The girl startles, shaken from a reverie by a sudden and shocking accusation. How serene her sister looks just now. How perfect. How graceful and majestic her feathers seem now that they're not jutting out at random angles and looking ready to shed. How pliant her fingers are and how they overlap in such perfect and intricate arrangements that it's impossible to imagine them failing at anything. She understood now, why that name had stuck. The awestruck smile was just spreading across her face, opening her lips to pay the start of some compliment.

When! All of a sudden!!

"Me?" she croaks, "No no no no. That's for you, sister. I couldn't be anyone Beautiful any more than I could be a Bella. You're, I mean, just look at you! You shine like starlight. When I watch you considering a question it's like watching a flower with infinite petals unfolding in the light of dawn. I wouldn't wish the name of a god on anybody, but if anyone could wear the mantle and not burn it'd be you. I don't... I mean,"

She holds a hand up, five plain fingers stretching to reveal thick, cruel claws.

"Just look at me. What part of me could be beautiful? I have hands like some kind of monster. My body's covered in fur in such strange ways that I can't tell which half of me was the accident. Am I meant to be growing more of it, or were my limbs struck by a disease when I was a child? I remember pain enough from back then, that feels like it might be right, but either way I'm caught in this land of in between. And just, look! Look!"

Now she pulls the shredded remnants of her dress up her leg to show off the hardened muscles that have grown in lean and irregular clusters. Whatever her history, she hadn't been born to these. Whether she was meant for softness or for the trim fit of a sprinter it was impossible to say, but her own body told her the story of someone who had fallen into and out of both shapes several times even just recently. There was no focus to any of it, no rhyme or planning. No divine hand reached down to touch her and tell her what she ought to be.

And in that absence she grew in to fit the space in all kinds of haphazard ways. Tall in ways that make her feel like ought not to be, hard and powerful but only to make her feel like a monster. Or like one is lurking just underneath her skin.

"I think I even lost an eye at some point? At least, one of these things doesn't feel like it belongs with the other. I think someone might have given me one of hers. Or maybe I am supposed to be this way. Everything about me feels like it's split along some invisible line. Maybe I was born so I could fill all kinds of roles at once. But whatever those were, none of them leave much room for being beautiful. I'm not even pretty. So come on. Don't tell jokes. At least not about this. You take the name. I look at you and my heart lights up to imagine you wearing it. It's perfect for you.

"I'll just be... hm. Where would I even begin? It felt so easy telling you, but I can't seem to turn it back around on me at all. What do I even want to be? What should I?"

It's unfair how pretty they are.

Weird to focus on that, right? Pack of hunters surrounding her, flares of blue and orange against the night, streaks of brilliant light reflected against the waves. She sits at the center of the flower, salt in her nostrils as she skims mere meters above the surface of the water, the hunters a dome above and around her.

No sound but the roar of the jetpacks and the soft shooshing of the waves. No thoughts but speed. Serenity at a breakneck pace.

Damn you, Merilt, for taking this away from her.

Jetpacks are pretty cool, you know? Like, don't tell the grav-rail she said this, but there are actually some applications where they're more useful?

F'r'instance, you know, just naming something that springs to mind off the top her head, they're pretty damn good for pursuit of a single target by a coordinated group while in an atmosphere.

In space, grav-rails are king. Put a gravity well in front of something, and you can fall forever, and the only thing stopping you from accelerating forever is the possibility of a rogue planet being in the way. But in atmosphere, terminal velocity rears its ugly head.

She dives headfirst down the side of the planet, arms flat against her side, minimizing her profile, and wishing for once that nature had made her flatter. The dress--that lovely, billowing, swooshy dress, with all the layers and fabric--is somewhere miles behind, having been wriggled out of as unnecessary drag. Nothing is too precious to sacrifice in the name of lower wind resistance.

And yet they're still gaining on her! Look at those little flooferdoodles and their solid-fuel anachronisms!

See, that's what they are in the stories, right? Anachronistic, primitive, used by depraved villains who are cocksure of themselves, and outsmarted by the clever Azura?

But what the stories always seem to forget is that it works? The Ceronians conquered the Azura with jetpacks! It works because they're coordinated, and they're faster than she is, even with the rail! Is it really an anachronism if they're still working the same way they did hundreds of years ago?

Um. Okay.

So, um, all she needs to do, right, is figure out, you know, how to beat a strategy that's bested the best Azura minds for a century. In the next few minutes. While not being an easy enough target to be hit on the battle rhythm, and not close enough to be drawn into the net.

Heights and depths. Heights have failed her, but depths… Water. Water's an option.

She stares at the Huntress, trying to read intention behind those eyes. Is the flicker there a promise? A threat?

Okay. Play with that idea for a second. Dive into the ocean, propelled by the rail. Water means resistance, more than air. But more for them than for her, born of water. Do their jetpacks work underwater? Assume they do, assume that the solid fuel inside the jetpacks does not require oxygen for its combustion and will not be extinguished in the ocean. Assume the jetpacks will still have the advantage.

Salt. Does the salt corrode it fast enough? Can she evade long enough for that to be a thing?

They've nocked bows. Do bows work underwater? Do the Pix know how to fight underwater?

Her brain fizzes and bubbles, like caged lightning.

Electricity. ELF. Salt. Salt in water. Saline. Salt water and electricity.

The flower is closing, she can tell. The longer she flies, the more chances the Pix have to set up the battle rhythm. Maybe she makes it to the spaceport before then? Can she gamble on that?

Can she gamble on the ocean?

One hand flicks over the belt, and she dives arms-first into the waves. Coolness and silence roll over her, shocking and icy.

Air isn't working. Water might.

And let's be honest, she wants them to follow her. Make them suffer for their prize. Give the painters some sodden victors for their mural.

Splashes, muffled roars behind her.

Right then. She doesn't want to turn her head, check to see what damage that's done to their formation.

Water. Their organization is done by pheromones, right? Perfect synchronization, perfect unity, interpreted by scent? Can they smell underwater? Does that work? Does she dare hope that they'll get disrupted by that?

More importantly, do they know the new range of an ELF through saltwater? Gotta be better than through air, right? Because she sure as hell doesn't, and she'll probably only get one shot to find out.

Death or glory. Or, well, you know, a big-ass gag or escape, but that doesn't scan as well?

