Thanqol

Breathless Dead

Dyssia!

For all the horror of it, this is ultimately a dead thing.

It cannot control time like it once did. It cannot control travel like it once did. It has given of its eyes and its heart and its phallus. It is a dismembered patchwork, and what part of its power still exists on this world has turned its full attention elsewhere. The divine principle represented here is now entombed within the Underworld, and Demeter has slammed shut the gates.

You feel how tenuous that link is now; how easily it yields beneath your silver blade. How it dissolves into a blind and maimed corpse, covered in liver spots, absent and fading into ash. No fit end for a God or Titan.

And yet, flowers grow from its body, as is the Law.

"Hmm," Demeter says, stepping past. Her hair cascades by as she bends down, marking a note in her sketchpad. "A fascinating confirmation. It always felt like he was grasping the short end of the lever."

She smiles, and now it's not just the body blooming with flowers. "Thank you, Dyssia! You have done the galaxy a great service!" She crowns your head with a wreath of laurel and dandelions, and marks your brow with a kiss. "An ancient evil is vanquished, and one less gate to the Underworld remains. As a blessing, I will grant your followers, the Pix, True Incarnation; they shall be severed from the chains of Biomantic control and may face the galaxy as a truly independent species. No matter their fortunes in war and diplomacy, I will ensure that they shall spread, increase and prosper. Well done, hero!"

And she's on her way, stepping over the body of Hermes without so much as a backwards glance, until she vanishes into the fire and smoke of a collapsing Knight. All around you, the Nemesis War rages on, and you are left holding a surreal silver sword, a bundle of wildflowers and an eerie lack of closure.

Love Bites - Sporko/Thanqol

"I have made," Euphoria announced as she entered, "twenty dollars!"

She held up the red note proudly. That was enough to pay for petrol for a year[1]! She should consult the Wed Lord and see if he was looking for a retainer.

She placed the note inside the glass jar that represented her contribution to the household finances. Honourably won, every dollar. It would become even moreso once the insurance merchants replaced her motorcycle.

"How goes thy war with the beast that bysets thy soul?" she asked, smoothly pulling her only slightly scorched gloves from her long white fingers. It was good to be in the cool and dark once more (it was good to feel the silver hilt of her blade with her own fingertips). "Doth thou - apologies. Do you yet have control of your humours?"

[1] circa 1950

Beyari: a Tale of Colossi

What a bummer! Just - she knew not in front of the megajaguar, had to play it cool. But it was genuinely really sad and disappointing. It wasn't fair, it wasn't like she had any reason to think that things might have been this way, but it meant she lived in a world where people had the ability to make giant geoengineering leviathans and chose not to give her talking cats. Every second she was deprived of talking cats was a choice that someone had made. Nature red in tooth and claw was one thing, but if you were going to bioengineer the kitties *anyway* -

The Angel of the Harvest added a grievance to its grudge spreadsheet, stomped its foot a single time, and then was on its way. It would go to war with the kitty it had rather than the kitty it wanted, and if it followed long enough the Angel would make a habit of leaving a fresh kill behind to help build the relationship. It was something that it could offer and it did not know where it would lead.

The problem faded back to the climb. The initial ascent of the legs was difficult, but the whole appeal of the challenge was in large part due to how hard it would be. Going away and engineering a jetpack would be a joyless solution. No, it was just going to do it raw with the information it had gathered to date.

It had been dead for a thousand years. Time to be alive.

Love Bites - Sporko/Thanqol

"Chat," she pronounced it like 'chateau', "have I become cooked?"
"Give it up, Fokas! We have you surrounded!"
"'twas not my intention," said Euphoria into her Motorola Backflip's CIF camera. It did not have a selfie camera, so she had to rotate the whole thing around to talk into the rear of the device. "My intention was to uphold my oath and escort this delivery safely and surely to its destination. You who have borne witness know the truth, and I pray that your lips may send it to the Lord's ears -"
"That's her! Open fire!"
Euphoria stood up. Crumpled bullets clattered to the ground around her like rain, broken against her sorcerous black plate. For a moment lines of fire danced across her body. One slashed her cheek, leaving a single faint red trail. A grenade landed at her feet.
"No! Get down, get down -"

A kick sent the grenade soaring so fast that it shattered the skull of the wyrmblood holding the assault rifle. Such was the violence of the motion it actually crushed the trigger mechanism and prevented the grenade from detonating - a stroke of fortune made irrelevant when the unfortunate wyrmblood's two friends were crushed beneath Euphoria's thrown motorcycle. She steps through the smoke and fire. Two more of the assailants - over-muscled bodies crammed into cheap black suits - rushed her with knives. One she took with a point-blank shot from her wheel-lock - hand to her hip, leaning backwards, weapon bent slightly down - and the other she took with a rotational draw-slice-sheathe technique she had learned from a Nipponese blademaster. She reached the wreckage of her motorcycle and threw it again against a sniper upon the nearby water tower. This time the fuel tank detonated and sent a flood of water and steam washing down all around.

