...Why ____ a ____ ____ __ _____ how __ _____?

This should not be beyond her. There is familiarity to this moment, in smoke and shadow and the softest kiss of moonlight. The roar of the microsingularity is little more than soft music in her ears. With every passing second her body feels lighter, and where fatigue and soreness pass they leave power in their place. Her gods-eye watched the Crystal Knight bend perfectly. And yet when Mosaic slashes her claws in a wide arc in front of her, they kiss only the air.

The Crystal Knight is behind her. To her left. Above her. Below? Mosaic pivots wildly. She tears gashes in the ground and stomps holes in the throne but she is never where she needs to be. The only thing she crushes is scenery. The only blood that spills is hers. She feels the bite of a blade, used here as mere tooth against a worthless interloper, and everything it gnaws is blinding white pain.

___ does _ ____ need to _____ ___ to _____?

Mosaic is painting her home with a garden. Blood pours from an arm, beneath her ribs, down her eye, and splashes against the ground where it leaps back up again. Here it is a mass of colorful wildflowers. There it is a clutch of birds. Now butterflies, now grass, now a swarm of buzzing bees. Beauty pours like a waterfall from every wound. The air is filled with the smell of pollen and nectar, though the heat radiating off of everything is quickly spoiling it all. Her body feels lighter now, as though she were carrying all of this life inside of her and now without the burden it has gotten easier to move.

The only thing that still weighs her down is her hair. The ribbons in her braid each grown in size until they weigh as much as Beri itself. Mosaic wheels about and throws a kick that crushes a crystal into powder. But the Knight it was named for knows nothing of shame or of pain. She glides untouched, mastery of the Rail beyond anything a servitor like Mosaic could conceive.

Why does a ____ need __ learn how __ _____?

She's done this before. //alongside a hero, and a pet
Fought with an Azura master she could not contend with //and you were neither, you were neither
But she lived //against all odds
But she won //to the detriment of all plans
Because the Azura master did not heed the Gods //because someone else did

Mosaic's tail lifts of its own accord. It is not even instinct or even divine providence that wraps it around the Crystal Knight's wrist before the blow that would have severed her head could be struck. All around her there is life, but all along her there is death. Red, sickly, nauseating death. Her tail crushes the mighty Regional Governor's wrist and pulls the blade until it buries itself in the garden and is swallowed by a spray of fresh blood from her back.

The name tucked into her armor burns against her breast. But the ribbons are so heavy she cannot move. Gravity shifts underneath her feet, and she slams against a wall. The ceiling becomes the floor and she falls against that. The Crystal Knight is the center of the universe, and the Slitted whirls about her so that this lesser creature can only bounce against and smash into the architecture she'd dared to call her home.

She promised. She promised, she promised, she promised! But the impacts slam her head against something sharp and jagged. Her hair catches and sheers from the left side of her face and all the way down her braid, which spirals open as if commanded by divine word. Ribbons flutter free, down into a pit where a tiger will not even sniff at them. Away into the hands of startled servitors who know better than to look up from their work to watch something like this. A river of blue-black hair floats around a fixed point in space.

Mosaic flops onto the floor with a wet crunch, sprawled beneath the bemused, twitching tail of the Crystal Knight. Her hand struggles vainly toward the target she could never reach, but even light as it is, gravity drags it back down. It's so... familiar. There's something, there's something, it's just on the edge of her mind! If she could just figure it out!

Why does a maid need to learn how to fight?

Artemis clicks her tongue in disgust. She clicks a pen open soon after. Mosaic's eyes, the gold and the purple, flutter shut as silver light falls across her like a blanket.

[an attempt to Finish with Grace: 6. Tenacity Incarnate activates.]

How would she cook an Azura?

It's a terrible thought to have at a moment like this, says the little bit behind the eyes that watches the other thoughts, that thinks about how she thinks, that banks the anger for later, saves it up.

Probably slow cooking. Big animal, tons of fat. Roast, spit over a fire. Break down the meat, melt the fat into flavor.

Idle thoughts. Pointless. A distraction. Shouldn't be thinking of eating, being eaten. Wouldn't want someone thinking of how to cook her. Hopes her other self isn't thinking the same thing. Hopes her other self is better than her.

Honestly, yeah, that is the hope. Because she knows that if it came down to her or herself, she--god, this terminology is confusing--if the only way she, Dyssia Prime, could survive was by shoving Dyssia Composite into a meatgrinder of teeth then… Well, she's hoping that Dyssia Composite is as good or better than she is, because Dyssia Prime would rather keep her clone alive.

Dumb. She knows it's dumb. It's gonna get her called naïve. There's no guaranteed that Dyssia Composite would even stick around, or help her friends. Shoving her to her death means she survives, means she gets to make it back to her friends, means she can help so many more people. One person, in exchange for all of that.

Is that what her clone is thinking too? The twitch in the back, that clench of muscles--are they bunched in preparation for the shove?

A ribbon drifts into the pit.

It's a false dichotomy. Kill or be killed. Feed or be fed on. A false choice. It's there, she acknowledges what it says about her, can admit what she would have done had she had to make it, but it's not the only option.

It's not her ribbon, though. She can still feel it clenched into the corner of her mouth, a knot of torn, burnt scrap, solid like an anchor between her teeth.

A second. A third, drifting through the smoke and darkness like a piece of meandering dawn. Like a messager bearing news to a besieged castle.

It's a gamble, is what it is. Is her clone thinking what she's thinking?

There's no time to verify.

She's big, is the thing. The tigers are bigger, yes. More powerful, yes. Faster? She's fat by Azura standards, yes, but that's plush wrapped around a twenty-foot core of whipcord muscle. Bunch the tail, whip it around, and the tip might as well be a hammer in its own right.

She grabs her clone by the wrist, and slithers over the stunned body of one tiger, rushes to the wall.

There's no way for one person to get out of this pit. You could boost someone else out, yes, lift and stand.

But then you'd be at their mercy, and at the mercy of however many tigers are left. You'd need to hope they turn around, offer a rope or an arm or a tail, something to lift you out as well. Hope they don't do the calculus and come to a more sensible conclusion.

Wordlessly, she points to the lip, and offers a step up to her Composite. She'll take that bet, no matter how her heart jumps in her chest, or how it takes a second to restart when her Composite bends to pull her out.

[Get Away, 5, 3, +2. Get there quickly and without harm, while bringing Dyssia Composite with her.]

It takes him some time to catch his breath, amidst his racing heart. Amidst the ghostly haze dancing in his eyes. Amidst the stink of cigarette smoke.

One deep breath in. One deep breath out. He picks himself up. He checks his shirt collar, feels the slight scratch in the fabric. He walks past his audience to get changed.

“I’m not done talking with her yet. That was only our first try.”

*********************************************************

Bold talk for someone who didn’t know if he’d get a second try.

It goes the same as the first. Almost the same. Word-for-word, the same. The only difference is that the sheep with his finger on the button knows the entire script, and hopes with all his heart that she doesn’t miss her lines.

He’s never been so relieved to have an Assassin leap at him. She doesn’t remember. There’s still a chance.

“You know, you’re right.” 20022 adds from the doorway. “This was worth ruining another perfectly good shirt for.”