She waits for the formation to reform, offers a quick look of hope at Artemis, darts for the edge, and hopes like hell. Hopes she's gotten the range right. Hopes their formation is disrupted by the water. Hopes she's faster than them. Hopes Artemis smiles on her rather than them.

Come on. Let's roll those dice.

The quiet of the streets coils around his spine. The creak of doors on hinges. The tap, tap, tap of their steps on the course, black ground. Their words, swallowed up in the void without a hint of an echo. They ought to be louder. They ought to be quieter. How he wishes for another voice to come and break this spell.

”Is that so? Forgive me, there’s not much call for high theory in…” The word flits on the tip of his tongue, unsure of its shape. Piracy? Cruiser maintenance? “...the kitchens, yes. Plenty of time to think. Little time for practice.”

The person he walks beside wears a face he knows. He speaks with the right voice. He recites his arguments with a practiced step, lingers over well-worn favorites with tender affection.

Every word is unfamiliar.

”Where did you study this…Art, friend? Just the other day, yes, you were telling me about, what was it, the difference between…turning on and stoking an Engine?” Maybe drawing an analogy to his ovens? It must have been about an oven. What had he been cooking? His eyes shine with the simple curiosity of a novice. “You know so much, it must have been a school like no other.”

Two magics, one right on the heels of the other, like Olympians desperately competing for the laurels.

The first? That’s the sweep— one arm under her knees, one cradling her shoulders, tucking her head in close to the breastbone. The huff of breath through a scarf, the firmness of her biceps, the set of her shoulders, both suggesting that she’s not treating this casually, not underestimating the burden, but not fearing it, either. No, she is like the horse which flares its nostrils before it begins a long and steady trot, the kind that can continue for hours.

The second is the sparkle in her eyes. She knows who she is. It has flowered inside of her, suddenly, but right, so right. Why this moment fits into her hands perfectly. Why she follows the triangles. Why she has a sword. How could she have forgotten?

“It is the privilege of a knight to carry a fair maiden,” the knight says, puffing out her chest with pride and delight. “Thank you for doing me this honor.” She cradles the fair lady gently, as chastely as she may with a hand on her thigh, for her heart belongs to another, and any flustered glances will bounce right off her oblivious delight.

A knight!

She is a knight!

Bella!

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

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

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

Redana!

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

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

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

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

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

Dolce!

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

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

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

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

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

Dyssia!

[Rolling the dice for Overcome: 8]

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

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

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

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

Well, put like that, It's gotta be diving deep, innit?

Because, and here's the thing, yeah, she could skim along the top of the water, draining those healthbars all the way. And as she went, they'd learn what her limits are for both, and when she needs to surface, and how much shocking she can take, and how long she can be shocked before an eyeful of glass shards seems appealing, and let's not forget it'd suck.

Yeowch! Correction, present tense, sucks! Is sucking!

And, to top it all off, there's no guarantee that she'd even make the spaceport, right? The main problem with wearing down your healthbar--or two healthbars, as the case may be--is that at the end of it, she's at low health, while they're fresh as daisies. She'll have spent the entire time getting gassed and shocked and forcing her way through thick water, while they'll have been riding pretty, skimming across the waves and, you know, not getting shocked?

Noooot exactly ideal conditions for a mad dash to a spaceship that may or may not be A) willing to board her and B) ready to launch immediately or C) willing to try to futilely hold off a dozen Ceronian skirmishers while negotiation and ship prep happen.

But, uh…

You hear stories, right? Azura grew up in the ocean, so it's not like there's monsters to be afraid of. Or rather, if there are monsters in the depths, it's like. Someone asks you what monsters exist in the depths and you answer, "Oh yeah, there's dangerous things down there, and it's us."

So there's nothing down there that could be a threat.

Right.

Course not.

We've rearranged the skies and the stars. It's just some deep water, right?

We'd know if Poseidon had swarms of monsters in the depths, right? 'Cuz they'd be on the land, see?

And she can breathe underwater! The Pix can't do that, right? Or at least, not for long enough to find her, certainly? They can breathe in the vacuum of space, or hold their breath, or whatever, but they still have to come up for air eventually! Where she can just stay down!

All she has to do is stay down there, break line of sight, and the rest of the planet is wide open to her! Sustain herself on kelp and, um, crabs maybe. It'll be an adventure, like that one story about a kid who got stuck underwater with nothing but a knife, and built her way up to making skyscrapers! Survive, thrive, stay down there, and come up on a different continent when she's ready to make her dash for it!

So when you think about it, diving deep into the ocean is practically just a walk in the park!

Ouch! Or at least, more of one than staying up here!

And, bonus! Bonus thought! Because she's diving, and they're not, it gives her an opportunity to figure out exactly the range at which she stops getting shocked! If she knows the range and they don't, that's something she can use against them when they have to come after her! Information is your best ally, after all.

Unless a Guardian would like to come out of nowhere and demolish their formation? That'd be a pretty darn good ally, a lot more useful than information. It'd be pretty darn cool if that happened.

…

No?

Darn. Of all the times for the universe not be listening in on her thoughts. Damned inconvenient, she'll have you know. If this were a story, that'd be just the kind of timing for a wise mentor to show up, solve the plot, and pass on a call to adventure, possibly just before dying heroically.

Gah! Right! Right! Shocks, gas, diving!

She has blue hair? Does she? In all this walking she's never really noticed. When would she have looked? All the mirrors here have been dusty or distorted or outright shattered, for whatever reason. All the rivers have been too dangerous to gaze into, if not for themselves then because stopping and staring at a river is not walking forward. And if she knows anything at all, it's that she has to keep going.

But blue hair. Blue. Such a different color from her fur. She's spent so long looking at what's in front of her that she'd forgotten things could be behind her. The girl reaches over her shoulder, and finds her hair is more than long enough to tumble over her shoulders if she'd only let it. All she needs to do is cut the tie holding this tight ponytail in place, and she'd see the truth for herself. Her fingers tremble.

She has no idea why this should be frightening. And yet it is. Vesper is a riddle; always so impossible to tell whether she's joking or making the kind of insightful point that might change your life forever. It's hard because the jest and the truth both smell the same coming from her, since usually the answer is that she's managing both at once. But then, could she really be a Duchess? What would that even mean?

