[IC] Breathless Dead

[Balmas]

Brightberry is a beacon of day in the otherwise darkened apartment. The light spills out from her spot on the desk--marked out with tape, carefully calculated for best reception, kept reluctantly clear--and paints the room in shades of eyelid-purpling brightness.

Technically, Brightberry doesn't have to do any of that. It's a waste of the laser, it's lossy, it wastes energy. But it's guaranteed to pierce the lump of blankets on the couch in the center of the room, which is groaning.

Is it technically still correct to call it a couch? It started out as one, sure--one of those big plush models, oversize in every dimension, like somebody had seen a couch once and then built a yacht in its image. But by now, it's so covered in blankets, so festooned in plushies, so worn down… D'you know, some people tell her she should replace it? It's worn out. The leather has lost its grip, so you can hardly sit on it without sliding around. The padding has lost its pad, so the entire thing is less cushion than imprint, matching her coils like an extended glove.

It's perfect. She keeps telling Brightberry, throwing it out would be like throwing out a member of the family.

Dyssia doesn't remember getting into it. The last thing she recalls…

One arm snakes out of the pile of blankets, and gropes around on the desk.

Okay. Book's still there. Books. Stack of books. Did she have that many books? What time did she--

"Dawn," Brightberry helpfully adds.

Yeah, that tracks. One of those nights, chasing a wild lead, falling into bed only once--fuck, she hopes she wrote down what it was. She keeps writing tools near the desk, but that doesn't guarantee that Dyssia last night will have been kind to Dyssia today.

Today… How long has it been?

She risks a sliver of a peek out the edge of the blanket, and immediately hisses in pain.

Every time. Every time! She keeps telling people--

Well, no. No, she doesn't, because telling people gets you weird looks. No, Dyssia, we're not going to reorganize our sky to make it less of a lightshow. We're teleporting clouds to make sure the perfect lightshow can happen. The lightshow is the point.

But still! It should be illegal to send messages like that past a certain point! Past a certain time in the day! People are trying to sleep, dammit! Could we not build a communications system that doesn't rely on every house in the city having a dedicated window open? And no, Dyssia, you can't shut a window or hang curtains, that's antisocial, how will people send you messages?

Past noon. Puddle of (bright) (afternoon) sunlight, spilling light on the huddled dusty sewing machine and its spools of fifteen different textiles, sitting there, waiting for a hand to touch them.

Stop that. If the one mandatory skylight is shedding light on the sewing machine, it's past noon.

How long does she have until the Great Sage gets impatient?

With great dramatic groans--and eyes screwed shut against the pain--she rolls out of her imprints and off the couch, and fumbles for a spacer nutrient bar.

Brightberry sniffs. Yes, she knows. It's not a proper meal. Yes, she had a high-quality kitchen installed. Yes, the mixer is just begging for a hand to turn it on, the oven ready to burst into flames. She knows a dozen recipes that are quick, easy, and for which the ingredients probably haven't had time to go bad yet.

But in her defense, the nutrient bar is ready now. It doesn't take any more energy to prepare than unwrapping it and sinking her fangs into it. That's a bigger plus than most people realize, you know? It doesn't sit there and accuse you of not using it. You just open it, drain it, and--

Brightberry sniffs again, somewhat louder.

"I was throwing the wrapper away," Dyssia protests, picking the wrapper back up.

She glances at the desk, and winces. She'd written… something. With time and some dedicated archeology, she was pretty sure she could reconstruct the thoughts and piece together the arcane syllables. It'd felt important, she vaguely remembers, and all came to an equals sign.

But equals what?

Why is it that it's never as clear the day after as it is when she's in the middle of it? In the moment, it's as clear as day. She can feel a hand guiding her, touching her mind, driving her on, as if every thought is lightning and she couldn't stop for all the enlightenment in the world.

And then morning comes, and she's dumber than dirt.

She resolves that this time, it will be different. She just needs to focus harder, do better. She's smart. She can do this. Tonight, she'll figure it out tonight.

She pauses.

"How long did you wait to share that message?" she asks, hopefully.

"I didn't."

"Are you sure? You didn't, maybe, take a nap? Maybe forget to pass it on for a bit?"

"Is that what you'd like me to say happened?"

It's an olive branch, and Dyssia almost jumps at it. It'd give her a minute to adjust, to let her eyes soften, to get ready, to take her time up the hill to the Sage's pavilion.

But…

Your spiritual development depends upon this.

The Ceronians…

She stares at the bed and its lumps of comfort, waiting to drag her back down to sleep. It'd be so easy to fall back in. Just an hour.

Maybe the Sage knows something that will help her?

"Thank you, Brightberry," she swallows out, and bends to gently pet the dragon. Brightberry preens, and leans one crystalline horn into the hand for optimal rubbing. "But if you could please send back that I'm on my way?"

[TheAmishPirate]

Bounding. Bouncing.

Tons of metal should not feel so light, but the road works many miracles.

Sunlit Brook is not designed for combat. Its engineering is heavy-duty because everything in space is heavy-duty. Truth be told, it should not exist in the dread dangers of space, but the road works many miracles. A ship’s mighty prow cleaves through stardust and spacestuff like a bullet. Sit behind it, and, no, yes, you would be roasted by the engines, but please think of a bullet for a moment. Sit behind it, and the world would be still. But it’s not just here. Along the edges of the craft, in the wake of the ship’s prow, there is a narrow band of stillness.

The plovers that live here are short, squat, compact. Powerful legs designed to leap distances, not heights. Never heights. Jets above deny the void. Jets below deny the ricochet. Arms end in fingers more clever than those meant to hold spears. These are the helpers. The scurriers. The carriers of supplies. The cleaners of ship-wounds, before others cauterize them. They flit about the edges of the ship, bouncing to and fro, painted in a swirl of artificial, angular color, meant to stand out against hull and void alike. At their speeds, others must see them coming long before there is a risk of collision.

Here, on the ground, Dolce’s packs are filled with supplies to feed and keep the crew, and not their plovers. He has no need of the upper jets, and diverts all power to the lower, landing so softly he hardly leaves a crater. He wastes not a speck of momentum as he tumbles, bounds, bounces along the trail, as if carried along by a heavenly wind.

[Phoe]

Bella could not in any way explain how a plover like this had come to be on her ship (her ship? Her ship). It doesn't seem at all like it would have been meant for maintenance work when... whenever it was built. The armor plating seems like it's been layered on long after the frame was originally constructed, and now a lot of the layers have been burned completely black by who-knows-what. And the parts that haven't are painted a striking cobalt blue, which is very pretty but utterly pointless.

There are many other peculiarities to it, hints at some secret history and hidden depths that a person might get lost in if they really wanted to. But Bella has no time for things that are not moving forward. She chose this because the color of it kind of looked like her hair. Isn't that enough?

The inside of a plover smells like rust and oil with a faint coil of copper around the whole thing. This one in particular also has a note of char sprinkled on top that coats her tongue a little bit with every small breath she takes. It's exhilarating. Her hands grip controls that feel rough and warm and stimulating, her feet press down into paddles that connect the complex system of levers that give these machines all of their power.

She rockets forward with the pure joy of a creature born to move. She runs on rockets and rips huge chunks out of the dirt with every "step", as if clawing her revenge into the soil for whatever technicolor miracle it visited against her ship (her ship!), as if these long grooves and slashes in the soil would mark her passing and with it her territory for generations to follow her. She digs just to feel the jolt in her legs while raw forward speed crushes against her lungs.

She pushes the ancient relic harder than it's probably been in a hundred years, or whatever. She pushes it to feel the heat building inside the cockpit, to feel the slick of sweat against her skin and let it drip down into her fur. To let the raw power of her armor rattle her skeleton and set the beating of her heart for her. She breathes, and tastes fire. She smiles. Even laughs.

