[IC] Breathless Dead

[Phoe]

The coin is lighter in her hand than she thought it would be. Colder, too. She watches, enraptured, as the swirling dust inside floats around in a helpless, endless circle. Her finger traces the surface of the containment ring, but even the sensation of touch betrays the secret of the power hidden inside it. Her skin touches its smooth, almost slick, vaguely oily surface before it slips off and brushes against the many tiny bumps and ridges that make the etchings on the coin instead. She sniffs the air but it's tainted with the thick and acrid stench of the cigar with only slight traces of some sort of sweet peony and a tiny bit of silver tang underneath it. There is nothing to suggest the kind of power that's held inside of it. Nothing she can find with any of the senses she was so proud of. And yet.

This is a place of miracles. It must be. Miracles beyond the scope of even Empire, if somebody as low as Thist commanded this much so freely.

XIII stiffens as she sets the coin back on the desk. Her cheeks burn as her tail bristles with obvious discomfort. Shame. Her muscles twitch. Shame. Her ears droop low. Shame. Inadequacy. Shame. Her fingers reach into the purse and pull out an empty containment ring. This one is even less remarkable to look at and touch than the filled one. Still, she squeezes her eyelid shut over her Auspex and observes the daric through a permanent wink.

Her fingers tremble as she brings them closer and closer. She feels pressure build against her fingertip where her talon touches the surface. Her lips part uneasily, showing the clench of her sharp and perfect teeth. She squeezes her eyes shut, and feels rather than sees her hand drag across it. Her claws and her talons tears deep grooves into the surface of Thist's desk. She opens her eyes again and lifts her hand to find the ring has split into three neat pieces along the lines she left. XIII lets out of a breath deep enough to make her shoulders sink in relief.

"Gave you my name," she hisses, "Never. Call me Reacher. Again."

She stands still for a long second. Lighting strikes of embarrassment strike her brain like spears while her skin crawls with hot pinpricks up and down her arms and legs as her heart seems to drop into her stomach at the same time. She breathes, and the air is danger. She snatches the purse up with one hand while the other nervously tries to smooth out the gashes she's left in Thist's desk. She doesn't even feel her legs backpedal toward the couch; she simply retreats backwards without thought and the next thing she's aware of she's sitting there with her hands folded demurely in her lap.

"Don't 'Zeus and the Path' me, either. I'm not stupid. Lie to yourself. Not to me. My ship's worth more than this bag and you're pocketing the rest. You promise me riches if I sit here and ask nice. But I won't see a tenth of what you wind up with, if it even works. And your Shah or whoever will reap all the benefits of raking the Order over the coals. None of this is for me."

XIII smiles with the sort of plastic precision she hasn't needed since her childhood when she had to charm potential owners. She forces her body into a maid's prim and rigid posture, and then a moment later flops over with the drama of a dozen fake and imagined injuries.

"That's fine. I'll allow it. Grift me as much as you want, I'll play along. I'll be the quietest and sweetest guest of the Azure Skies, just for you. Because you're going to help me, aren't you? That's why Apollo brought me to you. You're going to find out where the person I'm looking for has gone. And you're going to get me on a ship that'll take me where I need to go. Aren't you?"

She winces with the pain of sitting up again, bringing her hand up to gingerly brace her ribs. Her tail swishes merrily behind her.

"And while you're at it, you're going to tell me what this place does for wine."

[Balmas]

Alexa groans and sinks fully under the surface of the pool. Take her now, Poseidon. Vent the pool, flush her into space, and save her from cuties with big muscles and bigger hearts.

It's odd to miss the days when she didn't know what to say. When she could remind herself that she was the background, and the background doesn't ask questions until it's ordered, suddenly, to be very much the foreground. When she had the time to put her thoughts in order before never opening her mouth.

Now, the words fill her throat like fifty plovers running through a hallway at once--they slam together, wedge against and through each other in their haste to get out, until the whole mess is stuck fast and immovable. There's an ambulance on the scene, but it's going to be a while before any words can be prised out and triaged.

Please, Ramses. Be patient, don't leave. Give her a moment to process, okay?

Reluctantly, she surfaces, and fumbles for the plate. She cannot taste the food, but she does her best to appreciate the way the sharpness of the tubers meets the soft fibers of the crab, makes notes of the texture of flesh against teeth. But while she eats, she can't answer questions. She can wait for the medics to emerge with suitable words.

"Molech never lost a battle, true. But the Pallas lost all the time."

Never this badly, though.

She takes another bite of crab, and admires the way the red of its flesh blends with the darker oranges of the yams. The dish is a treat for the eyes, symmetrical on the plate save for where Ramses has dashed sauce across the two halves. He's artful, too, and she dares meet his eyes over the plate.

Does everyone know who she is? Has she spent months, years, hiding what all could see?

"And in truth, I have not been the Pallas for… a long time."

Is that true? Is it just now that Athena has abandoned her that the Pallas finally dies? Did she die when she betrayed Molech and helped Nero? Could she yet be resurrected if someone else held her seal?

"I… I would not be called by that name, please. It is not a happy name."

[TheAmishPirate]

The first warband only makes their presence known when it is already too late.

Three volleys of seven arc silently through the air, exploding on impact. Starbursts of feathers accompany a thunderous harmony of talons on deck, of spear on shield, of voices raised in ancient prayer. Hear us this day! See now our hour of triumph! We are victory made manifest!

The target turns to face his doom. A hatchling in either hand. A third nesting in his wool. Three more attempting to make a meal of his ankles. A dozen more scattered on the floor around him.

“...may I help you?”

First observation: The rituals do not have a provision for asking your opponent to please leave aside childcare duties and report to the field of battle. They approximate with an awkward shuffling away, while the least fortunate among the warband are pushed forward to help soothe the now-crying babes back to sleep.

It will, frankly, be the most approachable Dolce will make himself all morning. The twelve chieftains that remain soon learn their lessons, and opt to deal with the single, harmless sheep later. Breathing room: Established. Now to devise an approach for victory, and not just stalling out.

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

Vasilia found herself draped in a luxurious lavender bathrobe, holding enough coleslaw to make an ill-advised meal. It was, perhaps, not what she’d expected when Hestia had suggested she leave her chamber doors unlocked for visitors during waking hours.

Well. She’d be as lost with entertaining as she’d be lost with this, so suppose that was a wash.

“We have an agreement, the fridge and I.” She followed a coolant tube’s impressive arc across the room. “In exchange for room and board, it keeps food cold. I wasn’t aware I had to check my appliances for risk of assassination.”

