[IC] Breathless Dead

[Balmas]

This is important.

She is afraid.

The two thoughts swim around her, like shadows in the deep, invisible except in the shadows they cast, inaudible except in the electric thrill that fills the entire sea. They push her from the shallows, hound her to the depths, give her limbs the death-delaying chest-heaving strength of adrenaline.

Body cries hollow in multiple ways. Her eyes sag as she lifts her head from the workbench. Her stomach claws at her back, gnawing and empty. Brain empty, thoughts slow, like wading through a river.
She should have given this up when the creativity failed. Should have run when the thoughts failed to leap, had to be mustered and ordered and fought. Refused to work as they should, fled to greener fields, with saner--

But this is important. And she is afraid.
She stares at the god like a butterfly at a pin. He is the first person to talk to her in.

Time is. She's pretty sure that time happened, at some point, here in the dark.

It must have. Couch wasn't here before, and she can't remember when it got here. Can't remember it arriving. Didn't order it? Doesn't think she ordered it.

Spies. Probably the spies, noticing her and doing it for her. Noticing and caring and not asking whether maybe she shouldn't be--

It's perfect. Simpering, beautiful. Aching to be abused.

A masterpiece, she notes with. It's not pride. It should be pride. She did it, finally did it, finally did something right.

It's sin incarnate. Hideous. Dangles from Aphrodite's threads like a mockery. Stares at her with exactly the right expression, the one she slaved over and crafted to purpose, mouth open and whispering and echoing in the silence that

You did this. You did this. You did this.

Because it was important, and you were afraid.

"Why?" she breathes.

She does not touch him. Some lessons are burned in early. But he is here, and he is the first to talk to her in too long, and the question cannot be bound, cannot be restrained, comes with its own movements. To beg, to plead, to let her go back, try it again, do something different.

She knows why.

"Why? What had we done, to so earn the hatred of love?"

She knows why.

But here, it is important.

And she is very, very afraid.

[Phoe]

Ember's scent is never far from her nose. After all, Mosaiac has smeared it across almost every rock and blade of grass and grain of sand she's ever crossed. It doesn't linger long, at least not recognizably but the memory clings forever.

Ember gives off what could very generously be described as a bouquet of aromas. The soil caked into her clothes, the mortar under her nails. The smoky, just-burned tinge in her fur, the brine in her hair. The heady musk of her pack all over her, every smell but Gemini's. The salt and the steel and the faintly sweet-ish trace of old meat. But the most special part of all, the part that makes the smell Ember's and nobody else's, and the part the most concerted efforts of the Silver Divers and their little training techniques could never quite bury, is the smell of roses.

Holding her is like lifting a garden to the sky. She is everything in Bitemark and more than could be contained in the vast seas beyond it. She is elementally beautiful, which is why her scent is everywhere. It is here, too. Mosaic has held the little Ceronian in the same spot she holds this jaguar now, hearing her name moaned in the same tiny, desperate voice. She closes her eyes and drinks the air around her. She can almost, almost smell roses on the rubble.

But there are new things here as well. The sharpness of freshly shattered stone and flecks of acid where Stone Tribe claws had begun to worry at it. Churned grass kicked up in great clods by the power of her descent. The ocean, new fur that has never known sweat, and the very particular tang of brass that is almost as wonderful as music.

There is weight in her arms, and a lightness in her chest. Mosaic's muscles tense and coil, but do not strain. Her fingers find the back of this helpless sniper's neck, and she bends her claws toward delighting the spine into shuddering, full body tingles. There is a smile on her lips, and victory in her teeth.

Everything is stillness, the quiet of the world in the moments after battle, except for the two of them. Memories jump like lightning across her mind with every fresh touch, and every one of them brings that little trace of rose to the tip of her nose, the taste to the back of her tongue. The feeling of fur on fur and sharp edges made soft again with nothing but the curling of her arms. Tails entwining, and the sound of her own name in her ears like a prayer to some forgotten god.