There is no path to guide her here. No spirals of silver or of gold, not a single thing to tell her that her choices were somehow wrong, right, or predetermined. There is only the vague impression of a road and the even vaguer sense of curiosity about what she might see around the bend of it. What's past that tree? What's over that hill? What? What? What?

Even that is immaterial compared with the pure joy of racing a hundred other people to the horizon. She is Bella. She is the one who chases after starships and wins. The future is infinite, too vast to deserve consideration. The past is behind her and too dull to bother with the effort of turning around to find it. The present is joyful. It is the hiss of steam and the crunch of metal and the roar of thrusters burning hotter than she's ever felt before. It is the rush of wind she can't feel on her face but knows is there beside her just the same.

There is so much and so many beside her here and now. More than she could possibly need. Bella lifts into the sky until the ground disappears beneath her, just to spite it. With a swoop that twists her insides around in the most pleasant kind of way she crashes back down with a plume of dirt cascading around her like the ripples in a lake when a rock skips across it. Her body aches. Her aches tingle with the pleasant promise of regeneration and content. She tears into the soil with her lance and lunges forward with renewed speed and purpose.

Maybe this is all there is, forever. But then, what's at the end of forever?

[Tatterdemalion]

A name? If it needs a name, it is Redana's. That's the one that sticks to it. Oh, that plover? It's Redana's. She's been in its guts; she's played with its muscles and traced her fingers along its spine. It's the one she keeps mounted on the side of the bay she always uses, the one with the seat just how she likes it, the one that hums its name back into her spine. It's weathered and not ornamented, not decorated, not personalized outside of how familiar its grips are beneath her gloved hands. Redana's roars like a lion as it leaves its cables behind and falls into the sky.

It's always been this. The placid blue is unnatural, but Redana's will adjust eventually. What's one more unearthly color when it's been kissed by every one that Polychromatikí had to offer? It's always been falling, over and over, tumbling out every time into the tumult and the tempest. There's no storm that its pilot hasn't seen and then, grinning, dived into. It taps its deeper energy stores, the ones designed to let it keep a d-scythe burning as Redana makes her way up and down the Plousios.

Everything's packed, right? Bags stuffed into the floorboard, the nagging feeling that something must have been left behind, but beneath her the world opens up and the thought of turning back seems wasteful. Her seat hums in agreement. The only way is forward, to see what hasn't been seen, to discover what comes next. The wild rush beneath her (like water, like a river) is just encouragement to clench the grips tighter, to brace her feet harder against the pedals, to squeeze more speed out of Redana's until it's like she's looping the Olympic sprint over and over again, and everyone else is straggling behind, except--

Except for Bella. For a moment, she catches a glimpse of black and cyan in her periphery, and her first instinct is to bring the D-Scythe to bear, but she checks herself, and Bella crests like a dolphin breaking free from a nebula-spur, and then she tumbles back down to earth, to claw at the ground, to try to keep up. And Redana doesn't doubt her for a second, even as she rockets forward, and the entire world unfolds underneath her mountain by mountain, river by river, flag by flag, and she can go searching for quests and lost treasures later, because right now she just needs to accelerate until she's left everything

everything

everything behind her, in the trail of her thrusters, in the echo of her engine, in the wake of the prow with which she cuts into the unknown. And nobody's here to hear her laughter, nobody except for Redana's. But that's fine. Bella's keeping up. That's all she wanted in the first place, isn't it?

[Thanqol]

If this were a planet you'd have circled it. If this were a star system you'd have crossed it. Although the Sun soars overhead steel fingers will not reach it. This world was old before Zeus invented space.

You walk through the realm Dream, the brother of Death.

The path is lit by the sun. Over your head it passes in regular circles; every day it passes through the underworld so to be reborn anew in some distant sky. This too is a truth older than mere space. Its direction lights the way, a constant fixed point along a golden path across a golden world. These are dreams of hills, the dreams of hills, and their memories go on and on.

Sometimes the hills imagine themselves mountains. They remember the fire and the crush and the gallop of the Earthshaker's horses. They remember when they grew, each of them reaching up to pierce the clouds that the gods might find a home on their crowns. With this ultimate crown to strive for the hills grew like forests, into mountains and beyond. The engines of the Plovers do not strain to cross them even so. Run, run, run - and leap! The world below becomes a patchwork, and only the warning heat of the sun on the backs of your necks drives you down again. Some lessons do not need to be learned more than once.

You move against the stream. The River Lethe flows ever towards the Underworld and on its ethereal currents are washed strange remembrances, even in this ancient and desolate place. Here on a mountaintop is a house - a shack, really, a place where the paint peels from soft and splintering wood. It stands on stilts that were once vibrant red but are now stained a rusty shade by the iron-rich sand it perches upon. Its doors are missing and insides are crowded but upon the walls wags have confessed which of their friends are stupid and volunteered their sexual services if only you could resurrect the technological paradigm that transformed their glyphs into words. The floor is thick with broken glass, layered in dust, and paradise for the beetles who come here to escape the mountaintop heat. Their shells are brown and polychromatic both, simple things that Poseidon loves and blesses and makes numerous enough to fill these ancient hills.

From here, on this scorching pinnacle, it is time for the first pause for rest. In the world ahead the hills are crushed beneath grain, beneath trees, and beneath the ever-stamping hooves of sheep. The world goes on forever in every direction, without even the curvature of a planet to trick your eye and hide these horizons from you, and in this moment you are at the top of it all.

When you are done with the view, some practicalities. The Plovers are low on fuel; the mountains were ancient and their dreams drank all of the chemical tribute offered to them. The obvious move is to consolidate all the fuel in one vehicle and use it to haul all the food, gear and medical supplies needed for the journey. And then... Not on foot. Not yet. The next stage will be simply to glide. To unfold artificial wings and cross these worlds as a flock of geese until the last of the fuel runs dry and the last of the altitude gives out.

There is much to be done. Many details to be taken care of. Many skills to be used. So much to focus on. So much that can't be focused on - and it is there, in the unattended parts of your minds, that the current of Lethe sets things drifting. If you work hard on the practical skills of the journey you will start to lose softer things, names and faces. If you spend time holding on to the people you love you will start to lose skills and habits. Name one thing to keep, and one thing to stay behind.

*

Dyssia!

The Azura had never gone in much for time. No watches, no clocks, no time sheets or punch cards. An air of timelessness was desirable, even - the idea of a craftsman becoming lost on their Path with no interruptions to their meditation was something to be lauded. In a way, it was a gift - there was never a particular sense of rush, and the idea of going outside in anything less than your state-mandated Best was unthinkable.

But all the same, sometimes people got annoyed with you for opaque social reasons if you took too long to arrive somewhere and it was never quite clear what an acceptable delay was. It depended on the rank of the person being made to wait, it seemed. Does that uncertainty bother you, Dyssia?

Tell us also of your clothes, of your scales, of the collection you bring with you. Are you a beautiful sky blue, or a muddy violet? Do you accent yourself with a perfectly complimentary cascade of crystals and sea gold or with an offensive red cloak? Do you carry your gear yourself - easy in zero gravity - or do you have a collection of squires and other subordinates to haul it around for you? And on the scale of 'politely hurried' to 'utterly unhurried', how long do you make the Sage wait?

(As to society's expectations: If you have violet or indigo scales, to dress in red is rebellious but understandable, if you have beautiful blue scales and dress in red it's a tragedy akin to masking a great beauty. If you carry gear yourself you are considered to be an eccentric unless you are carrying so much as to seem to be some form of strength training. Many Azura of low rank will have ten servitors on hand, an aristocratic Knight is expected to command a Legion. You can dress exactly according to your station, or make some small fashionable alterations to indicate desire to advance in the Court - but dressing above your station outright will have you thrown in prison for months.)