The tub, she gave a tentative sniff. From a safe distance. “I wasn’t aware Archmagoses made their own coleslaw, either.”

[Thanqol]

Redana!

The walls are coming down. Dionysus is behind them all.

Things of safety and security are no longer so. Things of danger and peril shake under your shadow. The panels of the ship open like flower petals chasing a solar bulb around the room and behind them all is painted masks and whirring machinery. You have come through revelation into madness and the ground you walk on is unstable.

Your shadow spreads out from you like a wildfire. It steps around behind you and breaks and burns when you aren't looking. It hangs immanent in the world and like never before you have yourself to fear. The Laughing God smiles at you with a frowning mask and fills your pockets with matches.

Above all, this feeling demands action. If you do not act you will crash. If you do not swim you will cease. If you do not fix yourself you shall break the world as is your right as Empress.

Alexa!

"Got it," said Ramses without a second's hesitation. "Have you settled on a new name yet, or is the journey still ongoing? Or would you prefer to move on from the topic for now?"

There's a practiced, almost ritual cant to those words. The Coherent of the Order regard remaking the self as a holy ideal and there's a practiced gentleness and lack of push to Ramses' speech here. It occurs that if anybody in the whole galaxy who would hear you out it would be they.

Vasilia!

"Who else would make my coleslaw?" said Iskarot, sounding genuinely baffled as his head came up from over the fridge's torn out insides. Then, without switching a beat, he went on about the fridge: "Behold. See the improvisational nature to the periweave lattice? This model was manufactured two hundred and fifty years ago following the removal of the human population to Tellus. These components were manufactured by craftservitors who were overcome with passionate emotions; despair, confusion, so forth. Exactly the wrong energy to maintain something that is required to be as steadfast and immobile as a refrigerator."

He leaves the thought there as he continues to work, seemingly heedless of the awkward silence left in his wake. Magos Iskarot is not, it seems, particularly talented at small talk.

Dolce!

Your plan starts falling apart almost as soon as it had begun. The next day you missed up the timing and arrived at the day care after everyone had left on a field trip and suddenly you found yourself without fuzzy defenses. You're accustomed to Hestia quietly shielding you with a cloak of mundanity but you've taken a hesitant footstep into some entirely different world. Zeus lives here and you can feel the crackle of her momentum, her impatience, her excitement.

You have had some time to think and plan but you will have no more. The gods are hungry.

Bella!

"Of course I'll help you!" said Thist with a wink. "I'm your attorney!"

You feel a strange kind of safety with that. You know that look on Thist's face: that's contentment. You're not quite sure what it's like to feel that emotion but you know people who are experiencing it aren't threats. All their desires are satisfied and there's nothing more they can think to ask. It's the emotion that comes right before you're about to be dismissed, the emotion that means you did something right. But Thist isn't a superior and her contentment doesn't come with a dismissal - instead her posture and mannerisms become servile and obedient.

It's an alien transition, as alien as the Azura herself. Normally there is a master and a servant, and when someone is confused about which one they are things End Badly. But here Thist played a threatening role right up until she got what she wanted and now she's genuinely demurring and looking to do what you want without resistance. Like it's the most natural thing in the world and not a weird bargain you came up with just now.

"Not a lot of call for wine these days, since the humans went," said Thist, slithering out of her chair and moving fluidly over to the door. "There's plenty just lying around in the old buildings though. Aldin! Go find some human wine for my client, that's a good girl, and pick me up some strawberry bread while you're at it." She closed the door and sidled onto an ottoman where she could stretch out across from you. "Who are you looking for, and where do you want to go?"

[Phoe]

"You don't... drink wine?"

XIII's mouth falls open. Her hands pluck stupidly at her dress, as if there were answers to be found in the fabric and not loose threads that burned her cheeks with the shame of her own shoddy needlework. Because she needed another reason to feel inferior on this obscene nightmare passing itself off as a spaceport. Her stomach feels like it's shrunken three sizes in the past few seconds. She's going to vomit again. Her eyes dart over to the fragments of the coin she broke, not even remarked upon.

"That's, what? Impossible. That doesn't make sense, wine is the underpinning of civilization! When... when Empress Nero invented the first servitor wine it lifted the last class in the entire galaxy up to being true citizens! Everybody knows this! How can you just let it sit in random buildings? How do you toast blessings? How do you pacify the gods? What do you... what? What?"

She sniffs the air. And again, and harder this time. But Thist doesn't have any of the smells she knows to look for that help root out lies. Sweats have so many aromas specific to different emotions, but this lout only smells like dust and... cucumber? She can't place it. Her nose is useless. Her education, however borrowed it is, is useless. Alien. Unknowable. Only her posture and facial expressions seem remotely familiar. It's like being blind. How could they not drink wine? Was it like that cigar? Is everything this different, here? Is that why the food was so bad?

XIII holds her head in her hands and massages her scalp with her fingertips. The difference in feeling between the side of her head with its close-cut hair against the fullness and luxury she's used to when she plays with her hair leaves a hollow pit inside her chest. Her stomach gnaws at what's left of her insides; Gods, she's starving.

And Thist just sits there, smiling. Like she's just waiting for XIII to finish her outburst so she can answer every question at once to make herself as helpful as can be. It's something she's pulled on humans for as long as she's been alive. What the fuck was wrong with this woman? How could somebody with as much power as she's got be so servile? Was the whole damn Azura Empire like this, just slithering up and down the chain of command as it pleased them with no consequences? How was she supposed to know where she stood with any of them, then?

She swallows air. Her mouth feels so dry. She licks her lips, and swallows again. Slowly, she brings her hands to her sides again. She smooths out her dress, and then turns her attention to her tail, until she's got every bit of fur pointing the way it should be and every bit the picture of beauty it's supposed to be.

"...Sorry," she says with another fake smile, "Culture shock. Bad reading materials. Long trip, nothing to eat. Or drink. I've only had Apollo for... never mind."

XIII can feel her smile opening to show too much teeth, her own most telltale sign of hiding stuff. Maybe Thist would miss it. Redana always did. Maybe she was just as much of a puzzle for this place as they were to her. But she feels a hand press on her spine to lift her straight. And when the fingers press into her sternum, they push truth out from between the teeth that would hide it.

"I'm after the Imperial Princess, Redana Honorius Claudius. I don't care where I'm going, as long as I get there before she does. I made a promise to her mother, and I'm going to keep it if it kills me."