Mosaic's body is soft. Her breasts are pillows for a weary, defeated head. Her arms are a blanket. Her breathing is steady. The heat of her body is the sun, the motion of her fingers the sea, and her eyes the stars. She could stay like this forever. She could drown in pleasure and victory and chase her little Ember through her memories until the mountain crumbled down around her forever and Beri and Rosedam became nothing but forgotten fragments on the edge of reality.

If only it was just a little bit stronger. If only the work was not so important, there might be time. She sighs, and plants a kiss on her defeated friend's forehead.

"Yes," she purrs, "That is my name. Now give me yours."

Even still, she does not relent. Her legs are valleys that split the sky and earth and beg for some brave adventurer to map them, to know every delight and secret. But when they shift and part, it is only to turn around and face the mountain one more time. A sigh builds inside her throat. The song is ending. The scent of the world is just itself again. And there is so much to be done.

"And then tell me: up or down? Are you gonna go back to your work, or stay and help with mine?"

[Thanqol]

Mosaic!

"I am Quajl," she gave it without the expectation of getting it back.

"My brothers and sisters were taken by the Skies. Drafted as Biomancers for the war effort. The knowledge is cursed, and when they were ordered they could not disobey. It is for them I bargained with the Stone Tribe, hoping that I could build a weapon to crack the Skies. Perhaps in the crystals is an end to this nightmare, a world where the helix is not a chain. I fear that instead there will be a new and more efficient form of tyranny."

She held against Mosaic's softness, the soft and fragile clinging of someone who couldn't remember her last hug and didn't know when her next one would come.

"In truth, I fear my cause is hopeless," she said. "I cannot chart my way forward. I do not know which path will help my quest. If you can give me a reason, no matter how tenuous, I will fight for you."

Ember!

"Although it pains me," said Taurus, with her casual warrior's grin, "to send you out half-trained and half-punished, you are essential to this operation. We're going to take Beri. It's a strategic position close to the shipwreck and we'll need the base and the population's labour to dredge it. To take Beri we need to capture Mosaic. To capture Mosaic we need you, puppy."

"I would like to reiterate," said Gemini, "that Mosaic would probably side with us if we explained ourselves to her."

"Yeah," said Taurus. "Probably. But honestly, I just want to fuck with her a bit, you know? You hear the pack. Taurus is so good she might even be a match for Mosaic!! They'll shut up once they see her bound and squirming beneath my boot." She grinned. "I'll negotiate with her then."

She leaned down to Ember, breath heavy with Command. "That's fine with you, little Ember? It won't cause any tangled loyalties or silly little acts of defiance if I send you out to seduce your girlfriend into a proper introduction to the pack? Will you," she asked, "be good?"

Dolce!

"Consider," said Vasilia as the sand began to rise around her in streaming ribbons. "You feel despair. You spoke to others who feel despair. Despair is the dominant emotion here. Consider also that nothing here is accidental. The Skies built this despair as deliberately as they built the songbirds, as deliberately as they placed the stars."

The sand rotated, each streaming ribbon falling horizontally rather than vertically, spinning into an endless orbit. She looked out into the sea with the same expression as a knight from a dream, seeing a vision in the dying blue-green of the sunset.

"Consider also," said the Furnace Knight, "that those who have built this system do not feel despair. On the contrary, they are filled with hope, filled with ambition, filled with motivation. One cannot accuse the Crystal Knight of resting upon her laurels. So, why? What do they have which is so worth striving for? What justifies building all of this rather than simply using biomancy to place themselves in a state of enlightened bliss for the rest of their lives? What is the true nature of the Endless Azure Skies?"

Dyssia!

