It's like stepping through a door into a dream. One moment she is running, suffocating and trapped, and then her hand pushes through a portal and she is tumbling into a space so open and strange she should want a ship to navigate it. Tellus would call it a crime to waste this much area and material. For XIII, it's a miracle.

She sits down next to the river, in a spot just cleaned by the ghost maiden. She does not stop to watch her work, or wonder why she does. These acts are not a mystery to a palace servitor, especially when compared with the freely rushing water. This too would not be allowed on Tellus. Nero would never permit a river to exist inside her paradise. Where it must run, let it do so in rigid channels, pumped slowly forward at pre-approved speeds. But this is... fast. Wild, inconsistent even. It churns itself into a frothy white mess where two or more currents smash into each other, and it runs so slowly that it almost seems to sit still near the turn on the bank. It moves as it will, on a path it carved for itself, perhaps on the whim of some bored, drunken God but certainly not by the design of any mortal architect.

She is enraptured. She watches it flow past her from her perch with an intense expression carved onto her face, not curious or angry or afraid, not peaceful or happy or contemplative. She watch the water, each fleck of white drifting next to her seat and then disappearing under the bridge and around the bend, with the same look she used to get when she watched her princess preparing for an athletic contest. And for once not a single thought catches inside her brain.

An hour passes her by with only the sounds of the city for company. If you can actually call it that. The river bubbles, the wind rustles through grass and stone. Glass crunches and scrapes across the ground at odd intervals without ever really drawing farther away, as if to prove the pointlessness of the woman's task. Maybe once or twice a minute there'll be the whisper-brushing that passes for Azurite walking as some citizen or another crosses the street. It's quiet the way a dream is quiet. It's closer to the Yakanov than it is to even the Imperial Palace, let alone the reaches of the city-planet itself. There are no wailing songs fighting each other for dominance, no whirling and clicking of great and constantly operating mechanisms or tired grunts and heavy, many-tiered footfalls from people with places to be and work to be done at every hour of the day. A city should be thriving, teaming, writhing, so full and loud that it gave her a headache if she tried to listen to it all at once for more than a moment. And this is... not. It's like if someone tried to build a model of one inside her-- i-inside the Anemoi.

She stands as if jolted by the spark of a personal ELF. She whips her head about to look for Apollo an his smug, insufferable smile, but of course the god is not here with her. His interest was only to lead her here to this broken place; now that she was here he had no further use for her. Typical. Heat rises in her cheeks and her ears flutter in a very definitely pouting way. Moron. He was there, what the shit made you think that meant he cared? How often had the gods proved she was beneath their pity? If Hera would not visit her, then...

Suddenly her feet can't carry her fast enough. She doesn't challenge the bridge, but she cuts through streets and people's paths with reckless urgency until the smell of baking bread pulls her short. She takes deep sniffs of the air. It's warm and hearty and full of life in a way that makes her chest tingle. She sniffs again as she approaches. They use a different grain here, or they grow it in some weird new way (probably with djinn dust and enough terrifyingly casual power to make her stomach churn). It's flaxen and bright where it should be earthy, and filled with all sorts of extra things that make a proper city's worth of noise for her nose to make sense of.

She reaches the bakery and watches the armored woman inside work with the same kind of mesmerized expression the river had given her. Things were different here indeed. This bread was dark brown where her own was golden, and baked in rounded tins where XIII had been taught to shape it into bars by hand. But what set this place apart more than the basics, more than the loneliness that stabbed through it all, more even than the pointlessly huge quantity (how could so much of something even exist? Was this tribute for... but no, Thist said they didn't do that. So then how? How could anybody have so much more of something than they needed and still look so drab and ignoble?), was the variety. There were playing breads and unleavened ones, ones baked with strawberry cream and ones crammed so full of vegetables that the crust had turned orange-green. There were small ones and large ones and ones cut into the shape of leaves, and more entrancingly still several attempts to replicate the structure of their weird spiral-circle patterns that gave the Endless Azure Skies a majesty she couldn't brush off no matter how much she tried to assure herself that this was a broken place after all.

The baker moves with the kind of stately purpose she would expect of a high priestess. She gestures, and huge trays of uncooked doughs lift themselves atop a storm dust into grand stone ovens with heating elements so deep inside them XIII can't see how they manage it here. The baker/priestess turns her attention to more finished loaves, her body twisting like a dancer as the trays move to her will and rhythm over to teeming, empty racks to cool. Her every move is purposeful. No action is wasted. No words are necessary. This is the work of a master. This is the highest form of artistry. This is a palace, a theater, a temple, whether the Azurites would call it such or no.

She makes no notice of XIII no matter how obviously she watches or creeps closer. Not until her bag of coins starts jangling does she get a sharp stare and a nod of acknowledgement. Neither of them comments on how long the other has been there. The entire transaction takes place in total silence. XIII purchases a large dome of bread still shimmering with heat and stuffed so full of melted cheeses it makes her palms feel greasy just to look at it. She fishes coins out clumsily, one at a time with an uncertain glance up after each until she finally gets a shrug and a hand wave. She leaves with the distinct impression she's been ripped off.

The bread is warm in her hands as she leaves, even through the paper bag it's been wrapped in. XIII carves a careful chunk from it as she walks and pops it into her mouth. Instantly she realizes her doom. She could never manage flavor like this. She could study for years and not achieve this texture. It chews and it melts somehow at the same time,and the burst of sweet and salty flavor rains down her throat without mercy. She has never been permitted this kind of decadence. This is art. It is an act of worship that she's eating. This is a miracle, born out of a broken planet that wouldn't understand the uselessness of continuing to move forward through the ashes of its own corpse.

She climbs to the top of a building from the outside, picking her way up the masonry and around the hanging tapestry with it's unknowable circle patterns so she can find a safe nest among the tilted roofs. Her tail swishes solemnly behind her while her bread burns her lap, and she watches the sky through the shapes of the distant towers, and the brilliant violet glow that burns them all.

Alexa has attended many rituals, and if there's one thing she's certain of, it's that the guest of honor is not supposed to hide in a corner, clutching a goblet between her and other people like a shield.

She's not supposed to be the center of attention! She's the background! She doesn't exist until she's needed! And everyone's come out here, for her! The've all taken time from projects and pursuits, all to put on a party in her honor! She wants to scream, to tell them not to bother! Go back to your lives! Stop wasting time on this! And yet, here they are, wrestling each other, performing dazzling displays of talent, a dizzying array of potential, all for her benefit!

She does her best to just focus on that. On shapes, on limbs. On what they are, how they are used, and not what they are doing.

They're only mock battles. Wrestling matches, blunted weapons, for the glory of the gods. And so long as she's not thinking of it as battles, she can avoid touching the spot in her mind that used to hold memories. Don't wonder about the usability of a limb in defense, or try to figure out a counter--just appreciate it for what it is.

(She hasn't dared to think about wrestling. It's not battle. It's not. She chose it, studied it, on her own. It's pure, unsullied. Nobody pushed her towards it. It lives in her head forever, so long as she never checks to make sure she still remembers how to do it.)

It's much better to think about what she's looking at. Safer. Think about the options available to her. Think about the Coherents, their boasting and actions and, and the.

Um.

The.

Oh gosh.

The sheer variety of shapes and forms on display--the oiled skin, the straining muscles, the screaming biosteel, slamming against and over each other? Big, strong? Sleek? Thick? Everybody has their own ideas of what beauty looks like, and somewhere a Coherent has made it a reality.

A dragon-headed form has Ramses in a headlock, but Ramses is fighting back with the tentacles--one arm is bound against the dragon's torso, and he's making a grand display of peeling the arms from his throat.

The crowd cheers as the dragon taps out, and she brings the goblet to her face in a rush. Miraculously, only half the drink sloshes over her, which, lemme just say? Nailed it, ace interaction skills.

She's pretty sure she was thinking something upsetting a few seconds ago, but this is much nicer.

No part of this is right. Neither of them ought to be here. The ship’s champion had as much business at the helm as the ship’s cook. Poseidon would prove their folly, momentarily, except there would be no one left to accept the truth of the matter. Or, rather, those that were wouldn’t get to accepting said truth for some time, on account of the more pressing matters of a ship split in two.

But Dionysis didn’t operate on what ought to be. They stood atop a terrifying mountain of possibility, and promised all of it real, in exchange for all propriety learned and ingrained. Only here could the impossible seem rather doable. And only here could an answer be seen for how simple it was.

