[b]Mosaic and Ember![/b]

The strangest part of how your first void battle is progressing is that it is now taking place inside the streets of Beri.

The self-healing metal of the Slitted has drawn in the town where it impacted it, brick and stone crunched into places to fill gaps in the superstructure. Familiar scents as groves of smashed plants cling to life despite having being wrenched from sun and soil. Tumbled houses spilling furniture and personal possessions like juice from crushed grapes. 

It is not the Corvii you fight here, it is the Artamii - the new generation, the Endless Azure Skies' latest answer to the wolves of Ceron. The Armatii are avian combat servitors, eleven feet tall at their full height, slashed in black and white, with an intelligent belligerence that alternates between frustrating and terrifying. They fight primarily as skirmishers, and as skirmishers they are without peer; driving their opponents back into the safety of the phalanx - whereupon they unleash the fury of the Crystal Knight's experimental weapons. It's not a fair matchup; the Silver Divers have never encountered the Armatii before, whereas the Armatii have been engineered from the genetic level to surpass the Ceronians.

Soon the Ceronian phalanx has immobilized before the Beri town square. Only three Armatii hold the line against them, but so fierce are they the wolves have paused while heavy weapons are bought up to dislodge them. Every moment of delay, risks Dyssia further.

[b]Dyssia![/b]

So here's something fun: falling Sucks, Actually.

The Azura species, who went from aquatic environments to gravity-manipulation, has broadly not had to deal with the concept of falling down. The rush of wind, the complete lack of control, the inability to course correct as the ground starts rushing up at you - it's not a primordial fear in the same way that being crushed by deep ocean pressure isn't a primordial fear for humans. It's just something that doesn't come up enough to leave a genetic imprint. The horror is all intellectual which is in some ways worse.

And it is after you have begun falling but before you have hit the ground that the Crystal Knight slashes you with her saber.

It doesn't matter if your transdimensional ghost might under other circumstances be chill; coming into being as you're both falling into an arena causes a panic reaction and the eerie half-formed copy grabs onto you in a panic, coiling and trying to crush you, trying to put you between them and the ground. And after the impact someone fires a Solid Projectile round next to you - explosion, lights flashing, ears ringing, chaos. It's enough to set the other version of you into a confused, violent frenzy.

So how would you talk yourself down under these circumstances?

[b]Dolce![/b]

Suddenly Artemis is in the room.

"So," said the Assassin, extremely casually, "I [i]didn't[/i] accomplish my mission, then?"

Artemis takes out a pen and notepad, makes a note.

"And you're working with the Architect?" she wasn't bowing any more. You were having a hard time keeping your eyes on exactly where her hands were at any given moment. 

While the extremely clear transfer of information, clipped and snappy in the way of the Craftsman, did seem to be going down well, you got the overwhelming sensation that maybe honest communication wasn't your friend here.