Thanqol

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All she knew how to do was lose...

"Then I should at least be good at it by now?" murmured Injimo.

Before her was a vision in words and grace. A future. A sun and a shadow. A place. And she wanted -

There was nothing that she wanted. She wanted the win. Wanted to win fucking - something, but she had spent so long in defeat that she did not even know what that looked like. When she tried to imagine what winning even looked like, in general, in this specific instance...?

Was winning breaking this vision? Reducing hope to ash and tears? To what end? Other than Sayanastia's? Was winning -

"Unless." She turned the word over in her mouth. "Unless...?"

More than anything else, she could not move past that word. Unless? What did it mean? Was there another vision there? Another story that those eyes could see, that she could not yet? She could not imagine even one choice and Eclair could see two. She touched her fingers to her cheek. What was the other one? What was this future - this future where she won? She could not see the reflection of it in those beautiful eyes no matter how hard she stared. She couldn't... could almost...

"Unless," she sighed, raising her hands, smile finally breaking. "Until unless, then."

She would need to stare far more closely to see her victory.

Return to Thellamie

Injimo laughed - an unhinged, desperate sound. "You think I am deluded? You think that it is possible to be more than a shadow of the Hero of Ages? I set this out as politely as I could -" she shakes tea from her fingertips, "- gave you every opportunity to back down. But I guess you really do need it spelled out for you: If we are in our own hands, we are all doomed, each and every one of us."

She drained her tea in a single gulp, then refilled the cup straight from the hip flask. "So we're not. So we're not! She's coming back - she might be back already. She always has, always will, because she knows as well as we do that if she doesn't this world ends. Ends, burns, dies, gone, forever. Every time she's so much as late to the party it goes to the brink. You said yourself how close it is to collapse, and that's only going to accelerate. There are terrors you don't even know about rising from the depths. There are monsters you can't imagine crawling out of their holes. We've been pretending Sayanastia is tamed but she's really fucking not and she's one bad hair day away from bringing about another age of ruin. And you think you can stop this? You, fucking, skateboard detective and a couple of muscleheads? Of course you can't stop this. Here's where your investigation is going to lead you: to a full and comprehensive understanding of just how impossibly fucked we are. Something you'd know already if you'd ever had to fight Heron even once."

She took a deep breath, drained the cup a second time, and then closed her eyes and spread her fingers out to either side.

"So if the alternative is certain death, then there is only one thing left to us. To hold the faith. To hold the line. To make sure there are treasures and histories sealed away in the world's fortresses and temples for when the Hero of Ages chooses to reveal herself again. Anything less is simply accelerating the world's decline."

Black Crusade: Fires In The Garden

"I mean, it's a cute dog, my dear lord," said Staffanic, a sybarite with eyes diluted from his ocular stimulant injections. "Though I certainly cannot imagine casting my civilization apart on its behalf."

He gave a deep yawn, wiping the humidity from his forehead with a sweet-scented orkskin kerchief.

"If this is an intoxicant, it is either specialized for a certain set of targets - or it requires repeated exposure to build up its effect. Can't see the appeal from where I am. And that's for the best, really - there are a lot of screens down there."

To Vael and Hagar, this excuse seems reasonable enough - but Geron has caught this scent before. The sweat, the fatigue, the thickening of the swamp water around the sybarite's ankles - the Ancient Raven has set its mark. Staffanic is clearly unaware of this sickness but a seed of it already germinates inside.

Breathless Dead

"The best place to mediate," said Persephone quietly, "is in the tiger's mouth."

Those aren't the words queued for the day's Affirmation, but the people of planet Earth have heard or read them many times before. Against the grinding noise and impossible unreality of Tellus, in temples and in markets, in homes and on beaches, the people hear them in their hearts.

Against the shrieking of the Earth, they sit. Every instinct calls upon them to run, to fight, to grasp for what they love and want to protect. None of them do. As fire and aurora burns in the skies, as the stale breath of the Underworld washes out in every direction, as Legions march out in stumbling ranks, the people of Earth sit and are still. They look. They think. They take deep breaths. They close their eyes, then they open them. They look around them and they see.

Then, as one, they stand. And they go about their purposes.

Fire marshals put upon their brightly coloured hats and vest. People move quickly but calmly away or towards danger, as their nature demands. In part it resembles the movements of the armies of Ceron, whose battle instinct is coded into them on a genetic level - but no. The Ceronian instinct is a copy of this. There's no trick to it, it's just everyone taking a moment to think, and then everyone trusting in the people around them. Such a simple thing to say, but such a spectacular thing to see.