The crew belonged to the Captain. The ship belonged to the Captain.

Whoever commanded them was, in effect, the Captain.

Click! Went the cover of a speaking-tube.

“Reduce speed. Return to prior heading. 73 point 2 degrees starboard. Raise prow 11 point 7 degrees.” Went the calm, steady voice of a sheep.

Fwomp! Went a pocketful of fluffy, muffling wool, jammed down the only tube to the engine room.

Dolce’s hooves made no sound, as he turned to face Redana, and the communications dial she’d just shattered. Behind him, the blocked pipe, that she would have to go through him to repair. Beside them both, the viewscreen, the gathering storm, and proof to the question that would decide their fates:

Who commanded this ship?

**************************************************

Of course there wasn’t a way to tell in any way that mattered. The thought was a silly, useless old thing, forgotten for a reason. What good did it do her to know what her great-great-great grandparents were designed to do? Their lives were their own, as hers was her own, and she wasn’t going to run off and, and become a street sweeper or whatever they did just because they were born for it. Silly of her to even bring it up in the first place.

The uncharacteristically silly Vasilia considered the implements laid out before her, seemingly deaf to Iskarot’s words. Forks? Corkscrews? Ladles? No, no, it would be chopsticks today. For the challenge, you see. (Oh gods what had her life come to) She laid herself out, set to savor a bowl of coleslaw in her finest bathrobe, and only then did the Grand Magos drift back into her awareness, welcomed by a gracious gesture of her chopsticks.

“Well? I believe you were telling me why I’m so great and powerful?~”

You only get one miracle, Redana. You only get one person saved from you. You can’t call down Olympus to stop you every time you want to hurt someone.

She hooks her fingers in Dolce’s wool and lifts him up off the ground with the strength of an Olympic athlete. The things coming out of her mouth aren’t understandable words anymore. They’re just hurt and betrayed syllables sliding out from between her lips.

She slams him against the instruments so hard that not even the insulating wool can protect him entirely, and screams, even as the ship begins its long, slow drift out of the storm. It won’t escape unscathed, but it’s not going to dive into destruction, either.

She’s crying. She’s crying and shaking and falling apart, but she’s still got a grip on Dolce as she slams him into the wall again, and again, and again, until she tosses him aside and, growling like an animal, claws at the clogged pipe. Someone who was patient and careful could clear it. Redana is likely to just get it crammed in deeper.

But what when she realizes that? Will she call down the thunder? Will the Nemean tear open the hull? Will that incredible capability for violence finally be turned against the crew by a gods-maddened princess, and yet another journey to Gaia fail, torn apart by Aphrodite?

The defense of the crew and ship falls again to the (bruised, battered, brave) Captain.

Alexa!

The topic of the conversation between the Coherent shifts after a while, bringing a slightly cooler tone to a hot blooded celebration. The question has been raised about the first time they altered their bodies - what they wanted, what they thought they wanted, what they thought was okay to say that they wanted. Some of them are very quiet through this topic, but others are wise and distanced enough - or even simply drunk enough - to swap some stories.

Envy comes up - feeling drawn towards a task or social role designed for a specialized servitor clade. If you had been spliced as farmer and they had been spliced a pilot then there wasn't a path to the sky - at least, not one which didn't involve the genetic equivalent of cobbling together a rickety biplane in your garage from theoretical principles. Sometimes it was envy's cousin, hero worship - finding someone so inspirational that you wanted to follow in their path, even if it lead somewhere you were told you couldn't follow. Some of them expressed a deep itchiness, an uncomfort in their own skin that they didn't know how to express, and so they shed that skin regularly like a snake. Some of them had a dream of their completed self and have been diligently working towards that perfection step by step in a linear fashion. Some are curious, figuring they won't know what their ideal self is like until they try every possible configuration of shapes. Some of them had a simple problem, and they fixed it, and they were done.

There's a financial dynamic to this. The Magi of the Order are the experts at the augmentation and body modification that the Coherent desire, and so they hire the Coherent as soldiers and labourers in exchange. The conversation naturally flows onto grousing about pay, conditions, risk, and the damned magi. Everyone agrees that they should have gotten danger pay when the Yakanov went down, and that the priests were probably holding out on them with their 'all of our equipment is back on the cursed space station' excuse. But while they're grumbling, this is the good natured grumbling of workers who are basically content. This is more mythologizing than anything, the foundation laid to lead into tall tales of how everyone totally saw a Coherent warrior with an eyepatch blast through a horde of bonsai zombies with two lightning pistols granted by Zeus herself.

Vasilia!

"You are small and irrelevant and from the smell of things you have somehow managed to burn rice," said Iskarot. "I do not understand. The process is straightforwards. Boil water. Add rice. Add broccoli. Season with monosodium glutamate. And yet you are able to achieve such a spectacular failure and not be genetically driven to ritualistically flay the fur from your back as penance for your crimes against biomatter. That blithe acceptance of mediocrity is truly remarkable."

A pause, as a spoonful of coleslaw vanishes into the depths of that blackened robe. Is he clewing? Is he dumping it directly into a vat of acid? Impossible to say.

"I must clarify that although this sounds like criticism, it is not. I know far fewer beings able to accept mediocrity than beings driven to achieve transcendent perfection."

XIII!

Philosophers sometimes make the case that the universe is one and all places are bound to the same natural laws. Travelers from the Order of Hermes sometimes quip that Zeus' laws are constant no matter where you go in the galaxy. The Endless Azure Skies stand in defiance of such simple-minded universalism, and it demonstrates this truth above all with flight.

Flight in the realms of Tellus is a thing of fire and force. Muscles and engines burn away gravity for as long as they have fuel to sustain them and they pay for their defiance with sweat and smoke. To fly as the Imperials fly is to exercise power. Sometimes Imperial flight might even be graceful, but what is grace but power controlled? But to call the flight of the Azura graceful would be like calling the orbits of planets graceful - you could perhaps imagine how the concept might apply to such a spectacle, but the scale and concepts are so wildly different from any traditional understanding of grace that an entirely different vocabulary will need to be developed to understand it.

The Azura ships you watch don't move like birds or jets or anything else you might imagine. They are spheres, gleaming and reflective, rolling through the skies like marbles across ever-tilting glass. Many of them drag other spheres in their wake, orbiting them around them like moons around a comet. Sometimes they can turn on a dime, two hundred and seventy degrees of rotation in a split second at speeds that would make even a gene-reinforced combat pilot swoon. Sometimes they seem caught in some invisible lull, pulling themselves through a turn at the sluggish speed of a tea trolley snarled in that horrible tangled rug Nero kept in the Red Room. There's a logic there, a pattern, but it's no more visible to your true eye than the thermals that a bird might use. Even the Auspex is sluggish and curious here. It has been a long time since it has observed these ships and its memory stirs slowly. Eventually you can feel yourself leaning into the curves, developing a strange sort of instinct and expectation for the patterns they're taking even if you can't articulate the why of it. It has to do with their height... or perhaps their relation to other ships, or those strange flying buildings. The closer they are to each other the more control they have.

You watch them fly for many hours. Long enough that when the dark dagger-shape of the Anemoi cuts through the surreal symphony of Azura spheres, burning and raging on its way to a docking tower, it feels as alien as you do.

If the gods were kind, they would let XIII stay here forever. They would let no one and nothing bother her, so she could continue watching these strange ships roll across the stranger sky for the rest of her life, or at least until her daric ran out, which she could stretch well beyond Thist's three month prophecy. It's not like she'd need to eat very much to sit up here and stare, and even if she did these people were apparently too stupid to eat any of the real food that the humans had left behind when Nero called them home. And with so much unused space, she wouldn't need to worry about a place to sleep either. Not that she had any intention of doing that anymore any more than she could help it.

If the gods were kind, they would transform her into a philosopher. They would let her watch the spheres, transfixed, and contemplate their orbits from an Imperial perspective until she arrived at a new truth about the universe and the nature of beauty. They would make this lesson cost her everything, but they would let her learn it. She would forget her name, first the gifted one and then the older one. She would forget her mission. She would forget all the specifics of her home that still burned inside her head. She would forget... well, it didn't matter. She wouldn't forget. She couldn't forget. The gods were cruel, and they made XIII so that she would cling to all her memories as if they were precious treasures. Even still. Even now.