[Phoe]

Every second Bella spends watching the horizon makes it grow more beautiful. The grain rolls in softer and softer waves, the trees bloom in ever more brilliant colors, bees hum with a vigor that is infectious even across this infinite distance. Fruits wobble and spatter on the ground like fireworks, and the air is filled with the fragrance of ripe apples floating over grains and honeycomb. The sky is alight with a bouquet of colors so saturated and varied it could make a rainbow blush.

She feels it all surging inside her skull. The colors become deeper, the smells more luscious, the sounds clearer and brighter. More intense with every passing second until the simple act of breathing is like trying to hold a symphony inside her lungs. It would be painful, if it wasn't so beautiful. Or, no. It is this painful because it is so beautiful.

The pain becomes an itch. In her palms to start, and then her nose. Her ears. Her legs start to burn. To rest is to stop moving, and to stop moving is to allow the land to change itself in front of her rather than transforming it by her own willpower, which is called momentum. In other words, stillness is death. There is so much left to do! There is so much left to see! She must move, she must move, she must move! This girl called Bella must move, so she can see what comes after! The horizon is endless: where lies Okeanos? The question burns inside her like a virus.

She does what is natural. She safeguards the voyage. Cutting loose, burning free all by herself does not even occur to her. These are her people. Whoever they are, they belong to her ship. So they'll succeed or fail together. She made a promise, after all. She's certain of that much. She does not perform the labor, but oversees the taking of inventory. Her voice is high and clear on the winds, directing eyes, directing ears, directing hands. She is full to bursting with the knowledge of how to do a thousand menial tasks as quickly as can be, and she shares them all freely.

She does not transfer the supplies herself, because it is so important for someone with clear eyes to be watching the bigger picture. It feels good to stay in motion. Her red eye maps ten thousand paths for every set of feet to trod and her mind makes sense of them before she so much as registers it. These things are as natural as breathing, so she must put this eye on the path where it does not get bogged down by specifics. Her feet long to move, so she paces and follows along the plover line.

Only the itch in her palm remains. And there is nothing to be done for that until her Sister comes to her carrying the sword. The one with the edge that means safety. The true form of love. She takes it in her aching hand for the very first time, and when she swings it she can feel a hundred different forms click into place inside of her. A dozen others fall away, but they drift on the breeze and out of sight before she can register them. And what of it? She is more, not less.

Her orders happen alongside sparring, now. She duels a single woman with golden hair (whose name is Redana. Redana, Redana, Redana. Re. De. Naaaaaaaa) up and down the line, daring to spare her glances for the ones who are working to prepare their vehicles for their last and most glorious leg of the journey, even now issuing advice that sounds indistinguishable from orders.

But the sound of sword clashing against sword echoes through her words. Their dance is swift and brilliant. Graceful as the dawn and worthy of ten thousand apples, even be they made of gold and meant only for the Gods. She is teaching herself. She is testing herself. She is holding onto old strengths at the cost of older names. Names cannot fuel plovers. Names cannot cross mountains and ford rivers. Names cannot finish the long march and finally gaze as one upon the ocean. Not without the skills to guide them. And these people, this bunch of strangers and softies have maybe a round dozen among their number who will bother to hold onto these things with her.

She makes her sacrifices for the sake of others. Her sword rings loud and bright, the most beautiful music for the most beautiful place anyone has ever been. There is one person who makes all of this worth it. One name she holds tight to attach it to a face.

Redana. Fight her, Redana. Teach her, Redana. Dance with her, Redana. And kiss her, Redana. Redana. Redana. Redana. You alone have nothing to fear. She promised you. That you would never hurt again. And those words are as visible as a constellation inside her eyes.

[TheAmishPirate]

Road food fills an important job, as important as any of them. It must be rich, dense with nutrients. Refreshing to sip or to nibble. It must be able to stand alone, but greater still is the one than can blend with what’s foraged. All this, and everyone wishes it were yummy too. It’s a tough life, being road food. But Dolce is here to lend it a hand.

He spends a precious bit of fuel to haul an empty, newly-cleaned storage crate down the mountain, and climbs back up with a crateful of the freshest, sweetest spring water. Hold a hand over it, and feel the air grow still; it flows naturally cool from beneath the mountain. From this great trove he fills a trusty kettle. From the supplies aboard his plover, he fetches a little barrel, complete with spigot. Thus so he makes the rounds, stopping beside each plover, where groups gather in the shade to rest from their work, and enjoy a quick meal. Cups out, now, everyone. And hold them steady! First comes a thick syrup from the barrel, honey and spices and good things blended together. Then, fresh, cold water to fill. Mix thoroughly, wait for everyone to get acquainted, and enjoy! A spiced, sweet tea, of sorts, to put life in the body and a smile on your face.

At each group, he waits. There is time to wait. This, too, is road food. Moments when breath can be spent on conversation, and laughter, and company. In the time it takes for his brew to be properly mixed, there is time to reminisce, to tell of sights seen, to bleat contentedly as hands play through his curly wool. No one will go hungry. Not on his watch. No one will be forgotten.

It is here, amid laughter and good company, that the first are lost.

He keeps the memory of his first flight with the Starsong. His first meal away from the Manor. Joining them, officially. That fateful day when he transferred ships, and he first saw the Lady practicing the forms. These, he could never forget. The fifth mission. The seventy-first day off-planet. The in-between times, where the hard work of skill, habit, and growth was truly done. The steady climbs between peaks. These are the first to drift beneath the Lethe’s waters. Dissolved into a brew that carried the flavor of the experience, but whose ingredients he’d forgotten, and whose recipe he could not reproduce.

[Balmas]

A right answer exists for when to arrive. It has to. After all, everyone else seems to know what it is.

But if they do, nobody's willing to share. D'you know the kind of looks you get when you ask for, for, for a schedule? An estimate? It'd be so much easier if they could just give her a number, or, hell, "let us meet when the sun touches the horizon."

Or worse, they give you an answer, and then they fucking lie.

Oh, show up in your own good time. There isn't a rush. No doubt you have your own projects you need to work on. But just try it, and see what happens? They act as if it's a deliberate insult to do what they told her to do, as if she's snubbing them somehow! Why even say it's okay to make them wait, if that's not what they want her to do? Is it too much to ask to just say what you mean?

So Dyssia is early.

She thinks. She'll find out when she arrives, really. Sage Ohlemi might have the good grace not to mention it, which would be nice. Nicer than the ones who get that weird look and get all bossy, like they've decided they own you just because you showed up?

But it's better than the alternative, if the Great Sage decides Dyssia's taking too long.

The Sage'll get that look that says she took too long getting dressed--you know the one, the one with the pinched eyes and the pinched corners of the mouth?--but that he's come to expect this of you, Dyssia, none of which will be taken as a mark against you, but which nonetheless will hurt to get. Won't say anything about it, but the unspoken will hang in the air like a noxious stench. He understands, Dyssia. He's willing to work with your, ahem, oddities.

If he understands Dyssia, it'd be great if he could share with the class.

Although! That's kind of the point in her coming, right? Maybe Ohlemi knows something she doesn't!

Hell, it's practically guaranteed. It's not like they just hand out Great Sageness. How great a sage could he be if he didn't know something that she doesn't?

It's why she's taken so long getting ready. It's a multi-person job to bring out the luster in those navy scales, to bring them to the point where each navy scale glistens like they're deeper than they are. It's why she's draped in blue silks and gold teardrops, each one set with a stone of lapis to set them off.

It's no hoodie, for sure. The texture is all wrong, with none of the comforting weight or bulk of what she'd wear around the house. The silk catches every breeze, sending the stones swaying. It's like being pelted by unenthusiastic pebbles every time she moves.

But it's what she has to wear. The great sage has to know how seriously she's taking this by her showing up like this, right? Has to have something to help her?