Doors are left open. Bathtubs are filled with water. Cars are left with their keys on the dash so that people who need to get away can. Swords are taken down from mantles. People who know a little more step up as leaders, and people who know a little less listen to them. It is not a martial instinct, this is not the organization for war - it is nothing so brittle and predictable. A vast, empty, liquid serenity falls upon the people of Earth. Civilization empties itself of its expectations, its wargames, its hopes and its fears. Hands are emptied and fists are unclenched, because the open palm is the most powerful weapon that life possesses.

And on the table before that palm, all the treasures, wonders and terrors that this world possesses, to be drawn as needed.

On the vast horizon arises the Imperial Palace. It shudders into place around Hermes' golden anchor. A spectacular pyramid of rose gardens like a waterfall of blood, awe and scale manifest. Two golden eyes gaze upon its golden form and they know it is perfect, and they know that it is doomed. The Eyes of Hermes can remember the plans just as they were written, the vast machinery of the palace extending out to hold the gates of the Underworld open so the engines of man can come forth. When it is done and the translation is stabilized, all of Earth buried and all of Tellus free, then the palace and its engines will collapse into ruin, preventing any return.

The broadcast speakers crackle and sputter again, still weak from carrying the voice of Nero. Now they strain to carry something greater still: the wailing sound of a zither. A traditional song from ancient days; a swan's death cry, the music of an artist awaiting his execution. The final duty of Empress Nero will be the salvation of humanity.

Fire catches amongst the roses.

Black Crusade: Fires In The Garden

"As long as you like," murmured the priest. The concrete beneath him was taking on the consistency of mud and he was slowly sinking into it. "Have you ever seen such a rain...?"

He does not applaud Geron's speech - a few scattered claps come from the various menials and magi who are shaken out of their supernatural reverie, but it quickly trails off to silence. There is some far more enthusiastic applause from the small group of attendants and hangers-on, but it feels thin and hollow in the vastness of this dead machine. The steady pounding rainbeat drowns everything out.

This particular priest did not have any valuable implants - his identifying marks announce him as a mid-ranking bureaucrat responsible for water management, not any kind of combat specialist. You do notice a nearby body has been neatly opened up and relevant cybernetics have been extracted in perhaps a similar way you were intending to. Draupnir has gotten here first, after all - their servitors rove all about, mindlessly performing their functions - and they no doubt have some arcane machinery that allows them to identify the most valuable items for themselves.

Black Crusade: Fires In The Garden

"I am..." the martian blinked. "Doesn't matter. Old name, wasn't a name really. It was a ident-code on Form Sel-Z-0346, issued for a replacement component. Logistia-Initate Priest, Beta Grade, (1). When age wore me down then all they needed to do was look at my name tag to know how to commission my replacement. That's the kind of world this was..."

For a moment he seemed almost like dozing off. "You don't realize how tired you are until you stop. That's... that's what the Scribe of Days brought us. She brought us an updated calendar. There were saints that we were not venerating properly, you see. New holy days. We paused production, let the engines go dark, sat in contemplation of the Machine God. Sat in silence at first. Didn't know what to do with ourselves. Some just turned their minds off until they were called upon. But then... then the picts."

He stretched, timber creasing beneath his robes. His missing jaw struggled with a phantom yawn. "We didn't know where they came from, but they were inoffensive. Picts of animals. Of people dancing. Of peaceful worlds, where they did tricks and played music. Those of us without cognitive implants started watching them during the holy days. And there were... more and more holy days. The Imperium has a lot of saints. At first we dreaded downtime, didn't know what to do with it, and then we started dreading the shifts. But the shifts got further and further apart. Days. Weeks. I spent a month inside, watching the picts. It was like resting, but it wasn't restful. I slept less. Fell behind on my maintenance routines. But it was fun, watching the animals play with the little lords. Everyone seemed so happy. Two of the beasts threw an Astartes between themselves for six hours before it finally came apart. Hardly seemed to notice the roots growing in..."

He groaned. "And then Draupnir came. Joyless bastards, the bluecoats. Chips on their shoulders. Those skitarii of theirs... tech-savages, the post-apocalyptic survivors of the worst hellscape created by the Dark Age of Technology. Mars has its faults, but we tried to make it a better place! We tried to..." again a shivering yawn, the ember of strong opinion washing away in the rain. "... doesn't matter now. But watch out for the screens. They're all playing the picts now. On my way up here... it took weeks. You see one of those and..." he trailed off again, staring up at the rain.