XIII reaches toward the sky as if to push one of the smaller ships onto a new path so she could see it spin and roll away. A moment later it begins the gentle curve as it lazily turns along the path she pushed, along the path the Auspex had predicted for it. Not so hard to tell where and when they'd do something. But impossible to understand what any of it meant. It'd be easy to guess it had something to do with their weird spiral patterns, but the sharp red lines her implanted eye draws through the sky for her make it obvious that's not the case. Sometimes they follow something sort of like the markings, but most of the time their trajectories are shockingly straightforward.

Which, of course they are. They're going somewhere, aren't they? This place is dead, but that doesn't make it haunted. All around her, the sounds of scraping and cleaning slither across the streets just underneath the sharp peaks of banging, shouting, and laughter that burst up from shops and homes and around the river like living monuments to the serpent people who dwell here. They are the dead, but they live here. There's a lot more to them than pointless ghost ritual. They conquered the djinn, they mastered flight and craft in ways she's never seen before. Underestimate them at your peril.

If anything, what they remind her of is stars. Or planets, maybe, whatever the fuck the difference is supposed to be. It's all... orbits and spirals and rotations, and where Humanity took the secrets of heavens and burned them for fuel, the Azura seem almost like they've mimicked them, instead. Or, or could they have conquered those, too?! How the fuck did they get these things to fly, anyway? It's no wonder Her Majesty's deathblow wasn't enough to break them. A people who thought like planets... she clicks her teeth together and swallows. She looks up at the sky again, and sees nothing but a serpent lazily stretching across the universe. Someday it would wake, and it's jaws would unhinge in that creepy freak show way of theirs, and when they did they'd swallow everything they saw.

And through that vision of terror plunges a single black dagger. XIII jolts upright faster than if she'd been whipped. Her heart stabs, knifelike inside of her. Her fingers all forget at once how to hold her bread, and the remains of her masterpiece tumble to their death off the edge of her perch. There is. Nothing. More beautiful. Than her ship. After all. And yet.

All the fur on her arms stands up on edge. Her spine prickles with fear. Her tail bushes and her ears flatten. She scowls, and leaps to her feet. The Anemoi is not here for her. She didn't call for it, she had no idea how to call for it. She didn't pray for this, even accidentally. She hadn't prayed once since she crashed, and aboard the Yakanov she'd asked every god she could think of to keep the black dagger as far away from her as it could go. XIII's fingers curl into fists.

"...Apollo." she hisses.

She paces back and forth along the edge of her roof, as bits of stone and debris slide off and plummet to the street in her wake. Her eyes are on her ship, always on her ship, and spare no thought to where her feet take her. The idea that she might fall is laughable. She paces, and as she turns she swings her arms in irritation. Back and forth, back and forth, the name of the god ringing in her throat. Hadn't he hounded her after everything else in the galaxy had left her behind? Hadn't he forced her back on her feet, hadn't he harassed her and pushed her and prodded her until she had no choice but to escape on that skiff, and then flicked his stupid godly golden fingers and brushed her here, instead of anywhere even slightly useful to her goals? He had.

"Apollo, Apollo... damn it. Damn it! Shit!"

XIII tears her fraying coin-patterned dress up over the top of her head and throws it off the roof as she passes. Are you watching, you Azura fucks? Can you see? Get a good look at Perfection while she changes, if you're not stuck too far up your own asses to turn your heads. Fuck you. Fuck you. Her muscled legs coil and burst as she races from the edge of the roof to where her coin purse sits. Her tail lashes behind her, and she digs frantically through the pile of irritatingly perfect coins looking for the micro-folded fabric she'd tucked in there this afternoon. Wasn't meant for this. It's too early for her final work. But she'll be damned if she's going to sneak back onto her ship looking anything less than her best.

She pulls the dazzling dress with its thousand-thousand precious metal beads shaped into a starry night sky. Her final outfit, just in case. Well fine, whatever. When's Apollo ever let her do something the way she wanted to do it? She slips it on, and screams up at the burning sky. The Anemoi is here, and not for her. It's here, and after her. It's a thousand years away from anywhere Dany should be going, even as part of her stupid dumbasses suicide run, and that means and that means and that means.

"Jil you useless fucking bitch I left you in charge I gave you my ship what the fuck did you let happen to it? You'd better be fine, you got that? You'd better be ok, so I can kill you myself!"

XIII hesitates with her arm halfway to hurling the bag full of Azura money straight into the river. She stares at it with mistrusting, mismatched eyes, and finally lowers her arm to tie it to a belt, instead. She promised, after all. With a final shake of her head, she takes off like a thunderbolt launched from a bow and throws herself back down into the city below. And she runs, like she hasn't since her Empress commanded her to, or die. Yield, Endless Azure Skies, to a champion pedigree blessed with holy purpose. Yield or learn what happens to whichever one of you is stupid enough to make her miss the docking.

Miscalculation. Error in judgement. Thinking too much. Thinking too little. Mistake. Wrong. He’s done it wrong. All wrong. All wrong.

He says nothing. The only sounds he makes are the bleating cries she beats out of him. Shameful, to beg now. To be so stupid as to think that begging could change anything. The worthwhile sheep accepts the truth silently. The black sheep needs punishment. When the punishment ends, there will be no black sheep. There is nothing more to it. When the punishment ends. There will be no black sheep. Nothing more to it. When the punishment. Ends. No more black sheep. Nothing more needs. When the. Punishment ends. There will be no punishment. The black sheep. Ends the black. Nothing. More. Ends. Ends...

A lost lamb lies crumpled on the bridge of a cruiser, a long, long ways from his home. The Master has not given him leave to rise, or leave to go. He is permitted to partake of the air, provided he does so quietly, without crying. All else is forbidden, without the word of the Master. A good sheep stays where he is told. A black sheep needs punishment. There is nothing more to it.

The lamb tips over against the hull. One hoof finds purchase on the deck. Slowly, he disobeys.

It mattered little, whether it was possible to evade punishment. A Captain did their duty.

“You aren’t going to kill me.” His hand falls heavy on the instruments for leverage. Heedless of broken glass. Still, he rises.

“You didn’t kill Mynx. You didn’t kill me. You...aren’t going to kill me.” His hooves stomp defiance above the screaming chaos. His ears ache terribly at the loudest steps he’s ever taken. Still, he rises.

“Mynx could not harm a friend to their face. Whoever told you that you could do worse was...was a terrible liar. You. Aren’t going to kill me.” Closer. He expects the blow to fall at any moment, and he must get closer. The full weight of a princess in wrath...no, a friend, lost in darkness, will bear down on him, and still, he rises.

Mynx will need all the opening he can give her.

*****************************************************

“Rice is a trial of the gods, given to us to punish hubris.” Vasilia snapped. “A grain so diabolical an appliance had to be invented specifically to defeat it, and yet even this mechanically engineered bane falls to pieces if you don’t posses the precise secret ratios.” Ratios which she might have a better shot at learning if someone hadn’t hidden the rice cooker, Hestia.

“...it’s news to me too.” She pushed bits of coleslaw about with a single chopstick, forming a larger and larger glob, before starting all over again. “That I could live with...less. I’ve been ‘relevant’ my entire life, I’d no idea what was going to happen if I just. Stopped. If I’d even keep going.” Would she have, if Hestia hadn’t been there to promise her a future? A dangerous thought. One she preferred not to dwell on. “All the same, you give me too much credit. Can you call it acceptance, if the alternative means death? If I’m merely doing what I must to survive? Am I just walking this long, slow road because it’s the path that lets me win in the end?”

Quietly, Alexa sits against Ramses, swishes the liquid in her wineglass, and wonders at it all.

A day ago, she was having her teeth kicked in by some of these same people. Look, there they are--what'd Ramses call them? Murvle and Teck-Joe?--playing a game of bluffs over in the corner. She couldn't put names to more than maybe four others, and that only because she's been doing her best to catch names as they're spoken. None of them have fought at her side. Most or all of them know who she was. And worst of all, if they took it into their mind to hurt the people around her, she could do nothing. She can't protect herself! Can't protect those around her! Every nerve should be singing with fear, with anxiety, with tension!

And yet…

Somehow, the fact that she could not do anything is, itself, a calming thought. She's defenseless, no match for any of the Coherents. Has the blessing of no gods--not ones worth a damn, not ones she could count on to listen--and… She isn't the warrior she was. Doesn't have to stress about strategy, or concern herself with conspiracies.