"What have you done to earn it?" said Aphrodite, taking a drag on his cigarette. "You cling. Oh, do you cling, stuck to life like a leech on a pig's cock. And I love that for you!" he laughed. "Don't you see? This is my gift. Hate, love, craving, obsession. It's all that keeps you here! Without me you'd end up like all of Whonce's customers, rolling up enlightenment and snorting it until your brains melted and your souls checked out of the galaxy entirely. Did you know how the Azura survived the invention of biomancy? They invented an even bigger obsession!" he cackled. "Something they wanted even more than to wirehead their brains forever. They doubled down on craving and called their new obsession the Endless Azure Skies."

He spread his arms and grinned. "That's why this. That's why all this. The alternative to the Skies is blowing your brains out with transcendent happiness and leaving this world of matter and meat to those who are too broken to want to be happy. That's what you're feeling now, you want to run and overdose on being a good person. That's fine, your genetics will be filtered out and the next generation will descend from those who are on board with the program."

[Tatterdemalion]

"It won't work," Ember says, with conviction. "I will be good; I will follow your orders, Alpha. But she will smell betrayal on me if I come to her with secrets in my teeth, and she will defeat me, and you, and us, the pack entire, if we come at her with howling on our breath." Around her, the murmurs; she stares straight ahead, hands folded, ears perked, a signpost for the clan.

"And you know that." She takes a breath. Gulps. "The only path where Mosaic of Beri can be taken prisoner is one where she hands herself over to the pack willingly. She will not do this if I ask her; she will fight you instead, for daring to order me to ask her. You must take me prisoner and put me in peril which only you can defuse, and she will yield in order to save me. All this I share with you, packmate, Alpha of our clan, fellow daughter of Ceron."

She places one hand on her sword, drips Challenge onto the dirt. "But as a fellow daughter of Ceron, I cannot submit to betrayal of a lover." Her ears burn. This is the first time she's admitted to her packmates that what she feels for Mosaic is deeper than teasing a cutie and wringing information out of good boys and girls. "For her sake, I challenge you. Face me in any art and I will surpass you."

She won't. She knows she won't. This ends with her being used to embarrass Mosaic. But loyalty to a true lover is as virtuous as loyalty to the pack; she owes Mosaic this doomed fight to save her as much as she owes her pack information on how to overcome Mosaic. And if she, impossibly, wins, then she can throw her new weight behind Gemini's plan.

This is the way. Every Ceronian holodrama that Goldie has shared with her agrees. And Mosaic would understand too, wouldn't she? She might roll her eyes, she might make her lover a target of her barbed wit, she might even toss Ember off a cliff. But she knew she was falling in love with a Ceronian, and the bonds of the pack are just as much chains as the bonds of the heart (Beneath the Blood-Wetted Moons, dir. Xiophilina Entressus). So what if she will still lose? A knight is a humiliation-seeking device (The Knight of the Forfeit, dir. Nathan Svensson) and to share bonds with a lover is the third aim of romance (Dragon Among Lotuses, dir. "Simplicitas Pirata").

But Mosaic is worthy of being the cause of her first true pack challenge. Will you honor that, Taurus? Or are you jealous of her immeasurable virtues, not least of which is the thing she can do with her tongue?

[TheAmishPirate]

Intentional is a difficult word. It’s a word of purpose and desire, and discerning it from the outside in is about as difficult as counting the spoons in a drawer without opening it. Not impossible, if you know a thing or two about spoons, you’ve taken a careful survey of the room, remembered when you last washed the dishes, and correctly ascertained which of your recent houseguests prefer to eat their ice cream with a fork. But difficult. Let it not be said that Dolce approached a drawer imprudently.

Fortunately for the ongoing conversation, much could be done with the facts at hand, and the trust that the Vasilia he knew wouldn’t bring them up without purpose.

“I think,” Dolce ambles along with the idea. “You could ask the same question about the Manor, no? I don’t remember the Majordomo ever giving less than his best for his job. He was the first one awake and the last one off duty, every day, and never grew tired of his work. The guard dogs too. Perhaps they lazed about on the odd sunny afternoon, but they were no less alert and on-task about it. What did they have that I didn’t that made it worthwhile to them? What point did they see in it all?”

