. They'd wander the plains. They'd clash sometimes. Sometimes annoyed. Sometimes territorial. Sometimes earth-shattering battles to the death. Sometimes they'd bump up against each other gently, breaking each other apart with soft talons. I once watched the Scarwalker peel the carapace off the unresisting Taurus and rake its substructure before trying to put the armour plates back on. That... matters. To see the affection, the closeness the... love that divine machines can show each other. Enough force to destroy a tribe. And yet they step around the barrier glyphs. Gently. More said in the silence of power than a thousand Imperial promises. Do... do you think it matters to me, who the Empress is? Do you think I was surprised to be betrayed? We call Instanilios the City of Lies. All your high rider talk of honour and... loyalty and greatness means nothing compared to the footprints inside the barrier glyphs."

She was quiet for a moment. And then she lowered the lance. Set her feet. Made ready. Made it explicit.

"When I saw you were using my sword," said Solarel. "That made me happy. That felt like the nicest thing you'd ever done for me. So... thank you. I really appreciated it. When I asked to use this lance it was me doing the same. What I am about to do to you is my most sincere compliment and act of affection. I am worried with all the words in your head you won't see it. Won't realize it. So... shut up Akai, okay? Shut up and let me kick your ass. For love."

[Make It Right: When you allow yourself to be vulnerable to someone you hurt during your villainous past, they choose 1:
- Decline to engage; they gain a String on you
- Lash out; you Stagger
- Guide you; they mark XP and give you a task to help make amends
- Show vulnerability; you take +1 forward to interact with them
- Forgive you; you each clear a Condition and this move no longer triggers with this person]

Breathless Dead

Bella!

"Sure, all of those other things are true," said - said Vesper, because names are sticky and they'll attach themselves in seconds if you don't fight them. She waved her hand dismissively. "But you have blue hair, sister. Where I work that makes you a duchess and purple-feathered me some kind of amusing animal."

She balances brat teasing and absolute sincerity on a knife's edge. Trying to get ahead of any cynicism so that her compliment would slip past natural defenses.

"But yeah, you're a patchwork," said Vesper. "You're an amalgamation of high and low, of royalty and assassins, soft and strong, human and servitor. Nothing about you is in balance, you're not any one thing. You're a bit of everything. I think that's why people like you and want to follow you so much. Because everyone can find something to love in you. Find something to understand in you. That's why -" she snapped her fingers. "Oh. I've got it! Mosaic. Lots of broken stones coming together to make something transcendent. What do you think?"

Redana!

In the distance of the endless suburbs then suddenly comes a tower - a storm of towers, glittering and high to the sky. The city runs up against the ocean - no, the river, a huge and unbridgeable river, only connected where the islands rise from the depths to allow it.

It's twilight here. It feels like it's always twilight.

The city and the suburb and the wilderness has meshed together; a strange logic of aesthetic geography. Here there is a pit, a trench alongside the riverbank for cars to pass through without spoiling the views of the houses to either side. here are mansions ringed with fence with looming thunderstorms in the distance. Here are open streets with the smell of bread. Here is a side street that leads to glowing white stone houses. Here are streets of black stone with painted stripes, here is a horizontal escalator that runs for miles just to make it even more joyful to run, here is the great and exciting dream of cities about cities, crammed into the valley before the mountains.

You carry a princess against your chest in this wild and empty dream, full of everything but people. You hold her heart, butterfly strong safe against the world. You are a knight and you have a quest and that is enough to keep you moving as the Lethe washes more out behind it.

"Tell me about knights," commands the Princess. "We don't have them where I am from. Are there many kinds? What kind are you?"

Dolce!

"It was," sighs the ancient craftsman. "It was. Did you know that Athena is not the only god to have eaten one of her siblings? The school was built on the Anvil of Hephaestus - a lava world, gravitationally locked into position between three suns. A ball of ultraheated metal in the most extreme conditions in the galaxy. The workshop where he built the ancient Knights, forged the ancient machines, made metal work wonders and made souls out of electricity and sand. One of the wonders of the galaxy, the abode of the forge-god. Or at least it was, once.

"Then one day, Demeter stole a seed onto the planet. This was a very special seed, the masterwork of the first true Biomancer, offered in sacrifice. Some say it was a literal seed, some say it was a genetic treatment on Demeter, with Aphrodite's help for the seduction, she used to impregnate Hephaestus. But then, against all the odds, on a planet of fire and radiation and unimaginable pressure, the seed grew. It sank roots into the ultraheated metal and drank it deep. And the impossible planet, the galaxy's forge, became the origin for a new Working that would spread across all the stars.