Because what can she do, but lean back and let it happen?

She listens to the stories. Of bosses, who demand too much, pay too little. Of the excuses given. Of dirty jokes, told around campfires and passed around like precious gold. Of dreams, of change, of wanting to be more.

She doesn't know any of them. And yet, she's known them all her life. Has heard these stories dozens of times before, from dozens of others.

Alexa leans further back against Ramses, listens to the faint pulse of their heartbeat, and feels safe.

Do all the humans feel like this? Are they all straining against the limits of what they are, of what their hearts tell them they could be? Do the Coherents merely collect those who feel this way--the misfits, the weirdoes, the freaks? Or is it, just maybe, that she's not so different from them?

Maybe it's alright to want other things?

Carefully, she sips the wine. Feels it in her mouth, passes it from one side of her mouth to the other. Wonders what wine tastes like, and grins to herself because it's happening! She's gonna find out, in just a few minutes!

She drains the wineglass, and makes to stand up.

But before she goes, she turns to Ramses. Opens her mouth, can't quite meet their eyes. What even do you say? Words don't seem quite right--like there's so much to say, but anything she can say would be both too much and not enough.

She argues with herself briefly, and wins.

Words aren't enough. But she gives Ramses the biggest, hardest four-armed bear-hug she can manage. Puts all the words of gratitude, of acceptance, of happiness she can't say into that squeeze. Gives Ramses a quick, chaste peck on the cheek, and darts behind the curtain before her brain can catch up and start screaming.

“I will,” Redana growls. “I can feel it.” When she strikes her breastbone it is flinchingly hard. “Traitors! Backstabbers! Liars!” When she strikes the wall there is a sound like breaking glass. “Cowards! Cowards! You left her and did nothing! And what if she hates me? What if everything was lies? Do you think I can leave her?”

The tears are coming freely now. Her shoulders tremble. “She was so scared,” she groans. “In the box. I know that now. And then I thought she was happy. To be with me. And then she turned cruel, but now— how long did she hate me? Behind her smiles? And now, and now I’ll always know she died cold and alone and scared, curled up on some godsforsaken rusting wreck, and I can never apologize to her, and I can never ever try to make it right, I can’t fix any of it, and it’s her fault for abandoning her and it’s your fault for wasting our time and I’ll never know if we could have saved her if we’d just been faster and I’m going to kill you, kill you both, cowards and traitors and faithless and murderers—”

She reaches out into the air and the air becomes tainted with hot ozone and static. Perhaps it is because she is drunk; perhaps it is because Dionysus has its hand on the scales; but the change from girl to monster is not immediate. It is slow in the way that the final act of a tragedy is slow, and behind Redana are a thousand thousand doors, a thousand thousand green eyes, a thousand thousand could-have-beens and never-weres, shadows of shadows, gunslingers and pilots and generals, tyrants and matricides and maids, and through them all shoving them aside like a bull, the vast shadow rising of Redana Chrysopelex, who has both the strength and the will to tear everyone in the room apart and then half the crew for seconds. Redana’s fingers curl around the haft of something that might, in a moment, become an axe.

And Redana’s eyes are closed, and her face is contorted into a gross sob, and the tears flow freely as the Nemean looms over her. She is blind; she sees only Bella, curled up on a steel floor, cold and still. She is deaf; she hears only the hiss of Bella’s wounded words lashing against her, overflowing from old and hidden wounds. She is senseless; she feels only pain.

She will not return.

The Nemean will overthrow the Shah, perhaps, and turn the great wheeling ships of the Azura, bound to one fatal, grand and terrible will, against Tellus, and condemn humanity by turning it to silvered glass and steam. Or she will ride the ruin of the Plousios into the tempest, laughing as she goes, and do battle there with the leviathans of the deep. She will, heartless, assume the hole in the world left by Redana Claudius, whose heart is pierced and who can no longer stand under the weight of it.

Redana and Dolce!

As Redana reaches for the axe, Dionysus reaches for the Neamean. Its creation! Its daughter! For all the fertility of the gods it can always be forgotten that they can claim children through adoption just as surely. This, then, is the Nemean! Redana, daughter of madness, reaching back in time for the moment when she would be born! The Laughing God has ever been silent but as it reaches out to draw forth the final extinction of the human species from this game that all the other gods have been playing the silhouettes of Poseidon, Hades, Apollo and Zeus are but horrified shadows on the wall, waiting for the echo of coming laughter.

No god can undo what another god has done! This is the law! And none of them saw the truth of this moment, none of them had the eyes to perceive this future that had been making its way back to this past! All it needed was a Redana-shaped hole to fill and...

In that moment the grip of Dionysus slips. The Nemean cannot enter.

For there is already a Redana here.

Not the one broken in mind and heart - there is another Redana. Redana as she might be if she were made of marble, crowned with olive and with radiant hair. Redana as a queen, a leader, a commander, an empress. Redana stable and kind with the serene light of Apollo resting upon her head.

The Nemean rages forth anyway. It animates the shell of this lesser Redana, the alternate Redana, and flies at the Apollonian Redana with that spectral axe of entropy. With open palm, Redana the greater turns it away. Step, step, step - the light of calm and serenity boils against the madness of machine chaos. A thunderous blow carves the center map table diagonally; with light fingers the scattered papers are snatched from the air. With dark howling the air thickens into sludgeish poison, erupting in waves of venom wherever the Nemean darts. With perfect breathing even toxic air is cycled through each chakra in turn. With the shimmering crash of broken lights the Nemean makes its case for superiority. It was here first! With a gentle touch, Apollo's Redana cups the Nemean's jaw in her fingers and gives her a chaste and pure kiss on the forehead.

And with unhesitating violence, Artemis erupts from her forehead and drives her knife into Dionysus' mask.

It cracks. The machine god staggers back, eternal silence filed with horror as its fingers cover the fracture in its mask. The Nemean cannot struggle against the gentle embrace that pulls her closer for in this moment she is as weak as a kitten. Dionysus tries to pour dark energy, mad inspiration, despairing energy, into its child but every drop drains away. No god can undo what another god has done. And far-sighted Artemis had Mynx poison Redana years ago for just such an occasion. An arrow fired by a child has finally hit its mark.

For a long time this poison has lain dormant, but now it pours out from where it hid in her bones, relaxing each muscle and sapping away the strength of divinity. The furnace of Redana's heart and the silver shield of her bloodstream nanites already strive to purge it from their systems. But it will take time, and in that time the Nemean is slipping away. It is too weak to claim to be the true Redana in the face of this saintly apparition before her. And so it fades, withdrawing alongside its creator-parent, leaving only the shell of the broken girl behind, gently held in Apollonian Redana's arms.

(And though it is Mynx behind those eyes, there is yet a price to pay for defying a god. Redana, pure and transcendent, she shall remain until a Redana arises who is stronger than she and the Nemean both.)

Alexa!

It's like teleportation.

One moment you're stepping behind the curtain and the next you're sitting in a small recovery room, blinking away the fog. There is absolutely no intervening time or sense of motion. Whatever anesthetic or... whatever the priest gave you during the operation must have been really good.

The room is simple; a bed, a table, a shrine, a bathroom. The only thing that marks it out is the large silver tray resting beside your bed, filled with five biscuits. Salty, one reads. Bitter, says another, followed by sweet, sour, and spicy. A glass of water and a small basin is besides the biscuits with a note suggesting you rinse your mouth between each new flavour to cleanse your palette.

Vasilia!

"Surviving is a remarkable drive, and remarkably uncommon as a motivational force," said Iskarot. "The former Emperor Molech whose decapitated head now steers our ship was not motivated by survival, else he would never have declared war on Ares. Nor were the Cerons who overcame him - they are a war species whose genetics place their pack instinct above their individual survival, a trait that is instrumental in their battlefield triumphs. Many amongst the Priesthood have to work hard at prioritizing individual survival. They are locked in a silent struggle to convince themselves that their lives have meaning beyond their function, even years removed from it. That their travels have meaning in the eyes of an absent god. That there is some value in them living long enough to experience new wonders. Survival is an assertion of self worth, at a time when treacherous minds and unbalanced biology might deny it."

He tapped the side of the coleslaw container. "That is why I bought this. As a... celebration? Acknowledgement. Mark of respect. That you decided to prioritize your own survival rather than end us all and wreck this ship on the altar of stubborn hubris and refusal to be made irrelevant. You could have defied Zeus, and you did not. Given the stormclouds that have been brewing that may well have saved us all. So. Thank you."