(As the servitors scramble to hang the stones, she stares in dissatisfaction at the purple pattern. If it were somewhere else, it could at least be covered up. On her back, maybe, or down her side. Somewhere she can wear clothing and make excuses. Oooh! That could be her trademark, is to be Dyssia, that Azura who always wears daring clothes that cover the back at all times. You've heard of backless dresses? Well, this is the opposite. Give them a show up front, and make sure they never question what's in the rear.

(But no. Right in the face, right where it's impossible to miss. It's at least symmetrical? But being symmetrical just means there's more of it to stare at, more of it for people to notice and tut and "what a shame" about when she's not supposed to be able to see. A winding vine, creeping from her nose, beneath both eyes, and burying itself in her hood. A good metaphor, if a winding vine were a symbol of yet another defect.)

She has to arrive in state, which means the servitors have to be carrying her supplies. Which is weird, by the by. It's great to have crafting supplies on hand, but… having a dozen people running around you, tending your every need, do you have enough paint ma'am, more paper ma'am, do you need that book ma'am…

It's like being tended by an enthusiastic tornado. If the twelve little servitors give her any more help, she'll never be able to get anything done.

It would be so much nicer if they could just ride along with her, hovering along on her back. Can you imagine all the hands on her, just riding the same grav belt as her? Can you imagine how much faster they could all go if the servitors didn't need to proceed on foot? She's thought about doing just that--loading all the supplies in one cart, loading all the fuzzy little ones on herself, and pushing the belt to its limits.

So much nicer.

But no. It has to be an event. There must needs be a procession. She has to carry her whole household with her, in case she needs any of it at any point--which is, admittedly, something that happens, if she gets ideas, so it's nice then--but still.

Just.

So much hassle, so much fanfare, so much noise, so much light. She can feel the headache building, and she's not halfway up the hill.

[Tatterdemalion]

It wasn’t ever a conscious choice. Not really. It would be nice if it was, wouldn’t it? If Redana had a moment where she tried to hold onto everything, but found it all slipping out of her grasp like sand, and had to choose what was most precious to her?

No. She’s always been herself. And she doesn’t even notice what slips away. She is the strain of muscles, moving trunks out of dry-dust Plovers at awkward angles. She is the rhythm of a march back and forth, the plip-plap of feet striking the ground over and over and over as one thing after another is ferried from one place to another. She is the hand that helps lift a corner, and she is the work-song of the Coherent rippling up and down the line.

Everyone here is hers. A company, a conglomerate, a crew. The names bleed away easy. They are sensations, images, connections. A warm meal. A proud roar. Advice from below. A birdlike chirp above the crowd. The bell hanging around her throat.

Maybe it will be funny later that nobody really notices her losing her name. She’s listening for the inflection now, the attempt at getting her attention over the din of the work. She doesn’t even notice (it was so easy before, after all). It’s gone. It’s noise. It’s three syllables rising and falling. You could say anything to get her attention, sweat bleeding through her clothes, teeth flashing white through ruddy lips; she’s in the runner’s high, the elation of her body, the need to turn her shoulder to the wheel and make it turn.

Does it matter who anyone is? She holds on to what they mean. Warmth. Friendship. Loyalty.

Love.

She loves the anxious little sheep who makes sure she takes breaks, who pushes a thermos of hot tea into her travel-roughed hands, whose voice is soft and full of care. She loves the lioness who competes with her, who pushes her to work harder, who rallies labor around the toughest jobs and takes position at the front. She loves the woman with the red eye, the sternly hot one, the one who provides a rhythm to her life (a finger tapping a bell, a wagging tail, hushed laughter). She loves her companions, one and all, who she is grateful for, who are going to make it to the end together. She doesn’t need to remember who they were; she remembers who they are now.

(And by night the bells are close around her, and whisper a rising-falling-rising mantra: re. da. na. RE da NA. re-da-na. a pretty three-part meditation. It marks time when they lose themselves in the now, in the ways of move-like-this, in the mouths-and-limbs dance. A name is nothing. Wipe away all signifier and what is important still remains.)

By the time the vehicle is ready, she is the sensation of labor for others; she is the joy of service; she is the vessel of orders rung out from bells. Her colors are red and yellow; she is anxious as she watches the horizon, itching to move. She has to keep moving forward. She’s not going to give up, even if she has to carry everyone to the end. She is a sword, a wheel, a vehicle, a lover, a beast, a thunderbolt. She is all things for her companions, as necessary— and for the sound of bells most of all.

For her, anything. Everything. As long as it is not here forever.

[Thanqol]

There are cablecars down from the mountains, between the mountains, over the soaring mountaintop lakes that mirror the skies. Highways through the sky, or a net holding up the sky. There is snow here amidst the living-dying grass, crystal trickles of water clearer than air and colder than life. Here the mud crystallizes and the dirt sloughs away as something pure organizes the silt away. Expanding and contracting, like breathing, leaving dirt roads a ruin. The water excavates, carving away buried boulders and stone, and then carving away their impurities. It's steep, especially when the rains come and those trickles become streams and the mountainside path becomes a muddy waterfall and entire sections of hill come away underneath your feet. You sleep in cold and huddled tents, soaked through with water and dirt and it feels like you'll never be dry again. Dinner comes from cans, though rationing is a long way off.

In the shadows of the storm, and in the flashes of lightning, you see the silhouetted shapes of snow machines on clean cut hills. You see the outlines of rocks heroic. You came a long way to see those rocks. Not grand or monumental, not made to commemorate wars or kings, but they're here when nothing else is, and you have to respect that.

The next shape to resolve is the museums, the castles, the communications hubs. Thick grey concrete discs built around mountains in rings and layers, like retrofitted pyramid steps, like bunkers with a view. Glass windows and satellite dishes and display benches with maps and geodes and layers of inert text. They provide shelter, not from the rain but in being a part of a world where it hasn't rained for ten years. There are yellow flowers here and a bicycle path that will lead forever on out through the rises and falls.

This stage of the journey is between mountains primordial and mountains with purpose, the borderline between snow and artificial snow. What do you take with you, and what stays behind?

*

Dyssia!

The streets of Irassia are a distraction.

When one assembles a society entirely of those who are best at their arts, each of their arts demands that you bend to them. Flasks beyond compare, interwoven with engraved opals and corals, glass or lead, are laid out on dozens of benches and tables. No charge - money is not relevant here - just take whatever suits as your reward for passing this master on the streets. A storyteller sits atop a water fountain and theorizes about new kinds of girls and the gnomic poetry of their relationships, loves and battles. An orator beats her chest and roars her condemnation of her rival above the crowd, embedding the righteousness of her cause with the power of her rhetoric. There is a little bit of everything here, and it is happening all of the time.

But the worst delay is threatened by a Guardian. Glorious in a blue that might make you blush, she has set up occupation of a key bridge, surrounded by squires and attendants, and none may pass. Guardians often occupy such key points and deny anyone from crossing as part of their training. It is a provoking gesture - fight her, perhaps, or trick her, seduce her, evade the fire of her antiaircraft weaponry by flying over the chasm. Or sit down and wait four to eight hours for her to leave, or take an hour roundabout course along a different path and hope it is not also blocked. This is normal and expected and is part of Azura city life, but you are trying to get somewhere on time. How do you deal?

[Phoe]

It has become harder to rush ahead. The thrill of the journey still calls to her, and burns in all the same places with all the same insistence. But in the rain and through these hills, the going is slow. She cannot remember being dry. She cannot remember being warm. She can remember rushing headlong toward the horizon, which is why she looks so frustrated now.

It is not that her legs aren't up to the task. She has strong muscles that can carry more than her fair share of the weight. She has the will to pull herself out of the mud over and over and over again. But the party has slowed down around her, and she is obliged to circle back and make sure that everybody is keeping pace. It is dangerous to become separated in all this downpour. Rest is called for frequently. Tents are pitched, though no one seems to have thought to learn how to set them properly.

