[b]Mosaic and Ember![/b]

The message from on high is quite clear: Haul or die.

The Corvii descend in great unkindness. Every living being on the peninsula is swept up and dragged into place. Vast teams of sweating labourers are made to hold enormous cables that run down into the depths. Supervisors with ELF Razorwhips[1] walk the lines, and flesh and blood flies at their crackling rebukes. Like the slaves who built the ancient pyramids the people of Bitemark pull.

[1] A Razorwhip is a cruel perversion of ELF technology. Normally an Electromagnetic Flux nullifies electrical impulses, stunning living people and draining electricity. A Razorwhip instead briefly merges with its victim's nervous system, causing intense pain, before flensing the top layer of skin and flesh leaving bloody welts. They are awful weapons against unarmoured targets and are truly horrifying when wielded against primitive aliens. They are not standard, their use by the Crystal Knight is a statement of malevolence. 

In the distance you can see the Crystal Knight's flagship hovering over the ocean, the uncannily levitating sphere surrounded by a cluster of orbiting subcraft like a miniature solar system. Extending from her ship are multiple large crystalline barbs, esoteric weapons of unknown design - though if Quajl's weapon is any guide, it is capable of strange and terrible effect. 

You can almost see her there in the distance, the hungry loom of the ship over the water, staring for even a hint of its coming prize. The pupil of the serpentine eye, the perverse moon that commands the masses of the world to pull, pull, pull.

[b]Dolce![/b]

"You cut it fine with the minefield," said 20022 mildly.

There was no time for a full audit. But he spent the fourteen minutes he had checking [i]your [/i]work. You see the truth now; although he looks as mild and soft as you, he's a hunting dog as dedicated as the Majordomo. He is your enemy, even as he smiles from behind his cup of tea. 

"I made a few corrections," he says gently, even supportively! "But on the whole you did very well! You are a lot more daring than I would have given you credit for!"

You're sitting above the world. From your throne in space, in a room facing each other, all your plans in motion, the two of you sit in a comfortable room with a plush green carpet and a little garden off to the side. The full-wall window shows the planet in perfect frame. As calm as the setting is, this is a duel of intellects, a chess game of politeness and deception. 20022 is suspicious. You might be a spy, or you might be a naive student who made a few questionable choices. He's trying to sniff out the truth as you wait together for the Royal Architect to arrive. He hasn't mentioned what changes he made or why; he wants to see if that makes you sweat, if changing your setup will have caused your plan to fall apart entirely.

"Do you see what I mean?" he said with a happy little smile. "Even if you've never done this work before it's all in your genes, and you took to it like a natural. How did it feel?"

[b]Dyssia![/b]

There was a sudden sunlight breaking through the fog.

"Ah," said the Dust Knight, no longer possessed but inspired - the radiant smile of Apollo shining through behind him. "To win. The most dangerous thing of all. We won, the Azura - we conquered our rivals, we conquered the science of life, we triumphed over material limitations. It almost killed us all. Why not climb the endless mountain of virtue instead? Why not leave the task unfinished to your children, and your children's children? Why not let the galaxy continue on like this forever, the endless accumulation of virtue as its own purpose and own reward?"

"Fuck that," Dionysus says through [i]your [/i]lips. "I'm going to strap the wheel of karma to the front of a motorcycle and backflip off it into a canyon while drinking cocaine cola out of the Buddha's skull. It's time for a new age, and a new age is always built out of the failed and succeeded promises of the previous era."

"And," you say, with a rare certainty, "I know I'll find my answers on Bitemark."