[b]Mosaic and Ember![/b]

The Grav-Rail is a magnificent piece of technology. Unbelievable power and maneuverability, incredible acceleration, the ability to turn on a dime, as mobility option goes it's profoundly powerful and versatile.

Unless you weren't in a gravity well.

In deep space it doesn't have anything to work with; no matter how complex your sail array, with no wind the ship does not move. The Endless Azure Skies has always been a 'coastal' power as a result - dominating when operating in close proximity to planetary or stellar bodies, becalmed and vulnerable in the deep void. All Azura military doctrine was based around the assault and garrison of planets. In a lot of ways, the worst thing that a Knight could do was to give chase.

But surely it was alright this time. Their enemy was just that far beneath them, after all. They didn't even have their Knight!

[b]Dyssia![/b]

The Crystal Knight sneered. It took genuine, magnificent beauty to be as hideous as she was in that moment.

"Such is the judgement of a philistine!" she said, not addressing you any longer but her court. Ranks after ranks of perfectly organized shades of blue. "Someone who does not understand art! Someone who cannot imagine sacrificing for beauty, sacrificing for love! Someone with so little imagination she cannot comprehend loving something greater than the people she sees before her! Cannot comprehend sacrificing for that love! Cannot comprehend fighting for that love! Someone -"

She's going to go on like that for a bit, Dyssia. Let's tune out and focus on something far more interesting: the sword at your throat.

See, you got to see a few shots from this kind of weapon during the battle. Important fact? What it [i]doesn't [/i]do is kill people. What it does do is... strange. It was chaotic, but it looked like shots from the Hermetic's crystal rifle split people into multiple competing copies of themselves - it didn't sever so much as it [i]duplicated[/i]. In the chaos of battle, adrenaline pumping, half entering an alien dimension then it stood to reason that people might fight themselves in a panic before they realized what was happening. But...

Maybe it wasn't a sword before you. Maybe it was the Crystal Knight's flaw that she could only imagine it as a sword.

[b]Dolce![/b]

You are in a shuttle flying away from the Royal Architect of the Endless Azure Skies, on your way to meet Biomancer-General Liquid Bronze. You have with you a deeply exasperated 20022 who is working out his annoyance on one of the endless stacks of paperwork that he has with him, the Emissary of the Architect who is engaged in a deep conversation with the Corvii pilot to convince her to disable the shuttle's self-defense Flux spike, and the galaxy's most perfect killing machine.

The Diodekoi has been provided to you in a Stasis-Coffin with wheels and handlebars. In order to keep her under control the Architect has provided a rather novel device constructed of prism-crystals. Activate the cutters and the Assassin will be duplicated - some alternate version of her pulled in to reality for a time, one who can be dissolved/returned/however it works by ceasing the flow of energy through the crystals. This, proposes the Architect, will give you a chance to meet and talk to the perfect engine of death while being able to get rid of her again with the flick of a button. Gather enough knowledge of her personality and how she works this way and you might become confident in your ability to release her for real!

It will be a long flight, but you'll have time and space and supplies to make whatever kind of first impression you want, as many times as you want.