She can't remember their names. Or if they had any. It doesn't matter; she has their number and that's enough to get on by. She has a number, too. Is a number. Was a number. And a number is like a name, when you've got nothing else to use. She does the counting at every sodden campsite. First the golden haired dreamer, then the mice who cling so closely to her for protection (hers? theirs?), and then the girls she cannot help but call Sister even though none of them look alike or could possibly have been born to the same parents. Then the kindly sheep and the gregarious lion. At the Thirteenth slot she remembers to count herself, so her count doesn't fall one short and send her into panic.

Maybe that is meant to be her number. But she is sick of it. Or maybe she's just tired of the rain, it's hard to tell. Irritation builds on her in driving waves until she is permanently wearing a scowl, and nobody wants to be around her very long if they can help it (except for Re. Da. Na). She is weary of the counting, of needing to count. She is annoyed that she never remembers to start the count with herself, where it would be easiest. She is freezing and burning all at once with the need for new experiences, new food, new weather new... even if not new sights, then at least new rocks.

She's come a long way to look at rocks. They could at least be nice enough to be different rocks.

The rain does not pass. The rocks change but little. It is always slow going when you're crossing the mountains, no matter how great the need of your journey. But as the rivers form close to their paths, closing some off and opening up new ones. As the avalanches of mud and rock slide free and threaten the entire journey in a way she cannot help but find entrancing and beautiful. As the water soaks into her fur so deep that it can never come out again and the endless noise of rain is the only music her ears will ever know...

She comes at last to the buildings. To mountains that some hand has shaped. To flowers and gardens and glass covering everything, or so it seems to her. Nothing changes, really. But everything does. She is caught up in a deluge that washes her away even though it does not budge her a single centimeter. Her clothes remain soaked, but these flatter her form. Her body drips from every crevice, but the water serves to soothe the itch that's hounded her from the moment she set eyes on her plover. Not enough to douse it, but enough to content her with the pace that they are making. Forward is, after all, still forward.

But more than anything, the sound of the rain is different. As it plinks across walls and panes and the wonders of the pyramids it becomes more than just the rush of a downpour and the drumming on her aching ears. It is the sound of bells. She knows this to the very core of her heart: there's no more beautiful sound than a bell. It's enough to make her cry, though in the storm it's not a thing anybody else might notice. But she is crying just for her, and for the loveliness of this sound that soothes her body like medicine.

She is washed clean. The mud drips out of her fur and her skin, her hair smooths out enough that she can keep it out of her eyes. She lifts a hand and calls for the tents to be pitched again. Time to rest and time to count. Time to eat cold food from a can and not even mind it in the slightest.

She begins the count with herself. That's the easiest way to make sure she gets everybody, after all. And then the Dreamer, the Mice, her Sisters, the sheep...

Someone new can be Thirteen.

[Tatterdemalion]

The tent’s small. Barely fits two. The tent’s damp. Nothing really dries out here, no matter how she tries. The tent is humid. The warmth of their bodies fighting against the cooling rain on their skin, the livingness of them filling it from corner to corner.

She lies there, sometimes, for a while. Right after waking up, or just before she falls asleep. The color of the tent is blue. It is streaked like a tiger’s flanks with rain. If she reaches up, presses her fingers against it, then the water soaks through, trickles down her fingers.

This is a holy place. Here, where the air is thick and her partner uses her arm as a pillow. Here, where the only sound is rain striking the tent, the wind rippling the sides, their breathing in and out, and far-off roaring. It never lasts forever; her companion will sit up, grouse, start pulling on damp socks, start out into the light before dawn. Or she will succumb to exhaustion and sleep without dreams.

Outside the tent, the world is wet and unclean. It’s not a judgment, just a fact. Grit sticks to the fingers of her gloves. Her leggings are impossibly smeared with mud. Even where the rain kisses her, it doesn’t wash away the sweat and the grime. And at the end of the day, she enters the tent, muscles aching, fingers numb, absolutely spent, and she peels off the outer layers and drapes them over a bag, and she works her way into a different bag, and she lies there in the midst of holiness.

Once, she asks a question. Does the question itself really matter? Her companion tells her to shut up and go to sleep. She watches the rain, and listens to the rain, and says something— inconsequential. Sound leaves her.

Her partner rolls over, presses a clammy palm over her mouth, hisses. She kisses that palm and holds it close, cold fingers trying to be gentle, tracing over the knuckles. They’re holy, too.

The next morning, her lover slowly wakes, lifts her head from breastbone, yawns with a flash of white and luxurious red. Stares down. “…idiot,” she murmurs. “We’re going to be late.” But she still stoops to undo the shoelaces around thumbs, fumbles with the almost-iron knot in the kerchief.

The waiting wasn’t hard. It was holy.

On a different time— after the rain change— after, in the shadows of angles, in a tent pitched within yellow flowers—

She kisses those cheeks dry, as best she can, and holds her beloved’s head against her chest, one ear to the heart, one ear to the rain. The rumbling running through her is as beautiful as the thunder that rumbles against the top of the mountains.

This is another thing: one night she is not there, and the sound of the rain comes to find her, to come up behind her, to embrace her. She is lost. There are lights blinking up on the mountainside, red, as far away as the moon. Every step she takes leaves her just as far away. She doesn’t know what she means, and that empty not-meaning is the leash that tugs her along. It takes the sound of the rain and the thunder to take her hand and cover her eyes and lead her back to the tent, where she can sleep, where she can forget the far-off pulse of lights promising that if you come close enough, we will have a meaning, and you will understand, here, under the moon, under the stars, under no sun.

Somewhere, a crown exists only to be proof that it was forgotten. Maybe it lies, impossibly, at the base of the tower which holds the lights.

[TheAmishPirate]

The rain presses down, always. Now it teases and pokes at exposed skin, at sopping clothes, a soft patter with no pattern. Now it falls in solid walls, leaping from the clouds to meet them and carrying away anything too weak to hang on. Their footsteps will stop for a time, and the rain will press down.

Lucky Vasilia can bear it. Tall Vasilia, strong Vasilia, she of the long legs and sure feet, she cuts through mudslide and stream alike without stumbling. The endless rains soak her to the bone, stealing away heat and dry and comfort, but she holds her heart in a grip of iron and will not let go. When she deigns to fuss, her wit is sharp and her timing sharper. When the call to march come, her voice rings loud above the storm. For she is strong, and she can bear it.

Not all are so fortunate. Others stand a head shorter. The waters rush up to their waists, and they nearly fall in exhaustion on the far shore. Others wear coats of merely water resistant wool. And there is always more water. They may as well walk with pockets full of stones, their wet coats slapping wet against their body with each step. Others cannot remember the sun, nevermind warmth. For these, it takes all of their strength to keep going. While lucky Vasilia has plenty to spare.

When the call for first march comes, she playfully steals from the packs of the weary, and slips their burdens on her own with a wink and a smile. Sometimes she walks in the rear, and the forms of her comrades come flailing through the misting rains where their boots have sunk into the mud. These she pulls free, and pulls forward, marching them back to the safety of the column. Sometimes she walks in the fore, the first to cross the stream. The anchor rope makes a stylish belt about her waist, and at the sound of a cry and a splash she plants her feet firmly, and none are washed away. Sometimes she is a silent companion to the weary, sometimes her marching-song carries them one step ahead of the other. Sometimes, it is only she and he, huddled in a tent. She peels off soaking uniform and slips into her damp jacket, and before he can argue she’s tucked him within and zipped it up, that he may warm himself by her heartbeat.

These then, are the trials of Vasilia of Lakkos, hero to the people, whose glaive strikes for the weary, the downtrodden, the forgotten, the left-behind. Who enjoys victory after victory, and the memory of defeat grows too weak to hang on. The mud carries it away with all that is useless and dirty, and the rain presses down, and Vasilia presses on.

[Balmas]

Now listen here. Dyssia has a goal. Her spiritual development depends on this. This is important.