"And that's where the Collegia Biologis was built. That's where they train the Biomancers - not all of them, but the best. I was so excited when I earned my position - you know, we start out as mayflies? Swarming in the trillions, lifespans of less than a week. Most of us just live and die in that week and know no different, but some of us spend our times on the riddles instead. The smartest, most dedicated learn the secret of the molt, the technique to trigger our internal biogenesis and evolve from an insect into a reptile. And from there, each stage of evolutionary development its own riddle, an ascent up the Helix Path. At every life stage given the option to stop and live out our days, happy as we are, part of the ecosystem. Sometimes the path goes up the food chain, but sometimes it goes down too. Sometimes you need to throw away what seems like the perfect body to continue. But for some there's always the question what is up even further..."

"I learned at the feet of the immortal mistresses. Beneath the three suns and the Richardson trees I saw the fusion point between matter and flesh, and offered my dedication to the Lady of Summer. And..."

He trailed off, frowning. He didn't know how the story ended.

Dyssia!

[Rolling the dice for Overcome: 8]

There's a real problem when it comes to fighting smart, well prepared people who also have foxy cunning. On the one hand it's extremely exciting to be challenged on this level! On the other hand the moment you hit the water they all start hitting the surface of the water with their own ELF strikes. It turns out you were right about the water conducting electricity! But now the water you are in is comprised entirely out of electricity and it's intensely unpleasant.

Intensely unpleasant, sure. Yes. Definitely. But the plan is also kind of working? As in, they're not following you down immediately because they know that they'll get got just like you are currently getting got. You can't stay where you are, so you've got two pathways here:

One, rise up to just above the surface and skim along the top of the waves, up and down moment to moment. It means you'll get hit with toxic arrows *and* electrocuted but neither of them so bad that it'll incapacitate you. It is a plan that reasons, "I have two health bars and I will get every bit of value out of each of them".

Or you can dive deep. Dive deep and dive blind put yourself at the mercy of both the ocean and whatever plan the Pix have for you diving deep - and you're sure they'll have something special just for you.

Breathless Dead

Bella!

For a girl like her to think for this long tells a tale of continents and oceans, of the arrangement of galaxies and orbital mechanics. To think this long is to imagine the death of civilizations and the immolation of political targets on what might seem to others as a pyre of their own making. All revolves around the hollow of a sound, a place where text might go, an empty space that might be filled with associations.

She has to come up with something. It's a matter of pride.

"I remember I liked the name Bella," she said. "A pretty name. Bella! Do you think I could be a Bella?"

"That's not it, though. That's a seed, not a name to grow into. I think Vesper. Like the prayer bell. Like the evening star. Like Venus - like Aphrodite." She grinned widely, stepping back and spreading her arms to give you a better look. "Like someone Beautiful."

Purple eyes, purple robes. Feathers that fade from soft white into gentle lilac, giving each motion a sweeping motion and associated gentle press of air. Four thumbs and sixteen multi-jointed fingers, skillful beyond compare. A smile alight with sincerity, despite everything. Holding herself up through force of will so she can deliver that smile with everything she has, even as her words skirt the edge of blasphemy.

"Do you think the name fits?" she said. "Because I think it might fit you better."

Redana!

Each step you take gives the Princess the strength to take one more. Without your motion she stands as through exhausted, but the smallest forward movement you take she matches. She has given her destination but she cannot move towards it. She can only move towards you. Four legged you go together.

"Will -" she said. Hesitated. May I...? "- you carry me, noble hero? I have always wanted to be carried."

Dolce!

"Oh, but you don't comprehend the Art," said the ancient craftsman, with the sincerity of a teacher. "People can be tended, as can tribes, as can civilizations. Success or failure can be observed in the spooling out of their stories. Love can be condensed into a trillion parts in a drop of water and, from that drop, spin out into a civilization to conquer a planet, build an empire, to move the stars themselves. And yet in that expansion the tiniest flaws could extend to embody something broken or hateful instead. What a failure that would be! The growth of species must be as well tended as any garden, and the weeds must be plucked in turn."

"Consider Ceron," and here his voice had wistfulness, the envy of awe. "The greatest genius of the Art. The greatest love for an Empress. One could grow alone on an isolated world and still embody martial virtue in over ninety-two percent of cases, and three quarters of the remainder would still be suitable for support roles. But to grow them along the trellis, to control the shape of the wishes that develop in their hearts? Through culture and media, through songs and plays and movies, through the virtue of their champions, through the controlled deployment of Champion-strain enhancement to influential culture heroes? Deviation rates become minuscule. As a whole, they become a Varangian Guard beyond compare, loyal legions who can enact the will of Empire upon the galaxy. In tending to them, biomancers tend to the Empire, in tending to the Empire, biomancers tend to the Empress. An immortal gift, like the gods might give, true and loyal down through uncounted generations. What greater garden to tend? What greater love?"