XIII!

To move through the city of the Azura at such speed is to navigate through a dream. This is nothing like Tellus, nothing like the Imperial Palace, nothing like Baradissar. There is so much here and you're moving through it at speeds that render it more emotion than place.

At the end of the water channel is something that walks the line between lake and inland sea. Roads channel through short buildings, barely two floors high, made of brick and with their alleys filled with graffiti. Along a series of spires you can feel gravity change and warp as you draw close to those strange structures the Azura ships were using as turning points - you alter your sprint and lean into the same curves the ships made and you're almost flying. There is something like a street grid here but it's misaligned, all of the grid lines at different angles that result in entire buildings balancing themselves like inverted pyramids on tiny flecks of land in the middle of horrendously complicated intersections. Streets lined with trees lead up to networks of skyscrapers in the distance. Bridges and bridges across that lake-ocean, some thin and some wide, but you know better than to try any of the ones guarded by those silent Azura sentinels - even if you could win you're running so fast it'd take you longer to rebuild your stride if you stopped to fight. The violet sun is setting against the waves as you race, traveling along the network of piers that surrounds a harbour, heavy with strange boats and glowing blue lights beneath the surface. The Azura are an aquatic species, aren't they? Plenty of them swim here, bodies flashing through the water with a speed and grace that you wouldn't imagine their bulky bodies capable of on land. Your feet move in a blur with that cluster of distant skyscrapers ever in your vision, the fixed core of the world you can always navigate by.

It's like a dream. You've never ever covered as much distance as you have on this day. You've run for longer periods of time, certainly - when training for the Olympics you would run for days at a time, but there you were chained to the closed circles of the Imperial palace. Running without destination, running without arriving, running without making progress towards anything except exhaustion, running against nothing except time. Now you're running to a destination, now you're running in pursuit of a starship, the strength and beauty of your limbs matched in contest against solar fire.

You find the right bridge and you're running across it, from the twilight city towards an ancient university and cathedral mall, step by step closer to the shadow of that endless tower. You see glimpses of lives, shops, warriors, vehicles, ruins, statues, elevators, swimming pools, suburbs, tropics, dams, mountain observatories, escalators, toys, signs, tangles, doors that lead to other places, shortcuts that are spectacular secrets, tidal locked gates and trees wet from rain. You run and counting time and pace is impossible in a world too grand and too small to be chained by time.

She passes homes, works of art, workshops, alleys, stretches of empty street, river bends, and a great open space that might have been a training yard or a... something. She passes guards, artisans, families, outcasts, officials, salesmen, and a beaten down dog Servitor who stands out almost as much as she does. She passes the smells of fresh plaster, ancient stones, molted scales, wondrously mixed perfumes, ammonia, dust, and so many foods it's impossible to tell if they are mixing by accident or by intent of some genius chef. She passes piles of shattered glass, polished white marble, blackened smoke pits, and a temple so awash with colors that it must be a place where djinn are shattered and broken into service, because what else could they be doing there that looked so beautiful as she crossed beyond its reach?

She passes them in an instant. She passes everything so quickly it barely has time to flirt with all her senses before it disappears into the haze of Behind. She passes beyond the pull of normal gravity and into some strange dreamscape she could never have envisioned if she'd been so lucky to get to live her entire life in the Imperial Palace. And for all of the beauty and life around her, none of it registers as anything other than a fragment of some memory she'll torment herself with in her sleep or drive herself insane trying to call to the surface before the insufferably smug face of Prion Paula comes floating up from the depths to fight it off forever. Chanbarra chan! None of this matters. It's blasphemy to admire the serpent flicking its tongue across the universe in search of Tellus, anyway. What's important is that she passes by these things. What's important is that she is moving. She is running somewhere real to do something that matters.

And she's never done anything like that before. Not under her own power.

Desperation moves her feet faster than she knew they could. The Auspex lights a path of golden footsteps in front of her, and it's the only thing she sees that feels real. It carries her carefully past all of this slow, dreamlike life, her path never once crossing an Azurite or trampling on a creation of the Endless Azure Skies. She's a ghost to them like they are to her, a passing bolt of pure power and nothing more. Faster, faster! You're going to miss it, you dumbass! Haven't you ever run before? Would an Olympian be this slow? Why even have a father if you can't outrun his stupid drunken playboy ass? Why'd they tell you all the stories and dangle all the records over your head if you weren't supposed to beat him, here and now? Fuck! Move!!

Her mind is empty, except for running. She does not concern herself with plans or weigh her body down worrying about what she's supposed to do if when she catches up with the Anemoi. Her muscles sing a song of power and beauty and her body is alive with the feeling of crackling energy pumping through her heart into her muscles, with the fluttering of her abused and lopsided hair against her neck, of sweat wicking out of her fur before it can mat it and mar her more than this journey has already, of the tassels and frills of her beaded dress drumming against her breasts and stomach and thighs.

She is motion. She is purpose. She is all alone and sprinting out of danger and into greater danger. There is no corner of her mind or her shattered heart optimistic enough to think that a hero's welcome will be waiting for her on her ship. Likely she will die the second she reaches the end of her path and stops being Motion and starts being XIII again. Or, worse, they'll force the old name back around her neck so it can drag her under the ground and crush her into dust to be drained into some ugly ringed coin. Or maybe this would turn out to be nothing, and she'd simply disappear again.

Every possibility opening up before her on the golden path sends shivers down her spine. Her feet scream pain as her soles pound against a medley of uneven surfaces and smooth, hard stone roads that twist her about like a helix. Her lungs sting with the effort of being more lightning than girl, and only seem to exist to remind her that she's got to go back to the second from the first sooner rather than later. She passes by a million works of art, determination, and majesty of a civilization too glorious for her to dismiss. She passes them all by. She is going somewhere.

And this might be the happiest she's ever felt.

A miracle. No other word came close, by miles.

Dionysus foiled. No hands lost. No damage of consequence to the Plousius. Mynx, untouched. Redana, safe and sleeping, her dear heart battered, but still beating.

A miracle. Wrought, in some small part, by his own hands.

Dolce eyes wrinkle in an enormous smile, even as frightful tears leaked from the corners. “Well done. Well done. I promised her she wouldn’t, and she hasn’t. Thank goodness. Well, well done.” He wipes at his cheeks. Pats them dry. Misses a little. Finds his chin. Over-corrects. That’s wool, now. Oh dear. Oh, dear...

The bridge went far away and slowly sideways. On the other end of the universe, a wobbling bleat.

Then, merciful silence.

**********************************************************

So Iskarot did know how to flatter a person. The old softie. A flicker of warmth lit her face. “What do you know? I suppose I did something right after all.” She raises her bowl to her guest. “To survival, evading self-destruction, and being worth it.” And she meant it. At least half of it, anyway. A good record by her standards. As to the rest: A work in progress? A performance yet to be bought? Another lie for the pile?

She'd sort it out later. There was victory coleslaw to enjoy.

“I must say, to the first two points.” She continues between mouthfuls. Since when did the Order of Hermes bother with cooking secrets? She’d have to tell Dolce. “If I have to sit alone in my room for another day, striving to reach competence with basic food preparation, I will critically jeopardize someone’s survival. Possibly my own? I plan to play it by ear.” Did she need to stab her chopsticks into her bowl so forcefully? Absolutely. The need was dire. “Please. Please tell me you know of something I can do with myself that doesn’t run afoul of Zeus.”

Alexa sits up in bed like the room is about to pitch over at any time--one arm on the bed, one on the bedrail, propping herself up, giving herself support. It can't be that simple, can it? Surely there should be... Something? Side effects? Operations are one of those things that should knock you out for a week, right? Not like you took a long nap?

She buries her face in one hand and groans. It was supposeed to take long enough that everybody could forget, especially her.

What was she thinking? She has a girlfriend already! If you wanna get real technical about it, she's got two! She doesn't want anybody to misunderstand, get the wrong idea about... About things! Things and stuff! Especially since she doesn't even know what the right idea is yet!

I mean, Ramses is. Well. Nice. Incredibly nice. Kind. Danced with her. Sought her out after she tried to bully her way into an appointment. Fed her. Held her. Arranged this whole thing for her. For someone Ramses only met once at a party. I mean, who does that kind of thing? Goes to that sort of effort for a stranger?