Breathless Dead

She has played the part of Empress Nero for a long time. This long, hard, necessary, failed path to save Humanity - so much had to be put aside. So much had to be given up. She had lost her heart and her eyes, fingers gripped to the edge of an ever-widening abyss. The weight had been so heavy. She had held the entire world of Tellus upon her shoulders like Atlas once had, all of humanity kept from the brink by the strength of her back and her will. The great civilization that had been her child, that had grown up from roads and pathways and ships and medicines and now stood on the brink of complete oblivion - keeping it alive had required sacrifice. Not just from her - the entire world of Tellus was a life support system, an iron lung that kept the idea of humanity alive even as the Underworld pressed in all around it.

And she? She was the mechanical hand that gripped the flickering heart, squeezing it in time, forcing blood to pump. An act of despair. A hell. Waiting for a miracle -

Her lips curled up into a smile. "Fooled you~" said Hermes.

She could feel Hades' horrified attention snap back to her from so far away, but he was bleeding and crippled. She saw him abandon his place on Earth and surge towards her like a hurricane, a terrible black hole barreling across the cosmos. He could see what she was doing. The only thing left to decide was when he should arrive.

"Last second," she said thoughtfully, spinning her caduceus around her fingers.
She picked up her microphone. "Humans of Tellus!" she announced. They had never heard her voice before, but it was still Her Voice - something she had never given up - and no one could mistake the voice of their God-Empress as it rang out across the entire world. "Congratulations! Your years of penance are over! Soon the gates of Tellus will open and you will once more walk free and unconfined. Do not forget the lessons you have learned here, for you shall not be rescued a second time."

The great Nemesis runes began to alight all along the surface of Tellus. The vast black hole of rage and desperation that was Hades loomed large in the horizon. She could almost hear his voice in the distance, could almost see her family following behind. She smiled and ran her fingers over her scepter. "Hades, Hades, Hades~" said Hermes. "You ridiculous creature. Didn't you know that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?"

Golden lights began to flare. She sat alone upon her throne and smiled. Whatever else would come to pass this day, at the least she could be proud that she had at last successfully stolen the most precious possession of the House of Hades.

She engaged Nemesis.

*

Scientists had long theorized the existence of Counter Earth - a balance point on the opposite side of the Sun that contained an entire duplicate mirror world. Short sighted fools that they were, they thought that once their space probes saw nothing at the L3 point then that was the end of it. They somehow forgot that the opposite side of the sun was the night.

From the night, Tellus comes. From the Underworld it overlays Earth, dimensions shivering and shuddering as the World of the Dead tries to connect into place. In some places it is easy - the underground tunnels of the Burrowers snap into alignment almost immediately. Here the spiritual and architectural principles have not evolved at all across a thousand years of distance. Tellus slots into place, the tools old humanity left for itself falling easily and naturally into its hand.

But everywhere else it finds no overlap at all. Across this green and pleasant land Tellus can find no purchase, its spires and pyramids and tight-packed corridors failing to align with a soft and spread out landscape. Flights of fighter craft flicker in and out of existence in the skies above, dimensional invaders performing a futile search for the engines of war they can switch out with. Cyclopean temples to the Gods shudder in and out of existence. Everywhere the vast inevitable city arises from Hell and brings with it all its terrors, but everywhere it wavers on uncertain feet.

Stabilization efforts begin. Soldiers and machines move out to clear land, restructure buildings, align Earth with its Nemesis and in so doing dump the ruins of Earth into the underworld. A shame, but better to lose the depopulated ruin of the old world than the beautiful new capital she had made as the heart of humanity's new empire. The numbers just made sense. And besides - she had promised Hades that she'd send his wife back home.

Prayers ring out. Bells ring. The creatures of Tellus raise their voices in praise of Hermes, their God, their patron, their savior.

*

Persephone looks out at the terrible city trying to force its way onto her world. Her house has a view now, and it's a view of cathedrals in every direction. They ripple in and out of the world, broken puzzle pieces forced into shape.

"Aw biscuits," said Persephone.

She walks back inside, goes to her computer and hits ctrl-s on her document. She then shuts it down properly, picks up her sword again, and goes back outside.

Breathless Dead

Persephone drives through a twilight world.