Dyssia!

The Warriors of Ceron famously took the Grav-Rail from the Endless Azure Skies as tribute. Many of their warriors are armed so, some of whom have even sought to master the technique from enslaved Azura experts who were offered up in chases just like this. The Pix Huntresses are shadows of the wolves; they do not wield the Rail. When they give chase it is with traditional Imperial technique: With bow, with spear, with jetpack and with muscle.

The jetpacks are enchanting things, solid crystal fuel burn leaving glittering aftershocks. It gives them the speed and shape of shooting stars, carrying them just above the ground and giving them speed to match you on the straights. They are hunting gear, and fragile - if you closed to within five meters and struck with your ELF you could render the fuel drained and inert, the pack worthless until they replaced the fuel crystal. All it would cost you is becoming immediately encircled and attacked by all the others who wait for just such a moment. Bait, then.

As they streak ahead of you they menace but do not fire with their bows. Heavy solid projectile arrows are nocked but not released. One alone is worthless - you will rush through the cloud and recover in moments. They seek the battle rhythm, to be able to land shots one after another, a sustained impact of shattering sounds and overwhelming sights and scents, exactly six seconds between impacts to cause the failure of autosensory adaptation. The old Imperial way of fighting the Azura, rendering you deaf and blind from a sustained barrage until you lose all sense of perspective and direction and can be netted and yoked. In war, your household would protect you from the battle rhythm, shielding your body and giving you time to adapt and escape. On the hunt, if the rhythm begins it means your end. It also means if they fire and miss you might slip through their fingers altogether. So they seek their position, looking to surround and herd you, a glowing net of starlight foxes dancing around you in every direction.

It's beautiful. Flaming orange tails dancing in the night air, lit by white moonlight and the comet-trails of crystal jetpacks. The fire of your exerted strength against the cool of evening. The rushing blood of the hunt, primordial and deep. Fang and tongue and hungry mouths if you slip and fall. Glory if you should make it to that distant golden light. The goddess Artemis, scales of moonlight white, flying aside you on her rail, diving alongside you into the water, too caught in the moment to decide between predator or protector. A night for flight, and to be glad of flight.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Ah. She has been stolen, that is it. Stolen into service - and that is only fair. Solarel too fell for an Empress. Solarel too tried to steal the stars on her behalf. She understands. They had both found new swords to fall upon since last they'd fought.

Her hands trace the Makhaira under arms, around thighs. Gently, gently, gently. The thick cords of muscles, the crackling neural electricity of the spine. She knew every reactive armour plate, every sloped ballistic curve and ammunition storage rack. She had penetrated this armour before, unraveling its secrets around her fingers before Naelkai had done the same. The lace and bows of nanoweave, gentle gossamer threads of repair solution wrapping reinforced steel cable, soft to the touch. The promise of recovery, an invisible dress that made scarcity and durability irrelevant concerns to the followers of Zaldar.

It was that very lace she worked on now. Gentle touches, loving touches, the caress of silver geists and software updates. Uploading a new shape into the Makhaira's repair nanoswarm, node by node. Wrapping loop after loop of silken threads around wrists and breasts and legs. Gently, gently... up until her darling knight took damage. Then the thread would pull tight, a gentle weave of thread tightening into a shibari. All of that knightly durability turned back on itself. The automated repair swarms would remember a shape where wrist was bound to ankle and hair was bound to tail and a submissive inner heart would be revealed for all to see.

It would still require a blow. To trigger the repair process, and have it proceed so quickly that Akaithon would not notice the binding until it was complete. It would still come down to the lance.

"You desire a gift?" Solarel said. "She had me robbed, Akai. Attacked by the Varangian Guard outside of my God and exiled from Roevg, in defiance of all of the Knightly codes of the Evercity. I understood you standing by, out of love," a barbarian lilt, understanding was not the same as respecting, "but I did not think that you would then call the fruits of treachery a lover's gift."

"But then," she added, gently kissing the nanoswarm, sending a silver ripple along it before withdrawing back to the Kathresis, "it is the way of the high riders to take the noble path after every exploring every possible alternative, and then toasting their virtue for so doing."

[Who's the Monster? 7
- Your words sting; they take a Condition.]

Breathless Dead

Bella!