Is this flirting? Is that what Ramses wants in return? Is this courting? Is Ramses just a naturally good, kind, outgoing person? Does she want more?

And what does Alexa want them to want?

She groans, and hauls herself to the mirror. Feels around her face for sharp edges or indentations, for any telltale gaps, razor-sharp lines of fresh brass, and finds none. Is it weird to almost be disappointed at that? She... Well, it would be quite rude to say she expected worse. And in retrospect, none of the Coherents show terrible signs or scarring as a result of their modifications, so she doesn't quite know why she thought she'd come out with scarring.

Still, she finds herself grinning at the mirror version of herself. Mugging at the mirror, making faces, sticking out her tongue.

Huh.

Brass?

Is it funny that she hadn't thought what it would look like? Pink, neon blue? It's a good color obviously but... Was that an intentional material choice? Did the magos have a point to make in choosing that?

"Peter Piper picks pickles. Quick brown fox. Toy boat toy boat toy boat. Rrrrrroll. Things thought thoroughly."

Whew. Everything still works as it should. She wasn't that concerned, but... Whew.

She grins again, and makes a few more faces, just for good measure.

And now, the part she's been... Well, dreading isn't the right word. Anticipating, in the same way you anticipate test results, maybe? Everything so far has been so excellent, she's almost afraid that the most important part won't work.

Salty seems like a good place to start. She at least knows what salt is for--you put it on the rim of a martini--but has never understood why. She picks up the rod--thick, brittle, brown, with white speckles across its surface. Snaps it between two fingers, studies the crisp inner structure. Lays it on her tongue and--

Briefly, she's convinced that Ramses must have miscommunicated what she wanted to the priest and that she's ended up with the tongue of a gourmand.

What is this? The way it sits on her tongue, slowly dissolves? Draws out all the saliva, craves more? Almost before she knows it, the other half of the pretzel is in her mouth and gone and come on, you can't just give her one of those, that's blatantly a trap. With some reluctance, she sips the water.

Sugar is similar, but almost in the opposite direction? The fragile wafers sandwich a filling between them that tickle her tongue, beg for more. She could scrape the crackers clean for hours, if they weren't gone in seconds.

Dangit, she should have savored them more. Most of the salty drink recipes also call for sweet fruit, or something similar. Should have tried them together.

Sour is like lightning on her tongue, sucks her lips in. She laughs as she tastes it--not a favorite, she doesn't think.

Bitter just leaves her grabbing for the glass of water. Is that really a flavor? People choose to eat that?

That just leaves spicy, which... Well, at first, she's pretty sure she doesn't taste anything at all.

And then, well, after she can taste it, drinking water just makes it worse.

Redana no longer works among the Coherents.

She walks with the Magi now, listening to them, offering words of correction and advice in her melodious voice. She wears stately robes now, and her hair is bound up in the olive. The unpleasantness about the storm, the changed course— it is waved aside. What matters is that, despite the seeming contradiction of the orders, the Order carried them out, and that is to their credit.

She sits in state among the debates with a fan in one marble hand, and by lifting it on one side or the other she gives her judgment. This is the use of royalty, after all: through discernment, to take the many and make them one, to decide what direction the future will turn, to cause things to happen through hands that are not her own.

Redana has chosen a captain.

Now Dolce has a very capable second-in-command. Early in the morning and late at night she comes to him with lists, data, and reassurances. He has command of the vessel, and so Redana will make that smooth and simple for him. The first he hears of half the problems on the Plousios is when Redana informs him, with that smooth and effortless elegance, that it has been taken care of.

Redana might not be as fun now, but at least she’s finally grown up. Isn’t it a relief? Some of the Coherents might grumble, certainly, but others might see her shine and know her to be come into her own at last: a star to chase until morning. Untouchable, distinct, sacred: set apart from the world of ordinary men and women.

And at odd hours, Redana sits in her renovated chambers, white marble and gold, the bed spartan, the wardrobe full of subtle variations, and she holds the cup of coffee between both cold palms and stares into the swirling veins in the stone while Skotos brushes her hair.

Skotos is always with her. It’s just that Skotos is not important. Not noteworthy. It is Skotos who carries the papers, Skotos who stands at her elbow, Skotos who brews the coffee. Skotos wears the saffron robe and their face is swallowed entirely by that hood.

If you don’t pay attention, you’ll miss that Skotos is in the room. They might not even be a person. Have you heard Skotos talk? Have they done anything not in anticipation of Redana’s needs? They’re an ornament, like Mynx or Bella, not their own person. And this is what they deserve. It is the only fitting punishment. Silent, servile, subordinate.

Skotos knows they deserve this. That’s why they sleep even less than the Princess. That’s why they fade unseen into the background. That’s why they make inedible food every morning and hang their head when Redana smoothly pushes the plate aside and gives them an encouraging smile. That’s why they are Skotos. They deserve nothing more.

The Plousios!

The ship is its own city. For a long time it has stood empty, halls and gardens and parks and monuments acquiring rust and starfish. Now things are different. Now there is labour on hand to clean and refurbish a throne room and now there are warriors enough to fill it. They organize themselves by tribe and by rank and in their diversity and splendour they speak the language of power.

The Assistant Secretary of Fear and Doubt is perhaps the most visually impressive of the leaders, enshrined upon a palanquin born aloft by four mighty battlecrabs. He is sprawled in an opulent mess of jewels, fat as only an octopus can be fat, tentacles wafting in the air as he relaxes. As a fragment of the Eater of Worlds the replication of that mighty creature's ecosystem exists inside him and he has spawned over a hundred aquatic creatures, including a small cluster of subservient octoscribes who diligently take notes on scroll paper as they adjust and maintain the swarming creatures he commands. None of these creatures is underdressed merely because they are inhuman, however. Poseidon has guided them through the flooded sections of the ships to find fine banners and robes and fabrics with which to wrap themselves. They stand as the finest dressed and wealthiest creatures present, inheritors to a galactic legacy.

Next in splendour is Galnius and their Imperial soldiers, armoured in shining metals and with cloaks of Imperial red. Though they are humans, and though they are proud, they have shocked those who did not think highly of them by recruiting. Princess Epistia of Ceron has joined their ranks, having sought the fellowship of the greatest warriors aboard the ship, and they have trained and armoured her. Even proud praetorians such as these would not find themselves too far stretched to acknowledge a divinely blessed warrior of Ceron into their ranks, but Galnius has actually gone even further than that. Their numbers have increased to thirty, a tally that includes the finest recruits from the Coherent, the Alcedi, some recruits they picked up from smaller waystations along the way, and even a Hermetic Magi. The power they wield is drawn from their ambition and their courtly graces more than their numbers,

The Magi of the Order of Hermes are next. Though they huddle both together and apart in the disorganized way of rival academics, and though the encoded markings of their robes are inscrutable to those beyond them, their wealth and might is plain in the artifacts they carry. Sacred stasis-crypts containing deadly spears, floating spheres chained with plasma, an elaborate grandfather clock stuffed with cotton that it may not tick, their mobile roadshow of battlefield antiques inspires curiosity and dread in equal parts. Were a fight to break out here while the Order might not win they could certainly guarantee that no one else did either.

Vasilia - you are among the Magi, for Magos Iskarot has fulfilled your wish and granted you a purpose. You are to carry an egg - black, speckled with blue, sitting snug inside a brass box that maintains a heat just high enough to be uncomfortable. It is a simple duty but nothing about the Magos' manner indicated that it was in any way a condescending one. He has not told you what might be within an egg like this but its heft, its weight, the sense of destiny that hangs off it. This is a duty too important to be entrusted to a common caretaker, but too mild to give to a warrior destined for the heart of battle.

The Coherent are but a short way behind them. No disciplined phalanx like Galnius' praetorians are they; watch as they slouch and mug like a gang of roughs who have snuck into a fancy party. It is perhaps the most evident here that these are not phalanx soldiers, though they would no doubt be able to manage an approximation if called on. Neither are they sleek and armoured skirmishers optimized for tactical deployments. These are labourers, free and unchained. They might build you a pyramid or tear one down, but they know the value of their strength and will not trade it for empty promises.

Finally, the Alcedi flocks, downcast and humiliated. They are bitter and restive that it was not they who triumphed in their ritual conflicts, that they sail aboard a warship they do not lead. That they have no victories of note, no chancellors of rank, no earned place aboard the command staff, that their wealth and organization pales compared to those around them, that even Zeus is disappointed with their failure to seize power and confirm their value. But someone always must be last in line, and the hungry eyes of the flocks wait for opportunities.