What would... that... even mean? If. If her hair is really blue, then Vesper is telling her the truth. And people will follow her. And that's the thought that makes her spine shiver and her tail twitch behind her. That's the fear that makes all her fur stand up on end and her skin tingle with those strange little bumps that either mean she's very cold or very excited. That's the possibility that's making her heart pound so heavily in her chest that all of her muscles seem to have stopped working and turned the blood in her veins to a high pressure prison cutting across her entire body.

If her hair is blue, then everything about her has to change, doesn't it? But if it's not, then... it doesn't. And which of those possibilities is the worse thing to have to live with? She swallows, and hears the snip of her claws freeing the silken tumble of her long, luxuriant hair. She looks down, and realizes her eyes are squeezed shut tight. She forces them open. First the gold, and then the bloody one.

Her hair is black. Her lips purse, somewhere between elation and disappointment, when the strands slip through her fingers and catch the light as it rolls across her chest. The girl sees the truth with her own patchwork eyes, and the truth is a flash of cobalt she can never forget again. She tries to swallow, but mouth has filled with cotton. If only she hadn't thrown that bottle away.

"So it's," she stammers, unsure, "So it's true then? I'm, or at least, some parts of me are..."

She falters. The girl has no idea what word she's looking for. It would help if she knew what a Duchess actually was. A lot of the concepts Vesper likes to talk about always feel blank inside her head. But this one reminds her of another word that's never very far away from her heart. Rather, a pair of connected words that are too important to ever throw away. The first, Princess. The second, Empress.

Words so heavy, so safe, and so important that a person could cross an entire universe just for their sake. If only anyone were up to a task like that. Her hand lifts to her cheek, and flicks away a rolling tear she didn't notice was staining her face.

"Mosiac?" her voice is hopeful and uncertain in the same equal parts as the misshapen rest of her, "That's a form of artwork. The stones don't arrange themselves this way by accident. If that's me, it means somebody put me together this way on, on purpose. Did they? How could they? What would they even?"

Her thought is interrupted by a sudden sneeze. And after that sneeze, a laugh. A soft and melodious laugh that makes every hand that hears it itch for a drink and leaves them all leaning forward to catch the final notes.

"Oh, damn you. You jerk, I just realized what you're doing. You've got me so stuck on this whole thing I didn't even notice you were still trying to call me beautiful. That's not fair, how am I supposed to disagree with you when I don't even know we're fighting?"

She turns to Vesper, who used one other word for her in all the ones she'd chosen which was the most important of them all. And remembering it, she smiles. Not a wide smile, full of her sharp and delightfully pearly teeth. Just a tiny thing. Soft. Vulnerable. Trusting.

"All right, you win. I don't know if this is one of your seed names or if I'll have to carry it forever but... sure. If you really think I'm meant for something, I could be Mosaic."

Ah. So it’s not just his nightmare after all.

“...and look at you now.” An amalgam of metal and matter, a testament to his vision. “I don’t think a sheep like me is suited for metal, but you, you wear it well. You always have.”

No. That’s not right. At once, his own voice rings wrong, and so it must to the craftsman too. Some tragedies are so vast, it takes a lifetime to journey to the bright side of them. What good does it do to pretend otherwise? To pretend neither of them see what’s happened here?

“...you don’t even recall what you asked of her, do you?” He smiles, pained. “Even at your most inspired, I just can’t picture you doing something so thoughtless as to make an offering without a wish on your tongue.”

An offering of the heart laid before a goddess he revered, and not even his request remains. The heroes of myth and history did not suffer as they did so that they could feign ignorance now.

Perhaps if one of those heroes were here, they’d have words of wisdom for times like this. Or they’d slay the foul monster blocking their way, something so terrible that neither of them can even see its true form. But no, it’s just the two of them. Craftsman and Chef. What can he do? Well, not much. Only a little thing. A small thing. Horribly unsuitable as any kind of solution or answer.

He holds onto the craftsman’s bandaged hand with his own. At the first sign of discomfort, he will withdraw without a fuss. Until that time, he will stand by his side, and he will ask him, “What was your vision, the one of metal and matter? Do you remember?” And he’ll listen to every word, even as he takes the first step forward. If this be a cautionary tale, then the craftsman will not have to walk it alone. He can offer this little comfort to one laid terribly low.

If the Lady of Summer finds offense in this, then. Well. Then he’ll find a suitable offering to stay her wrath.

Had she ever been here? In the depths of the city, surrounded by the city, by people, by crowds, everyone crammed into cities built to house entire species? Where everything was loud and crowded and houses were built on top of houses, stores exploded out into the street, and everywhere you turned there was someone else?

The answer becomes no. The memories of clinging to her arm slip away, replaced by a city more real than real. A city without anyone else; a city built for the benefit of the buildings, which whisper to each other in the dark. A city of secrets and hidden places; a city that has meaning that is not derived from inhabitance but from existence and context.

From high up, she glances down through a window and sees a shack, squatting in a grassy square in the shadow of taller walls, wires curling on its sides. From below, she looks up and sees ten dozen golden windows, each one spilling out light, each one promising solitude. From across the way she catches a glimpse of pink-white trees lit up by phosphorus beacons, casting long shadows of reaching arms across the city.

“All knights are the same kind of knight, milady,” the knight says. “It doesn’t matter whether they have a sword or a spear or an axe, except that swords have an advantage over axes, and axes over spears, and so on. Some ride horses and some ride skateboards and some ride rainbows. But all knights are the same knight, because in their hearts, they all have a quest. And sometimes this quest is to go someplace, to find someone or something, to never give up. And other times it’s to go where someone else is, to keep them safe no matter what, and to never give up. And sometimes, I guess, it’s both? I’m both. My quest is to protect you, and to follow my fair damosel triangulus, and to not let that kill me, because then you’d both be very upset at me for being so careless! Knights rescue the helpless, the captured, the kidnapped, and even when they get caught up in it, they’ll always find a way out in the end. To be a knight is to devote yourself to the happily ever after as your mistress, your tyrant, your god.”

The ceiling overhead is vaulted but thin-slatted, and where there are slats missing, the pale pink sky of twilight peeks through. Around them are locked doors and locked windows, invitations to peek inside and see treasures. It would be wrong to crack these vaults open and take what they like; it would be easy, but it would be a blasphemy. So the knight continues onwards.

“It’s your turn,” she says, smiling, hefting her up a little higher, pulling her a little closer. “Tell me about princesses. What sorts are there? What kind are you?”

Mosiac!