[Balmas]

"I thought Alexa was who I wanted to be."

She hates, instantaneously, the edge of weakness that creeps into her voice. That slight whine of bewilderment, of being adrift and lost, rudder- and anchor-less. She is meant to be strong, to be frank, to be a beacon of surety and protection in a changing world. A place where her ward can find peace and comfort, where none can creep in or make afraid.

But that's the thing, isn't it? She isn't--can't be--what she was.

It is strange to feel so safe, is it not? Here, in the presence of one of the order of Hermes? One who knows who she was, who was a match for her even before Athena turned her face away? She should be panicking, fleeing. Not inching along the bench.

"It means 'defender' in one of the old tongues, did you know that? I found it in one of my father's records."

A perfect name for one who, even then, would not be the Pallas. A name that would not slaughter innocents, or intimidate the weak. She did not want to fight wars, but surely she could defend? Could stand as a wall between those she loved and those who would harm them?

And see how well that worked out? Surrounding herself with those who could guard themselves without her intervention? Barring her heart fast unless she judged the person capable of managing themselves without her? One who locked herself away where she need not care for anything but her niche? A fine protector, indeed.

She doesn't cross the last few inches that would bring them close enough to touch. There's a barrier there that even now, even feeling so safe, is too dangerous to cross. But oh, to think that Ramses might reach back... Touch, any kind of touch. A brush, a grasp, anything to tell her that things might be okay.

"I do not--" She hesitates, swallows, and steels herself. "No, I don't know who I am. How can I choose to be someone who hurt so bad?"

Hurt others. Hurt herself.

"How can I even start that journey if I don't know in which way I'm going?"

[TheAmishPirate]

Ah. Hrm. Only a day, then?

Not that he expected more than that! Goodness, no, he wouldn’t have dragged sweet Hestia into a conflict of kingship. (Though he would continue to leave her offerings to show there were no hard feelings, and lend a hand with her Vasilia-based efforts when asked.) He knew this moment was coming, ever since he decided the Captain’s chair was his achievable desire. Nothing in all his years of walking with Hestia or reading about her told him any different. The prophecies foretold an empty nursery, and now here it was, right on time.

He didn’t expect to feel so much like a freshly-shorn lamb, shivering in the absence of warmth he’d taken for granted.

It was good, then, that the next phase of his plan was already underway, and did not hinge on him being any less of a silly, lost sheep. The rituals and prayers were all completed yesterday, with the precious time he’d already bought for himself.

For you see, as the various chieftains were waking today, they would all of them find a bulky envelope addressed to them lying some respectable distance from their encampments. Dolce’s signature nestled unobtrusively in the corner, so as not to distract from the seal of Artemis occupying the center. While the names involved were different, as were some relevant minutia, the documents within read roughly as follows:

Pursuant to the official charter of the great ship Plousious, owned by Lord Hades...leased to the Starsong Privateers, for the purpose of conveying her majesty Redana Honorius Claudius and Lord Hades’ personal cargo to the planet known as Gaia, your challenge to your Captain’s leadership has been found to be inappropriately registered. Though Captain Vasilia has waived all rights by taking up arms with intent to enter your contest of her own will, her actions do not affect the standing of her duly appointed second, Dolce, who now bears the legal rights and responsibilities of Captain, under the above charter, since her voluntary departure.

Dolce has exercised his right of formal complaint regarding improperly classified action against his rightful station. Upon review, it has been found that your activities cannot be adequately categorized as any one, many, or all of the following:

• Gladiatorial challenge of authority
• Riotous mutiny
• Kidnapping with intent for harm
• Kidnapping with intent for ransom
• Kidnapping with intent for humiliation
• Kidnapping with intent for pleasure
• Performance art
• Decentralized protest movement

And so forth, for pages.

As such, any further action taken against Dolce will be taken as an Unlicensed Actor, without the aid of the Great Huntress, and at grave risk of her displeasure.

If you seek legal recourse, Dolce offers neutral ground to discuss the matter, in hopes that a resolution agreeable to all parties may be reached. (Catering to be provided for you and your associates, guaranteed free of malignant intent from your host as per standard hospitality protocols.)

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

Vasilia fell into an overstuffed chair, the tub resting on her lap like a favored kitten. Iskarot was many things, and a conversationalist wasn’t one of them. And it was precisely that which made him such an ideal conversational companion for washed-up Captains. No games, no riddles, shockingly straightforward by Order standards, once you knew how to listen. He was here, when he didn’t have to be, and talking, when she hadn’t the humor for it. Hermes bless his nightmarish heart.

“What is the ideal energy, to build a refrigerator? What is the steadfast and immobile life?” She mused, drumming her fingers idly on the tub’s lid.

[Tatterdemalion]

When she wakes, Bella is still there. Her lips are set in a frown, and how she smiles. Her coat is cruelly familiar, and her eyes still throb as she lights a cigarette and exhales something that stains the walls clear. Behind the mirrors are machines and masks, and every one of them is her.

“Zenoy, Zanzenoy, Zenangelov,” the Laughing God purrs, and the knowledge hits her hard and fast like lightning. She stumbles out of the bed, trailing the Scyllan medical tether until its jaws yield and leave her bereft of its monitoring and enhanced nutrient lines, and she begins fumbling, pushing through the mirrors, grabbing at them and knocking it down.

“Redana,” Mynx says, and she’s wearing a mask, too. Princess Redana Claudius, thinking herself clever. The pink of Redana’s skin melds too neatly with the red scales of her neck. “Are you okay? The Alcedi grandmother said that there wasn’t anything wrong with you, and neither did the Magos, but—“

Redana grabs Mynx by the mask, and finds that she can’t find the seams. Well. That’s all right. “Mynx,” she growls. “Mynx. I have to find the right one.”

“You... what?”

Redana pushes Mynx back, not unkindly, and continues— no, not here, not in here. She stumbles out through the decontam and lets it wash over her and Mynx, even while she checks— no, not here, either.

“Redana, you’re scaring me.”

“I have to find the right one.” The mask on the door (Princess Redana Claudius, upon eating something that she had been pushing around her plate for ten minutes) glows green through its eyelids and Redana pushes through and groans at the sight in front of her, rows upon rows upon rows of masks all the way down the corridor. “I have to find the right one,” she says, repeating herself, louder, with more urgency. “Because I can’t save her without the right one.”

“Zenoy, Zanzenoy, Zenangelov.”