Above all is Redana, sitting upon a throne with an Apollonian halo around her golden hair and a gown of white. There is no pretense with her and there is no need to be. She is as natural as the engine, a lifetime of lessons making the perfect leader.

"We are entering the Endless Azure Skies," she said. "And what We find there will be strange. They are the binders of djinn, the wielders of philosophy, and the survivors of many rounds of coups, revolutions and political disorder. Even those of Our crew who have visited their realms cannot say for certain how power is distributed there, and so nothing can be taken for granted. Empty yourselves of expectation. We may fight or We may dance but We shall do so according to the designs of the Gods, in whose hands We place our offerings and Our fates."

Alexa - you may be a long way away from sentry duty, but you recognize Mynx when you see her. So many days, so many hours, listening to her and Redana practicing the same speeches, the same tricks of oration, repeated back to each other like mirrors so they could judge each other's progress. This isn't even Mynx trying to impersonate Redana, though - this is Mynx trying to set an example for Redana to copy.

"And so I commend the specifics of our course and approach to the Captain," said Redana, gesturing Dolce forwards. And oh gosh, Dolce, you're being asked to give a speech and a plan to this room full of armed and deadly warriors! Who knew Captaining would involve public speaking!?

XIII!

You climb to the top of the world.

The spaceport stretches to beyond the atmosphere, where it opens like a flower. Ten docking petals, each able to service an entire Cruiser. If one were to examine the raw mathematics of it, this structure does not compare to the Hexdock, a vast megastructure outside the Defense Envelope of Tellus that allows the servicing and maintenance of the tens of thousands of warships in the Grand Armada. But the Hexdock was something to be glimpsed through windows, as distant and unreal as a painting. This wonder may be lesser than the greatest works of gigaengineering in the cosmos, but it's a mountain that is here, now, that you can climb.

If there is a limitation in the Azura imagination it is no doubt climbing. To move up a surface like this is beyond the reach of those sleek bodies and so they have unconsciously discounted it. If they need to scale a surface like this they would do so with the sleek precision of their gravitational spherecraft. So there are no ladders on the exterior of the stardock, but so too is their no need for ladders. This surface is rough, uneven, irregular, filled with unlocked access panels and cabling extensions wrought with the carelessness of those who thought this approach inaccessible. Plenty of handholds, then, and plenty of places to stand.

You partly climb as you ascend, and partly you run up that sheer vertical surface. Perhaps too you fly, if just a little, your sweat-soaked ears twitching as they hear the gasps from observers below who never imagined that a tower like this could be scaled so swiftly and so well. You race up the stem of the flower and feel the way that gravity changes beneath your feet. Imperial spaceships have artificial gravity, charged metal plates, but they are used simply to keep down as down, no more thought required. The Azura spheres both project their own gravity and respond to the gravity they pass within. You feel the waves of it wash over you once, twice, and then your instincts are ready - and you pounce.

And with that pounce into the aftershock of a passing Azura sphere you fall upwards. You fall upwards thirty stories and hit the side of the tower at a sprint as the wave passes. Up you run, clinging to the side as spheres pass downwards and leaping into their wakes as they ascend. Through flying, through falling, through sprinting, through climbing, you soar to the top of the world.

And you arrive a full eight minutes before the loading ramp of the Anemoi begins to open.

Eight minutes of ultimate, dizzying, triumphant adrenaline atop a tower with a view of oceans below and mountains as peers. Eight minutes where the fire that's burning inside you is running so hot that if you're not going to run you will at least need to scream in triumph. Eight minutes of victory, eight minutes that are yours, your prize, unbound by any empress or god, shared with no one, your reward for having raced a starship and won. Eight minutes for you alone to be happy.

She's never had a moment like this before.

The Olympics were a hollow mockery of the sacred games where the only prize waiting at the end was the hope of a slightly nicer punishment. Her accomplishments in service to her princess were all invisible by design, by someone else's orders in any case, and rarely amounted to more than getting the laundry in before anybody knew she was gone. And what had she managed as a Praetor? Little and less, and all of it so stained by failure that she'd vomit if she thought too much about it.

So, no. She's never had a moment like this before. One that's just for her with nobody else to pull her leash or take the credit. One that proved, that finally proved, that all the expectations heaped on top of her had been put there for a reason. A moment where she got to win, and there was nobody and nothing to take it right away from her. Whatever waited for her on the Anemoi, it couldn't change the fact that she'd made it here first.

And she's got no idea what a moment like this calls for. She'd have thought she'd be exhausted: too shaky and sweaty to do more than stand there and gasp while she waited. Instead her body is filled with energy, and she tosses her head to the sky to howl victory without caring who hears her and how they feel about it. She feels the sweat pouring off her body, but she doesn't bother with wiping herself down. She's too busy jumping into the air and slashing the space in front of her with a joyous fist. Do you see her? She made it first! She! Made it first! She prowls about the landing zone, shaking off all the little flecks of exertion with every trembling turn.

Her lungs fill with the efforts of the labor all around her. She tastes the chemical sweetness of high performance foods being crated up all around her as people prepare them to ship off world and greet weary sailors with their life saving power. She tastes sweat in a dozen different musks and flavors besides her own, all of it proud and sure of where it came from. The sourness of the work is tempered by the sweetness of what it's for, and she hungrily gulps down more and more of it just to taste the combination on her tongue. She prowls, until finally her lungs grow full, and less greedy. She tastes until the memory is part of her soul.

The song up here at the top of the world is the sonorous hum of XIII's purring as it rumbles underneath a series of crashes and shouts that mean the port workers are admiring her while they keep up their work. The heavy thuds of crates being stacked and unstacked, carried, sealed, unsealed, and fought over joins the pleasant chirps and squawks of the simpletons so surprised to see her suddenly standing there among them. There is the click, click, click of a fire being lit and the roar of it being stoked. She howls again, though quieter this time. Her accompanying motions are more strained, more flexes and poses out of a movie than true movement.

The smell of rust and flame is everywhere, as is the hissing quasi-screaming pops that accompany all the bits of debris and poseidon's lesser plagues being charred off the sides of the mauled and dented armored plating that carries every ship through its suicide mission of travelling anywhere at all. Cooked, slimy, sickening flesh and chipping shell threatens to overwhelm all of the other delicious scents lifting XIII into the air, but for a moment even that smells like triumph. She is here. She lives. They do not. Her claws flex pleasantly before she wipes the sweat from her fuzzy ears and briefly slicks her hair back.

The urge to scream and stalk about fades as her minutes draw short. This is not her ship anymore, but it's hardly been a lifetime since it was. She'd die before she let herself greet it improperly. Her back straightens. Her feet plant themselves firmly. She folds her arms behind her back. The beads on her dress clatter and sway as the last traces of her exhausted breathing dwindle down to a steady, even rhythm. The smile on her face dies in an instant to make way for a stern expression as unreadable as her Auspex. Her tail flicks behind her in anticipation.

This is her mark of being the best. This is what the triumph of her race has bought her. She lifts her hands to smooth and fuss her hair into place three more times, returning them to the same strict folded position behind her back each time. A final snort of air through her nostrils, and the loading ramp starts to open with a shuddering groan that says the Anemoi wasn't much happier with its journey than her little skiff had been by the end. But even in pain, the dagger-ship is stately and quiet in a way that seems impressive even on this planet full of ghosts. And XIII is there to greet it, with no sign marking any bit of her that she hadn't been expecting it the entire time.

Whatever greets her now will not find a Praetor with the authority to demand anything from them. But they'll find a girl with all the power and bearing of one, who won't betray a hint of surprise or anything less than perfect poise and command no matter what faces skulk down to meet hers.

The moment arrives for the Captain to speak. Dolce recognizes it well. How many times had they met, in the days prior? That first glance, when he’d realized a meeting must be called. The long hours before a mirror, seeing a tidy uniform instead of his favorite vest. The constant, electric presence, keeping him awake to read one more chapter, one more page. They’d struck an uneasy truce, and were it not for that he’d be asleep this very moment. Miracle of miracles, they’d found some common ground to work around. After all, he knew how to deliver a report in a clear, steady voice, no matter the situation he faced. He knew how to address a room, without looking at anyone in particular. If his voice slipped, he would carry on without blinking, and no one would realize he’d never meant to say it quite that way in the first place.