“If I wanted to know that,” and he most assuredly did. “Then the first thing to do would be to hear it in their own words. No chance of doing that now, I’m afraid. But if the Manor is like the Skies, then the Skies are like the Manor. And it’s not impossible to speak with the Azura. Or at least listen to them.” But difficult. Most assuredly difficult. A whole silverware set while blindfolded sort of difficult.

But if the Skies are like the Manor, then the Manor is like the Skies. Maybe the answer to one would share some territory with the other?

[Balmas]

You know, in the better class of play, this would be the moment where the heroine tells the villain exactly what they think of their monologue, and in which hole they can stick it.

I mean, you know it won't work, right? Hero doesn't know it, but it's only been twenty minutes since the play started. Nobody actually believes that the Comtesse de la Rue is going to give up on her web of manipulation and deceit--she's been, in her own mind, helping people find love and happiness for twenty years, and no jumped-up pipsqueak can give a speech that's gonna change her mind.

...Which does, now that she thinks of it, beg the question how much time has passed in her "play." A month, at least, since that day.

Possibly two. Time a little fuzzy at the moment, like it always is after emerging.

Brightberry will know. Note to self, once she's out of the lab and cleaned up, ask Brightberry what day it is.

Subtly. There's gotta be a way to subtly ask what day it is in a way that does not communicate you've been on an unspecified number of all-nighters? Ask how long it is until. No, no, that doesn't work, the servitors will just change the schedule because she asked for something.

Post script to note to self, with the neon glitter pen that stands out: do something nice for Brightberry. She puts up with a lot and it's been while.

Right. Time and plays and such. Twenty minutes into the play, nobody actually believes that the heroine can make a speech and convince the antagonist to turn over a new leaf. The plot couldn't happen that way.

Two hours in, after the Comtess has had a chance to see her web crash around her ears, and to see the effects of her actions, then maybe she'd accept an impassioned plea, have a plot-appropriate change of heart. But this early in the play, everyone knows that she's just going to scoff at Valerie's speech about how she will love her Ceronian, and she will help her become Shogun, and nothing will stand between her.

And damned if she actually knows what the monologue she needs to give right now is? Because he's not making any friggin' sense?

Fuck, please don't let this be one of those things where nothing makes sense until after a night's sleep. Or worse, one of those things that is perfect and absolutely makes sense until you have a night's sleep.

The Azura cling. He hates us for it. Wants us to. To be happy and die? To let go of those emotions so we can be content with what we have? To let go of the emotions that keep us unhappy?

But the emotions behind this are also his gift? They keep us here instead of being happy?

His endgame. He wants her to. Too broken to be happy. Could be happy if she let go? Let go of the Pix? Too broken to let go. Too set on trying to help. Help the Pix who are, you know, arguably also her enemies?

Endgame is filtering that out? Getting rid of the people who meddle? People who want empire, who aren't content to just be happy until they.

If this were a comic, there'd be a steam cloud forming above her head. And already, she can feel the effort of thought smoking neurons.

... You know, smoked neurons are probably pretty tasty. Like barbecue. Delicious, crispy grey matter, with a crackly skin you can scrape with a fork, but with a smoky, fatty center.

"I would like my puppet back, please."

Fuck. Already, she can imagine a playwright pacing back and forth in front of the stage, swearing at her star actor for forgetting her lines at the emotional climax.

Not prompting her what they are, though, the imaginary jerk.

"You see, I need to go overdose on being a good person before I get filtered out of the gene pool. If I'm gonna get filtered out, might as well do what I can first."

[Phoe]

"I can't say that I've ever really thought about cracking the Skies. You're a very interesting person, Quajl. I wish that I had learned more about you back from the place I learned your smell. Oh well! I know you now. We can be friends even if I can't convince you to stick around."

It is cruel to end the embrace so quickly, but she must. Mosaic's body is already burning up from the build up of unfulfilled oaths; any longer and she would be a danger to touch. Her spine tingles in a way that feels like she caught lightning, her skin itches and begs for her to claw it off, and her eyes have begun to sting when she looks anywhere but the pile of materials she needs to start turning into housing.