The Lethe carries the dream of gold. Gold bars weightless and ethereal, somewhere in a vast and disorganized bag just out of line of sight, a place you can only reach if you don't think about it too hard. They must have grown from the flowers you passed before, an exposed vein on the mountain where the slate and silicon crumbled away to reveal the underworld's treasures. A fortune, if only there was some way to access it, to change it. Perhaps the right bookstore might transmute it, or the place where that whisper of two-dimensional bread comes from.

You have a fortune in gold but you'll need to translate that into coins. Two each, of whatever size or shape that can be found. Perhaps from the three-story maze that overlooks the lake. Perhaps its massive tower interior with stairs up and down for days and shops that sell all the infrastructure to maintain a breakable world. Perhaps in the glittering red velvet carpet and checkerboard pattern area near the grand entrance at the end of a rusting red-green bridge over an asphalt pit. Perhaps in the strange stripped down white tile and cardboard where the building has shrunk back from earlier dreams, occupied only by the hardy survivors of invisible hands. Somewhere in this sparse crowd there will be coins, if only...

If only Vesper wasn't a useless shopper. She wanted to try on everything and make you try it on too, just to see if it worked better on you. Your path crosses over with a third, the hound with the clarion voice, and as far as Vesper is concerned everything in this world can be divided up between the three of you. With three models so distinct in form and aspect everything will suit someone best. Leather jackets and sunglasses, hawaiian shirts and jorts, tuxedos and fingerless gloves, and even a fourth pile for a forth sister that will be transmitted to her once she is rediscovered. A world once splintered into a periodic table returns to four elements, a kingdom divided between warlords returns to four directions, and we need to know how you look in these shutter sunglasses before we can make any further decisions or plans.

The Knight!

"A princess is someone who fails," said she quietly.

"She is someone who dreams of a realm united. A mother placated. An evil averted. She uses blade, knowledge and influence and even her own marriage as tools. She offers herself in sacrifice, in labour, in obedience, in body before consuming Cetus, consuming Cronus. She offers all she has but still cannot. She burns herself out and ends in despair. Until..."

An autumn whisper blows past her in the Lethe's currents, the smell of bonfires and cheap fireworks, on the trail of burning leaves. The building lights are cold, structures like upturned pyramids, ghostly eucalypts rising from grass so green your mouth waters.

"Until she is rescued," she admits. "And therein is the kind of princess known. Some are rescued by princes, some by knights, some by princesses, some by Zeus. Some are rescued by kingdoms entire, or in very rare occasions by themselves. Only then might her dreams resolve and give meaning to the one who rescued her, to define at last the happy ending that the knight quests for."

Dolce!

"I... dreamed..."

A dry chuckle, a young man thinking of a younger man's folly. "Dreams, Lethe. Of all the things it can wash away of course it can't wash away what it first granted. Do you think this is how Lord Hades talks to us? So many of us spend our lives fearing his realm and we spend half of our lives with one foot in it, and the other half in service to the visions we find there. Of course, then, I dreamed of energy.

"Beneath three suns, you understand! The Forge itself was conquered, a vibrant and growing oasis, a miracle of perseverance and alchemy. But a single solar flare from any of those stars, the mere licking of celestial lips, would have burned it all down to its foundations. Organic matter had triumphed over inorganic matter, most assuredly. None could doubt that. But... what would it take to fly closer to the sun, as it were?"

"There were others who thought like me. They started work on creatures made of glass and crystal, a project to amplify neuroelectrical impulses until they were so powerful they could leave the body. Stormclouds caged in matter. But that always felt small scale, like parlor tricks, no guarantee they'd ever lead to the world I dreamed of. A world where life had spread from the Forge to the stars that forged it."

You can see the burns. The mechanical limbs. The scars come into resolution, now that you know that they are patches over molten wax wings. For all his youthful idealism, you can see that this dream ended in despair.

Dyssia!

Have you been to the depths below? It is in theory the native environment of the Azura, in the same way that the tropical rainforest is the native environment of humanity. What that means practically is that everything here is evolved to kill you, personally.

The corals seethe dissonant red. They break up the cool blue-greens of the ocean depths, promising poisonous death. Every slightly misshapen pile of sand or stone might be an invisible octopus, camouflaged perfectly and ready to pounce and try and strangle. Jellyfish glow with bioluminescent false suns, pretty little balls of bright white, luring you in towards their spreading network of paralytic stringlike tentacles. You're pretty sure that fish has a sword for a face.

Oh, sure, you're an apex specimen compared to the Azura of ancient days, much like how a human might tower over a monkey. But monkeys know their way around rainforests; know how to move stealthily and safely, likewise those ancient serpents were wise to the tricks of the ocean in a way you aren't. But their legacy is with you still in the form of an unbelievable, instinctive, primordial wonder and terror at everything down here, a genetic scream that you should touch not, look not, go not. Messages written to you on the corpses of trillions of slaughtered generations before opposible thumbs were invented. The primordial terror of hearing a tiger's snarl, translated into the snap of crab pincers. Poseidon ate your ancestors in this blue hell as surely as Demeter ate humanity's in her green one.

If you've never been here before, if you've never felt the dead hand of instinct weigh on you as immediately as this, you might get a glimpse of the mechanism that keeps servitors loyal to their tasks.

As you're contemplating your instincts are getting louder and sharper. Amidst all of these perils there's something worse. Something that's making the coral grow faster and the jellyfish glow brighter and the razorfish swirl and slash like warmup scimitar strokes. It's a nightmarish feeling of the natural world starting to perfect itself.

It's the influence of a Biomancer. The Pix sent a Biomancer to head off your retreat into the depths. You can't see it yet but the way the world moves...

One Biomancer or the united hunting pack? Not an enviable choice.

Mosaic, at least, was born to shop. Or well. No she wasn't. The concept of the gold held very little sway inside her head except that it was pretty, and the call of coin would have been hollow if not for the fact that she was certain she was in the one place where a pair of coins was necessary to move forward. But just the two, for each of them. All the rest was pointless, confusing, and she'd be happy enough in any of these clothes if they got her what she wanted. Which was movement. Forward please, Vesper. She is missing her Beloved, do you not understand?

Modeling. That's the thing she's actually the best at. Vesper only confirms it with every new selection, every fresh experiment. The pile that's 'for' her grows so disproportionately large that it's starting to make her tail bush in irritation.