Redana starts running. She glances this way and that, and wherever she looks the mirrors crack and masks pour out of the walls. Sometimes she stops and begins to root through them, uncertain, until she stands up and hares off again, certain that the one she’s looking for is just a bit beyond.

Just a bit farther. Just a bit further. Just a few more steps. It’s around this next corner. The machinery is deafening in her ears, and she almost understands it. Maybe after she finds the right one, she’ll be ready to listen to it properly. But that’s not here. Not yet.

“Redana,” Mynx says, her face still embarrassingly smug, “I really don’t think you should go in there.” Redana stops, looks at her hands, then back at Bella, who is waiting for her. Her stone tail curls around the helm, and smoke curls in the empty places of her back. Redana pries the door open, ignoring Mynx’s squeak of terror, and marches in. There it is, hanging right where it’s supposed to be.

Redana reverently takes the mask and gives it to Bella. Bella hooks the string behind Redana’s head and settles the mask firmly on. Her fingers, clawed, crumbling, linger on Redana’s eyelids before trailing down her new cheeks.

Captain Redana Claudius sets her hand on the helm. “Magistrix,” she says to Mynx, her voice calm now, self-assured, but without arrogance: “Seal the doors and inform the crew. We’re taking a Tristranian Folly. Engines shuttered, save on my mark.” It’s an elegant dance of engines, a way to kill momentum, to make a hard turn without straining the ship past what it can bear. Too slow for battle, but whispersoft if you get the timing right. She pulls the cords and messages begin their long relay down the ship.

“You are to be commended for bringing this to my attention, magistrix. You will be disciplined for cowardice and desertion of a true comrade, which are high crimes, but I will take the circumstances and our long acquaintance into account in your sentencing. Phobos and Deimos make fools of us all, and I will not cut off my own nose to teach my face how to behave. Once we are on our new heading for Ridenki, you are to confine yourself to the brig. Am I clear, magistrix?” Captain Redana Claudius speaks as a woman of the high seas should, her Armada accent crisp and steady, her words carefully enunciated, her passion hidden behind a stoic demeanor.

“And for the sake of the Thunderer,” she says, frowning at what she’s just received on the pneumatics, “send word to the phalanx that if they think the cook is in command, they are gravely mistaken.”

With a wave of her hand, one wall becomes the starry sky far beyond, and even here she can see the gears, the levers, the turning keys, each one hiding behind the drifting colors. Perspective. That’s what she needs. With the right perspective, you could understand the entire design. Isn’t that right, Father?

Isn’t that right?

[Thanqol]

Redana!

It is Hades who stands before you now. Hades, blue eyed burning and furious, saying words that you cannot hear. Hades pointing, Hades snarling, Hades unfolding into something beyond being but folding back into a black pyramid paperweight reflected in the shine of Dionysus' mirror-mask.

Dionysus puts its hand around your shoulders. It has got you.

Apollo is next. Appearing meditative, calm - and in the next minute, headless. Dionysus has decapitated him and put his head back on upside-down turning his benevolent smile into a thoughtful and painted frown. Apollo maintains his composure but you can't as the god of solar peace comes to seem comical.

Dionysus pats your shoulder. It has got you.

Poseidon is the last to try and stop you, face dark and storming and patterned with warning of the terrible risks if you venture back into the storm he generously provided to speed your path. The spotlight from Dionysus' eyes cuts right through into the heart of his hood and cloak revealing the layers of space fish and space squid and space seals and space seagulls and the full fascinating ecosystem contained therein, and how cool it is how often those creatures wind up turning into space crabs in the end.

Dionysus gives you a drink. It has got you. It'll pull the galaxy apart for you, god by god, star by star. Don't even, girl. You got this and it has got you.

Tell us of the scene Dolce finds when he finds you two.

Alexa!

"Who the fuck starts journeys with destinations in mind?" said Ramses. "That's not a journey, that's a commute. Journeys aren't about destinations, they're about the ship you choose to take you there."

He takes your hand in his; hard, rough strong. "When I rebuilt this body," he said, "I wasn't thinking if it was the one that was right for me. I was thinking if it was right for right now. So who do you want to be right now?"

Vasilia!

"It requires a narrow band of emotional identity where you have risen to a position of prestige within a tiny bubble without comprehension of a wider external world," said Iskarot, sparks from his welding doing nothing to illuminate his shadowy features. "Stability is constructed on ignorance. Revelation inspires journeys, internal or otherwise."

Dolce!

Different civilizations have different understandings of the Gods. You don't grasp the deep, primal bond the Alcedi have with Zeus and how they can channel her favour so decisively through this ritual. Likewise, they don't understand the subtler, more technical manifestations of Artemis' craft. They worship her in old ways, traditional ways - outdated ways. What are their fetishes and tokens compared to your perfectly annotated paperwork?

They find out the hard way when one of them takes another shot at you, misses and hits Iskarot - who does not miss with his return volley. By the time the Hermetic has concluded his rampage three of the contestants have dropped out of the contest due to injury or fear. The general attrition of the contest drops two more, reduing twelve to seven.

Soon following you get two notices accepting your offer to meet, and five elaborate towering glyph-totems constructed outside your quarters giving you full notice that you are being hunted in full accordance with protocol. Still, though, that means you've got some time - which you'll need, because you just got word that Redana has commanded that the ship turn around and head back the way you came. Write your next address to Redana.

Bella!

Thist's manner changes. Of course it does. She now knows that you are a vessel of Imperial power, in service to the Azurius who rendered this empire unto ruin. She knows that her pitiful civilization exists at the pleasure of the one you serve -

She pulls a plastic bag full of some thick peanuts from a desk drawer, messily scatters them in front of you, then loudly cracks a shell and swallows the nut whole. She gestures at you to eat, and after another moment of rummaging finds a half-finished bottle of a pale blue liquid. It tastes like the chemical byproduct of some industrial process, which is to say: delicious. Unnatural, yes, but filled with the heavy metals and complex elements that your biology craves to build bones that can shatter stone.

You're halfway done with the bottle before you realize that Thist's expression is just thoughtful. Just thoughtful. Lidded eyes, a mouthful of peanut and senth smoke. She's doing calculations, but you can't sense the elevated heartrate or a rush of adrenaline any of the mannerisms that would indicate that she's dealing with a civilizational level issue. Is her body language that alien? Or does she not understand? Or... no. She couldn't possibly understand.

"Regarding the gods," she said slowly, letting the smoke coil around the fork of her tongue. "The sacrifice of material possessions is not the custom here any more. There was a whole schism, but suffice it to say that there are some influential philosophers called Burning Masters who believe that the gods are far better honoured through oaths and deeds than items."

