It burns without heat. It crushes without weight. It carves her into pieces without claws, without even moving. Mosaic watches it hanging over her, for as long as she dares. Her eyes, both of them, dip from the sky and the horizon to the ground about her feet. Of course she blinked first. Of course she did. For all her power, what is she? For all her dreaming, what is she?
Below. Beneath. The genetic material used to weave her tapestry is filled with instructions that predate every known civilization; the cat on the high ground was untouchable. The superior predator does the watching. To be seen and exposed makes one weak.
The order came down from on high, to pull, pull, pull. But they put a horn in her hand and not a rope. They expected her to yell instructions and fix the lines, and to always stay moving. Even though her arms are the strongest. Her hands clench into fists. She turns now and watches the sea. Watches crews from Beri and Rosedam and a dozen other towns hauling on chains that stretch down endlessly into the water.
On the beach, scores of other Servitors lie across the sands catching their breaths. Her best swimmers. She'd sent them down to attach the hooks that would pull up the Crystal Knight's prize. She'd sent them down because it meant the job got done before anyone else got the brilliant idea to send the Lyrii, or anyone else who could have gotten hurt.
Even so, the waters down there are dangerous. It was a tough swim; she should have done it herself. But if she had...
"Oi! You lot! Breathin' ain't pullin' Get your sorry asses off the ground 'fore I tear 'em offa ya!"
The thrum and the crack of a Razorwhip snaps across the air. Mosaic's legs are already moving. The sounds of loose rock and dust precedes her feet as she slides down the cliff side to land in front of the Corvi taskmaster leering at her diving team. Her shoulders are squared. Her back straight. She towers over the other woman, for one fleeting second the picture of the Hero of Beri again. She glances down at her fists, and sees they are still balled tight.
"Enough."
"Shut it lady. The sheep said 'supervisor'. That don't put you in charge."
Mosaic's teeth flash in anger. She glances up, and feels the weight of the Eye on her back. Her heart pounds inside of her, but she wrenches her hands open again. Forces her face back to calm. She says nothing, but tilts her head toward the ocean. The Corvi rolls her eyes and wrenches her shoulder back for another lash. Mosaic's hand is on her in an instant.
"Enough. They cannot work at all if you tear their skin off, you dipshit."
"Izzat violence? D'I hear a threat? You heard it, right boys? I think the supervisor's comin' on to me!"
A chorus of wet chuckles washes over her back. Corvi smiles are ugly things, and one flashes right in her face. A twisted thing with no happiness inside of it, only jagged teeth and breath left to rot as fashion statements, with a lopsided twist to the mouth that makes the whole thing look broken. The razorwhip hums in her hands, purring like a favored pet.
"You're right though. This lot can't pull none after I work 'em. Nice of ya to volunteer - you ain't done shit today. You know, I hate those fucking eyes of yours. Mismatched little fuckers. Always lookin' down at me. You think you're hot shit, supervisor lady? Think you're better than me? Lessee who's bigger than who after a good twenty lashes!"
Her suit tears open with whispers of complaint. Her skin screams white hot pain straight into her spine. Mosaic's golden eye explodes in stars and darkness, only for a moment, but enough to make her think she's gone blind. It rushes through her body, like wildfire, consuming every nerve in a symphony of different pains. Impalement, laceration, burning, freezing, gnawing and itching and numb, whimpering nothing. Her knee twitches involuntarily as the ELF weapon finally breaks contact with her skin.
She does not flinch. No spark of anger, no cry of pain. No retaliation, no slumping of her shoulders or droop of her tail. Mosaic brushes a finger along the gash, finding no blood but feeling the roughness of a burn scar across her abdomen. She glances once more at the sky, and turns around.
"If it makes you feel better," she shrugs, "Nineteen to go. But do it as we walk, I've got more teams to manage than I can count, and we're not going to meet the Crystal Knight's deadline standing around here. So if you don't mind..."
She catches another lash across her back. Her shoulders tense. Her ears bend around to the source of the noise, but nothing more. She waits a moment and then walks across the beach, listening for the sound of following footsteps, of buzzing electro weaponry, of angry shouting and signs of aggression pivoting back to the people she needs to protect.
Two more shocks through her body. Like being asked to hold Zeus' thunder and the sky up at the same time. Her muscles scream. Her body begs for deliverance. Mosaic does not. She passes from camp to camp. She gives breaks to overworked citizens by way of chewing them out for poor form and taking the rope from them to demonstrate proper technique. She rotates crews and sets up a lunch line to create jobs for the most fragile Servitor species that don't involve heavy labor, and buy spare moments for others where their hands get to hold something less weighty than a starship that will never deliver any of them to a new world, or a new hope, or a new idea, or to anything other than the ever-shifting whims of a tyrant who happens to be too high to reach.
She's taken far more than twenty lashes to reach this point. Her beautiful suit is clinging to her in tatters now. But even still, even with her legs slowly turning to jelly underneath her, she does not react. She doesn't grunt, and with practice she's trained even the involuntary twitching out of her. Her ribs are starting to crack under the strain her body puts on her bones, but what does that matter? She has one job allotted to her, and it doesn't allow for pain.
"You're fucked in the head, lady! What a piece of shit! Crystal Knight's gonna mount your skull on her wall when this' over, you just wait!"
One more bite from the razorwhip, and her tormentor screams frustration at everything. But she's tired, she's bored, she's hungry, and there's all this excellent food tormenting her nose that she hasn't been eating because she's been too busy trying to break in a demigod. Worthless fucking waste of time. She stomps away, and finally all is quiet.
Alone at last. Alone, if only for a moment. Mosaic's body betrays her at last. She drops to one knee faster than breathing. She slumps forward, and lets her arms droop to either side of her. All her nose can smell anymore is burning skin and fur. Acrid, stinging, disconcertingly like a meal. She spits, and turns her head as best she's able in the name of looking anywhere that is not the Eye, and not the Ship she thought had meant salvation.
Not the thing that would abandon her here. What was the question she was meant to be asking? What could she even do against a moment like this? What language, what knowledge, what skill fixed the immovable order of the universe and the Endless Azure Skies? There's nothing left on Bitemark that can tell her what she doesn't already know. Her voice turns to the gods, instead.
"Is this... all you wanted from me? A-am I not, nnnngh! Am I weak or am I strong? At least tell me that!"