Captain Dolce faces the assembly. A fragile peace bends. But does not break.

“As her Highness has said,” his soft voice fills the room, not one tick louder than it needed to be. “We do not know what we sail into. We do not know who presently holds the Endless Azure Skies, nor how they will receive ships passing through their territory. But what we do not know cannot change what we do know: Our destination is farther still. Our business is not with the Azura. Our goal, then, is peace. If the gods smile on us, we will be welcomed as honored guests, and all who meet us will be blessed.”

“Thus, our own course set, the decision then must rest with the Azura, and we must be ready for their answer. If they seek to entangle us, we must politely decline. If they seek to threaten us, our hearts must be steadfast. If they seek to bar our way, we must find the path through. But we must not make their decision for them, or else the consequences will rightly fall on our own heads.”

“I do not mean to suggest it will be easy. But.” Here, he lets himself look. Look upon the many grand and wondrous souls who’ve come together for this voyage. So many, from so many impossible places, all under one roof, for one purpose, sharing in a dream and a life together. He, at the head of it all. Who could have imagined it? “If I speak of difficulty, I speak it out of the faith that such a company will rise above it.”

Then, he waits. He has spoken his turn. He has prepared all he could. He has offered all that is proper and good. Now, he must let there be reply, and let his fate be what it may. So he waits. And a lioness in the company waits, feeling nothing of her burden when compared to the anguished coal buried deep in her chest.

Alexa doesn't quite know where to stand.

Which is maddening, by the by. Decades of training, centuries of practice in standing still, and in one fell swoop, she's back to being awkward. The spear in her hand feels like a toy--no, worse, like a child using her mother's weapon in a game of pretend. Standing behind Redana now, in her condition, would be as insulting as it would be silly. But it's also what those decades of training insist is correct--that she should be in the background, behind and slightly to the left, in case of any attacks.

As if any of the other groups would accept an interloper claiming that position of unearned prestige. As if she could do anything if it happened. It's not nearly so restful or peaceful as it was in the party with the Coherents.

Still, once she sees Mynx on that dais in that form, she has to move forward. Quietly, meekly, so as not to disrupt the others or tread on toes. Without demanding. She's here, Mynx. You can see that face, see that concern there. But you obviously have a speech to respond to, right? She's here. She'll wait.

Skotos does not share in the glory of Redana. Every sunbeam casts its shadow, after all, and here they are, off and to the left. If they were ambitious, they might be pained by how perfect, how effortless a princess Nero’s heir has become. They might compare themselves unfavorably to her; after all, surely the difference between her and them is that Skotos does not have the virtue and character to be like Redana. The universe is arrayed in hierarchy; the high ascend to their rightful places, and the low settle in their appropriate spheres.

This, then, is where Skotos belongs: lacking in charisma, dignity, presence, and honors. They are all but anonymous, a saffron robe and an all-shrouding hood. Beneath Redana, beneath Dolce, and most definitely beneath Bella, lost in the cosmos, drowned under shining waves.

The most that they are willing or required to influence proceedings is when they offer Alexa a glass of wine while Dolce speaks, mutely. Not because Skotos knows about Alexa’s new tongue, but simply because they have a tray of wine for the toast to the captain. Really, the wine is the notable thing here; Skotos is interchangeable with any other member of the cult, even with furniture if you’re not really paying attention.

The stars burn violet within the Endless Azure Skies, and this is but the beginning of their marvels.

From the right angle, with the right sunglasses you can see the Spike driven into the heart of the star named Olean. A subtle megastructure, almost invisible from a distance except for a strange black dot against the sun. In radial lines stretching out from the Spike all throughout the solar system, from the closest sun-baked ball of molten metals to the most distant storm-wracked gas giant, asteroids marked with gently blinking teal-blue guiding lights and wrapped around with the gleaming patterns of gravity rails drift in impossible orbits. These intersystem asteroid belts chain together planets, managing orbit and rotation. Even the planets themselves have monolithic equatorial carvings visible from space channeling the might of the Azura miracle. Why let the growth of the Azura be contained by the number of planets that happened to fall in the narrow band of stellar habitability?

But the Azura forgot the lesson of Atlas when they rearranged the sky. When their strength slipped so those endless skies did fall.

One planet, Manaemede has accelerated beyond all control, spinning so fast that its days last hours and continent sized chunks of rock break off into the void from the centrifugal force. It whirls in a chaos of broken math through the star system, flanked by a too-thin cascade of Azura ships who might be attempting to tug the wreckage of the planet back into a stable orbit - or perhaps just keep it from colliding with any of the surviving planets. Once this planet was the mausoleum of a Shah, hauled into place and worked with endless art to commemorate unparalleled victories. Half of the mighty pyramid still stands on the planet, a mountain range monolith sinking into the exposed magma of a flayed world.

One gas giant, Igorthian, has been turned inside out. Through some sorcery of gravity the Azura have extracted the hyperdense core of metal from the heart of the gas giant while leaving the gas itself somehow frozen in place like the ghost of a planet-sized storm. Cosmic industry is at work on the huge ball of exotic metals, explosive-based strip-mining where the tumbling fragments of hyperium and quadranix are sent along the asteroid gravity chains toward the Spike where they will be smelted and refined in the heat of the sun itself. The metals will return to Igorthian where they will be sent back into the core of the gas giant in new configurations. When this megaproject is complete the Azura will have built a space station inside of the gas giant, with views in every direction of a planetary storm held in place with tricks of gravity. An unbreachable fortress wearing a storm as a shield, an art installation unmatched anywhere in the cosmos, a brand new ghost city built for a civilization that can't half fill the cities it has already.

And the sector capitol, Salib. A perfect, textbook Azura planet. A luxury in oceans and shores, a bounty of open space and engineering miracles. A proud regional hub with bases of the Party, the Orrery, the Aspects and the agents of the Shah. The pride of the Sector fleet hangs in orbit, a sleek and curved supercarrier named Fraternity and Tyranny surrounded by swarms of spinning fighter spheres. No matter that whenever the carrier's orbit passes over the eastern continent those fighter spheres descend into atmosphere to launch a bombing campaign to support the loyalists in the ongoing civil war there. No matter that with each flocklike descent many of the spheres do not return.

This, then, is the Olean system. Grand beyond imagining, opulent beyond reckoning, and merely one of the many systems in the Endless Azure Skies. So too is it riven by natural disaster, technology failure, civil war, and impossible monuments built in the desert.

*

To the crew of the Plousios!

Take a minute to reflect on the Azura and their works. Then tell me: what specifically do you hope to gain here? You are on the threshold of wonder; do you seek power to help you in your quest? Knowledge of the perils of the rift? Or even just to see the sights of a place that has so long been distant?

The gods of relevance in this place are Poseidon, Apollo and Artemis. You may wish, too, to make offering to them.

XIII!

You were a child when you met her. Less than a child. You were unsold property, unworthy property, barely fit for the kennels until she picked you out. Out of all the world it was she who saw your potential and raised you to the station of Imperial Pet.

You did not know then that she was the Master of Assassins. You remember grey hair and deep wrinkles and a gingerbread smile. You remember hands stained with soil and bone meal and eyes the green-gold of the harvest that could see an ancient oak in an acorn. You remember kindness from a passing stranger, because whenever you saw her in the palace she would glance around and stealthily slip you some home-made treat or vegetable and a wink that was just for you. You didn't see her often, but she liked you. Saw you. And was perhaps the only person who ever did.

The smells of the Anemoi are sane again. The Lanterns are safe, hidden in the shadows where they have always lived. The Kaeri are more prominent but lack their previous sense of arrogant cruelty. They are unsettled and shift restlessly and seem as drawn towards the dark as the Lanterns. But the light is warm and yellow from a dozen red paper lanterns, enough to illuminate a strange and darkening garden. The Master moves through rows of roses and daffodils and peaches, always seemingly to have infinite layers of vegetation between you and her, and despite your Auspex you constantly lose track of her. There is a riddle here, written in the soil. All of Artemis' greatest murders are riddles.

"I honestly don't get why she likes you so much," huffed Beljani, adept of the Oratus Temple of Assassins. Her jealousy is palpable. "No disrespect at all, of course, I love what you've done with the dress, but we happen to have a transcendent super-genius genetically designed for engineering perfect plans in a box and we're running frightfully low on second chances."