She laughed like a wheeze, bending half-over as though struck. Sincere, but it took a moment. "Okay. Fair. Yeah, they were dumb jokes. But they're where my brain went every time?" she said. The question was an axiom and a debate at once. "I didn't, like. Have a childhood, right? I wasn't turned on until the bioweave had fully grown me. No point, right? Not like I needed training if I was just going to forget everything. So I guess those first second instincts where I named myself were my childhood. A bunch of childish jokes that were funny right up until the moment where I killed hundreds of thousands. Like. I was standing on the bridge of a Solar Archcruiser, watching Admiral Heller crush her own homeworld with grav-projectors, trying not to throw up, and then she turns to me and smiles because she thinks we're best friends, and says "Thanks to you, Deathkill, we have stopped the rebellion", and, like, I had to compose a play in my head about a girl in the countryside who loved strawberry wine so that I could roleplay the climactic scene where she toasts her best friend's success in marriage. At that stage of the process that was the simplest way to deal with it."

She stared off at the horizon for a moment, then ate the pills - packet and all - and emptied a glass. "And, like, fomenting an insurrection that got the planet destroyed was the simplest way of killing my target. It was nearly a 30% improvement on the odds of the version of the plan that didn't kill everyone. And it didn't risk my sisters. My... sisters." Each blink stood out, breaking the spell of her violet eyes. "I figure they must have been reassigned. Given how far I went out of my way to not use them. I'd just... do the job by myself. So they didn't have to go through the same rampancy I did. They couldn't be reset like I could."

She trails off for a long time. "How am I supposed to name this thing, that I am? All the joke names became poisoned when they became the titles to chapters of carnage. And now to apply a pretty word backwards in time, to stamp it next to all of those deeds? What name would survive being dipped in that much blood?"

Redana!

There is something quite like a Wish in the heart of the girl named... the girl who wears the title Redana Claudius. It is a scratching, tense, unstable feeling that's always there; an awareness of every blade and snipers position, gravitationally drawn towards them. To be pierced, bloody, Imperial blood spilling joyfully on the ground as her death becomes a nightmare for her killers. She thinks about this constantly.

But the maiden is right. That's not a princess wish. That's not an impossible deed. She... she accomplished that. She was lifted on bloody claws and stared into the eyes of her murderer and felt the exaltation of Purpose fulfilled. But there were still things she wanted. There were still things she wanted even amidst a glorious death. Impossible things. Exactly the sort of thing that might trouble the mind of a Princess.

"My task..." said the princess. "My task is to cross the entire galaxy, to set foot on distant Gaia, where humanity was born. And I've come as far as I can go alone."

Dolce!

"Yes, of course!" said the ancient craftsman. "We must watch. We must learn. And then we must engineer self-sustaining solutions. To spin a crew in the gene-looms perfectly suited to her personality, reflective of her energy. Warriors she would delight to lead. Once we have observed her favoured tastes in food we must design servants to cook it to perfection for her each and every day. Love and flesh are inseparable. The functions of matter are nothing without warm smiles to go with it. She must see our love in everyone around her, and in so doing we will build her a home worthy of the name."

Dyssia!

The Warriors of Ceron have conquered the galaxy, you know this intellectually. Emotively is so much harder. Yes, in theory this phalanx represents a concentration of martial force, biomantic brilliance and technological power without parallel. Every warrior could single-handedly destroy one of the metal giants of the Age of Knights or bring a planet of the Age of Exploration to its knees.

But they're so fucking cute. They've even got little holes in their little helmets for their little triangle ears! They're all so serious! They're even holding their swishy tails still to show how serious they are!

"These aren't Ceronians, they're security Pix," Brightberry corrects. "A warrior servitor subvariant. They're basically twenty five percent lesser than true Ceronians in almost every respect, including size."

Oh gosh you get to see an entire formation of angry foxgirls do irritated ear twitches at the same time.

Even though you are being sold off to bandits, the Endless Azure Skies does not part with its citizens without ritual. You have been garbed in glittering white silks like moonlight, and even now the system grav-projector is bringing the full moon into place above you. There is to be a sacred hunt, with you as the quarry. When you are captured you will be dragged back to the Pix ship bound and gagged, a lawful prize. Already their huntresses are doing stretches over behind you as they pace around the edges of the phalanxes, sharp and lean girls with muscles like whipcords.

Now, this could be the kind of sacred hunt where the priestess walks up to the sacrificial mare in the temple and casts a bridle over her shoulders, nice and dignified and quick. Or this could be the kicking and screaming kind of sacred hunt where you head out into the wild determined to make them sweat for it.

Or it could be the 'fuck you' kind of sacred hunt where you use your head start to go for the spaceport instead. That'd really make them work for it.

Which one you choose is between you and Artemis.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

She's terrified. She'd acted without thought, without seeing it. An act of emotion and not stratagem. The tell - using the Zero-Point Weapon to alter the environment to her advantage as an opening gambit. Relying on the wrong instincts to stall while she recollected herself and recharged her primary weapon. She of all people should have known to never underestimate the sheer power of the charge.