Her claws rake across the stone, and where the sharp points touch she splits down roughly even lines. The heat of her palms is enough to melt rock, and she presses them at the corner to make rough fuses, just enough to get the shape of it going. Something she can lift and carry to where it needs to be before she starts hauling lumber to give it actual structure. On and on she goes, digging foundations and building these rather crude shapes one after another, doubling back regularly as she notices she has enough stone to add a room here or there to make space for all of the people that need to live here.

The work falls into a pattern. Carve, lift, support, expand, dig, lift, set. She can't chase more than a vague shape as she is, so she models everything she builds after the little cottage she lives in. Three rooms and an alcove, a flat roof. Not small, but not large either. But even still, her concept of home, recreated the best that she can. It isn't much. But what can she do?

"They're kicking everyone in Rosedam out of their homes," she explains as she works, back always to Quajl, "That's why I needed the mountain. Though they did a whole thing recently that makes me think there won't be a mountain for too much longer, either. The Royal Surveyor's got plans I guess. What can you do?"

She shrugs. With an entire roof lifted over her head, it gives the impression that the planet is shrugging along with her.

"Lately, I've been wondering if I'm not doing enough. You know? I'm up to my ass in work and promises but shit just doesn't stop breaking. Some days it feels like I've almost got it, but then I wake up and..."

She slams the stone down on top of the latest building, her third so far. Cracks form all along the walls from the pressure of her power, and with a loud snap and a rumbling like a small avalanche the whole thing comes down around her. Mosaic grabs a chunk and hurls it in the direction of the ocean. She doesn't stop to watch if it makes it that far or not.

"There's gotta be more to life than this. Kidnapped siblings, sick sisters, and nothing to be done about it. Parties every day and songs when I go out, all this sweet air and food that's better than anything I can remember eating and it all just! It makes me itch. I have to get out of here. I have to do something. I'm so strong. I'm stronger than anybody! So why do I feel so stuck?"

Mosaic's feet give out from under her. She slumps against her own ruined handiwork, and watches the sky. For the first time today, her shoulders sag. The work is catching up to her, and she looks tired.

"Tell me that, Quajl. Tell me that and I'll crack the Skies in half for you. Even if it's impossible. Even if it's wrong."

[Thanqol]

Mosaic!

"I was once strong," said Quajl. "I... remember, I was a creature of industry. Hulking arms. Furnace breath. Endless motion, but never moving. I moved things from one place to another, crossing many miles, but my heart remained the same. My thoughts remained the same. And my unchanging thoughts couldn't explain what my unchanging heart wanted."

She does not help build. She is a creature of elegance, grace, precision, distance. Her arms are thin, and she carries no sword.

"But that was what I found on the road," she said. "Not a new dream. I found new thoughts. New ideas. New people. New ways of moving, new ways of talking. And as I learned, as I understood, I started... being able to explain what it was that my heart wanted. I learned the thoughts to want. I learned the words to ask. I learned the skills to draw the blueprint. I learned the courage to build it. I could never forget those lessons, no matter the miles, no matter the path."

The sun was setting. She looked away from it, to the distant stars.

"I don't know what your heart yearns for," she said. "But you'll never find the words to explain it if you don't reach for them."

Ember!

The pack circles. The decision is made collectively; there is no chance of delay, deferment, of stratagem. The wolves sense the fight and they demand entertainment. The only way to change their course is to offer them something even more interesting than this, a pup against a wolf.

Taurus stands. She flexes. She is not subtle, muscles straining the fabric of her divesuit. A low, throaty growl, almost a purr, runs from her throat and up your spine. She was full of strength and her strength wanted to be used. Strength for its own sake, expressed to its natural limits. What greater joy could there be?

She doesn't turn to words. She doesn't reach for weapons. Instead she reaches for throat and leg, for joints and wrists. She seeks the pin, and the prisoner she was promised.