She is born to wear high gowns with trails that drag the ground behind her. She is born for short and swishy pleated skirts with saucy button up blouses that don't entirely cover her prodigious assets with anything approaching a Duchess' level (she assumes) of decorum. She is born for sleek and slitted dresses, for long coats and short ones, for frills and for lace and on, and on, and on.

In the end it is the look her other sister is giving her: one part high effort smile to one part bravely hidden whine to one part not-at-all hidden glare that convinces her to speak up. Enough. Rather than trusting to Vesper's expertise, Mosaic adds her own opinions to the mix to best help sort the selections fairly. The idea of the exercise itself being folly does not occur to her. Her family is four sisters, including herself. The past is not so clear as the city skyline is just now, but just to look and hear and smell and touch the three of them is enough to know that they all wore the cost of many miles and atrocities upon their shoulders.

And knowing that, wasn't that worth at least making sure everybody looked their best on the other side of this journey? For... however long that might take? One outfit apiece. They agree on this much. But given that, it has to be the best in all of creation. That's how they'll know each other, if every other signal should fail them. No group anywhere could be so beautiful.

But what does Mosaic know of fashions? Her beauty is haphazard. Her body rejects nothing out of hand. The slim cuts and the heavy ones. The revealing masterpieces and the concealing comfort clothes. Somehow it all looks great. Somehow it all feels nice. But even so, it's not like she's come into this battle unarmed. There are some freebies. She cuts several cocktail dresses because of how fantastic they would look on her clear-voiced sister, and cuts a robe, a fluttering sleeved shirt, and a massive coat with almost as many buttons as pockets because the idea of seeing Vesper in them instead puts a smile on her lips. She shrugs off the shutter shades, somewhat at random.

And from there she's out of tools. And there are still so many outfits to model. Button mashing is the last and best tool of the desperate, and though she doesn't know it by that name Mosaic employs the strategy with gusto. That shows too much leg, away with it. That doesn't show enough leg, rejected. That doesn't show too much leg, get it gone. Shut up, actually? Who cares if she's making sense, she's making decisions, ok? Like either of you two know anything about that!

Bit by bit, the possibilities dwindle. Without any conscious hand guiding her decisions, a pattern forms in the shape of a dream. Or an obligation, maybe. Something ephemeral and impossible that nevertheless touches her and pulls her toward a single thought just as inevitably as she found her name. And when everything else is gone, Mosaic is left with suits.

The cuts come further. Faster. More certain. Wrong color, sister. Too loose a fit. It needs to fit more of a... no, here. Look at this.

From endless possibility shines a single light and washes out every other color, and every shadow along with it. The jacket only has a sleeve on the left arm, melting somehow as it crosses her chest to a two-button vest that leaves plenty of the tight fitting, white button up shirt and the delicate black tie she pulls taut around her neck. High waisted slacks hug her hips like a lover might, covering the socks (blue-black, like her hair) except where the points of her shiny, tall heeled shoes let them poke through at the tops of her feet. At her back, the suit jacket unfurls like a cloak that brushes near the ground by her tail, principally on her right side where her front clothes are shortest. And where the fabric flutters open, all that midnight black and moonlit white is obliterated by a bold streak of crimson coating the inside of her clothes.

This is the barter by which she will mint her coins, she's sure of it. This is how she's meant to look. This thing, which is many things stitched together by some clever or desperate hand, is beautiful in a way that nothing else in this entire city could possibly be. All that it requires is a splash of gold chains here, a bell charm there, a pendant necklace in glittering gems so that she shines as bright as a sun over a field of desperate green grasses. A beacon. That's what he sister calls her.

Mosaic throws her arms around them both, and squeezes her eyes shut so that the tears can't poke through and ruin this moment. Whatever lead her here, however difficult the path has been... none of it has been a mistake. And what a blessing it is that these girls should be allowed to walk forward together.

"Now come on, you idiots. We spent all this time on me and there's still hardly anything properly picked out for the rest of you. I'm not the only one who should be exploring, here."

You know, on second thought, healthbars are a pretty great thing? Getting whittled down, one razor-cut at a time, is certainly not how she wants to spend her afternoon!

Gosh, has it only been a few hours since she woke up? How did she actually plan to spend her afternoon? Baking, wasn't it? Was that today, or was it baskets today? She doesn't quite recall, and the schedule on her desk has been accumulating dust since she made it an promptly started to ignore it.

Ahem. Not how she wants to spend her afternoon, right? Shock and poison and glass in her eyes and splinters under her fingernails. But the point is, see, that stuff is survivable. Get a healthbar big enough, and you can endure tons of small hits.

Down here, it feels like everything around her threatens a one-shot-kill. Oh man, She Is In Danger Now.

She's never felt so alive before.

Fucked up, innit? If this were one of her stories, this is where the heroine would do something clever and subvert everything. Or, you know, fall into a bad end of indeterminate duration, depending on the story, don't judge her.

But the heroine is always alert and aware and thinking, where here, she feels almost drunk with sensation.

Possibly, that's a neurotoxin in the water. Should probably watch out for that.

But it's true! Her pulse races, her heart threatens to burst in her chest, she's breathing hard, and everything--everything stands out. Every twitch out of the corner in her eye gets focused on. Every color is bright, vivid, a confusing mess of blurred edges and threat.

She should go up. She should go up. Go up, get away, take the risk. Twenty--no, no, fifteen, 75 percent, remember--fifteen Ceronians cannot hope to match the terrors down here.

And yet she lingers.

Every nerve is lightning, every sense is screaming to get away. Threats from every corner, every direction. Ancient sense of electricity coursing, telling her it's useless to pinpoint the direction of danger, because it's every direction, and up, up, up is the smart.

Colors and lights and glows… How has she always wanted to go find adventure in space, when all this time, it's been here?

She should leave. She should go. Swim up. Swim away. Her hands haven't stopped pressing the ELF on her belt since she got here. Everything is danger. Everything is perfecting themselves, the better to kill her.

But she could no more tear herself away from this--this sense, this wonder, this peril, these colors, this bliss--than she could become a master by wishing for it. It's madness, pure and simple.

And with a thrust of her tail, she sends herself further into it.

“That is so sad!!”

The princess will find herself aggressively squished against the knight, who is sniffling. But she can’t get her arms up around the princess, and there’s no way she’s going to put her down, so there’s no way of stopping the tears.