The only thing that saves her is that Akaithon isn't her. Isn't Solarel. Isn't Mirror. She invests too much power in the shields, too much stance in blocking the debris. If she'd studied harder - if she'd seen, if she'd known - she'd have accepted the damage to her mech as the lesser price to pay. She'd have come on with every bit of power she had in that moment of weakness and the battle would have been over before it began. Mirror wouldn't have invested any points in health. Mirror would have struck her down in a microsecond and been disappointed by the result. She's terrified. In this moment over the abyss she saw herself with absolute clarity. Saw the sloth in her brain. Saw the malicious vine of habit. Saw herself with the clarity only possible in this place on the boundary between divinity and scrap metal.

[Defy Disaster: 5+1 Grace +1 Forward from Wicked Past; a 7]

But Akaithon didn't see it. And the difference between seeing it and not is everything.

The blade takes the Zero-Entropy Weapon - the crystal-cold device that is the key to her offense - and carves it into a mess and tangle of nanobots. In the cloud of particulate destruction, in the chaos of debris from the breaking station, in the speed of the Kathresis' movement at full burn she steps forward, under the tall arm of the Makhaira -

Out from her gaze for just a second.

- And then back. And then up.

She clamps onto the Makhaira's back. Her reactor is dark and invisible. The added weight is impossible to judge with no gravity. The Makhaira is twice the size of the Kathresis and can easily lift her, especially if she adds her own thrust subtly to balance any lowering of acceleration. When Akaithon spins around to follow through she finds the Kathresis gone, as though it had teleported or become invisible. In place of either Solarel is clinging to the Makhaira's back, heart pounding in her ears, disconnecting her neural link for a moment so she can bite her knuckles and thereby discharge the absolute, pounding manic terror.

She'd gotten lucky. A habit. A lack of respect. The fact that that pounding electric guitar in Akaithon's cockpit had muffled the impact of metal on metal. She clung on with sheer audacity.

And audacity demanded that she continue talking.

"How else could it be?" said Solarel, staring directly into the painted heraldric crest in the centre of the Makhaira's back. A world as the pupil of an eye. Her words bounced off ten thousand pieces of debris before reaching Akaithon in case the latency of the reply give her away. "You desire the Goddess of War. What trinkets could buy her? What lord could offer her?"

But now the problem: she didn't have any way to turn this position into a victory. With the Zero-Entropy Weapon she could have charged a full shot and unloaded it point-blank into the Makhaira's back, a finishing blow. Without it her twin swords could wound but not kill, her point defense weaponry and drones could annoy but not wound, her lance was outright useless. Damn Akaithon for putting points in health.

So, while Akaithon was turning her full attention to scanning the debris field, stance shifting constantly, ready for attack from any direction, Solarel sighed. She knew what she had to do.

"So, Akai, my daring knight, my high rider," said Solarel, adjusting her helmet and cracking open the cockpit of the Kathresis. "We've got some time until you make a mistake. So tell me. You're going somewhere. You're going somewhere and you need the Aeteline to get there. Where? What could you possibly need all that power for?" if not for defeating me? If not for defeating Mirror?

As she spoke she slipped out into the void, climbing from one mech to the other. It was time for delicate, slow sabotage. To gently run her hands over every part of the Makhaira's divine body. To touch her hidden places and break her fragile things. While Akai talked and searched she would work until her lover seized up and her legs became weak and her oxygen failed, making her gasp for breath with Solarel's name on her lips.

But slowly. Slowly. For this girl she needed to slip under her armour without her noticing. Needed to occupy her conscious, chattering, thinking mind with puzzles and riddles and games even as the lace ribbons that held her underwear together came apart beneath her fingers. To steal her bones so that all that was left was water, pouring out of that suit of armour, helpless. Slowly. I was wrong to try and love you in any other way.

[Figure out a person: 8. What do you love most? What are your feelings towards battle? How could I get you to betray your ideals?]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Come and take her?

Oh, wouldn't that be lovely? To be a creature of such strength and power that she could just fucking do that? Even here, alight on the edge of adrenaline, glowing with the cerulean wash of desire she knew that she couldn't. She couldn't cross that distance. She couldn't beat this spirit. This one thing, this small thing for something she wanted more than she'd ever wanted anything and she couldn't. A wall of mud and muck and indifference and she couldn't climb it on broken legs. No sword. No spear. No bow. Only an umbrella and the ability to call monsters.