[Roll to Overcome]

Dolce!

"Oh, absurd," she said - but she softened the tone towards the end as kindness defused fire. "That is to say, the Skies and the Manor are opposite extremes. The Manor was a thing of unchanging stability, left to its own self governance, intended to run forever. But if you're looking for it, change is everywhere in the Skies. You told me of the Decaying Soldier - the Corvii are here because they've been surpassed, improved upon. What does that mean? If it was a self-sustaining system there'd be no need for that."

She pulled her knees up to her chest and gently settled down to the sand, the Rail's whir dying. "I grew up in a place where change was possible. Power could change hands. Civilization could progress. I see the signs of that in the Skies. I can feel the weaknesses. The ambition. It makes my heart race. It's reaching for something, and that means opening its fist - even if only a little."

The sea breeze rolls in from the ocean. She breathes deeply. In the distance tallships cross the horizon, sails heavy with the wind.

Dyssia!

Shock turns into a sneer. Hatred and contempt. In the twitch of that lip you can sense the words 'you don't understand', but he can't even say that. You do understand and you're defying him anyway, in full knowledge of how pointless it was.

There is a roll of distant thunder. Aphrodite looks away towards it - hatred and contempt - and is then gone.

In his place there's a strange, glittering energy. You're defying a god. You're envisioning a god's motives. You're embarking on a doomed quest for reasons of aesthetics. The energy of Dionysus, that familiar, burning, scrambled inspiration has flowed in where Aphrodite's hostility still lingers. An awareness, a buzz, a cascade of inspiration. Power too, if you have the courage to become one with it.

[Phoe]

Mosaic's hand stretches toward the setting sun. It's a tiny thing from here, so small that her fingers can close around it and her fist is enough to blot it from the sky. She cannot reach it. Her fingers close around nothing but air, nor do they take her to visit the horizon. Even wholly closed off inside her fist, the sky shines on in brilliant but slowly fading hues, as if her desires meant nothing to it whatsoever. One more show for the planet, and then the stars will shine in earnest.

In the morning it will rise again, whether she holds her fist clenched or no. Such a stupid thought. Was that really all the better she could do? Childish observations and sloppy construction, a pile of scrap every time she gets frustrated? Mosaic, demigod, strongest ant on the stick.

Her legs tremble when she tries to stand again. She shoots a quizzical look down at her feet before flopping back down and looking up at the stars again. Her shoulders are twitching. Her lips curl back and flash fangs. Her grin widens, and she throws her head back like a Ceronian taken by a howl. Her laughter builds and builds until it's a roar that would make Gemini's hot little piece of ass (Taurel? Is that what she calls herself?) jealous.

"I'm... scared? Ahahahahahahaha! That's the funniest fucking thing I've ever heard! Look at me Quajl, I'm shaking from head to toe! Me! Isn't that hilarious? Hahaha, ahaha, HAA! Ah, gods thank you for the joke. I feel better already. I'm afraid to leave. Afraid to leave! That's why it sounds so new! Hahahahaha!"

Her heart hammers wildly against her ribs until every part of her is vibrating. Between the fits of laughter, her breath comes faster and faster, shallower and shallower. Her fur rises on her limbs, uneven and bristling, and she trembles all the way down to her finger tips. She is afraid. She, Mosaic, is scared to leave the safety of her little town and her useless backwater planet. It's not that she lacks a ship or a destination, or even that there are people she'll need to bring along before she's satisfied. She's just... scared. That she'll turn out to be less than enough. That there are other, bigger, stronger godlings and monsters that she simply will not measure up to. And that even if she manages through everything else...

Even if she goes, there won't be anything there. That this is the pinnacle of life after all. That she is stuck, forever, miserable inside her secret heart but all the vast wonders of the universe around her nothing but hollow shades and ugly mockeries. She can feel her heart shrinking at the thought.

"No," she says to nobody, "No. Fuck that."