“Surely that’s not all! There’s got to be… what about…” The knight thinks, or tries to, but the specters of princesses in need of rescue haunt her as she marches along, even in her distress still surefooted and careful. After all, we can’t have a delicate princess tumbling out of the arms of a knight. What a scandal that would be! What would everyone think?? (The fact that there is no one around to notice doesn’t occur to her.)

“…but that must be the reason there are knights!” And what of what she’d said? What had she said, anyhow? Something about happy endings? “That’s what we’re for! To be there for you! To stop those dreams from dying! No sad princesses! Not while I’m around!!”

No sad princesses! It echoes in the dream of cities, a declaration that will be draped over her shoulders. Here, then, is a virtue of chivalry!

You wear it well. Stupid, silly sheep. He knew there was wrong in it as soon as he said it. What was all that about watching and observing, hrmm? If he was going to go and plant his hoof squarely in his mouth mere moments later? Nerves were no excuse for being hasty.

Still. He did mean it. For someone wearing the tattered remains of a dream, he looked…comfortable, as he was. Accustomed to his scars, like an old, familiar coat. Perhaps that made it at least a little okay.

As they walk, he offers up a story of his own, so the craftsman’s past might have some company. “Once, when I was very, very little, I dreamed I might join the clouds as they drifted across the sky. They looked so much like me, and wouldn’t it have been something to fly through the air with them? To hop along their puffy white hills, go tumbling into pillowy fields, explore that brand new world that was always in sight and just out of reach?”

“I didn’t try again, after jumping out a second story window. But, later, much later, I was allowed to fly in a shuttle, and they let me sit by the viewport as we entered the atmosphere. For the first time, I saw the clouds from above. What was a thick blanket of solid white below was rolling hills, crested with wispy peaks. We cut an arc around a mountain of stormclouds, and they were real. You look at them from the ground, and it may as well be a painted dome above your head. But up there? The clouds near you move fast, the clouds far away move slow, and it’s a real place you can fly around in. If they’d forgotten to land, I could have sat watching forever.”

Through the patchwork forest, through the criss-crossing branches and leaves of every shape, bright splashes of color peek down at the pair walking hand in hand. Whether it is cloud, star, or something else entirely, who can say?

“It’s not quite the same thing, but, there is something special about the sky, isn’t there? About upward and above?”

Mosaic!

The Gemini - that name suits the hound - indulges in gold. Gold and glitter, a grid of the earth's secret treasures. She has chosen a rare material indeed to dress herself in, matter that responds to movement. A shrug or a stretch of her arms turns patterns of gold into rubies and sapphires as they clink and strike each other. If she runs or moves suddenly then the gold becomes transparent diamonds, revealing the hidden shape of her body. This sweeping, shoulderless dress is bound with a sequence of blue ribbons running up along her back, with a crown of jasper on her head. But for all its plutonic wealth she does not appear rich or regal. This is a performer's radiance, a performer's tackiness. Synthetics and sequins designed to dazzle from afar rather than impress up close. When the light is wrong it looks fake, and cheap, and hardly eye catching at all. But in the right light she can outshine anything. She is delighted with it, with the adaptability, with the mundanity, with how she can use it to make something fake appear more real than reality.

Vesper is besotted with the coat, but she uses grav-pins to lock it into an appearance of continual flutter, soaring off her body as though it is about to be carried away at any moment by a strong wind. In red and white it frames her shoulders and back in high drama, so the subdued lavender-greys of her feathers and steel-greys of her triangle-themed suit fade away. Here focus is drawn to the green-gold chain of her pocketwatch, the green-blue chain of a cravat, and the brilliant light of her eyes.

Neither of these are dresses for assassins. The word hardly seems to fit either of them any more.

The Knight!

The princess takes her kerchief and drys your eyes. Softly. Delicately. She then folds that sacred cloth and ties it into your hair as a ribbon, in a complex braid that her fingers know as certainly as a handmaiden's. Something holy; a lady's favour, an essential part of being a Knight.

Before you is the sea.

Bright white sand that fades into scrubby, vined and tangled grass. Bitter, deep-rooted things with tripping tendrils. Tall trees from jurassic eras, unliving fossils. Huge and broken rocks and tangled rock pools as the world of memories is ground down into this powdering dust. The infinite blue. Oceanus. The sea that surrounds the world.

This is it. This is the end of the world. The place sought, and ultimately found, by Alexander. The barrier between the worlds of life and death, the greatest of the rivers of the underworld. The ancients knew that all the world was suspended upon water, the continents floating above this vast subterranean ocean. For all they would subsequently learn about lava, plate tectonics, planetary travel and quantum mechanics they had it right the first time. This is the sea that the galaxy floats upon.

You've made it. The end of the universe.

Dolce!

"Hah," laughed the Ancient Craftsman. "Yes. It's Zeus, I think. I think a lot of people don't understand her, now that we've gone into the void, now that we can move the clouds, now that we can move the stars. I think she seems... abstract, like a concept of power, not the literal sky. But there's something indescribably beautiful, something erotic, something intimate about the sky. Mathematically it's a thin layer of atmosphere, but... how can you not fall in love with it?"

Dyssia!

You didn't know they made foxes in this colour.

A radiant, scandalous, stolen Blue. Shining like a goddess, like sunlight just breaking through the surface of the waves. The glittering wings extend in the flying-fish frills and fins that an Azura angel might wear. There are so many ways that this could be wrong, that it could fall on the wrong side of taste, on the wrong side of the uncanny valley, but this Pix has done her research and has sculpted her appearance with the precision of a marketing guru to be the most beautiful sea fox that could ever be.

She smiles. Beacons. Flicks her legs and tails together like it's mermay. On some level your senses are aware of danger, perhaps seeing the shimmer of the paralyzing nigh-invisible jellyfish surrounding her in a defensive aura, but she's doing an amazing job of displacing that discomfort onto the fact that she's holding a riding crop and is biting her lip just so. The ocean ripples with her siren's song as she draws you closer. Isn't she worth the danger?

The smell and the sound of the water had attracted each of them equally, though no one could say why, or how they could have missed such an insistent bubbling for so long. It simply hadn't reached them until after they'd perfected their looks, and after that they could no longer recall a time when it hadn't been in the vast corridors with them.

The rhythmic and steady bubbling pulled them as the Sirens even as it soothed their hearts more deeply than the sweetest lullaby. The smell of it was heavenly, so clean and soothing that it could have been a gift from Lady Hera herself, and tinged with the luscious aroma of heavy metals that meant life in all of its wonder and glory. Heavenly: enough to make a girl drool. What could they do but follow?