*********************************************************

He makes full use of any drawing board and piece of scrap paper he can get his hands on. He’s got plans to make. Each attempt, a radically new approach to the conversation, tailor-made to supply as much new information as possible. Does she prefer a more clinical style of emergency protocol, the two of them navigating a flowchart together? Does she want some more urgency, to match her energy? Should he talk first, or should she? Could he actually invite her to discuss the matter over tea?

As soon as he finishes each attempt, he’s off to write down everything he can remember, and begin work on designing his next attempt. Even with carte blanche, even with no other guests on board to compete with for supplies, he writes in his smallest hand, uses both sides, and carefully annotates important points to simplify future references.

This was one route he thought he might have to take.

Lying in the corner of the coffin’s room is a sheet of metal and a sheet of paper. A carving tool might have been nice for the metal, but perilous to bring into a room with an Assassin, and possibly extraneous anyway. A simple, but quite fragile pen sufficed for the paper.

He’d left some space by the sign he’d written, big enough for a second sign. It would have been nice to collect her mark - undeniably her mark, delivered in a hand that only she could replicate - every time the two of them talked. Proof that they had talked. Something to even the scales, just a little.

It was one route he thought he could take. He has a better use for the paper, now.

*********************************************************

Did you know? That when the need is great, and velocity greater, a sheep can skid the full length of a carpeted room and still hit the wall hard enough to smart?

“Did it almost get you that time, or was that all your own doing?” 20022 scans the room, idly guestimating distances. “If so, an impressive standing long jump. Well done.”

Did you also know? That the door to this room could be easily unlocked from the outside?

Perhaps the scales were unbalanced in his favor. Perhaps that made the whole situation just…balanced? Is that what happened when an injustice meets unfair scales? It was keeping him alive, and he was rather grateful for that. If it weren’t for this, this, troublesome crystal device, he would’ve been dead on the first attempt. It was the only reason he had a hope, instead of a coffin with a dead girl inside.

He studiously ignores the voice reminding him that said hope had yet to manifest, and his stacks of notes were growing ever-higher.

*********************************************************

If you asked him, this was a rather self-defeating way to make an Assassin.

Imagine if he had been working for the Architect. Imagine if this was a trap. She emerges, as if from a dream, her last memory that of ripping into the Architect. She recognizes - and of course she recognizes, why wouldn’t she? - that she is aboard one of the Architect’s shuttles. She is in a room, alone, with a figure she doesn’t recognize, but who immediately pledges with a solemn oath not to harm her, and to help her.

If you asked him, the most sensible approach would be to cooperate. If you are, in fact, the deadliest person in just about any given room, then why rush? Wait. Observe. See what the lay of the land is. See who these people say they are, and then watch what they do. Figure out if the room is trapped, figure out how many people are aboard the ship, figure out if there’s a cannon pointed at the room, and once you know what’s going on, then you can stab to your heart’s content. What’s the point in attacking right away? If there were external observers, if there was an airlock waiting to open, if there was that cannon…

All valid points. For all the good they did right now. They made the process of redecorating, again, a little more bearable, but little else besides.

Maybe it was easier to think about someone else’s foolishness so he could delay thinking about his own. Additional curtains hadn’t done it. Changing rooms hadn’t done it. Neither had changing the colors on the wall, dampening the noise of the ship leaking in through the door, or any of a dozen other tasteful modifications. He would run out of ideas here eventually.

Maybe by then, he’d have thought of something new to say to her. Something that could get around the insurmountable wall of the Architect’s survival, to see if she could even be let out while he still lived.

No way to know unless he could talk to her. No way to talk to her unless he tried again.

*********************************************************

He retreats, at last, to the kitchen. To a land of warm ovens and comforting scents. To a place of familiar routine and steady activity. Where his most pressing need could be met; the food had gone cold. It will be a while before his next attempt, with no real way to bring it here any faster. Not if she was going to get a nice meal, when next she woke up.

He’d found a solution.

It might be a little early to call it a solution when he hadn’t even tried it yet, but he’d spent so long dancing around the edges of it, he didn’t know what else it could be. The problem was the Architect was still alive. When he got down to it, that’s why every attempt so far had failed. Something in her brain, the way she was made, refused to let her do anything other than pursue her mission if there was even the slightest chance it was left incomplete. If she earnestly believed that she’d succeeded, then she would have no reason to kill anyone here. She would stand down, enough to have a conversation with her.

Under the circumstances, it would be easy to set up. Every time she wakes up, she’s waking up for the first time, and he’s seeing her honest reaction. Suppose he set up a party, in her honor. Have enough people on hand to congratulate her, unprompted. Iterate on the decorations and level of initial cheering until she’s surprised and delighted instead of spooked and stabbing. She’d wake up to the perfect party, tailor-made just for her, celebrating her great achievement, and thrown by someone who wants only to wake her up and bring her home. How could she refuse a chat then?

She couldn’t.

She couldn’t know she’d seen this party a hundred times before. She couldn’t know she’d met him a hundred times more. When she shares a victory dinner prepared just for her, and he asks for her help in getting her out of the coffin, she couldn’t know every time she’d refused. She’d only know this one moment he’d arranged for her to say yes.

Not that he hadn’t lied before, or made judicious use of the crystal device to find a way to get to know her. But those were different. He’d dodged, he’d avoided, he’d tastefully sidestepped the dangerous truth, hoping there was some level of uncertainty regarding her mission she was willing to accept. Some common ground they could both stand on, and speak to each other about. He’d not escalated to outright deception. He’d not judged her too far gone to reason with, and played with her head to plumb the depths of her heart.

An injustice meeting unfair scales. He could use that power to find a way to save her. He can say that he’s setting things right.

No one here could disagree.

Mosaic?

Mosaic?

Are you feeling okay?

Someone's usually there to ask you that. Someone usually cares. You're the centre of a web of light, hope and dreams and desire. You're seen and known and looked after. Even if all you have to give is a charming smirk, it's enough to make the shadows fall away.

But shadows don't work like that in this room. In the centre of those beautiful spotlights there is not a single one. What look like shadows at first are in fact painted; every crease and curl of hair has its colour perfectly controlled. No mess or darkness here in the centre of this lightbox. All that darkness falls on you instead as the Crystal Knight rises ascendant. All the light falls on her and her glittering sword. All the light except -

The flash of a blade. She reels back.

A princess stands before you. Haloed in golden hair with a blazing eye of gold. She wears regalia of an Empire long beloved and long buried, an angel summoned forth from the underworld. You know her name. It touches your name in three syllables... or perhaps four characters. You don't remember her properly. They say scent is the key to crossing the Lethe, but hers is not right...

She spares a moment to smile at you. Like a hero. Don't worry. She's got this.

And then there's nothing but the blaze of warfare. The Princess and the Knight in a storm of silver and thunder. That prism-sword slashes at her, tearing dimensional fragments of her away, but they resolve into nothing. It's like it can't figure out what to copy, amorphous and distorted fragments of girls, of wolves, of twisted basilisks, all amounting to nothing. She fights the Crystal Knight as an equal. She drives the Crystal Knight back.