All this and she still absentmindedly held the camera. Unfortunately, all it captured was a rough blur of fire, black fabric, and screaming silhouettes in incomprehensible 240pixel resolution. Enough to entice the appetite of a certain stratum of the internet who considered her an avaunt guard found footage filmmaker doing an elaborate bit, who were currently going wild in the chat.

"Twenty dollars from xXxWeedLordxXx?" said Euphoria. "That is appreciated. It shall relieve some of the pressure of failing this delivery. One hopes that you have found happiness in your recent wedding."
"You shall find no happiness, Blood Dragon," said a daemonic voice arising from the pit. "It is to be your end and your death."
"Wrath? Thou has grown bold indeed," said Euphoria.
"Do not thou me! You have grown lax! There is nothing you possess that you can defend against us!"
"It seems you yearn again for the pit," said Euphoria.
"I shall not -"

*Static, stream feed cuts out*

*

A black knight makes her way on foot down the long path towards Sophia's home. She is no longer in possession of a motorcycle, but she has cleaned herself up somewhat from the battle. She imagines that if she plays it sufficiently cool from here she might be able to avoid any questions. She would not want her host to worry about her.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

The shell cracks. The meat burns. The (delishmus, Cyanis reflexively adds) carcass of the space monster falls away.

But in fulfillment of the secret law of how these things must go, something arises from inside.

A rush of vines, an abundance of flowers; all of them roses so thick and heavy their branches could not support them outside of this zero-gravity environment. The terrible power that had been emanating into the tunnels beneath the world had not been the cold, wet meat of the crab - that had just been what the true monster had spent its long imprisonment weaving about itself. Bare feet step up onto the ruined shell, brushing through the hair that reaches all the way to the ankles. The gossamer white dress transitions from sheer gauze to a thick and heavy reinforced cotton weave as it rises up, joyful swishing giving way to sharp triangular structures that make it seem more like a suit. The rosestems that weave together the creature's hair are long and jagged and no longer have the excuse of just being a thing of nature.

You would never call it beautiful. It has put a lot of effort into its appearance - or allowed someone else to do so on its behalf - but none of it has done anything to make it less sharp and harmful.

Previously the crab was using words to threaten and disorient. This creature does not bother. It raises its arm towards Berserker's stellar castle and in an instant the whole structure is overgrown in fairytale thorns and its resident falls into an enchanted sleep. That is all the defensive action it needs to take. It disregards the foxgirls without even a glance; they are not on the same plane as it.[1]

It turns its attention to the world. Counting continents. Looking at the balances of green and blue and brown. It raises a hand of industrial metal and begins to sculpt out its grand designs.

(1)

(Aren't they?

The Burrowers, for all their technomancy, were always the most fascinated by the possibilities of the supernatural. They were the ones, after all, who summoned the demons of Hell to man their supermarket checkouts; they were the ones who conjured kon-kon-konsultants to advise them on market strategy, they were the ones who built the Spiritron Accelerator - that still drifts, battered but intact - in the wreckage of the shattered Vault, glowing with the radiance of souls dredged from the nine hells and seven heavens and pushed into a perpetual loop, the wheel of karma attached to a F1 racing engine, allowing them to refine and conjure Servants. This transcendent entity implies with its radiant indifference that it is your spiritual superior, just as the crab implied with its gleaming shell that it was your physical superior.

But if you thought about it, really thought, you'd get the sense that it was more powerful than Damn Fox. And Damn Fox is the most powerful thing you've ever met and probably in the world, so that doesn't seem like a huge amount of comfort... but... it's not like you couldn't see this thing from where Damn Fox was sitting. It's not different, it's just more.)

Breathless Dead

Dyssia!

"Ungrateful!"

It doesn't even bother with the mechanics of firing an arrow. It just throws the bow so hard it tears the stone. It throws its fingers, one after another, wrenching them from its fingers. They accelerate so fast they burn the atmosphere around them.

"Me, me, me! Your kind cannot imagine a project that spans for longer than your own lives! You cannot comprehend the hereditary duty that is required to build a galaxy - to build a society! Every individual was created for a purpose and that purpose has a higher priority than hedonistic joy! It is no different for me - I do my duty as it was laid down by my father, even when it causes me pain! Even when it asks me to sacrifice! You are a mere nihilist, a weak girl grown soft on the comforts of the world I built! You have not struggled like I have struggled! You have not suffered as I have suffered! You do not know what is necessary despite me teaching you every day! It is disrespectful to everything that I have been through for you to be happy!"