Oh, and something about the planet dying, but really who has time to think about that?

Focus on what's real, which is that Dyssia is unstoppable. She's a force of nature, she will obtain her goal, and nothing can stand in her way.

Ignore the storyteller. If you stop here, it'll be hours before you realize it. He's too good at his craft. He'll be here on the way back, and you can listen to the romances he spins afterwards. You can do this, Dyssia. Ignore that maybe you're gonna miss an important detail in the ongoing saga, you can do this.

But consider also, holy crap, that glassblower is incredible? Look at the way she pulls at it, pinching and tugging as if it's taffy, instead of molten sand. She's got a row of horses cooling in front of her, each one unique, each one somehow more truly a horse than the one before it.

Which is absolutely incredible, in that none of them actually look like a horse? Dyssia's tried to draw horses before, and somehow none of them come out right--a leg too long, or an ear that refuses to be the wrong shape. She's never thought that it could be so much more effective to draw what a horse is, instead of just what it looks like.

And here she is, doing that in glass. Smooth, flowing, moving while not moving.

No! Remember. Force of nature. Enlightenment. Progress, dammit!

(Carefully, she takes one of the sky-blue-cooling-to-orange horses and passes it to a servitor. Take care of her, please.)

And holy shit, Amycix. You know, the blacksmith? The one that has a pavilion on the corner, all silks and cloth and warm and dark?

Amycix is so cool. Like, unbelievably cool. You know the old saying about having multiple irons in the fire? Amycix actually does that. Multiple forges roar, sleeping dragons breathing fire across the ingots, all in various stages of yellow-orange-red.

She can tell the difference, did you know that? Dyssia's never picked up the secret, but Amycix assures her that you need to be able to do that, if you want to be a good blacksmith. That's why she has the pavilion, that's why it's so dark, is so she can better see the color of the metal. Try to forge steel too cool when it's this shade of red, and it fucks with the crystalline structure of the metal. But get it too hot, when it's glowing white like this, and all the carbon gets burnt out of the steel, leaves it charred and ugly and weak. You want it a nice glowing yellow, that's when to strike.

And holy crap, Amycix can strike.

Don't tell her she thought that, please. Please please please don't tell Amycix about the fantasies about those arms, and what they could do to her any time. Mmmf.

But it's not fair, the absolute precision Amycix manages. It's like, she never stops moving, right? But the way she moves is like she's already seen the future of how she'll move, and now she's just carrying it out. Out of the forge, onto the anvil, three precise strikes, bang-bang-bang, and back in, and onto the next forge. There's an economy of motion that makes the blows almost meditative, and--

Okay, that's enough of that. If she stays and watches any longer, she'll be in more danger of not arriving than if she'd stopped to listen to the storyteller. Damnright hypnotizing, is what she is.

But Amycix is super cool, as established before, pay attention. Doesn't say a word about thirteen people ducking into her workshop to strategize, doesn't say a word when they aren't paying attention, only smirks a little when--oh fuck--she notices maybe a little too much about where they're paying attention, bail--

Aaaand that just leaves the minor hurdle of the Guardian.

She saw the blue on the bridge all the way from the top of the hill, and had groaned then, and is groaning now.

What is it about some people that makes them think they have the right to just clog up traffic like that? To just declare that this is their bridge, and none may pass without their say so? Why even design a city where rivers and chasms allow idiots to insert themselves as roadblocks?

It's like, she gets the appeal. It feels good, probably, to declare to the world that you are invincible. To tell any and all who look at you that, come on then, if you think yer'ard enough. What's the point of being invincible if you don't have anyone to test yourself against? It's about sitting there, and making eye contact, and daring people to prove you wrong, and seeing them wilt before you.

(She's considered what it must be like, and has come to the conclusion that standing in one place, glaring menacingly, for eight hours, seems like a pretty pointless and boring use of time. What a waste of a perfectly good day.)

Normally, she'd indulge them. Detouring means they get their high of successfully deterring someone with their presence, and she gets to avoid dealing with assholes. Or maybe, if she's feeling perverse, she'll just talk at them and see who breaks first.

Oh, it's not anything deceptive. You don't need to fool someone into letting you past when you know the right way to chatter. Make it so intolerable to listen that they either strike first or let you past just to get rid of you.

But not today. Not when she has a goal, not when she's unstoppable, not when destiny is on the line. Today, she has no time for them. Today, it's time to hitch the servitors to the grav belt, and hope like hell she's better at dodging than the Guardian is at shooting.

[Thanqol]

The mountains dreamed themselves tall, and humans dreamed them taller. Ladders to the stars, pyramids to the gods. Here on their frontier the dreams blend together and the mountains become pyramids. Mountains of stairs, ever upwards, ever downwards, doors open to reveal the scent of mercury and embalming fluid. Atop each pyramid point of glittering crystal rests a ball of golden fire, a personal sun. The pyramids have crashed into each other, piling up edge to edge, like driftwood washed downstream and collecting on the shore. Amidst them are statues, bronze and sandstone, sphinxes and soldiers and lawgivers, piled amidst the valleys of the pyramids as though left by floodwater. Enormous faces smile beatifically or snarl with kingly cruelty. Weapons for giants arise in broken piles. Cathedrals stand proud amidst glittering fields of shattered stained glass.

Rivers run down from the distant mountains, the crystal streams of the mountaintop storms flowing down into this graveyard of pyramids, cascading down the steps in crashing, ever-roaring waterfalls. They pool into lakes and streams in the valleys and fill the world with swampish life. Lily pads and tangling vines and carnivorous plants that snap closed around the dreams of flies. Roman pillars have their marble snapped by the supple strength of crawling ivy, the barrow mounds of warrior kings erupt with wildflowers even as the flow of the Lethe carries them upstream against the river-currents, ships of dirt garlanded in riots of colour. Mortared stone cracks as fruit trees force their roots between them, and present their harvests of glittering pomegranates for passer-by to pick as they will

And then you see the slaves.

They carry water up from the flowing rivers to the heights of their pyramids. They scatter the grave soil and hoe the earth. Their backs are burned black beneath their suns. They smile with fading satisfaction as they watch their crops grow. And on the toxic, bitter scent on the breeze you catch a familiar smell, a familiar memory - and see a familiar face. Aged and care-worn, he smiles briefly but keeps his distance. He still watches the flashing sword that the wolf girl carries.

Aphrodite... Aphrodite, how could you forget? Here in the depths of the Lethe you have discovered his secret plantation. The tobacco farm where he grows the herb for his ever-present cigarettes. And you have discovered his most true slaves, the rapturous creatures who had everything and yet dreamed of immortality. Kings and emperors who built to outlast death achieved their goal, true enough. They would not pass into the realm of Hades as common men. They would not pass into the realm of Hades at all. Instead they will labour, working the fields beneath the scorching suns until their pyramids crumble into dust. What could be a sweeter drug for the God of Desire but crops grown by the sweat of the insatiable?

He rolls his devil's leaf in white paper and ignites it, then raises it to you in bitter salute as you make your way through the Valley of the Kings. What do you carry from this monumental place, and what do you leave behind?

*

Dyssia!

The more common use of the Grav-Rail is to control one's own gravity, to turn sideways into down, and to reduce the speed of falling so instead one glides sedately along on the world's current. The militarized use, Gravity Projection is to try to alter someone else's gravity from a distance. To fight so with a Rail is one of the most complicated martial processes imaginable, a combination between elaborate martial arts and doing physics in real time. Essentially, chess boxing for control over reality.