But the Crystal Knight still has some sins left in her. With a hand raised to the rooftop - to your home - she summons her bodyguard. The Armatii champion swoops from ambush, from behind, talons extended and trailing blades like autumn leaves. The Princess is still smiling.

But how far can you trust that smile when it is unbound by your ribbons?

Ember!

When one hears of the ocean, one thinks of leviathans. Horrors. Crabs. The vast and monstrous menagerie set forth to darken the depths between stars. One thinks of the worst the ocean can produce.

But the ocean too has horses.

The creature that snuffles against your hand is cold and hard, long nose like reinforced starship plating. It has only simple black eyes but huge radar projection ears that allow it to sense the signal distortions of ELF strikes from worlds away. From its nuzzling snout comes a long, striped, black and white tongue that pokes and tickles. It tries to open your belt pouch with the frustration of a creature that can't understand why humanity insists on such tricks.

It is after your food.

Dozens of smaller ones, bubble sized against this one's equine bulk, float around it; eggs newly hatched and equally curious. They lick their little tongues at your face and scatter behind their mother when they realize they have sent you into a spiral spin. The adult voidhorse ignores them and continues its single-minded determination to get at your ration pack, holding itself steady and graceful in the deep.

Dyssia!

And just as you've gotten to know her, Composite starts to dissolve.

The Crystal Knight's sword was not even meant to keep her half as long; it was a weapon for a disorienting strike in battle, not this prolonged process of teamwork and shared destiny. She fades back into the cubic distortion that conjured her before you've even finished hauling yourself out of the pit. There's no time to say goodbye, no time to ask questions - it's unfair how quickly it ended.

You went through all that trouble to save her and now you'll never see her again. You don't even know if she was real. Transported here from some other place, a copy of your spirit cast like a shadow against the wall, a trick of magic and mind? There are no answers for what just happened. Does that cheapen it for you? Or do you think she's still out there somewhere, facing the same questions you are?

You can't contribute to the battle; you don't have a weapon, don't have your Rail; you'd be a detriment. A warrior races up to cover you with her shield and escort you to the exit, past the Crystal Knight's spotlight servitors. You're done here... unless you can think of something you could add to the lighting.

Dolce!

"This was an easier problem when I thought you were mad," sighed 20022, pulling the biscuits from the oven. He was helping prepare the meal too, accepting your direction as a simple matter of fact and courtesy. He could hardly lounge about when there was hard work to do. His contribution was rather uninspired, though. He had produced a dazzling variety of biscuits, some with cream, some with icing, all of which somehow tasted both dry and identical. He had prepared a fruit platter that somehow seemed to be 90% water by flavour. Finally he'd produced a bowl full of boiled sausages - and even those were trivial to make without actual meat, he'd somehow made them taste like they had no meat inside them. Utterly unobjectionable food.

"When you were mad I could assume you'd get bored and give up," 20022 went on, "but now I have to face the very real possibility that you'll succeed at this. And then - what? You'll have the loyalty of a warrior assassin without parallel? Would you mind my asking, what do you plan to do with -" he caught himself. "No, that's not my business. As a member of the Service you are entitled to collect assets."

There was a little hitch to how he said that. He knows your feelings about the Service but is rudely ignoring them. But he can't have it both ways - pretending that you are with the Service means pretending to extend you all the privileges of the position he's selected for you. Sometimes that will cut against him, like here where he considers himself as not actually having the authority to stop you from doing this, even though he'd be well within his rights to do so if you were actually just a civilian.

That's an interesting fact about 20022. He can be rude, but he can't be double rude.

"I apologize," he said. "No, my question is more specific, and it relates entirely to my own mission. Do you plan on using the assassin against Liquid Bronze? That would be... inconvenient, but I couldn't in fairness stop you. He'd likely survive the attempt and likely consider it excellent sport. If he survives it would make our mission much easier, but it's more risk than I am personally comfortable with."

"Re..."

The sound is pulled from her unwilling lips. Her hand reaches out for the mysterious, beautiful princess of its own accord. Fingers stretch and when they cannot reach, her claws harden and grow in the span of seconds. Longer, toward the girl. Toward the battle. And inwards, upwards, taking the blood her body is soaked with and turning it into a twisted, ruby-tinted gauntlet climbing its way up her forearm.

"Da..."

The second sound is lightning in her heart. She writhes on the ground as power twists inside of her and pulls all of her muscles in different directions. Her spin locks, her tail snaps rigid. She rises to her feet at an unnatural angle, as if pulled there by invisible threads. Immediately, she slumps forward. Mangled clumps of hair fall in front of her eyes as they finally snap open without immediately blinking shut again. One in gold. The other in Imperial crimson.

"Nnnnnnnngh!"

There's another sound she's meant to make, but it slips off her tongue and her memory at the same time. She's not. That isn't! Something is pounding inside her skull, trying to crack it open and spill secrets all over this cathedral. The name won't form. She can't find the smell. The sounds pouring from her mouth now are not invocations to a hero, but animal hisses and snarls and wet, rasping breaths. She is a creature of pure desperation.

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. Pounding cracking burning stinging grinding freezing stabbing lancing tearing squeezing pain pain pain pain! It hurts, make it stop, it hurts, help her please, someone someone someone show her the scent tell her the sound look at her look at her look at her stop fighting and look at her and tell her! What does it mean? Why won't it stop?

Why does?



Fight?!

She sighs, and the sound is resentment. The sound is resignation. The sound is sweet, terrible longing. There are no ribbons in her hair. There is no weight to tie her down. There is nothing of Mosaic, nothing of a hero in her awkward lunge. She sees the Armatii drop from above and hurls herself at it with the force of a comet seeking nothing but relief. She is, she is, she is!

Talons kiss her face. They tear scars into her cheeks, across her jaw, and along her forehead, but she smashes her skull forward to break the perfect warrior's weapon before they can cut her head off. The pair of them collide in mid-air and go twisting and spiraling away from the Princess and the Knight in a tangle of hissing and limbs. The champion's bladed skirt grinds into the twisted glove around her hand. The air fills with the sounds of crunching bone and whining steel, thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk crunch splatter. Blood and hastily grown bone spill and shatter.

She looks at her mangled, useless fingers and the hand that's been twisted into an unrecognizable shape by the carnage, even after she wrenches the blades out with a savage twist of her arm. The Armatii weapon has fared no better. The maid, the hero, the... girl, twists her face into a horrible smirk, and begins to laugh. An awful noise like a hacking cough.

She is the first to rise, of the pair of them. Her shoulder sags, her arm hangs useless from the socket, but she stands straight and with impossible pride as though that could lift her above the giant who would be towering over her again in just another moment. She spits a tooth down into the champion's face.

"Only one name on my list you stupid bitch. Fuck off if you know what's good for you."

One ear bends to hear a rush of air, and she knows the Princess is in trouble. A moment too long spent worrying for her sake and now the deathblow is on the winds. Her other ear bends to catch the air in front of her again. She ducks. The Armatii sword keens as it slices through the air, notching her ear and tearing out a piercing instead of splitting her skull in half. She snarls and leaps into the air, hissing when she feels the rush that means her opponent has jumped higher and faster than she could and is about to take the space behind her.