The silence falls again as she returns to her thought and your mind reels that she still doesn't seem shocked. Then she gestures with a coin (you can control it with just a gesture?) and a book is carried to her from across the room. She opens it and flicks through a through pages -

"Oh, shit," she said, eyes widening. "Nero IV? She's still alive? I haven't heard that name since... I think it came up in my Terminus and Party course in college? Wow, that's a blast from the past. You're for real? Uh, so, just to catch you up, basically as far as we're aware the Empire collapsed following the Battle of Watersweld Binary. Annexation teams have been salvaging, raiding and settling former Imperial territory for hundreds of years without even a whisper of opposition. So there's a princess now? Huh. Neat."

[Tatterdemalion]

Dolce!

The bridge is, for lack of a better word, trashed. You are ushered inside by a very sheepish (if you will excuse the pun) Mynx, who helps you navigate around the broken glass. There is a ridiculous amount of broken glass, as if many mirrors hanging on the walls had been shattered by strong hands. The culprit isn’t hard to find: her hands, already healed, still leave smears of her priceless blood on her glass. The room is full of the antiseptic smell of whiskey, and once again, the culprit isn’t hard to find, filling Redana’s shot glass again with a flourish of its velvet dressing gown.

Redana turns on her heel, back ramrod-straight, eyebrow arched in uncharacteristic confidence. Behind her, the god of madness waves, its mirror-mask reflecting a version of the room that most certainly is not real. At least, one sincerely hopes.

“Ah, Mister Dolce,” Redana says, her words too crisp for the flush in her cheeks. Her jacket is pinned back at the breast, and its motif is the twin-headed eagle. “Capital! I see you received our word. There is a ridiculous notion going around the crew that you are the Captain of the Plousios.”

She takes a seat, glass crunching under her boots, and gestures for you to do the same. Dionysus sets a neon blue cocktail sweet enough to drown the room by your seat, a decadence to melt a sheep’s composure like candyfloss. Redana herself sips from her whiskey and then meditatively swirls it around her glass.

“This rescue mission is going to be difficult enough, what with the storm we’re going through.” She idly gestures at the rainbow knot of disaster, stretched across the wall impossibly wide, slowly gaining mass and terrible details as the Plousios hurtles towards its doom. “We can’t have ambiguities in the chain of command at a time like this, what? Why, you might even...”

Redana stops, and for a moment she looks lost and vacant. There’s a terrible ache in her eyes as she looks at you, as if she’s trying to remember who you are. Then her eyes slide back down to her drink, and she knocks it back.

“...I am prepared to take steps to stamp out mutiny,” says the mutineer, with absolute confidence regained. “But let’s do our best to avoid unpleasantness, shall we? Bella here can’t wait forever.” She gestures at the God of Madness with that red-smeared hand, as if that explains everything. Then she leans forward and whispers, conspiratorially, as Dionysus fills her glass with amber again: “When I save her, she might finally accept my apology.”

[Phoe]

The bottle is warm in her hand. Not the welcome sort of warm that suggests a hot thermos of coffee waiting to push her on after a long day of freezing her hands fixing coolant lines. And not the tingling sort of warm of the nape of a certain neck that she could touch all she wanted while she lost herself in braiding luxurious golden strands of hair. It's just warm. It's warm because it's been sitting forgotten in a desk drawer for who the fuck knows how long, and tastes just strongly enough to suggest that it'd go down better if it was chilled.

She squeezes it. Twists it around with her wrist to watch the liquid inside slosh lazily about. The material is smooth, and feels hard against her fingers. It disgusts her. She's taken with a sudden urge to hurl it into a wall, or simply shatter it against her claw tips, but the gnawing emptiness inside her won't go away. It's been so long; she is so very hungry. She takes another slow and careful swig, instead, and watches Thist through her hollow golden eye.

"...Empress Nero IV Acontecimento Azurius has reigned for two hundred and fifty years."

XIII pauses to brush her fingers against her throat. Her voice sounds funny in her ears. Tight. Clipped. Straining. She lingers on the space where even now her skin is paler from the years it spent hiding under a collar. She drowns a cough in another shot of her drink, before it can unmake her all over again.

"In her wisdom she declared the reaches of space were dangerous," her face twists into a scowl. What's the matter with her? Did she spend all those years memorizing the lines from the museum just to recite them like a broken gramophone now? "...That the storms and distance had made enemies and strangers of what should have been family. She, she constructed the... throne world Tellus to be her seat of power. She has. Ruled there ever since. Humanity has been safe ever since."

Her cheeks burn with pink, which only makes her frown deepen. She chugs the rest of the industrial fluids without breathing. What the fuck is wrong with her? Her blood is becoming iron chains inside her body, squeezing every joint and organ until the act of sitting here and watching Thist not react hurts near as much as a whipping. Her vision swims. She stubbornly keeps her lid shut tight over the Auspex. Her fingers massage her scalp again, harder and more desperately. The unseen hand the keeps correcting her posture and teasing new words from her lungs now grabs her wrist and squeezes before she can claw the veins that are crushing her to death open. Which god? Which god keeps tormenting her like this?

She barks with laughter. Broken, pitted, fake and ugly for how obviously forced it is.

"The value of civilization is measured by its distance from Tellus, cretin. D-don't blame me that you were stupid enough to crawl around on our scraps and call it conquest when we couldn't be bothered to swat you back off of it! And yes, there is a Princess!" here at last she puffs out her chest, finding the pride she'd been chasing this whole useless fucking conversation, "She's the daughter of Empress Nero and no less than Zeus herself! And she's... a fucking moron. She's a drooling, useless jock bitch who's sitting on the power of a monster who could crush everything in your empire to bits."

Her red eye forces itself open. XIII sits on the couch with her spine locked painfully straight all the way down to the tip of her tail. Her breath is thin and forced through her nostrils in such shallow bursts that anyone would have to be inches from her face to see that she was breathing at all. The Auspex burns cold inside her socket as it watches Thist's coins, whether she wills it to or not. XIII sneers with the dismissive and absolute triumph of a person who has at last puzzled out the weak point of her opponent.

"I don't know what kind've bullshit your philosophers and textbooks have been feeding you," she preens, "But you're even dumber than those old novels made you look if you really think you're the superior species to Humans. They're perfect, down to the least one of them. And you've built an entire civilization around the same table scraps a reject servitor like me uses for worship? That's pathetic."