Monsters. Demons. They filled her head, their names and shapes and catalogues. You couldn't just read about them - even in words explaining the curve of their wings some of them made their way inside you. They changed the way you thought, the way you imagined, the way that problems could be solved. Puppets for a road, chariots for mercy, the howling wind for silence. Their logic flowed through her mind in alien cascades. The prices they'd declare. The power they represented. The allegiances they held. Would they free her Maid from her prison form? Would they shatter her and ascend on the wreck of her power? Would they do their job as commanded? If only she had the capability to do things herself she could choose how they got done. She'd thought that power had meant strength, but there had never been enough strength to make all the world bend at once. She'd thought that power had meant authority but there were always fractures between her desires and the desires of her monsters. Even manipulating the powerful, how she'd started her career, had placed her on the razor edge of her mistress' caprice.

How could she get what she wanted? What was the path? The azure stars were still as unreachable as ever no matter how many times she altered her approach. In changing her approach she'd lost coherence with herself. With each re-invention she was still a slave and she could hear the laughter of Venus in her ears. In her temper she saw a new path; one where she could cast this god's star from the sky and weave it into a needle of starlight. A new path to power built on fear and ruthlessness. Maybe that would be the way.

Come and claim her. Her fingers itched. Her knees didn't. She could see the tumbling arms of the haywain. And...

She remembered. Words said in a past life.

Which did she desire? The Maid, or her pride?

... the Maid. Perhaps untrue, but she was too proud to admit to herself that she was a slave to pride.

And so, with eyes burning blue, she turned and looked towards Kayala Na. Do you remember her, Kayala? The crippled girl you met in the forest, who you helped briefly and then forgot in your pursuit of another? She remembers you. She'll never forget the way you discarded her. It's a dagger in her pride, right next to the one she adds there now.

"Help me~!!" Fengye begs, clasping her hands together, eyes filling with shining tears. "Please, noble lady! That terrible monster has stolen my darling and is imprisoning her inside it! Please! You're my only hope~!!"

[Entice: 10. Fengye takes a string on you, and choose from the list]

Breathless Dead

Flowers become houses. The view of the horizon vanishes behind sprawling trees. The straight line branches and splinters, weaving in a thousand directions. One landscape becomes a trillion, crammed in shoulder to shoulder with each other, every four meters a different biome, each home a different garden. An autumn breeze blows over the ocean, wherever it's gone. So strange that you could lose the end of the world.

A wooden framed house up on stilts with a smaller house beneath it, cast iron tablesets set out as though for a cafe. Open green ovals of sweet grass, wet with morning dew. Soft white sand and concrete shower blocks that seem to say that the beach should be right here but it's somehow not. A labyrinth. Endless motion, new experiences, but no certainty of progress.

Despite the homes and the streets there are no people here. Everything human without humanity, and somehow you're losing each other too. Subtly at first but slowly with more and more tension. There's a main street here somewhere but the dreams of civilization are far more tangled than the wilds and the road. When you do see other people it feels like a trespass, an intrusion, a shock. After so long moving now the only way forward lies through someone else.

Bella!

"You know, I legitimately thought going in that this was going to be easy," said the girl. "But - you know that mental stress can make itself manifest physically? Hypertension, muscle strain, kind of thing? It's baseline tension physiology to maintain high awareness on mission, but there's also a better version that assassins have that maintains them in full hyperadrenaline battle readiness when certain mental stress triggers are met. It's a prelude chemistry that prepares the body to endure the physical transformations that come with Rampancy. You remember it still? Because it looked good on you. I mean that sincerely! I look like I'm about to start plucking my own feathers, but you looked like a skeleton tiger goddess."

She smiles. "I'm Beautiful, by the way," she said. "Ha ha, my little joke. Actually I'm Boldness. Actually, I'm Jacinth. Actually, I'm Asset 00498. Actually, I'm Killfucker Deathkill - I was in a weird mood that day. Actually, I'm Justice - gods, you know that's actually the worst part? Not the amount of it all, but the amount of it all that's cringe? Just every awkward joke that felt right at the time and maybe I had the charisma to pull off in all of those moments but smeared across the inside of my head. Anyway. Actionable: breaking into these houses, going through bathroom sinks, looking for packets or containers that look medical. Doesn't really matter what, they'll mostly be weak caveman drugs and I'll need to chug like three kilograms worth of the stuff before I'll even have a chance of them taking the edge off. Oh, shit, I just remembered - I used Justice twice. Okay, change of plans, instead of the drugs search for a firearm and fucking shoot me."

Redana!

She's a maid. A scavenger. She's been walking behind you all this time, catching what you've discarded and left behind, cleaning it away with broom and brush. She's a leader, an empress. A warlord with the name Redana, wreathed in purple, smiling in your smile, wrapped in wreckage that might have been yours. If you have become a shadow she has become the light.

"I would -" could? "- reward you for following me this far," she said, curiosity in her voice. Wondering if she had been the leader "If it is within my power to give -" what is my power? "- name your boon, and I will grant it?" May I? May I really?