The walk was short, a minute at most, and yet more torturous than all the long miles they'd needed to get here in the first place since their ship had first mysteriously run aground. Yearning and certainty built up in their joints like rust, and every step became harder and more necessary than the one that came before it. Always the sound and the smell, but never the sight. Until at last they came around the final corner, and Understood.

The fountain itself was simpler than the water had made it seem. No grand edifice in gold, platinum, and marble here. Just a simple flat basin of gentle ceramics, and above that a smaller plinth with a brick working in the middle, leading down through the center into the earth below. It is... small. Cliché. Cheap looking, even. And yet...

The sheer presence of it almost drops the sisters to their knees. Claws itch on fingertips and pheromones waft through the air before anyone can stop and think about what they're doing. Violet eyes flash dangerously, and three tongues go dry with want all at once. The air itself is heavier than lead. It is at once hot and cold, pleasant and horrifying, tempting and repulsive.

Its name is Desire. Desire. Desire. Desire. Speak the name and succumb, mortals.

"It's... a wishing well, I think."

Mosaic and Gemini turn their heads toward Vesper and blink as though shaken out of slumber.

"A wishing what?"

"A well. I mean there's water in there too but you can smell the coins, can't you? People must have been throwing them down there for aeons."

"That's stupid of them. What good's it do anyone to give up your toll before you've even crossed?" Gemini scoffs.

"To wish. I mean, that much is obvious."

"Wait so, if I had two coins already I could have a wish? Anything at all?"

"That's what they believed, at least. Who knows if it'd really give up whatever you wanted for so little."

"More likely it's a trap, yes. But this is our answer."

"What do you mean?"

"Vastly more coins at the bottom of that thing than we could possibly need, right? Takes two to pay the ferryman."

"Yeah but, like, how would we even get them out? Just looking at this thing I feel like it's gonna eat my hand if I stick it anywhere near there."

Silence. Vesper alternates between chewing on her thumb and trying very hard not to do that, instead. She pulls a pipe from one of her many new pockets and sucks on it, though it is neither lit nor filled. Her face creases with worry lines as she slowly works her way backwards from destroying the edge of the galaxy. The problem with geniuses is that they always have to begin the problem at Zero.

Mosaic raises a hand as if in class, and clears her throat.

"Hey. What if we just do the whole thing backwards?"

"Reverse the transaction?"

"Yeah. Does a wishing well only work one way?"

"That's an interesting thought. There's not much literature on the topic, but then these things died out as a concept centuries before any of us were born. The rules could be different for each one of these they built. We simply don't know."

"It's such a creepy thought, honestly. It's like a... Unwish. You had something in your heart and you just, like, let it flutter out into the wild? I wonder what it feels like. I can't even think of anything I'd... hey, Mosaic?"

"Hm?"

"It was your idea, right? You should get us started then. What would you Unwish for? I mean even if this doesn't work that's a fun question, right? This is like our first slumber party together!"

"Except that we're all awake."

"Well obviously."

Mosaic snorts, and looks down at her hands. Desire, desire. Her fingers curl toward her palms, and the claw tips press against her skin there. Not enough to draw blood, but enough to feel how easy it would be to manage that. Her tongue slides across the fangs inside her mouth, sliding pleasantly across their smooth surface but even still needing to fold so carefully to avoid being punctured. There is a memory teasing at the tips of all her sharp edges. Or, not so much a memory but a question.

Why does a maid need to know how to fight?

"There was a... house, I think. I used to live there. With my Beloved and her mother and... another person. Someone very, very important. I want. No. I wanted to stay there forever. I felt safe, and happier than I can remember ever being. I cried when I left. I must have, right? Every night until my eyes hurt too much to keep doing it. Every step I took away from it made me miss it more. If I looked at a field full of the brightest wildflowers I would only have been able to tell you all the ways they failed to live up to the little garden inside that house.

I worked there, too. Can't remember for who but I'm sure I did it. And I've wanted to do a good job for them since always. I still want -- wanted -- to go back and be safe and happy, and get told what a good girl I am for finding my way back again. It's my... mhph. My oldest dream. But."

She doesn't finish the thought out loud. Instead she straightens her back and lets her body uncurl to its full, majestic height. If she's honest, all her memories of that house are dark. Very dark, and very stale. Like the air inside of it hadn't moved for longer than anyone had been alive to feel it. The thoughts feel covered in dust. Disgusting. If she had her coins already she'd toss them in the well right now and scream for a duster and permission to go and fix it.

But she is broke. And she is not a maid. There's nothing waiting for her back there at all. All the people she would have longed for must surely have left such a poor, dilapidated place by now no matter how safe and cozy it melt have felt to a child. She searches for the picture of it in her heart. It snaps closed inside of her like a locket, and slips from her fingers into the dark.

She snatches at the air as if to catch it, and marvels at the sudden weight inside her hand. Slowly, hesitantly, her fist uncurls.

In her palm rests a pair of coins.

He remembers the perfect arc of her neck, her arched back, her tail trailing behind her like a comet. He remembers her willing herself to soar ever-higher when she ought to have fallen. He remembers an outline against the void, wreathed in kaleidoscopic glory.

He remembers looking up, and seeing stars.

“Mmhmm…” And this little cloud tinges sunset red. “If it were anything but love, how did we get this far?”

She's the most beautiful person Dyssia has ever seen.

Which is saying something, when you consider that Dyssia grew up with Merilt, and if you look up "sex goddess" in the dictionary, you'd find a picture of Merilt there!

Well… no, no you wouldn't. Making a dictionary, writing up sex goddess, and putting a picture of anyone but Aphrodite--or maybe Demeter, depending on your definitions--is a good way to end up with a bunch of slag that used to be a factory.

But you get the picture, right? Merilt's the kind of hot that lets you walk into a room and instantly quiet every conversation. The kind that has options. The kind that doesn't have to settle for--

Look, it wasn't a crush, right? Dyssia explicitly did not want it to affect her relationship with Merilt. She was lucky enough that Merilt chose her, out of all people, to be best friends with.

Because let's face it, Dyssia is. Well, yes, attractive. She looks in a mirror and thinks, "Yeah, I'd do me." But in an unconventional way. Attractive, but. Not in a way that would let you go on the street and know that every eye is on you. Not in a way that gives you that easy walk, that confident gaze. Not in the way that would let you walk up to your best friend and ask whether they'd like to be more.