She opens her mouth to laugh, but the sound doesn't come. She watches Thist with caution where she should want triumph, and doesn't even notice the tear running down her cheek.

[TheAmishPirate]

A Captain bore fear in place of their crew, fought foes their crew would never see, and stood firm at the first and the last, to spare the ruin of all. It mattered little whether victory was possible. A Captain would do their duty.

Dolce’s heart threatens to swallow him whole. One moment he would be here, the next, gone, compressed into a miniscule particle of fluff, carried to rest somewhere out of the way where he would likely remain for the rest of his days.

“Lord Hades designated Vasilia as Captain.” He opens his mouth to let the words fall out. “Vasilia designated me as her second. Vasilia has chosen to temporarily abdicate her duties. I.” The gates fall shut, and it takes all his will to pry them back open. Slowly. Painfully. “I am Captain of the Plousious.”

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

“So. Anyone who’s going anywhere has to be a little unstable, or else they’d not be going anywhere to begin with.” Vasilia looks to her companion. Looks to her dim reflection in the viewscreen. Looks to her memory of every soul aboard she could call to mind.

Checks out.

“And that’s it, then? Anyone standing still has their eyes closed and ears blocked?” Her own ears perk up, as if to prove themselves still functional.

[Balmas]

Right… Now?

It's not that Alexa hasn't thought of what she wants to be. All those sleepless nights loathing what she is wouldn't be very good without dreams of what she could be.

She wants to be a strong defender, the invincible wall to keep her friends safe. She wants to never have to fight again, never have to worry about whether her friends are safe. She wants to chase Minerva, to read that letter, to hare off into the cosmos to find where she is. Is she well? Is she safe? Does she still laugh the way she used to? Does she still remember her? And at the same time, she almost feels guilty thinking that, because she also wants to see Isty smile more, learn about her, feel her in her arms. She wants to beg Athena for forgiveness at the same time as she wants to throw curses in her face, damn her for destroying her life.

She clings to Ramses' hand as the thoughts rush past. It's an anchor in a storm, something to bring her back to the present.

Those are all long-term destinations, though. Good girlfriend, pacifist, defender, those aren't now. They're things to work towards.

She rubs a thumb across his hand, feels the rough callouses. What do those say about right now? Why choose to keep those? What does it say that Ramses wants his hands to show the marks of work?

Right now. What does she want, in this second?

She stares at the plate. Reaches out with a spare hand. Turns it this way and that on the edge of the pool, studies the way the light plays across the discarded crab shells. Takes another bite, feels the texture on her teeth.

Tastes nothing.

"I think… I would like a better tongue."

[Thanqol]

Alexa!

You have asked one of the Coherent about body modification. A door has been opened.

Members of cults, secret societies, religious orders and fandoms all have a common look in their eye when they're invited to talk about the subject of their passion. Ramses is thrilled to have the opportunity to talk in this way and veers between missionary passion and splicer technobabble. Tongues for pleasure, tongues for utility, tongues for weaponry. Do you want to catch arrows from the sky with a frog tongue or be able to taste the air as a snake? Do you want a tongue that can appreciate the most exotic spices and flavours of the galaxy's culinary traditions or one that'll find that same pleasure in licking salt off rocks? Do you want a tongue designed for cleaning fur, or one designed to clean your eyeballs?

The only answer that might confuse Ramses is a request for a 'normal' tongue. That word simply means nothing to him.

Vasilia!

"Unnecessary. Silence is as deafening as headphones," said Iskarot, flipping the fridge back into place. "Sometimes revelation is too distant to hear through no fault of one's own."

He clattered into a seat, mess of limbs arranging themselves around it. "What is your genetic function? The sheep I comprehend as a menial, but you are a predator-kin. You do not appear to be designed for organized warfare and your instinctive mannerisms are incorrect for a pet. Inquisitorial staff, perhaps?"

XIII!

Thist does not argue the point. Instead she switches tack, flowing back into a smile as she surreptitiously produces a box of fluffy linen tissues from desk drawer and pushes them across the table. "So you need to find this Redana!" she said. "At the first instance I'd suggest talking to the Orrery - that's the fleet headquarters - because they manage customs and border patrol. Oh, no, actually that's a good question - do you want to make this an official matter? The Orrery does report to the Party, and the report could go as high as the Shah. The alternative is that you look to hire a Warband. Warbands are, ah, Ares worshippers on the Path of the Mighty, and they're not the sanest of sorts, but I know a couple you might be able to have lucid conversations with."

There are so many points Thist could press, so many attacks she could make on your exhausted and over-extended ideology, but she doesn't. Neither does she question what you have told her or that you would be able to prove yourself as an agent of the Empire. While her lack of aggression is appreciated, it's also coldly galling. Tellus was raised on the stories of Nero's defeat of the Azura. It seemed a civilization defining, epoch marking triumph that shattered this species' power forever. It was a mark of pride for every being on Tellus.

And yet Thelis Thist has no emotional investment in the conflict whatsoever. Tellus seems to her a historical curiosity; your presence as perhaps that of a king from some far distant world - worthy of respect and polite interest, certainly, but not awed by your power or what fearful of what your presence might mean. To her, Tellus, Nero and humanity are simply ancient history, and not history she took the time to study.

[Tatterdemalion]

Redana blinks. The words shoot through her like darts through mist, embedding themselves in glass shards. She stares at Dolce. Then she laughs.

It is not the laugh of someone who is stable, of sound mind, and sober. It is not the laugh that one particularly might wish to hear from a captain, unless they have already evacuated every non-essential crew member as they order the throttle to be locked into full acceleration and the beak of the Eater of Worlds yawns wide to accept their vessel.

“Once upon a time,” she says, booping Dolce on his adorable nose, “there was a whipping-girl. Her job was to take every single punishment that her mistress deserved. And then, one day, the princess— her mistress— her— she ran away from home and left the whipping-girl behind.”

Redana rakes her hand through her hair, and looks at Dolce with wild bacchanal eyes. Her voice remains perfectly ship-shape, each word precise and trotting into place like an obedient sheep.

“Designations,” she sneers. “If I leave my Bella to starve on some broken husk of a Hermetic toy factory, then I would deserve the torments of the Kindly Ones!”

Dionysus does not so much as flinch. Mynx mouths “what the fuck.” For a moment, the only sound is the throb of blood in the ears. There is no sound of the snapping of claws. There is no scrape of chitin. Burning eyes do not appear in the yawning mouth of the door.

They only sometimes come when called.