She stands, and finds her legs are strong again. She flexes, and her body crackles with power that she knows down to the tip of her tail is Enough. She smiles, steps forward, and returns to digging foundations. Shaping stone. Building supports. Each new house she builds looks just a little bit prettier, a little bit nicer made than the one that came before it. The night is upon her, and there are promises to be fulfilled. She could never leave otherwise.

So what if Quajl doesn't help? Let her watch. So what if the stars are distant and uselessly silent? Let them watch too. She is Mosaic. She stole the mountain, she took an old friend's name, and come the dawn she will have built a neighborhood from nothing. Before she leaves she will steal Ember and Gemini from their pack, pluck Dolce and Vasilia from their happy little niche, and carry Vesper out on her shoulders.

Oh, and of course she'll find and kill that crab. The one that got away. Lady Artemis always comes first, right?

"You know, I think I'm gonna punch out the Crystal Knight before I go. Everything I've ever heard about her makes me think she's a stuck up bitch. Besides, she'll be good practice for the real thing, right? Whatever words I find, figure I owe you that much for the advice."

[TheAmishPirate]

There are a few ways he can go from here.

The Crystal Knight is the only Azura around. Someone of her station must have a vast household, and in a vast household there is often more need than hands. If the Service has someone for Mayor Kaspar, the Service must have someone for the Crystal Knight, and perhaps that someone could use another someone. The Crystal Knight is just one Azura, true, but she must deal with others, yes? Correspondence, house guests, superiors, friends, allies, rivals, enemies, the whole lot of them. He could secure a quiet vantage point in her staff, and watch, and learn.

He and 20022 have gotten off to a wonderful start, despite a perilous first meeting. There is much that can be discussed between coworkers. Hopefully, if he is careful, reads the room, and minds his manners, a new hire such as himself could be excused the odd question or two in the onboarding process. Nevermind the standing offer of counselors and union representatives, ready to listen and share what they know. If the Service runs alongside the whole of the Skies, then there must be plenty that could be learned if he just kept his eyes and ears open.

It’s always polite to leave room for a third option. Things won’t always go the way you think they will. Somebody else may have an idea that you never would’ve considered. Nothing good ever comes from assuming too much.

Whichever way he goes, all paths start the same:

“Thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to meet with me again.” Dolce says, offering 20022 a scone to go with his mid-morning tea. “You have trusted me with the knowledge of just how busy you are, and I do so appreciate both your confidence and your time.”

[Balmas]

Which orifice does that count for?

Probably ass.

She didn't mean to tell Aphrodite to stick it up his ass!

Or.

Well. She did. She absolutely did and wouldn't take the words back for all the crystal dragon treats in the galaxy, on reflection, but it still wasn't smart!

… Maybe for all the crystal dragon treats in the galaxy. Not for her, you understand, but because Brightberry deserves nice things, and she can be humble one (1) time if it means seeing Brightberry's face light up.

Airdrop a dragon onto a planet-sized ball of delimshus shinies. Oh, she'd get so fat so fast and it'd be glorious.

And it'd give her time to clean the house in the meantime, so she can do two nice things at once and--

And she just told a god to go fuck himself, didn't she? The energy keeping her going is draining away, and after this long in the lab there wasn't much to begin with.

But Zeus was onside? Maybe? How do you translate the thunder there--like, you can't touch her? Leave her alone? He left after so maybe so but also it's probably a bad idea to assume either of those things are true? There are worse ideas than assuming you're untouchable, but it's hard to think of one at the moment.

Hard to think, period. Sure as hell doesn't feel untouchable. Feels empty.

But…

She's felt the energy rising around her before. Like the electric, heart-palpitating feeling you get when you're riding the wave just before the crash. If you can just keep running, keep ahead of the darkness, you'll never find out about the crushing weight chasing you. It's a ride, but when the darkness catches up…

It's a bad idea. The last time she embraced this, Brightberry…

Well, it takes a lot to get Brightberry to yell.