The Guardian attacks you with a Projection. She stands in the centre of an inverted Grav-Rail, a ring that she twists and spins her entire body within as it orbits around her. It's a simple matter of flipping a Rail inside out and suddenly you're manipulating the universe's gravity rather than your own, but the universe is a far more complex beast. Imagine trying to identify a single point in space, then communicating that point in space through the medium of dance, and then trying to flip that point around backwards. If you do it right you can make someone fall in a direction of your choice, amplify or release the effect of gravity on them, or even create a microsingularity inside their body that crushes their bones under their own weight. If you can do it right it's the perfect weapon, and its use is the crown jewel in the Azura arsenal. That is definitely a load-bearing 'if', though, especially when you're using it against another Azura wearing another Rail.

Projection duels are the closest the galaxy gets to outright wizard battles; two powerful wizards competing for control of gravity, locked in fierce stares as the world explodes and shatters around them. But you're not up against a master, and you're just trying to cross a valley and not win a fight. All told, it's not too bad - the equivalent of needing to do a simple sudoku puzzle and go for a light jog at the same time. The Guardian must still be new, bless her.

Tell us of how you overcome this challenge, and after you do, how you land and make your final preparations before approaching the sacred pavilion Great Sage Ohlemi.

[Tatterdemalion]

Of course she was the first one to find them. She has been insatiable. Like a hound-servitor trapped indoors, staring out the window, yearning to run. So she does. She runs. She climbs. She clambers. Yes, she clambers— up and down and over. She is, ostensibly, a scout. What she is more often is an adventurer. The nature of this valley is such that wherever she goes, she can look around and find something new, interesting, intriguing, underneath a shining pink sky.

It must be what she was made for. Her sword swings in a scabbard slung over one shoulder. Her bare limbs burst with freckles. Her gloves are sure, her boots grip steady. She catches herself running her fingers over the dust-catching scarf, which feels… right. In its right place, just like she’s in hers.

When her satchel is empty of ration bars (and full of interesting rocks and sun-faded trinkets), she navigates back to… to security. To a scowl and a wagging tail-tip. Look at these stones, she offers; look at this pin for your shadow-hair, look at this scarab-ring for your soft-finger. Let me give you the way forward; let me be your guide through the valley and the mire, up the shelves and down the stairs. Just give me a kiss. Just tell me I did good. Just wear my gift, just once.

Tell me that my body is useful, and I am good at using it, and what brings me joy is worth doing.

So of course she finds them first; she approaches them with her sword in her hand, at first, and then sheathed once she comes close and sees the mania. The smiles, the sweat, the exhaustion— but without the joy. Just the obsession. Just the labor, and not for its own sake. And above them all stands Desire.

She offers her honored enemy an emphatic apotropaic gesture.

Then she is going here and there, there and here, jumping over ditches, steadying a handcart, offering a steadying hand, asking: do you want to leave? Do you want to come with us? I can’t quite say where we’re going, but it’s dreadfully important— don’t you want to come? (But wanting is the whole of it, and dooms her to failure.)

Finally, one stops, and considers a moment.

Not yet. Not after all I have done to remain. When the harvest is done, he promised… I will have my reward. Everything I ever… everything. And that is enough to drown all the rest of them. Petty. Grasping. Unworthy. I alone am worthy, was ever…

…but thank you. Good luck, and here—

They offer her the weathered cloak-clasp. Jagged Ceronian bronze, the wolf’s head over clouds (unless they are the backs of sheep). A statement, and a weapon, and an impossibility. She closes her fingers around it, and they stand a little straighter for it.

Let it see starlight again, and battle, and glory. Let the Azura remember who made them tremble. Let the universe remember me, who changed the course of stars and determined the fate of trillions with the lifting and lowering of a fan.

Their teeth flash, and she takes a step back despite herself, but, no, they are already stooping, lifting the grave-dirt onto their shoulder again. She touches the brooch to her breastbone, and presses a point into the skin, enough to dimple, as she watches the conqueror, the ruler, the insatiable, make their way up the pyramid again.

But their tail wags, tired but sure, and she clips the brooch to her scabbard. She has done what she can. Now all she can do is make it to the other side for their sake, too.

[Phoe]

She glides through the path of kings like a ghost. There is nothing for her here. There is nothing of love in that smoke, there is nothing of beauty in these crumbling monuments. The path carries her forward like an ice floe along a current, as if it too was rejecting her presence here.

There had been... something of her, in all of this, though she cannot recall ever having walked as a King. The very idea of it seems preposterous to a lifelong wanderer like her, and yet something at the corners of her heart feels the slightest tug as she passes. It pulls her neck, if nothing else, to watch the sweat on the backs of the Fallen and see the starless sky baking them like clay. It calls her to notice the crumbling and unrecognizable edifices all around her and wonder vaguely (and a little sadly) if she ever read about any of these people in a happier time.

It calls to her to watch her scout. Her scout? Her scout. Her soul, her lover. Re. Da...

Anxiety she cannot name and does not understand stabs at her every time they part in this place. Her Heart loves to wander, and the girl's own body warns her that this is a terrible place to become lost in, worse than all the others they have crossed by far. This is a place where if you stop you will never, ever leave. Forward is the only way forward, and that is that. But her Heart longs to scramble, to leap, to explore, and sometimes only with the deepest reluctance seems to feel the tug on her leash and come trudging back to make her reports.

Often she comes back with gifts. Apologies, she calls them. Dedications, the girl corrects her. The scowl is not for the sake of her wayward Heart, but for the feeling crawling up her spine that something is slipping free inside of her. Soon it might slough off and fall away, and she might not even recognize it to pick it back up. For the first time that idea scares her. For the first time she can feel the rattle in her soul that sounds and smells like sickness. But she takes these Apologies, these Dedications, one and all. She does not need to be begged to wear them, hold them, smell them, kiss them. She does it all freely, and forever. Her hair and her dress are full of the things. The weight of them is her pride.

Her pride. She feels that flicker at the base of her neck again, where it meets the shoulder. The girl's gold-and-red eyes turn and watch the shadow of Aphrodite as if he were the sun in the sky. He does not meet her gaze, but hides from her inside a cloud of impenetrable smoke. The foulest thing she has ever smelled. Her nose wrinkles with disgust, and she turns her attentions back to the sad creatures tending to the stuff he makes it from. Her pride. Her pride. Her pride.

Down this hill and into the path of kings lies the final resting place of vainglory. Here toil who, in their mightiness, took their insecurities as threats to be stamped out. So much effort, and for what? All that talent. All that work, all those lives ground into dust to raise statue after statue after statue. Empires raised and shattered while petty hearts screamed their names to the gods in the vain hope that when they passed their majesty would linger after. What did it buy them? Only one god listened.

All. All the others... abandoned them. Only Aphrodite paid them any, any heed. She closes her eyes. Pathetic. None of these people ever had names to begin with. If someone else had risen up in their place, how much more might have been done? How much greater heights could have been reached, how much more of the glass and the rain could have replaced the scorching plantation they now float through?

But she understands, at last. She reaches for the sword now sitting at her hips. Not an especially sharp blade, not a special blade, but a very pretty one. One of her favorite Dedications, of all those she now wears. The girl glances at the strange and lovely face in the blade she sometimes doesn't recognize as her own reflection. And then she lifts. It has blade enough for this.

The girl slices a single braid out of her hair, one that has sat on her head for countless ages. She tosses it down into the valley for the mighty to contest over. The expression of disdain ruins any smile she might have had forming.

But her body feels lighter than the air around her, all of a sudden. And when her Heart next asks her if it's ok to go exploring, she finds that it will be a race.

[Balmas]

Okay, just one second. Need you to come up a little--yeah, like that. Closer. C'mon, closer, you're not gonna get bitten. Unless you're into that? No judgement, biting is great, shows you care, if you want we can find a nice nook somewhere and play around. But f'real, c'mere. Need to tell you a secret, and nobody else can know we're not just biting each other.

Good, just like that.

Comfy? Ready?

Good.

Deep breaths?

Okay.

Grav rails are the coolest fuckin' thing ever.