She's her best friend.

Was. Was, she needs to remind herself. Past tense.

It made so much sense, though. Yeah, you might end up in a fulfilling relationship that goes places and ends with both of you sharing a life of adventure. Ooooor, you might alienate one of the only true friends you have--again--and end up in a gutter.

Or, you know, you could spend years pining? Pining is probably the wrong word. Being happy with what you have, telling yourself not to ruin it. Being scared to ask that first question, hoping against hope that maybe, maybe she feels the same way? Only to be stabbed in the back anyway?

Did… Did Merilt know? She always told herself that no, there's no way she could have.

But right now, she's questioning a whole lot of her past assumptions. She can't have known. She had to have known. There was always that teasing look when she smiled. And, so you know, Merilt has a great smile. Dyssia could look at the smile for hours, and god help her if Merilt laughed. Just, plain up girl-melting laugh.

Or, you know, it was. Back before. Before things changed.

The smile she gives out now is… It's the same shape, right? Like, to a tee. Could photograph one, and photograph the other, and line them up over one another, and have no differences. But it's fake, Dyssia knows--the mouth shape is the same, but it doesn't reach the eyes.

You wouldn't do that to a friend, right? Wouldn't keep them by your side, letting them stew in--

Fuck, is she the bad friend? Is that what happened, is that Merilt knew, and got tired of waiting for Dyssia to finally get her guts together and ask?

It's not fair. She wants to be angry--wants to nestle into it like a warm ball of energy, draw power from it. But now she's not even sure who to be mad at.

The Pix has the same smile, you know? Like she's spent time with Merilt, and crafted her mouth to look the same, and spent hours perfecting that same smile under her tutelage.

And she's open, and willing, and wants her. She's even more of a sex goddess than Merilt, could have her pick of anyone, and is asking for her, and wants her, and--

And she's within arm's length now, she realizes with a jolt. No idea how she got through the jellyfish tentacles--she'd moved past them almost without thinking, on autopilot, just figuring out which way they were going and then not being there. Just…

On second thought, it's not quite like Merilt's smile. Not like either of Merilt's smiles, she means--not the real one that she used in private back then, or the one she gives out to devotees today.

It's probably just the light, you know. From the jellyfish, and the bioluminescence, and the way the wings scatter and diffract both across the Pix's face.

It's a crafted illusion of a smile. But it somehow seems kinder than what she's used to.

She gulps, and stares at the Pix, almost at a loss for words.

"Come here often?"

Fuck. No, actually, at a loss would be better.

The knight stares out at the perfect blue. The surf roars its heartbeat. Rise and fall. The stones sing where the trailing fingers of foam turn them.

She is aware of her heart. She is aware of her fingers and the blood in them. She is aware of her hair, braided with love. The ribbon is a part of her body, as much as her boots are, as much as her stomach is, as much as the ocean is.

The stones sing. Clack-a-clack. The ocean yawns and reaches for them again, but the foam only reaches their toes, and the wave shrugs back down. Strange wood lies on this shore. It is shaped like someone sleeping, or like an explosion of fingers, or like serpents. There are no birds.

The knight hoists the princess up as high as she can, to keep the train of her dress from dragging in the sand, and says: “We need a boat. Let’s look.” And she marches down, against the foam, looking for a boat, or a very large raft, or even a very large tree big enough to fit everyone inside, all of her companions, all of her heart. A white boat, a black boat, a tall boat, a long boat. A yacht, a galleon, a clipper, a battleship. Something left abandoned here, a dream (a dream?) of crossing left behind.

She will name it Starsong, when she finds it. And she will. That’s what knights are useful for.

There is nothing more empty than water.

Air is alive. Air is life itself. This has been true since Zeus breathed life into the clay sculptures of Prometheus. Air is sister to fire, sister to lightning. Water is by comparison dead, inert. When it rises it is because it has been driven by the air, because it has been compelled by the moon. But always it seeks to fade away and drain back to the lowest place that can be reached. It falls endlessly, building up crushing pressure in its shadowed depths. Gather enough water in place and the exterior will burn as it forces out the veins of air that have been trapped within it. Gather enough water in one place and it will condense even further than that. The Azura knew this when they built the Gravity Rail; singularity is but the craving of water.

So the sails billow and flap. Air alone rises. Air alone survives. A little bubble of air squeezed out of the immense, dark pressure at the bottom of the world. The last breath of air escaping from the Underworld. This is a ship of wood and ropes, of wheels and copper, of white paint and the speed of knots. Against it, Oceanus in all its might. What a terror to face an ocean without Poseidon; without the unknown and the dangerous. To face an infinite wine-dark sea with no beginning or end. To sail the void that crushes time and space. To sail it using only breath.

So if life is, at the last, breath then tell us of yours. Tell us how each of your breaths propel the Ferryman's boat onwards.

*

Dyssia!

"Oh!" giggles the Pix in a way that is charming but also deeply undermines her radiant goddess illusion. "You charmer!" she punches Dyssia's arm flirtatiously. It's very much the atmosphere of a dork who only understands intellectually the effect her makeup has. "But yes, I'm Tidal specialization. Mostly I work with crabs, but Azura are so fascinating, I'm lucky to have this chance!"

The jellyfish tentacles are wrapping tighter and tighter, layering around arms, neck, tail, body. Your body will figure out the paralytic in time, so they're getting a solid physical grip before that happens.

"But... I have to ask..." there's a furtive look in the Pix's eyes as she glances upwards. "Are you a girl of your word? I mean, I've caught you, so does that mean if I offer you parole you'll be good and do what you're told? Because - well, just hypothetically, there could be opportunities in both our futures if we play our cards right."

You know what you're dealing with here, with that glittering contemplation from this disguised angel, with the twitch of the fox ears above a supernaturally beautiful face. This is a scorpion and her nature is to sting. Most servitor species have some encoded Hubris, a fatal flaw that runs through their society unless it is actively suppressed by human or Azura masters. In the event that that a servitor population runs rampant then it quickly becomes a slave to its self-destructive impulses, creating a vulnerability for ruler species to reassert control. It's what bought the Pix here in the first place, it's why they agreed to the Sleeper's deal in the first place, and now at last the tendency towards betrayal is working in your favour.

But be careful, because she'll sting you too.