Dolce!

"You understand what it means to be ready," said the old badger in the saffron robes. "Preparedness. That is the key. At any point a decision may be made. Her Imperial Highness might commission a new fleet and the alloys need must be ready. Her Imperial Highness might make a house call, and she shall not be well served by having to wait for dinner. By the time the Engine bursts to nova the time to repair the plasma coils will have passed. By the time we are asked it will be too late. So you see that it is impossible to continue before we have discovered what it is that we need to have with us for when we go. Come, friend. Sit. We must work it out together before we take another step."

Dyssia!

"The Oracle..." said the Sleeper, in his gradual way. "Has determined. That you represent a unique... capability. For the Azura."

Merilt stood in the back of this meeting, behind the fold-out lectern heavy with documents. She was saying nothing, as cryptic and distant as a star.

"The Azura are beyond compare," the Sleeper went on. "Nothing is beyond our reach. All we need is the desire to stretch out our... our hands and take it. This presents a prob... problem. For what challenge could we issue to the Pix? Should we say, so long as the Grand Sage remains undefeated, we shall not yield? Then they need only work their magic to convince a greater warrior to cast him down. And be sure there are the greater. In this perfect world all of society is aligned in a perfect ladder of skill and potential all the way up into..." he trailed off into mumbling.

"All things are possible," said the Oracle. "Apollo has shown me this. All things are possible, except you."

Except you.

"Yes," said the Sleeper, jolting half awake. "Except you. In all the Oracle's divinations the only thing on this world that was judged truly impossible was you... properly finishing a Path. Truly hopeless. The greatest masters of this planet have come before you to share their passion and willpower... rain on the salt flats. You're entirely unteachable, even in the eyes of the gods."

"And so, you will be our challenge and our sacrifice to the Pix," said Merilt. "You will be turned over to their custody. They will be free to do whatever they like with you for as long as they like. And on the day that they inspire you, Dyssia the Distracted, to finish one of the Paths - whichever they like - then Irassia will bow down before them."

"Mm, yes," said the Sleeper. "One sacrifice to preserve our world. A simple bargain, really. A heroic action, even, and even although it has been assigned to you by others. There will be a ceremony... a dress will be appropriate. Do you have any questions?"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Of course Solarel knows what Final Destination No Items means. The ultimate challenge, a true test of skill astride the stormplains. No interference, a contest of pure skill. She has studied martial languages in all their forms.

This? This is not Final Destination No Items. Not even close.

Maglocks detach and the Kathresis floats a centimeter above the station. She draws her legs up into a meditative fold, hands folded in her lap. The Kathresis dreams. Even this place is not clean. It seethes with motion, with energy, with potential. So does the Makhaira, even in its stillness music bounds at its core. Want. Want, want for things that aren't her. How did this happen? When did Akaithon develop dreams grander than beating her? What... what would she even do with the Ateline if not use it to defeat her? She feels cold irritation prickle the edges of her neck scales. Jealousy. How... how did all these people keep coming up with bigger dreams than this? With things they wanted other than to be here, now, in this moment?

Even Akaithon. She thought you, at least -!? What would you even use the Ateline for if not fighting her?

And I shall call you Tactics, she thought in crystal ice, because that is all you are good for.

"Typical high rider," said Solarel with calculated warmth. "You ask how to use the God. You don't ask what you can offer the God."

The Zero-Entropy Weapon snapped out in a heartbeat, aimed at the perfect nexus of energy. It fires - but not at the Makhaira. It fires down at the station.

Even here. Even in space, in the void, life seethed. Energy seethed. Just below the surface. Nothing was clean, nothing was organized - not even this. Not until she made it so.

She hefted the lance - that precision weapon, the delicate microcircuitry gleaming in the sunlight. She paused - not tactically, but because this was too good a moment to not allow the inefficiency of a playful smirk. And then she slammed it sideways into the impact point of the Zero-Entropy Weapon.

And the space station shattered like a sheet of ice.

Metal fragments crashed out in all directions. An instant debris cloud. It wasn't chaotic - it was the only thing here that wasn't chaotic. The spellbinding arcs and trajectories of the crumbling station are known and knowable more than those of living metal. It was a shield; charge at her too fast and the jagged metal fragments would crack the cockpit or lodge in joints. It was a cloak; take your eyes off her in the debris cloud and the Kathresis' radar signature would be impossible to re-acquire. It was a challenge; could your scholar's brain keep up with the consequences of her barbarian strength?

A solvable problem. A riddle in a million jagged shards. How dare you think that this was anything other than the end of your road, Akai? There is no space in Solarel's brain for tomorrow. How complex does she have to make this before she has your attention?