Shhh, shhh! See, that's why we can't let anybody else hear this, they'll get jealous! Even with all the time in the world--even with everyone else encouraging her to take all the time in the world--there are so many things demanding attention, needing to be tried, and the rest of them will know if you have a favorite!

But can you blame her?

It's like, on the one hand, they're simple. Mundane, even! Ubiquitous, on every hip! People, gliding along, buoyed up--though that's maybe the wrong term? Can you be said to be buoyed up if what you're actually doing is just leisurely falling sideways?--buoyed sideways by something so normal people almost don't stop to notice it!

But it's so much more than that! So much more than just up and down, side and back, vector and speed!

It's soaring! It's ballet, twirling in the sky, servitors soaring out around her like a planet's rings! It's dropping upside down into the sky, hovering, plunging diagonally until suddenly there's a planet planted at the tip of her tail like a fulcrum, and spinning away crazily in a new direction!

She's not crazy, right? Pretty sure she's not? It's like, you have all these stories of legendary heroes facing each other and trading gravitational blows so powerful it disrupts the planet itself, and people act as if it's normal to just hover sedately along? When there's all this that you could be doing instead???

And that's just on her own part, without Projecting back! Just dancing, being difficult to target, never standing still for an instant unless it would throw off their targeting! Evading the target lock and conjuring a bubbling string of giggles!

Add in Projection to that, and the giggles burble into full-on laughter. Not making fun of the guardian, please understand! It's the laughter that happens when you're just having too much fun for the sounds not to spill out somehow, y'know? A tap here, a nudge there, not enough to harm, but enough to disrupt, make it so the gravity manifests just that little bit off-center?

Holy shit, this Guardian is amazing, did you know that? She's young and inexperienced, just like her, but she's throwing everything she has at her! She's definitely got the harder job here, but--just wow! She's playing upside down and with inverted controls and she's skipped leg day, but Dyssia's still feeling the glancing pockets of gravity, just a shade too slow to touch her, like if she slowed down just a second more she'd be on her in an instant!

Oh, she's coming back this way afterwards. She has to, see? Dyssia can't stop now, because enlightenment has a deadline, which is a weird thing for a concept to have? But she can't stop now, which means she needs to stop later, which means that after she talks to the sage and after she achieves her destiny and after she's sent the servitors home, then she is going to come back, and give this Guardian the attention she deserves, and it is going to be great.

She's still laughing with the thrill by the time the Guardian turns her attention from the sky and back to the bridge, and still giggling from the adrenaline by the time they drop towards the ground. She's worse for the wear: minus some gemstones, veil is… somewhere--which is technically true of virtually anything, in that barring some quantum mechanics everything has at least a position--and the servitors are giggling almost as much as she is, most undignififed, although she can't blame them… Bit of reassembly necessary. Clean off the dust kicked up, find a backup veil, act like this is the plan…

And make herself known. She can't remember whether she's supposed to announce herself, or have herself announced by someone else? Just walk in as if she owns the place?

Probably better to send someone in, and let the sage know she's here, and wait for her invitation. Unless the message was the invitation?

Fuck it, better to wait for the second invitation. Just to make sure.

[TheAmishPirate]

Dolce walks the valley of kings clinging tight to the hand of royalty. Vasilia, noble Vasilia, strides amongst the rubble, unbowed and undaunted. What strength yet untapped in her powerful frame, that she bears the sun without complaint, and he suffers in her shadow? Her thoughts tread paths well-run through crowns, and gods, and nations, and ruin. She walks between princely slaves, every step laced with dignity, every step a thankful prayer for safe passage through Aphrodite's lands. Everywhere he looks, he sees the black-stained hands of their faithful scout, and in shame he clings tighter to his escort.

What is he to do? Aphrodite is watching. Acknowledge him, pay him the respect he is due from one who is so insignificant. Let not his gaze linger, on one who is worthy of special attention. Let not his gaze miss him, as one who is trying to hide. This sheep is not special, but no more not special than anyone here. Be small, be pleasant, be useless in the grand matters. The wish burning in his heart depends on it. These people depend on it, though they know it not. Everyone depends upon it, and that's more people than he'll ever know, and it's everyone he knows.

If there is room still to wish for a journey home, Vasilia will be the one to wish it. He is but a humble chef, a lost sheep, and has his hands full with just the one.

[Thanqol]

The mountains finally fade into the distance. Even the pyramids and barrows wear down at last. Tobacco and swamp vegetation gives way to a dry, crumbling orange soil that tastes of blood. The winds picks it up and carries it from the land's scars, the empty pits where buildings or roads should be slotted into. It lingers in the air, barely kept aloft by a miserly breeze. A rain like an insult comes through, spitting just enough wetness to condense the dust out of the air and stick it to your hair and clothes.

But then there's the wheat. Endless fields of dead gold, greedy roots holding the powder soil together. No orderly, cultivated grains are these - these are wild grasses and they are jagged, seed pods like needles so that they might tangle into the clothes and hair of passer-by who will carry them to new homes. Unlovely things, a glimpse of the vicious logic of Demeter even here - but for all that, the act of picking them out of each others hair is a curiously playful experience.

The worst are the thistle fields. There is no other word for these: these are cursed. These are a curse. Tall and thin trees made entirely out of spikes, leaves as sharp as their dull violet flowers. Many of them are dead according to their own strange causes but their desiccated grey husks maintain the same bloody-minded viciousness as they did in life. To move through these sharp forests you must walk in single file, and the one in front must swing a machete to clear a path. Your boots crunch under stalks heavy with pungent, vital sap.

But for all their ugliness these are liminal plants. As the hills fade into plains the eternally dead grass returns, as the plains fade into hills then the forests reassert themselves above the spikes. Now and then the curse fades into supple bamboo glades, or into paddies of sugar-cane whose fresh-sweet nectar seems like a gift. One time you even find a single apple tree, heavy with fruit on the jagged border of sweet and sour. It's an occasion to stop and feast and celebrate the end of a month of hard drudgery.

Dyssia!

It has never been fully decided how to accommodate a Great Sage. A grand temple to emphasize the power and respect society should have for their wisdom? A simple hut to suggest that their power transcended mere material possessions? Great Sage Ohlemi has split the difference. He occupies a grand monument - an immense statue to one of the Tyrants - but he has built his hut atop the ruined neck where the statue's head once was. The immense serpentine statue now looks more unsettling than it did when it was whole.

The Great Sage has not descended from his place atop the statue for nearly a century, and that is not an achievement impressive merely for the dedication it represents. At the base of the statue are two crashed aircraft, four shattered Plovers, and a veritable carpet of broken weapons and the odd missing tooth or old bloodstain. Powerful warriors have been testing themselves by trying to get the Grand Sage down from the Tyrant's shoulders for as long as he's been up there. In the beginning it was Loyalists, those discredited old fascists, seeking to avenge the insult to their rulers. Later it became a sport for aspiring champions without political leanings, though they really could have thought a bit harder about the symbolism.

Those less contentious make the Great Sage offerings. He descends a single bucket like a man might fish and people come by to pray and drop in food, ammunition, petitions, propaganda leaflets trying to convert him to a variety of political causes, and on and on. The bucket carries all of these things up and away. For a long time that's all it was, but then some penitent soul decided to give him a crystal dragon egg. A century of silent contemplation of the mysteries did not survive. Ever since he has been a combination of chatty, terminally online, and old person trying to understand technology and it has not done much for his dignity. There doesn't seem to be any part of society unchanged by the spread of the dragons.

But now that you're here, you're left at a loose end for how to approach. You could stand at the bottom and ask Brightberry to contact the Sage's dragon - Kissingsky - though that's a bit like phone calling someone within visual range, which is a bit awkward. You could put an offering or a... note or something in the bucket, like a good pilgrim. Or you could take the invitation on its face and just fly up to meet him and see if he unleashes the awesome cosmic power he's spent centuries mastering against you. Or you could just shout very loudly, but that might be a bit disrespectful.