Here is an endless rolling line of hedgerows, weaving to and fro, until it climbs a hilltop. The barriers fall away, providing a view of the patchwork biomes of a sprawling zoo. She continues along a mountainside set with concrete and glass bunker structures, overlooking a terraced lake, before turning along a green corridor beneath the shadow of electrical pylons and criss-crossed with bike paths. Then down across an arid plane, past small towns and a flat-spaced octagonal casino until the road takes a downhill turn. The foliage turns tropical and the road meanders here and there across green summer islands. Another turn takes along a coastal road with a view clear to sunset. Farms and homes and ocean breezes that take away summer's heat, cliffs broken by endless beaches. Children play with toy excavators in the rubble of construction sites and bike paths snake under and over roads in every directions.

She comes to a home without a view - the plot with the view is vacant and set with park benches. She comes to a home with a community request board out the front next to the little library and chore register. She comes to a home without enough spare rooms for all her guests, but neighbourhood doors open with faces delighted to see guests. She comes to a home surrounded by lemon, cherry and almond trees, all out of season. She comes to a home lit with the sound of someone in the distance practicing the harpsichord.

Hades waits at the door, red rose in his hand.

"Please," he said. "Come back to me."
Persephone sighed and pushed past him.

Her home was humble, built for one. In one corner was a computer surrounded by post-its, books and notepads, still logged into the Daily Affirmation Of The Way <3 account. There was a comfortable couch and a couple of borrowed chairs so that everyone could be comfortable. There were bowls of peanuts, honeycomb and sun-dried mango slices.

"Please," said Hades again. "Come back to me. I have built the Underworld in your image. Now it trends towards justice. Now it trends towards love. I have turned eternity to this purpose, to teach the galaxy's monsters how to unclench their fists. I take every soul that comes to my House into my care, and more than that. I do not simply break down the wicked, I bring down their societies. I crack apart their contradictions, pry loose Aphrodite's fingers, wash each soul clean and pure, no matter how long it takes. I, too, have declared war upon samsara, but within my realm, with my resources, free from the interference of my family, I can triumph. I can triumph, in a way that you never can here. I need your help. Leave this world behind. Be with me."
Persephone leaned heavily on the cutting bench. She looked tired. She looked sad. "Every soul?"
"All of them!"
"Then what of those you fed to the Rift to reach me?" said Persephone.
"I had to reach you," said Hades, eyes burning blue.
"You had to," said Persephone quietly.
There was a sword in her hand.
"Them?" said Hades. "Well paid! They knew the risks, they knew the rewards, they chose to roll the dice. They had every opportunity to quit this journey. Against humanity itself!"
"I never asked for humanity," said Persephone. "I don't want it."
"You are a liar!" said Hades. His eyes burned so blue they scorched the ceiling, as blue as the skies. "You did not come to Earth, take over this civilization, remake it in your image, seed your swords throughout the galaxy because you do not dream of political change! I have seen Jupiter! I have seen what your people have built! You are setting yourself up as a parallel culture, steeped in symbolism -" his voice broke, pleading, though the blue burned brighter, "- and I could not agree more. If that is what you want I'll give it all to you, and more. I will call in every debt I am owed and shower this world and culture in all my family's blessings. This culture will thrive and spread, replace the hollow expansionism of the Skies, end the atrocities of Biomancy, reform the warlike Ceron!"
"My mother will mourn," said Persephone, scratching the edge of her blade against the edge of the stone counter.
"Her? That heartless monster?" scoffed Hades. His bow tie was choking, he loosened it with a finger. "I've seen how you threw her out of this world when she tried to visit. You set your beasts on her rather than see her, there's no love lost there - and between Hephaestus and Kronus, how much of her is left, really? But if you must pretend to care, I have made arrangements for her death. She will join us beneath, and she can be our greatest project - to unwind the nightmare she has become. Return her to warmth, release her kind and loving to the galaxy -"
"After how many years of winter?"
"Prices must sometimes be paid. You know this. You have lived in the real world long enough, sometimes you have to turn something off to fix it."
"I understand that very well," said Persephone quietly.
"Then," said Hades. He pulled off his bow tie entirely. Without it... somehow it became apparent that the suit he wore was the exact same cut and style that Aphrodite wore. "Come with me."
"No," said Persephone.
"Come with me."
"You have not learned anything," she said.
"Come with me! You are my queen!"
"Actually," said Persephone, "I am a Princess."

Scarlet light flickers like a heartbeat. Hades reaches up pale fingers to the red slit across his throat, right where his bow tie had been. The God of the Dead looks at his own blood with disbelief. All those angular joints bend and crease, folding him up like an origami crane.