Beyari: a Tale of Colossi

"I am the Angel of the Harvest," it said. "I wish to bring an abundance to all."

The Angel hadn't discounted the possibility that the jaguar might understand speech, or even talk itself. Hardly an unreasonable prospect in the shadow of an entity as genetically engineered as Sandra - if the people who had done that had decided to safeguard it with a phalanx of intelligent cats there wouldn't be anything stopping them. The bone composition if nothing else indicated that the creature was actually higher tech than the Angel itself, so imagining itself to be smarter seemed doubly foolish.

"My intention is to climb the back of Sandra," it went on. "I intend no threat or harm. I would like it if you came with me. If not, I would like to pass through your hunting grounds."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

There is a secret order to the cosmos. It is carved deeper than the hungry would know to look for, and invisibly it sculpts their behaviour. The wise and attuned know it proceeds thus:

- Gimmick
- Weird
- Monster
- Bishy

So the crabitalist's phase three transformation being to become a creature of terrifying strength and speed comes as no surprise. Instinctively, the heart of a heroine can sense it in the same way that each sword blow prepares one for the next. Muscles beneath the shell grow so huge that they bulge out from in between the gaps in the armour plates. The rear of the crab reconfigures into an enormous set of plasma engines. The simple perfection of a crustacean form gives way to a monstrosity of brute strength, barely held in check by its carapace, and it burns hard for the triumphant foxgirls.

There is no trick to this part. This is simply big number. It moves fast and it hits hard and it will take you to your physical limits. And fortunately for Katherine, as Berserker's Master she inherently understands how this works...

... and remembers that there is another Berserker still tearing apart an orbital factory thousands of kilometers away. You can still see the flash of red and black as terrible detonations rip apart and reconfigure the enemy fortress into a new orbital stronghold.

Beyari: a Tale of Colossi

The motion detector on the Angel's shoulder chimed. It had been a simple thing to engineer - it had pulled one almost entirely intact from a security point in the facility, then she'd just needed to add a portable fuel source and a shell. Given the tiger-rich environment it had been heading into, it had considered setting the alert tone to a large animal roar - not out of place, wouldn't draw humans - but it had decided against it for two reasons. Firstly was simple annoyance - there were only so many times you could hear wet_leopard_growl.avi at max volume.

The second reason is that she loved cats and wanted to pat them.

The Angel of the Harvest turned its wicker-mask face up to face the terrifyingly huge jaguar beast. While maintaining an unblinking stare it reached into its bag and produced a whole, raw, bloody boar leg, wrapped in plastic. It unwound the plastic smoothly and then dropped the leg on the ground, then took several long steps back. Then it spread open palms out and gestured towards the meat.

Of course the idea that it was possible to communicate with an apex predator was not founded in data. Even with the unstable genome of canines it had taken thousands of years to properly domesticate them. Plenty of zookeepers were mauled to death by animals they had raised from kittens in controlled environment. But the Angel of the Harvest's toxic trait was believing that if she stared into the eyes of a great cat they would recognize the true nature of each other's souls and form an immediate, mystical bond and then she'd get to ride around on it perhaps while shooting a bow and arrow.

Most people, the Angel believed, shared that dream. They just did not act on it for base reasons like 'survival'. But you missed one hundred percent of the shots you didn't take.

Return to Thellamie

Rurik rubs the red mark of his recently healed shoulder, and then pulls a chain hauberk over his head. Slams the breastplate into place. Tightens the endless sequence of buckles and knots.

The thing about bait was that the fish never chose not to bite it.

He had been committed to this path from the moment the sisters asked for help. They could have spent the rest of the conversation bapping his face with their paws and mocking his taste in haberdashery and he still would have helped them. All of the details about rescue, star-crossed lovers, fate of the worlds - they were almost academic. Of course, it made it better to be doing something important, but it was all secondary to being asked for help. Heron has never asked him for help. Never needed it[1].

[1]He'd been walking her towards the training course he'd spent years setting up and refining with Injimo's help when they'd been ambushed by a stryx flock; she'd dealt with them so perfectly that he had quietly changed their path to go by the river shrine instead[2].
[2] Within which Heron found a hidden door, an underground complex, and a twisted nurdragon that had been corrupting the site from below. Right under his nose.

So, there he was, taking a moment to pick out hats that would shore up his defense against missile attacks. He was as committed, as simple as that. But there would come a moment when he would have to decide between doing what Seli and Keli said, and doing what would help them. He could feel it; there had been a moment there when it had felt like they weren't talking at all, that someone else was talking through them. He did not want to help that person - and he did not want to miss the moment when the two sets of interest diverged.

[Figure Out A Person: 7 What do they hope to get from this plan with Heron?
What are their feelings towards Inara?]