"Hey Princess!" her face contorts from the pain of using the wrong word //smell. Where is the smell? "Switch with me!"

Her claws wrench together as if tearing at the air itself. A sword passes through her body without resistance. She is already long gone; across the Crystal Knight's cathedral in the same instant she'd finished her gesture. Her hips wheel about and she kicks her hero and her savior hard in the back, sending her bouncing and skidding to clash sword on sword with the monstrous Armatii. She knows without needing to watch that the blond-haired goddess is more than a match for the latest perfected warfare of the Skies.

Her eyes turn and behold the Crystal Knight. Already, the shadows are swallowing her whole so that the Azura noble can glimmer all the more gloriously. Pointless. Pointless. Pointless! All it does is disguise the motion of her arm. Her claws spring from the darkness with the ferocity of a pouncing tiger and smash against the flat of the strange, dimensional blade. There is one, thin wisp of silver floating across the brilliant prism of that incredible weapon. Her claws find it. Shred it.

It screams as it shatters into beautiful glass junk. Bereft of her shining toy the Crystal Knight's expression turns so dark that even her technicians can't make her shine. Her massive tail slams into the grinning Servitor's ribs a moment later. She howls as she rolls away, and howls louder when she's stuck in a sudden gravity spike. Just like before, the Crystal Knight turns to her mastery of the Rail. And Mosaic hurtles to her doom.

No.

This time it is gentle. This time it is simple. This time her monstrous glowing eye opens wide and shows her paths to walk and places to place her feet. This time she twists about in the constantly shifting center of gravity as easily and as gracefully as if she and the Knight were dancing. Now they clash, fist to fist or foot to tail and claw to scale and pass each other by in the manner of ships banking round to shell one another again.

Again. Again. Again. They smash into each other. The fight devolves from grace to savagery. They trade a thumb in the eye for sharp fangs down to the bone. A knee dropped into the throat for a hidden dagger between the ribs. The dagger trades hands. The dagger stabs a hand. Blood from two species, of two colors, starts to pool and swirl on the floor beneath them, spiraling in the wake shared dance of space they weave above.

Again. Again. Again. The battle speeds up when by rights it should be slowing. The Crystal Knight almost exclusively targets the Servitor's ruined right side, the one with the powdered ribs and the mutilated arm. She snatches up pieces of the home she's made walls of and the sword she'd had turned to pebbles and fires them like shrapnel from a cannon. The Servitor makes a shield of her already useless arm and otherwise slips into the well of shifting gravity according to the guidance of the silver path that only she can see. She grasps for the Knight's throne and, taking it in one good hand, crushes it to pieces against the Azura's powerful back.

As a pair they drop to the floor. Alone, the Crystal Knight rises. She is seething. She is beyond the power of speech. Her hissing is ugly even to the ears of a monster, and no light can make her beautiful in this moment of violence. Her tail wraps 'round the Servitor and squeezes. And squeezes. And squeezes. She stills her breathing to hear the musical chimes of screams turned into whimpers by a lack of air, and even those whimpers giving way to desperate gasps and the crunching and popping of a body that was never, that was never, that was never a match for Hers.

She doesn't notice the cat's arm escaped her until it's already plunging into her breast. The miracles of biomancy and several millennia of Empire had done nothing to change one of the most basic facts of nature: it was cats who hunted snakes. Who were the faster and more feared predators. That was why she had a tiger pit, and not a den for some enormous serpent. Claws tear deeper inside of her, and deeper. They pierce the heart and crush it flat.

It is. In the end. The will of the Gods. The Crystal Knight laughs, disbelieving, and all her coils and her great mass fall limp. She splays across floor, still glimmering in the light of her perfected cathedral, and goes still. No animals spring from her corpse. No plants. She rests amidst the garden she'd spilled from Mosaic, unmoving and beautiful forever. The name burning against the Servitor's breast grows dull and cool.

She loses her balance the moment she is not supported by the Crystal Knight. There is a smell. A smell in the air that's pulling memories from her head no matter how hard she squeezes it. A name, the need to be clean, a name, the need to be clean, to be clean, oh gods, she has to! She's covered in! GgghhhhK!

The smell of blood is so thick in the air that it's choking off almost everything else. And in her desperation to find the Princess, to find Redana, she's inhaled so much it's coating the back of her throat. There is a name in the stench of blood. Artemis plucks it free and places it on her assassin's tongue before she leaves on crisply clicking heels.

Bella retches, just like she always has in the presence of blood.

[Finish with Iron: 4, 1, 4 +2 = 10]

There is no sound out here, not in the way that Ember can use. So the dance plays out in silence, in three dimensions, amidst the debris. Her heart rate normalizes as she opens up her belt pouch, slips a ration cube free, feels more than sees the tongue wrap around it, black and white on white, and it vanishes into that mouth full of inward-pointing teeth. The vast, membranous wings beat with exaggerated care, keeping the voidhorse in place.

Another cube, between forefinger and thumb; another offering. She drifts underneath, trails her fingers gently along its neck. This is a thing of sleek muscle. There is a scar against its shoulder, just before the wing structure. The slow wingbeat threatens to dislodge her; she clings like one of the newly hatched, and clambers her way under the stomach. Before it can roll into a ball and try to get more, she is working her way up, onto the back, behind the wings, and she tosses the third cube towards the ship.

There is no fear in her heart, just serenity, just admiration, just awe. No one ever told her about creatures like this. No one told her how much beauty there could be in between the stars, too.

Her teachers would be furious. Idiotic, foolish, silly girl, to spend so much time and effort on someone who… Was she real? Did she exist? Does she exist, still, somewhere else, scrambling and recovering and checking for tigers? Silly, to work so hard and risk so much for someone who--

It's like, she doesn't even know that Composite actually is a Dyssia? If the philosophers are right?

But she can't bring herself to feel silly for it. Can't, won't, internalize that she should stop fighting, even if it's just to save herself.

(And isn't that a telling phrasing, her inner thought-checker remarks. So much easier to keep going to save someone else than it is to rest for your own good.)

Composite is out there, her gut insists. Alive because of her.

And it's like--the philosophers can't be right, right? Because she's pretty damn sure that this would be a firm memory in her own mind. Unless it's been a super-long lifetime, which, you know, could in theory happen? Not exactly likely, given the trajectory her life is taking--criminals and traitors tend to either win or have much, much shorter lives than normal--which could be a good sign? If she has a lifespan long enough to forget about this encounter, either it means that the rest of her life is so much worse than this that it wipes this encounter out of her mind, or it means that they win.

Um. Derailed train of thought. Right the cars, reassemble the rails.

Philosophers are wrong, she's almost sure of it. Can't be certain, not 100%, not without asking Mosaic to--do you think she'd--no, no, she's busy, can't grab the sword, she'd--

She starts to shoo away the shieldbearer. Can't you see she's busy, she's occuppied, she needs to help, needs a spear, give her your spear, needs to help, and--

Carefully, Dyssia fishes the knot of ribbon out of the corner of her cheek, and does her best to unfold it, wring the moisture out of it, irons out the wrinkles between her palms.

She made a promise.

