[b]Redana![/b]

Ring, ring, ring the hammers! Industry is unleashed! Pipes and violins and sweat! The saffron is ablaze, flesh concealed and flesh revealed. D-Scythes roar and the engine burns thick and hot and heavy. 

[i]"Atlas tried to build a man!"[/i] roared a Hermetic Priest in the voice of the mountains, choir-master alight with sacred candles atop his formless robes. 

[i]"His eyes were cast from gold
His fur was spun from silk
His mind was built from shining stars
And his spine was made from foil!"[/i]

The refrain was picked up by the united voices of the Coherent. This is a labour song, held in time with the engines. Three time the call and reply go out, a steady and endless rhythm designed to hammer away the time as much as the steel.

[i]"Molech tried to build a man!"[/i] called the Priest, voice rising in passion as the song built power.

[i]"His arms were carved of stone
His spear was forged from steel
His mind was built from spinning gears
And his soul was black as coal!"[/i]

Everything moves to the beat. The MRUs manage their steps in time as they roam amidst the sweating workers. Backs bare and furred and scaled shine and stink and are slapped as they tear down walls and rip up floors. Flashing sequences of datacode subvocalize through the din, laser-lights patterning out morse code to augmentic eyes. Wherever specialist work is to be done, the priests seamlessly arrive with their arcane arsenal to conjure matter from nothing or melt away a key bulkhead in a single gesture. Whenever there is hard labour to be done the Coherent surge in with hammers and picks like the tide.

[i]"Nero tried to build a man!"[/i] called the Priest, voice relishing this line particularly - and the roar of approval rippled up through the assembled workers. A particular bloody, husky passion filled these next lines.

[i]"His ass was soft from pillows
His stomach was full of fat
His mind was built from theatre shows
And his feet never left the soil!"[/i]

It was incredible how [i]young[/i] the Order of Hermes seemed to be. How vital, how passionate their civilization and culture. They wouldn't last a fraction of a second against the Armada, naturally - for all the shock of them having a [i]fleet[/i], having heard the numbers and stories from Iskarot you now see that your tutors were not blind to think of them as harmless. You half wonder if Nero could destroy their entire civilization with the Assassin Temple alone. 

Today she could do it easily.

But if they kept working like this? If the empty galaxy was left to them for another two hundred years? 

Was this what the future looked like?

[b]Alexa![/b]

The grass ripples. Shifts. Cracks. Tears. The soil pours off, wet and thick and clumpy, still bound together by the roots of a thousand different varieties of grass. The mound splits and cracks apart and what is beneath is indistinguishable from the soil that it had been buried in. A creaking leg screeches its protest as it reaches out and scratches at the earth, unsteadily testing its weight. It sinks slightly into the damp soil but it holds. With the second step the whole bulk of the creature pulls itself free - four legged, hunched, creaking and clattering and with the gentle and pained screech of metal rust.

The ancient autodog takes its third pained step towards you. And then from its mouth it drops a single clod of earth - no, not dirt. A ball. This machine has slept here for unknown hundreds of years, ball in mouth, obediently waiting for the day that someone would come to throw it once again.

[b]Vasilia![/b]

"So, uh. What happened to stop your heart from being bright and young?" said Hestia. "You're not much older than either of them and you talk like an ancient mariner. What [i]happened[/i] to you?"

[b]Dolce![/b]

"The Rift," said Hera. "Aphrodite's Rift. It's a wound in the heart of the galaxy, in the most literal sense. The closer you draw the more savage its effects. Each of you is cursed. Your hearts are uncertain and broken and they will become more so. Any flaw, no matter how invisible, will grow and grow until the void becomes insurmountable and it consumes you all."

"It is the blackest of curses," murmured Hades, kneeling down to place his cake in the oven. "Each soul carries the seed of heartbreak. No matter how they try, it is impossible for anyone to cure themselves."

"[i]Any[/i] relationship is destined for destruction if you stay on this terrible path," said Hera. "But perhaps if you are strong enough to stand alone you might yet survive it."

[b]Bella![/b]

You should have known. The Hermetics weaponized music against you before. Why not again? 

You've got the theme song to the movie stuck in your head. [i]Chan-barra-chan-barra chan-barra-chan[/i]! The rolling, confident theme music of Prion Paula as she enters each new room of the ship fills your mind. It runs deeper - every entry she made was so smooth, so confident, so effortlessly sexy that it's almost impossible to avoid hesitating in each doorway, the pose half-struck. [i]Chan-barra![/i] 

The story was simple to the point of parody. The bad guys wore red and spiked armour and the good guys wore blue kimonos, [i]chan-barra[/i]! The wicked were powerful and the good were lowly, [i]chan-barra-chan[/i]! Fights were staredowns of unutterable tension, long shots of staring eyes and subtly trembling hands, sweat dripping down foreheads until everything exploded in seconds of unutterable violence that were so swift and so skilled and over so quickly that they left you stunned and mouth dry, still trying to process as that shining swords was returned to its sheath. It was a movie that did not for a second exceed its ambitions, did not for a second feel drawn to add any complexity, did not have any of the nuance or subtlety of Imperial stagecraft. It was a story of good and evil, and after much struggle - [i]chan-barra![/i] - good triumphed. 

And that's possibly the most frustrating thing of all. The movie, despite every expectation, is not dumb. It doesn't make any mistakes. Doesn't get anything [i]wrong[/i]. Nothing that makes an easy criticism and dismissal. It's just... simple. Straightforwards. Catchy.