"I am no one's prisoner," said Persephone. "Not my mother's. Not yours. Not me, not I, not any more."
"Re..." Hades rasps, shuddering and distorting. "Re... DA! NA!"

How quickly that kind face turns to a thing of terror. How suddenly you can see the crimson strings, the red thread of fate pouring out of that throat, thickening into ribbons that find their end point in the hands of smiling Aphrodite. The God of the Dead turns and whirls, knocking over chairs, breaking glass, staggering desperately until his eyes lock on Redana and he snatches the Gift - that sealed treasure he had bid you take all this way. Wild eyed he stands and faces Persephone, who still holds her sword calm and steady.

"I will fix you too," rasped Hades, hand to his throat as ribbons continued to spill out. Aphrodite is grinning. Everything was for this, a scheme an eternity in the making. "If that is what it takes to make you happy. You are coming with me -"

He rips open the box.

Nothing happens.

Hades looks confused. His expression is mirrored in Aphrodite. But as Hades lifts out the cold metal crown, his expression remains confused - while Aphrodite becomes so enraged he bites his cigarette in half.

"What... is this?" said Hades, holding up a Nemesis Crown.
"HERMES!" screams Aphrodite in fury.

The world begins to shake.

Prepare for planetary teleportation.

Black Crusade: Fires In The Garden

There is a clatter of bells as a Martian priest sits up. He has taken off the augmentics that replaced the lower side of his face and jaw and pulled back his hood. His elderly face was smiling with his eyes - if not the ruin of his jaw. Wearily, he rummages through the pile of materials next to him until he finds his voxsponder and sockets it back into his neck with a binharic whine.

"Do you enjoy April's sweet showers?" groans that mechanical voice through rust and age. "The drought is pierced to the root. Projections indicated that it would continue indefinitely, so I was assigned to manage a project to ship in ice from off-world, but..." the red priest's fingers reached down to cup a flower growing alongside him. "Zephirus has come, breathing life into each sweet root."

He brought the flower up to his nose and took a gentle breath.

"If you would, you may sit with me. We can enjoy the rain together. I can tell you of the Scribe, and how she brought her knowledge unto us."

Return to Thellamie

If Eclair imagined that this was the first time Injimo had been kicked into a tea party, she would be wrong.[1]

(1)

Technically, she had not been kicked into a tea party in the wild, but it had been one of many scenarios she had trained for in case Princess Heron had needed training on how to do it.

Her long hair, unbound from topknot, falls down across her eyes. She slumps halfway across the table, elbows on, holding the teacup drunkenly in one hand. She whirls it around her finger, then sloshes the whole thing over her shoulder. She slams out her counter onto the table - teacup, teacup with saucer, margarita glass, majong tiles. She flicks her hair back and looks up with dead, hollow eyes as she lifts the teapot and sloshes boiling water across all three cups in one swift slash, spraying water all across the table. Nonmatching ceramic bowl, ivory dice, three cigarettes, potato chips arranged into a delicate lotus pattern. Her sleeves whirl and slash as she arranges the tea set, then flick as loose leaf tea pours out onto the table.

She snaps her hand, her magical tablet flicked into her hand. She breaks eye contact, profoundly indifferent, cups rattling where she brushed them, pressing buttons. A bright yellow plastic toy excavator, a Yukisworld relic that had found a place in the Stacks, rolls across the table, controlled remotely. Its bucket lowers and it picks up a huge scoop of the tea leaves scattered across the table. It rolls forwards, mechanically beeping, and dumps the tea wildly across the two teacups. Into the margarita glass Injimo pours clear vodka, splashing two drops precisely into both tea cups as she tosses the flask over her shoulder to land with the original tea cup.

She shakes the lid around the edge of the two teacups, staring directly again, eyes red, then sets it on top of the toy excavator. She looks at what are now her guests and offers her hand expressively with a lidded stare.

A Yakuza-style tea ceremony. The artistry it required to be this rude - the way the scattered tea-leaves still formed a lotus pattern - underestimate it at your peril.

"I wouldn't know what you're talking about," said Injimo. Discipline was back. This was a trained Handmaiden, after all - even here past the edge of despair, tea ceremony drunken and mad and an offense to every law of etiquette, was a dangerous thing. Reminded of her duty, she had drawn a demon blade of lies and chipped chinaware, and threw up this last wall of entropy in the face of logic. "Unless -" gasp! "- this is a gaaaame! Officerrr, you like the idea of creating panic by spreading rumours about Heron's absence, don't you?"