Oh, she knows what the promise meant. Knows that returning the ribbon doesn't mean she didn't break her promise. Knows she deliberately broke her word and, yeah, maybe turned the right, but still.

Wants to fight. Wants to advance on the spotlight, paint her regret, paint her apology over the scene, write how much she wants to help in the sky.

But the actual apology--more than helping, more than words, more than giving back a ribbon here and now--has to start with action. She broke her word. Mosaic, she's going to start by keeping it now, making sure she gets home safe, and trusting you to come back to her so she can give you her ribbon back.

And, she thinks as she ducks under the shield, maybe things might be alright in the end.

20022!

He makes you wait. There is much to do, after all, and his process is as closed to you as his thoughts.

Is this pettiness? The silence? It's not efficiency, that's for certain. Oh, you don't step on each other's hooves, but neither is there any synergy to speak of. You could have taken that pot off the burner, rather than Dolce having to step swiftly across the kitchen to get it himself, and yet nothing burns. Tantrum or habit, you've nothing else better to do. You can wait. You can observe.

You observe his mouth drawn tightly. You observe him set dishes down sharply, then wince at the noise. You observe his nose twitch, twitch, twitch as he thinks. When the spread is all but complete, he speaks at last.

"She will not be used against liquid bronze."

And you observe, as he turns to leave, his anger was not directed at you.

Assassin!

I'm sorry, I don't have a better name to call you by.

One moment, you're killing the architect. The next, you wake up alone in a well-lit room.

I know your blood is up. I know your mind is racing. I don't know what you're feeling right now, and I'm not going to hazard any guesses. I'm just going to tell you what you see, and a little of what might happen next. You might notice things in a different order, and that's okay. Go at your own pace.

You're in a room on the Architect's shuttle. One of the grand suites, in a non-standard configuration. Much of the furniture and trappings have been removed. The beds still there though. It's large, much larger than you, and comfortable. It will break if you hit it. Nothing else will happen if you do.

No one is here. No one is in the hallway immediately outside. If you can tell, and maybe you can, the nearest person is some ways down the hall, waiting. You will hear their their footsteps if they approach, but they do not, no matter what you do. The door is locked. It will make noise if it is unlocked. You are alone, and unbothered.

There is a low table before you. There is a stack of blank paper, and a pen. Take notes, draw, rip them to shreds, crush it to dust, do with them what you will. They are offered freely.

Also on the table is a generous spread of food. Freshly made. A variety of tastes, a variety of spices, chosen carefully that the smell is inviting without being overwhelming, without any two dishes clashing. There is no invitation, nor any indication of place settings. The food is there, offered freely to anyone who will take it, and such an open and vague offer cannot be considered binding hospitality. Eat, if you like.

There is a coffin, with you inside it. There is a strange device attached to it. There is a note affixed to the device, asking you to please not tamper with it, as that is how you are standing in two places at once.

"I will explain when I return. It will be some time. I will knock before I enter." Signed, Dolce, and a little drawing of a Synnefo holding a heart.

The room is, save for the coffin, yours. Do with it what you will. Take your time. Work out what you have to. Enjoy the food, or don't. But this much I promise you: As your attention tries to claw its way back to your mission, it will find this room frictionless. It will be given no data. It will be given no targets. It will be given no fuel. It will only have the memory of the Architect breaking beneath your claws to sustain itself, and memory dulls as familiarity grows.

Some time much, much, much later, there are steps down the hall, and a knock on the door.

"This is Dolce. May I come in?"

Bella!

Noise and blood and industry.

The world is a cacophony. Everywhere the screeching of power tools. Everywhere the disassembly of Heaven. Perfect lights are wrenched from their sockets. Ancient trees are pulled by their roots and dragged away. Ancient chains are shattered and terrified choices are made. Everywhere you around you the pounding of fire and claw and freedom. Everywhere around you the stripping of the Slitted for parts.

The Plousios is in poor shape. The Slitted is one of the most advanced warships built by the Endless Azure Skies. All around the warriors of Ceron and their allies wrench mechanical flesh from the bone and carry it away. Youth and beauty has died to renew age and experience. The dead are stripped of their armour. The father consumes the son. So it always was.

You are guided through the verdant mayhem of your Wolves, through the toxic plasma fires and nerve gas aftershocks, through the sack of Beri. You are wrapped in an Imperial cloak, thick and warm, arms around your shoulders as you are guided home. Your Empress shields you as best she can from the victory of the Legions.

Ember!

You return from the silent void to the howls of victory. The Wolves have fallen to pillage, in accordance with the ancient laws of war.

But even though victory is won, it is limited. Morale broken, the crew of the Slitted has retreated - but they are still twenty thousand or more. This is a populated system; they can be abandoned, and they will make their way back to safety - but they cannot be ignored without this turning into a war. The raid must be completed swiftly, lest their retaliation find you drunk, glutted and helpless.

You have authority here; you lead the van, and your rivals are still aboard the Plousios. It is your prerogative to determine what to loot from this vanquished foe, how to return with it, and how to announce your triumph. What draws your hungry eyes?

Dyssia!

You are swarmed by the Pix.

It might not have fully sunk in how much they have come to love you. You saved their species, you gave them purpose, you are their unifier and their leader. Much of the time they are professional and ferocious as their duty and nature demands, playful in their suggestions of overthrow, in their baits and barbs. But they thought they lost you and that has a way of bringing out people's true emotions.

This is to say: You are being mobbed by a thousand foxgirls, all of whom want to hug you and cry, and all of whom are prepared to bite each other for the opportunity. Out of the frying pan and into the ζαχαρωτό Άδης, as they say.

Dolce!

The Diodekoi has lowered her hood and taken off her mask. She makes no attempt to conceal herself again once you enter, still holding the wine glass she has been using to follow her meal thoughtfully.

In aspect she is a unicorn, one of wild mane and bladed horn. Her eyes, though marked with dark circles, are full of starlit intelligence. Her fur is white with coal black patches, particularly around her hands and the cascading hair that runs up her arms to her wrists. She has a sense of... righteousness, to her. Like she could kill the world and it would objectively be the world's fault.

"Enter," she said. Her accent was old, even to the ears of someone who had been on a backwater like Beri. Removed from her mask there was an edge of archaic formality to to her that hadn't carried at cross during her concealed persona. Not an affect, something that came naturally to her. "I would hear an explanation."

Too loud. Too bright. Her head droops and her eyes find the floor so they don't have to watch anything more complicated than her feet. Her ears sink lower, and lower, and lower, until they are squashed flat against her skull. It doesn't help. A lifetime's worth of context floods her mind, and the more she realizes how much of her life was spent in a washed out muted hellhole the harsher and more overwhelming her reality becomes.

Put her back. Put her back, please. Mosaic was a dumbfuck peasant girl but at least she didn't have to be so aware of what the air tasted like. At least she didn't find these lights so glaring that the pain made her nauseous. Put her back. Please, please put her back. Stupid fucking Lethe. Stupid gods damn--

Bella breaks into a coughing fit. Her ribs feel like they are turning into dust from the stress of it.