They’re very busy, you see.

But there’s this game, Dolce. You wouldn’t have played it, but you can’t be among rogues and scoundrels without hearing hopefully-exaggerated stories.

You lay out daggers on a table. Each player takes turns plunging them against their own breast. Play continues clockwise around the table until you find the one that doesn’t agreeably fold back into itself.

Redana needs to stop talking.

[Phoe]

"Why did you bring me here? What was the point?"

She sits with her head in her hands while her tail droops limply across her thigh. She squeezes at her temples, careful to press with her palms to keep her claws from breaking the skin. There is so much pressure building inside of her. But the old releases, even just the thought of them, makes her stomach fill with crawling legs and butterfly wings.

"No reaction, no impression. Not to anything. I don't matter? Is that the lesson? Easier to let me die. Should've let me die. I wanted you to... nngh."

She is not speaking to Thist. She isn't bothering to keep her voice down for her, either. She squeezes her head and ignores every offer of tissues, of nuts, and of information and advice. Her arms start to tingle with the force of her blood squeezing inside of them, and she lets them fall away from her head. She doesn't tilt her head or look around for an answer; for all the time he spent fucking around inside of her head and twisting her into whatever hollow mess she was now, he'd never felt the need to offer her a single word of explanation. Why would he start now?

XIII snorts. She shakes her head. She stands as if someone lit the couch on fire from underneath her, though not before snatching the bag of daric with one hand. She clutches it tightly as she stares at the everything in the room except for the woman helping her with the kind of gaze that suggests she wants it all to burn. Out. Out. Out out out out out out out! Air. Need air. No more words, no more lessons, need air!

"Fuck you," she snaps, "If you're so smart, you figure it out."

She moves with the careless grace of a person who long since forgot what it meant to explain her comings and goings. For countless days, or weeks, or months or... she couldn't think about the possibilities beyond that, there had been nothing in the way of her urges to wonder except walls. And those were nothing but suggestions left behind by a ship she'd killed herself. It's only an even older habit and the strictest of training that makes her walk toward the door at all.

Even still, she pauses in the frame. Even still, she turns her head to look at Thist with her good eye. Even still, she nods.

"I won't," she calls from over her shoulder, "Break my promise. I'll never. Just... get to work."

She's through the door and gone before another word can follow her. Out. Out. Out. Anywhere. Anywhere but here. If there's a reason for all this, then show her. But do it somewhere else.

[Balmas]

Alexa stares at Ramses, eyes wide and jaw slack.

In theory, she's pretty sure she knew there were this many kinds of tongue in the universe. But having them all listed at her? An encyclopedic litany of licks? She's not even sure where to start! Possible versions of herself strut across a mental catwalk--tasting the air! What an idea! Feeling out the environment, spotting enemies before they even know she's there! She gawps furiously as Tongues for Pleasure acts out something incredibly lewd on stage, and has to stop herself from blurting out, 'that one please.' A tongue for bathing! A tongue for war! Tongues for fighting and fucking flirting and flying and frightening and flyting and--

She listens as Ramses goes on, rapt at every word. No, that's not quite right--the words are amazing and she could spend hours just going over them in her head--but what really has her attention is the light in Ramses' eyes as they talk. That flare, that passion, that energy? She could sit and listen to Ramses gush for hours, a small smile growing on her face.

"I have never tasted anything before," she admits when Ramses pauses for breath and stares at her. "I can eat, yes. But it is all shapes and textures, never..." She waves a hand vaguely, having run out of words. "I can listen to people describe food, right? But it feels like describing green to a blind man. It would be nice to be able to, to see green for the first time."

[TheAmishPirate]

For the lifetime of every material need met to the fullest: For the nights of sleep free from fear and foe: For the knowledge of ages passed down through the generations: For the mouth of the Masters forbidding in specific, in person, in clearest detail: The lash! The lash!

For the weak link in a centuries-old chain of dinnertimes: For deeds done in darkness by the gifts of home and hearth: For the supplanting of love that must always be first: The scourge! The scourge!

For the reward of the faithless scoundrel: The whip. The whip!

“The ship belongs to the Captain. The crew belongs to the Captain.” Slowly is the only way he can enter. To keep from cutting his hooves on shrapnel. To keep from coming undone.

"There is nothing here you could use to help her. I'm sorry." It slips out. He doesn't know if it's a mistake.

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

Another time, perhaps even a week ago, the question would have earned Iskarot a free diversionary tactic with his choice of subtly scathing retort. But today, Vasilia held vigil over his sacred coleslaw, until the time it would be needed once again, and secrets did not belong between them. Or maybe she’d puttered around her quarters long enough that simple company was enough to loosen her guard. Or maybe she’d taken Hestia’s lessons to heart, and the first step to building a past was to acknowledge that it existed in the first place. Who can say?

She hardly could.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Vasilia shrugged. “The concept is, was, a foreign one, until I took to spacefaring. Where I was born - you’d know the gravitational workings better than I - the planet was positioned such that every piece of drifting scrap in the entire system wound up there. Any castaways still breathing and any wrecks still populated found their home there. Keep going on for a few hundred years, and who even remembers what their great-great-great-great-great grandparents were ‘designed’ to do? If you could even tell. After all, when a bricklayer and a herald love each other very much, what are their children supposed to do? When the child of a bricklayer and a herald and the child of a scrap processor and a court entertainer love each other very much, what are their children supposed to do? For me, I was born, and my family had taken the laurels before, so it was the natural thing for me to do.”

A pause. A thought. One so old, she’d forgotten she’d ever had it.

“Why do you ask? You don’t have a way to, you know, determine such a thing, do you?”

[Tatterdemalion]

"The ship belongs to the Captain. The crew belongs to the Captain," Redana recites back at Dolce with a sneer. "The ship is mine, the crew is mine. Thus. Come on, even I can do this! It's a simple logical statement. If the ship and crew are mine, and they belong to the Captain, then I am the Captain. You've spelled it out yourself! And if I cannot help her with these, then to Tartarus with them! To Ixion's Wheel with us all!"

She begins fiddling with a dial. A dial that, yes, when you pull that hanging cord, signals to the engine room that more speed is necessary. That storm's coming up fast and hard, and in another heartbeat there will be no way to stop; the Plousios won't be able to deaccelerate in time without shearing itself apart.

"I have her blood on my hands, little cook!" Easy mistake to make, Redana. That's yours, dried. From where you've been punching walls and mirrors. "Hers, and Mynx's! I tore her apart! I wanted to, and wanting's the same as doing, and I gave her the death she wanted all this time, the death I didn't want for her, I didn't want for any of them, why, why am I worth dying for?"