"What do you bring to the table, high rider?" said Solarel. "Why should the Ateline even notice you?"

Breathless Dead

Of course the road is a gift from the gods. Everything is a gift from the gods. The grasses might have spoken grain, might have spoken bread. The thistles might have spoken safety. The mountains might have spoken glory, achievement. But there is something special about receiving the gift that you need.

It wraps through the landscape like a ribbon. Sometimes it lifts off the ground so that it can loop around a boulder or raise above the treeline to show a distant ocean. During the daytime it absorbs the light of the sun, warm and soft to walk on, and the quartz in its construction glitters like diamonds amidst the black. At night time it reflects the light of the moon and shines powder-white, and the breezes that race along it are cool and gentle. Mountains come into focus, looming up in the distance. They come closer, closer - and then they vanish, for you are amongst them. And then somehow there is another flat with more mountains in the distance.

The course stops. The momentum checks. An interruption, an annoyance. The... the yellows are doing something. They're mobbing an old white box with a brown stripe along its middle. They chatter and they talk, babbling together an idioglossary between terms remembered and terms invented. The carburetor attaches to the spinny bit and then you undo the bolts and...

Magic.

Such are wizards. For months you've walked and this gaggle has followed, uncomplaining but uncontributing. You've pulled their weight. But all of a sudden on this hill they have come together and built something that can pull yours.

There's space for eight, comfortably seated, in the vehicle - twelve if you cram. Space for another eight sitting on the roof or hanging off the sides. This group goes ahead excitedly until they start coming back with more vehicles salvaged from the roadside. Ancient machines, primordial, at their fastest, with their engines straining barely matching running speed. Words like Thunderbird and Dodge and UAZ proudly shining silver even though their untarnished shine shows their falseness. And along the ribbon road you fly as fast as dreaming, and no faster.

That distant ocean is coming up on you now. On your left side is green hills, soft and rolling and dew-shining, yellow flowers like kisses from summer. On your right side is an endless blue expanse. Ahead of you is the ribbon-road, and the engines roar as they swim against its current. The ancient dreams of wilderness and earth are done and the dreams of people lie ahead. What stays behind in the ancient world?

*

Dyssia!

"Have you heard of the Pix?" said Brightberry. "It's not a story the Azura would tell you."

You're sitting at the bottom of the pillar while Kissingsky leans over the side. Radiant beams of light containing complex information occasionally pass back and forth between the two crystal dragons, both of whom are currently not bored with the conversation. That's always something to be careful with - if a dragon doesn't think a message is interesting she just won't bother to send it, and might wander off entirely. The best that could, apparently, be done to induce them into service in the first place is that they're all enormous gossips and stickybeaks who like to know everything. Sometimes some of them fly around in the path of communications beams just to eavesdrop on other dragons' conversations.

"So, in Atlas times," Brightberry explained, "they needed," she made fingerquotes with her wings, "'Salespeople'. People whose job it was to convince people to want things. Right? Because if they could convince someone to want something they didn't... already... want..." she stops to try and figure out this concept, obviously stumped. "That would give them... power over you. Somehow? Anyway. The Pix are servitors made to do... that."

She then communicated back and forth with Kissingsky for about twenty minutes, at times nodding seriously, at times giggling and flapping her wings flirtatiously. She doesn't bother to clue you in on anything that's happening in that exchange. This is just how it be sometimes.

"Anyway, so, they just parked a Revulsant-class Grand Cruiser in orbit and destroyed the Skurulsant mountain with an orbital strike as a show of aggression," said Brightberry. "The Oracle and the Sleeper asked for you by name. They're both coming here. You're going to be a hero!"

With crystal dragons, the information you got was often the information you got. Still, there are a few blanks that you can fill in on your own. The Oracle is straightforwards enough - the Oracle of Apollo, one of Irassia's most important religious figures, the overseer of the Paths, and your personal governmental nemesis. In one sense it's nice to be on the radar of the planet's high priest, but less so because she thinks your continued existence is inviting the wrath of the gods down on everyone. The Sleeper, though, was a nickname and not a title; his real name was Salhadin, Path of the Orator, but was called the Sleeping Speaker because of his mode of speech. He constantly seemed to be on the verge of dozing off, information coming out in dozing mumbles, head constantly dipping as though he was about to collapse. The effect was a unique innovation he'd bought to his Path. The occasional mumble made people strain to hear his every word, and the sense of physical danger that he might at any point topple over and hit his head on the lectern - something he did on occasion - made people afraid to look away in case they missed it. He was one of the most individually compelling people on the planet, and also one lauded highly by the Oracle with whom he was utterly politically aligned.

So why they wanted you, of all people, when it came to dealing with a starship filled with angry foxgirls was impossible to figure out.