Her left foot rises, but her toes drag across the floor. It stomps back down as if she'd dropped it off a shelf anyway. The right foot follows but all it does is scrape along behind. Her tail is so limp that it's dragging across the ground, over sharp rocks and pungent grasses and too cold water without the strength to keep itself from staining and catching on literally everything.

Her arms aren't working. One of them is so useless that all she can do with it is flop it over the shoulder of the beautiful woman carrying her and watch it dangle there like a mutilated lure trying to catch a particularly ugly fish. She can't feel it at all. Never mind what's happened to her claws, she's not sure it even has fingers anymore. Her useful arm isn't much better. All it can do is ache and cling to a better woman.

Bella forces her head to rise. She forces exhausted, half blind eyes to look at the painful radiance she's propped up on. She forces herself to smell again, and not just breathe. Though the air is thick with the herbaceous notes still clinging to her tail, with the sting and half peppery aftertaste of spent SP materials, through the protest of earth and the loud cry of sap dripping like blood over everything and the pungent, disgusting musk of wolf sweat that's just sitting over everything in front of and around her right now, there is still a note she can't quite place. Enough to be wrong. But not wrong enough to be right.

Someone is missing. Someone is here. Her vision blurs with salt and tears on top of simple weariness.

"I really f--" Bella rasps her way into a coughing fit. Her legs go so limp she has to cling to the person around her through the cloak that's muting the world just enough to make it bearable. Hot guilt and embarrassment rushes through her to see how eagerly her one good hand feels for every little curve and tries to push her fingers through that cascade of golden hair, "Fff, Gods. I, I fucked up again. Didn't I?"

Tears turn to crying. The pain can't make her stop. Bella trembles and twitches so hard that it forces the pair of them to stop. Which is better than moving. Which is worse. Waves of ice and needles ripple out from her chest but all she wants to do is be here and feel it happen. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. She needs to say things. Needs to ask.

"I wanted to... look for you. I know I did. But I didn't... remember how. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I! Are you?"

She sniffs. She stiffens. She tries to push away and stand under her own proud power for just a moment but it only sends her to her knees. She looks up at the golden princess, the last symbol of the Empire she was raised to serve, and her lips tremble.

"Please. Are you real? Please stay. Please don't go. Whatever you, where you're going, I'll! I've lost you so many times. I can't...

"I can't do it again."

The key turns in the lock. The door opens. He is careful not to rush. He is more careful not to delay. Though the wait was necessary, he has made her wait long enough. He sits down across from her, hands where she can see them. He wears a shirt with barely a tear in the collar.

"Let me start at the beginning of my journey. It isn't a long story, but it will explain everything I know..."

It isn't the only story he could tell and, to be honest, it may not even be the wisest. A much shorter rundown of who he is and how she got to be here might be all that is necessary to share. Who knows? Maybe Assassins think Synnefo who can't stomach the Service are failures and cowards. If he has learned one thing today, it is that he truly does not know anything about assassins, and what little he does know is probably wrong and liable to get himself almost killed. Why would he assume a Deodekoi would be unaware of her powers and mission? What myth made him think that? It was a silly idea, in hindsight.

Wise or not, she deserves to know who she's dealing with if she's to have any say in what happens next.

So he tells her of a chef who wanted something better, and failed to find it in civic service. He tells her of a miracle snatching hope from certain tragedy, and his small part which ended in a polite loss of freedom. When he approaches the subject of his visit with the Architect, he checks in a few times to see how she is doing, and if he needs to abridge events any further for her sake. However the news is delivered, he tells her of an assassin who was thwarted and imprisoned, then delivered into the hands of a chef. He tells her how they have spoken before - and runs a finger along his collar - but this is the first conversation they've been able to have. He tells her she won't remember any of this. He tells her he has no way to prove any of that.

"I want to help get you out of there, but I don't know how to do that without you trying to kill me." And he speaks of it with no accusation or judgment. There really is no offense taken. "I'd also really rather you didn't kill anyone else?"

Oh, this is going to end poorly, but she can't be bothered to care. She needed this, needed it more than food or air. This press of bodies, this desperation, this--

It's like, everyone is so distant. Every Azura is so distant, she corrects herself--plenty of servitors willing to touch and share, even if only incidentally. But for Azura, words and distance and formality and politics and--

She's openly weeping, hugging back, desperate to touch as many as she can, hug as many as she can.

You can only call it love, right?

Well. I mean, you could call it a lot of things. Family is actually probably a better word, now that she thinks of it. That intimacy, the easy touches, the--

Would it be weird to date one of them? Feels like it would be, with the power differential? Like, even if they put aside the relationships of Azura to servitor, it'd feel like it's taking advantage of the knight-soldier relationship?

Hold that thought. Examine it later. Unpack it, look at it from weird angles.

Right now, she has foxgirls to cuddle and reassure.

She has a family to care for.

There are three broad classes of loot that the Silver Divers are capable of taking on: resources, captives and trophies. But resources, while necessary, are not exciting, and captives cannot be carried off in bulk. So it is trophies that the Daughters of Ceron crave most of all: trophies which demonstrate their glory, their prowess, and their right to conquer.

Ember needs trophies, true, and she does encourage her pack to grab what they will: fallen arms, eye-catching decorations, hard-won feathers. But more than any of these things, she needs to bring Beri back to the Plousios. So this is the edict of the Tyrant's Voice tonight, my girls: for every trophy you bring back, bring back something of Beri, too. Bring back collections of spoons, casks of wine, and bring back Dolce's stools and oven, while you're at it. Bring back gifts for the little people of the Plousios, which can flow through the would-be alpha's hands like water. Take these things which belonged to Mosaic's people and show our glorious leader how well we can attend to her wishes and whims. Gouge out all that was good from this place, which we never ruled but lusted after, and leave a ruined hollow in the sphere's heart.

And if you've still got room to carry plunder, toss a cute Servitor over your shoulder. The people of Beri are under Mosaic's protection, and it will be nice to have some spoils of war around to pour wine and carry lamps and be bullied by the Divers, proof of the victory here today. That ought to peel some of the pack off from Plundering Fang and Sagetip. Their first task will to be to carry the choicest trophies on Corvii shields to the Observation Hall on the Plousios, and there the Triumph will be held. There, the people of Beri will be invited to come and receive plunder from Ember's own hands, and to marvel at the halberds and the shields and the regiment colors that decorate the tent which will dominate the center of the hall, and the whole pack will be invited to make merry, to drink Azura wine, and to sing praise to Mars, to Mosaic, and to Ceron.

Absolutely nothing could ruin this moment. After all, Mosaic survived her battle, and will be quite pleased to see her wolf taking charge and thinking of her town. They haven't had a moment to themselves, but that's part of what their positions entail, and they'll...

They'll have time. Later. Once Ember has divested herself of arms and has finished being the leader that the Silver Divers need. Then there will be a place and a time for just the two of them to be, like on that moonlit hillside, and the thought of it sends shivers all up and down, like the tongues of little voidfoals. (The voidhorse stoically accepted the plunder in exchange for more rations, and a bridle helps lead it back to the Plousios.) Maybe she'll even be praised, even if she couldn't bring down Armatii.

And then Ember will present Mosaic with her very own new maid, seized during the fighting! Won't that be a perfect present?