She punches the dial and it crunches under her knuckles. Then she rests her forehead on the wall and her shoulders tremble.

"Back to the kitchens, little cook," she says, in a small, still voice. "Or I'll kill you, too."

It's not a threat. Not in that voice. Just fear that she's telling the truth.

[Thanqol]

Alexa!

There is, of course, ritual to be done. No technological matter or medical practice would ever be attempted without first seeking the blessing of the gods. With Hermes, though, rituals are of a different character.

The favour of other gods can be clearly seen, their commands heard, their punishments made clear. But Hermes is absent in a way that none of the others ever are, even distant Demeter. Outside the Order devoted to him his shrines are minor, his cults disfavoured, his domain of travel, communication and change neglected in this dark and stagnant galactic age. The Magi of the Order of Hermes hold that this means that the rituals required to obtain the favour of Hermes must be correspondingly more subtle and advanced; the Coherent have instead gravitated towards an interpretation that these rituals should be celebrations. Any excuse for drinking and dancing, perhaps! But just the same, there is also room made for a sermon.

"Evidence currently suggests," said a Coherent organizer, standing atop a pile of boxes at the end of the small gathering. "That Hermes does not wish to be found. I know! The Magi will tell you that the clues he's left in his wake make his implicit guidance clear, blah blah, but I am unconvinced. What I think is that Hermes is undergoing changes himself. He's wrapped himself in a chrysalis and none of us can pierce his shell. So if Hermes is changing behind a barrier of godsilk we're not going to be able to punch through and invade his privacy, nor should we! What we are going to do is follow him. Not with our legs! Not with our brains! But with our actions! What could be more foolish than trying to cling to someone else's metamorphosis? What could be more inspirational than learning that metamorphosis is possible?

"Today we're celebrating Alexa," he said, gesturing at you from the pulpit. "Who is today following for the first time in the footsteps of the Saffron Lord. As with Hermes, what she wants to change and why she wants to change it is none of our business unless she cares to tell us, Vapin," the organizer points out one member of the crowd in particular, to general laughter. "But we're here to support her, inspire her, and show her what is possible. So - show off! Set an example! It's hard to know what you want if you never realized it was an option!"

There's a general cheer, a round of libations and toasting, and almost immediately thereafter the organizer's message is taken to heart and several flashy fights break out. A saffron curtain through to the medical ward awaits whenever you choose to go through it.

Vasilia!

"Hmm. Not without dissection," said Iskarot, rummaging through your cupboards for cutlery. "The Gods appreciate scrap. Ruins. Shells. Husks of ruined things can tell profound stories, if you know the primordial rituals. Bone cast into fire cracks along patterns of destiny. Work swiftly enough and a host's motive force does not have to expire with their physical form."

The bowl of coleslaw impacts on the table heavily, followed by a random assortment of corkscrews, chopsticks, forks and mixing spoons. Given how Iskarot provides himself with a single regular spoon, he evidently understands the concept of eating with the correct utensil, he just isn't making any assumptions about what you eat with.

"Your lack of clarity on this topic is enviable," Iskarot said abruptly. "Mongrel breeding is the source of humanity's power. Congratulations."

XIII!

The sun burns violet. In places, the city does too.

No one seems concerned with the blaze that engulfs the distant towers, licking from its graceful heights at the base of a mighty stonework orb. A strange gleaming network of spheres hang in the sky, alight with energy, and you can see visibly how the wind is pulled through them and sent in the direction of the blaze, making sure those flames and that ash do not flow closer in this direction. An old Azura, drab of scale, pulls the strange avine horse he rides to a halt to look at the distant blaze with the weary look of a man watching a sunset.

A solitary azura woman, drab but for a small scattering of brighter blue scales around her face like freckles, sweeps the streets. She's pushing broken glass about, sorting it into piles and moving on. The ground glass is two feet deep in places. The cthonic towers above and the spectacular floating spheres had windows once but each of these is broken and all of that glass is on the ground. This must have happened some time ago, for the trail of glass-piles goes on as far as the eye can see and the Azura maiden does not seem any closer to finishing her Sisyphean task. As far as you can see she is the only one at work. There is a trancelike precision to her movements, a flow-state as deep as the rushing river.

There is one of those here too - a massive flowing body of water through the center of the city, criss-crossed with bridges. Upon some of the bridges Azura warriors, with spectacular feathered plumed helmets, faceless bone-white armour and orbiting moons of gravity-stones, await at the center. No one crosses these bridges and you sense instinctively that a terrible fight awaits you should you try. Some Azura prefer to clamber down onto the rough black sand and swim across the fast-flowing water than take their chances with these silent sentinels.

Banners hang from many buildings, bedecked with swirling circular symbols broken into layers and lines and colours - circles within circles within circles, overlapping and creating curved spaces where they intersect. The meaning of these is unknowable; they're not words in the Azura's language but they definitely have some kind of meaning, not least because one in five Azura wears a symbol of this style but unique design on their clothing somewhere.

The streets, even when they are cleaned of glass, are quiet and deserted. Not the teeming masses of Tellus who live cheek to jowl, the Azura are strangely spread out and solitary creatures, and even when they do pass at least a meter of empty street hangs between them. The smell of freshly warmed bread meanders through the paths of the street. A baker wearing some sort of armour eerily similar to those haunting bridge-warriors sets out massive racks of food, the vast majority of which goes unsold - and yet she bakes more.

Oh, there is power here Bella. Unbelievable power and grandeur that exceeds Tellus for design, artistry and grace. But it, too, is scarred. It is scarred so deeply and profoundly it makes what people there are here, people who move through the apocalyptic ruins of their civilization with silent and peaceful grace seem almost like ghosts. Vignette by vignette you come to see the Endless Azure Skies as both more and less than you were taught from Tellus. Their windows have shattered and their buildings have broken and their population has vanished - in every aspect, they have collapsed - but it has not stopped them at all. This is not a civilization locked in a stasis penitentiary. They are still pressing on, making new history with each passing day, unperturbed by their ruin.

It is not that Tellus is meaningless here. Your Auspex discerns that many of these scars are from Tellus' ships, still unrepaired centuries later. It also suggests that many are from later conflicts, civil wars. Tellus seems like a civilization caught between the ticks of a stopped clock, whereas the Azura have - for better and for worse - never stopped moving forwards.