Bella!

"One day a dream came to me," said Princess Redana. "It came unexpectedly from someone I never thought would drop it. I had never had a dream before. There had never been anything I had thought to pray for. And yet, once I picked it up, it somehow became so important to me I could not imagine setting it down again." She turned her head to look at Bella. "I need this, Bella. All my life all I have known is whim and law and craving. I did not know what it was to imagine."

She gently placed her fingers on Bella's fingers. "You may, of course, accompany me," she said. "But I do not think what is between us will change. Princess Redana must chase her dream, and even though you are closer now you will still be chasing after her." Her fingers raised up to brush Bella's cheek gently. "You may chase as long as you like. But in my heart, I will always hope that you find a dream as I have - one that can carry you into your own future."

Ember!

There is no better answer. Not only have you returned in victory, but you have transformed an earlier defeat into a triumph. The question of command cannot be asked for you have answered it. Another pack may be different, but the Silver Divers cannot help but respond to plunder.

One last question, before you have the chance to present your triumph to Mosaic: What are your initial acts of leadership? A King's first decree is always the most important, as are the choices of advisors and deputies. Do you trust your rivals, Plundering Fang and Sagetip? Or is it time to replace them with fresh eyes? Will you honour the name and traditions of the Silver Divers? Or is it time to forge a new identity in void and voyage?

Dyssia!

You are buried underneath fluffy tails and cute girls.

The emotions of the moment have passed. The foxgirls have gone to sleep. Warm and heavy, like weighted blankets. Everything is peaceful and contented. You have slept and you have recovered.

And now you are a little bit hungry. A little bit bored. And Brightberry is sitting over in the corner, reading a book, and flashing a small, blinking pattern on her scales that indicates that she has a message waiting for you.

Your hardest question, then, Dyssia: How do you get out of bed in the morning?

Dolce!

"I understand," said the galaxy's most deadly warrior. "I appreciate you giving me time to think."

She is beautiful in her singularity. She does not need Empire or Skies to illuminate her. In her mythological affectation she shines as pure as a single moon, crafted and timeless at once. There is no tension to her in these moments; she does not need it to be ready.

"You are unusual," she said. "You are clearly a creature of fear. I know many such. You anticipate disaster, and yet you do not take the steps required to avert disaster. There are a great many and to miss any of them would guarantee calamity. Yet you are not even on the path. That gives you freedom."

She leaned forwards. "There is a way for us to be friends. It will require trust and sacrifice from both of us. Blood and virtue will be spilled. It shall not be beautiful. Nothing about me is."

She offered her hand. "My own path leads me through blood, bone and shadow. It is inevitable. All I can promise is that it will be swift and afterwards I shall be unbound. Will you walk with me a while?"

It’s remarkable, the way she can hold her hand out to an unmoving sheep that makes him look like the awkward one.

“My apologies, I’ve had to be on highest alert to keep from getting killed all this day.” Even now, his pulse quickens and his body prepares to leap, on instinct, seeing her hand move closer. Guilt tugs at him, its shadow crossing his face. “It will take me a little time to warm to the idea.”

This is the second first impression she has given him. She first appeared as a pilgrim of the Hermetics, so alight with wonder that she would beg questions of Hades before concerning herself with her shades’ fate. Now she appears as a regal creature out of timeless myth, gracious and perilous in her bearing. It is a little unfair that he knows the both of her. He can’t stop from wondering where her heart lies between the two.

“Because you’re right; this will only work if we trust each other. Beyond right now, I have to trust that you won’t kill me, you have to trust I’m not fooling you for my own ends. And that has to start somewhere.” It may have already started. She has extended her hand. His thumb remains on the button. "It's an oath, yes? Or maybe something written in you?"

She gives a slight dip of her head. No more need be said about it.

"I thought it might be. You don't sound like someone who's stuck and despairing. You’ve given this quite a bit of thought." It might’ve been easier if she was simply trapped in her own head. Some problems can be solved with a nice chat over a cup of tea. Had he really thought this one would be so easy? Or was that just a desperate prayer for a bit of good news?

He frowns, and takes his own time to think. She is gracious enough to give it to him. “If it were only me...I've been in some fights before, and what happens there is the realm of Mars. Artemis is a much different matter. Clear, direct, and laid out. A name is signed, and there must be blood. I've never had a hand in a hunt before. It won't be my hand on the knife, but it will be my hand that sets it loose, and my heart that must live with the consequences. Just as it would have to live with you trapped in that coffin."

Either may prove too much for him to bear. She knows his story. She knows the price of breaking here. No more need be said about it.

“Knowing all that,” his free hand rises above the tabletop. Just a smidge. His fingers cannot decide whether to curl open or pull back. “Is this what you would ask of me?”

[Rolling to Speak Softly: 4 + 4 + 3 = 11. Can Dolce trust her with his heart? He also Forges a Bond with her.]

"I don't have a fu--"

The words are stolen from her by a painful hacking fit. Redana's fingers against her cheek are soft and soothing and warmer than a blanket fresh out of a dry cycle. Bella allows her eyes to flutter shut and presses her face deeper into that hand. Where it retracts, she cranes her neck to press close again. It's all she has to cling with. It's all she has to cling to.

"I don't have a future idiot," Her voice is softer this time; the melancholy and melodic whisper of the defeated, "Just look at me. Clean slate and all I managed to be was myself."

When she opens her eyes again they are wet. The tears sting at the corners and blur her vision even through the Auspex. Her breath hitches, stinging her chest with little hiccup pains magnified by her broken bones and ruined body. Her arms don't belong to her, she can't use either one to make it stop. The muscles in her face refuse to scowl or squint away the crying fit. So all she can do is let it happen. All she can do is let herself be carried, let herself be pushed away, and let herself believe it's because she is loved. All she can do is--

"I don't want you to be Princess Redana."

The words startle her so much she winds up pinching her tail on her mangled claws. She gasps, half in pain and half in shock. But now that they've tumbled out, she can't make them stop.

"I don't want anyone to be Princess Redana. I don't want this debt, this guilt this... this... pushing me away for my own good. It's all so stupid. That's what Princess Redana does and I hate it. I hate her. But I don't hate you. I don't... this isn't about dreams, or biomancy programming whatever, ok? I've had five years to think about this. The Empire is dead. We're not. Fff... fuck it."

She sighs, and nestles closer. But her feet find purchase on the floor, and she shuffles forward to move them toward the hideous rust bucket known as the Plousios once again. Hand in hand and arm in arm.

"Don't make me chase you. Please. Just let... just let me be the one to take you where you're going."

Hmm. Maybe if she--

No, no, uh, let's try--

Negative. Nope, nuh-uh, nix.

You know, she read a story once about a king who cut a sleeve off his robe to avoid disturbing his sleeping lover? Privately, it always struck her as kind of a weird story because, y'know, cutting even a nice robe is pretty meaningless when you have hundreds of robes like it? Even a minor nobody like her had a closet full of them?

How would the king escape if both arms, torso, and tail were pinned? Did the story cover that? She's pretty sure it'd be outside the scope of the tale, which is frustrating.

Also it doesn't really address the question? The answer is normally "grudgingly, at somebody else's behest." Like, if the sun wakes her up, great, she can accept that with good grace and a note to bundle the curtains tighter tonight.

Not that that actually works in, you know, space, but it still feels like--

Like, you know, for her sanity she has to pretend there's a day and a night that happens, outside of herself?

Or, failing that, if there's absolutely something that has to happen, it's normally something like a cascading series of servitors: wake up, it is two hours to the thing. Wake up, it is one hour to the thing. Wake up, it is twenty minutes to the thing. Okay, five minutes, actually time to get up and going and churning.

Fuck, she really doesn't want to get out of bed. Foxgirls, right? Who knew? Perfect blanket analogue. Warm, fuzzy, heavy, capable of licks and snuggles.

None of which makes it easier to get out of bed, and in fact judging by the deathgrip somebody--Oddja, maybe?--has on her wrist, actively makes it harder.

So. So so so. Priorities.

First priority source a new grav-rail. Be so much simpler to make her way to the edge of the carpet of foxgirl if she did not, in fact, need to make her way directly over it.

Under? Under appeals. Tunnel through, gingerly shifting through bodies without, at any point, pressing on them. Risky. Risky. Less risky than over. Work with it.

Free the wrist? Pros: easier to escape everything else with one wrist. Cons: how to free the wrist? Could dislocate the thumb, but first, ow, second, easier to just--you know--wriggle it just that--got it!

So, one limb free. Progress.

Carefully, she burrows through the pile until she's able to scrabble free from the edge. Never goes too far from the pile, though--she's not going to disappear on them again.

"I." Swallow, remuster. "I'm sorry for getting captured."

FIRST DECLARATION: Lady Mosaic is to be incorporated into the pack Lares, alongside the Ancestors, Poseidon Tidefather, and Mars Wolfkeeper. Her instructions and guidance are to be given appropriate weight, and her iconography will join the shrines of the Silver Divers.

SECOND DECLARATION: full assumption of control of the voidfaring vessel Plousios. While it serves Lady Mosaic, it belongs to the Silver Divers, who will serve as her command crew and administrate the vessel appropriately.

THIRD DECLARATION: as the Plousios is in no condition to make war on the Azura as the Lares deserve to witness, the Silver Divers will seize and incorporate merchant shipping and Azura colonies for materials and labor until repairs are complete, at which point the Ring will ask the Lares for guidance.

FOURTH DECLARATION: a tenth of plunder to each member of the Ring, to be distributed as they see fit, and a double tenth to the Alpha. All else to be divided equally among the pack.

FIFTH DECLARATION: a summons for Plundering Fang, to present herself before the Ring and renew allegiance to the pack.

SIXTH DECLARATION: a feast to be held in the Third Hall in the name of Lady Mosaic, open to both clan and outsiders, so that the outsiders may understand their place aboard the ship in protected service to the Silver Divers and to Lady Mosaic, and that the Silver Divers might revel in victory.

SEVENTH DECLARATION: those initiated into the cult of the Plousios are to be treated as auxilia. They are not pack, but they are of service, and not to be tormented, save at the discretion of the Ring. All others are fair prey.

SUSTAINED by unanimous agreement. The harmonious pack is the strong pack. Hail the Lares! Hail Ceron!

Bella!

"I did not want to be Princess Redana either," she admits. "She was a mask I wore because I did not know who or what was underneath it. She was trapped. Unhappy. Holding a debt and duty to an Empire that she never loved and never believed in. Every part of it was poison for her, and even the good turned to ill, running through my veins until poison beat in my heart. The Empire is dead, but this is how she defied death. This was what bought her to life."

She squeezed Bella's hand. "This. And not you. I'm sorry."

And again, her gaze rose towards that distant horizon that she could see even now. "I can't stop. Even for Aphrodite, I can't stop. I would welcome you traveling by my side, I would love that, but you cannot be my destination - not until I have seen this dream through to its end." She smiled, sadly. "You know what the stories say about looking back to the one you love."

Ember!

Thank you for your time. I apologize for the delay; now your queen Mosaic approaches. You have given her a day to rest and recover, but now it is time for the ceremony. How have you prepared it? How have you prepared yourself? What part of this event most shows your love - yours alone, unshared with the pack?

Dyssia!

Disturbing a sleeping Pix is a heartbreaking experience. Driven by raw sleeping id, the slightest disturbance causes them to give a heartrending wail of pain before rolling over and going right back to sleep with a smile on their face. You trigger this landmine half a dozen times on your way out and each is a dagger in the heart, even though the end result is a sleeping pile just as content as before.

"If you were sorry it'd stop happening," said Brightberry. "Gods, I know you don't like hearing this Dyssia, but you're going to have to shape up because shit's about to get real. We've got a crew of rogue servitors in an Imperial-era warship and we both have firsthand experience as to what the Skies' response to that is."

She grumbled and flexed her wings, displaying a cascade of data in the space between them. "I ran the data on who they'll send, and we're fucked. We're in Biomancer-General Liquid Bronze's sector. He's apparently some sort of psychopath savant who managed to elevate the drone concept into a full servitor species. The current crisis plan for if the Endless Azure Skies encounters an existential threat is to assassinate the current Sky Marshal and elevate Liquid Bronze to her chair - the only reason he's not there already is because he's not aesthetic enough. The Oracle really fucked us on this mission."

Dolce!

"I want to live," said the Assassin. "I want to see my sisters again. I want to be born into this world, and for a complicated birth knives and blood are called for."

"Here is how it will happen," she said. "I will open the tech coffin. I will decapitate my other self while she sleeps and give you her head for safekeeping. This will kill neither the head nor the body. Then you will launch the coffin back on a trajectory towards the Architect. I will survive, sustained by the body and the crystal array, and I will carry out my mission. And she will begin the long path towards regeneration, freed from the curses written into her bones."

"So I ask," she said. "Selfishly, yes. But I ask. I would beg. I want to live."

She will not betray you with this. This is what it costs to save her life.

It takes him time. Forgive him, Assassin, but he needs time. Would that manners permitted him a piece of her scrap paper and a pencil! It is much, much harder envisioning all this, while watching her, while watching his heartbeat, while watching his posture, while tracking the seconds it’s been since she stopped speaking. Time. Give him time!

“That…that would work. As far as I can understand it, anyway.” It still leaves her - that is, the her talking with him right now, not the her in the coffin, nor the her whose head will grow a new her, oh dear, this was complicated - tied to a body whose bones bear a curse. But she was calm now. They were talking now. And they could work with that. For now.

His hand trembles.

“Please, you have no need to beg.” He continues to watch her, all of her. In the periphery, his own arm extends bit by bit, mechanically clicking through the motions. Each jerk closer winds his chest tighter. A great, invisible vise crushes in his shoulders. When he touches her hand, her fingers will close around his. She is going to bring her hand up, and down, some polite number of times. Her grip will not tighten. Her claws will not lengthen. His skin will not be pierced. His body will not be thrown. He does not need to watch for these. He does not need to watch for these. He does not need to watch for these. “I will walk with you; I want you to live, too.”

It doesn’t feel good to say it. It’s certainly his fault.