She's super nice, you know? Too good. Too nice. Too forgiving. And even when she was yelling, it was. She was shouting about how Dyssia'd been gone for two weeks, and she didn't know what had happened, and she'd been worried, and have you eaten anything since I forced that food down your throat, and food, now, bed, now, talk…

And then she didn't talk to her for a month.

Her pulse pounds in her ears. Bom. Bum. Bom-bum-b-dum.

She's hollow. No food, no sleep, no thoughts, and the purple crawls in--fills her, fills the emptiness, crackles through her veins, fills her with promises.

She can practically see the energy--a pulsating purple sphere, at eye height, pressing against her consciousness. A promise, a threat. Somehow, it's the size of a pea, but also bigger than her head.

Behind it, the puppet slowly raises its head, and turns a fearful, hoping expression on her.

Thoughtfully--dreamily--Dyssia plucks the bean from the air, turns it this way and that. Brings it up to one eye, sees, as it were, herself, from outside, from above, sees the bean staring at her staring at the bean staring at.

Flicks it in the air with a thumb, catches it in her mouth--

Bom. Bum. Bom-bum-b-dum.

And it turns out, it's super easy to make sure a ship can't be used, when you think about it.

I mean, what was she thinking? Slowly convincing all the Pix to abandon a perfectly good ship, serving under a psychotic abuse golum, making an equally psychotic abused golem?

Nonsense. Slow. Useless. She's full of fire, full of lightning, and the images dance in front of her.

Bom. Bom. Bom-bum-b-dum. The drums push and thunder, urging her along. The chasm yawns behind her, but it's not important. It's behind her, and she's running, and all she needs is what's in front of her, and what she needs…

All she really needs is for the ship to stop being a ship. And there are so many ways for that to happen, right? There are all these systems dedicated to making sure that a vaguely ship-shaped blob of astral metals today will be a ship-shaped blob of astral metals tomorrow. And you just--you just reach out and turn them inside out, right? You've got a star that can go nova, which is less helpful than you might think, but not as not helpful as to be totally useless?

Engine room. She doesn't remember getting here, but she's here now. There's a badge on her chest. Is that real? Smells real. Smells purple.

The whole world smells purple, somehow there and not there more real than real. It's like the veil that held her down, kept her here--there?--has been lifted and she can see the world the way it is for the first time.

Except it's not the first time?

Unreal clarity. She can see the whole ship--see the coursing of the flame, see how it writhes in her hands, see where it flies and vents and roars. It's all so simple--vent here, and the ship turns this way, and vent there to turn that way, and she could just laugh!

Nudge the star. Bump it between her claws like a top. Spin it around, arcing fire and electric radiation into the engines until they flare red, white, purple--

But laughing takes energy, and she's running, and the darkness is following, and the roar of bom, bum, bom-bum-b-dum is chasing her through the ship, full of thunder and roaring and teeth and--

Ritual. Rituals. She's acquired the robes of the navigator, and the augury is before her. Pix stare at her, stare at her badge. Poseidon rumbles and points and she's full of light and laughing and grabs the augury and wrenches and--

The Pix are arranged before her now. They've realized what she's doing and they chase her, jetpacks trailing plumes and unreal formations and wild scents and the bridge is before her and the captain is shouting orders but she's lightning and violet and bom, bum, bom-bum-b-dum is behind her and around her and is her and she is it and the drums fill the universe with their--

Bom. Bum. Bom-bum-b-dum.

Screeching. Tearing metal.

Bom. Bum. Bom-bum-b-dum.

Falling. Screaming?

Bom. Bum. Bom-bum-b-dum.

Blackness.

[Tatterdemalion]

Ember splashes water in her face, gasps at the sharp shock of the cold water on her skin, feels the shiver run from the tips of her ears to her tail. Her heart is still racing.

"Pin her!" "Under the knee!" Excitement, bursting like exploding flowers, goldwet! "You can do it, pup!" "Smother her!" Support, slate-gray star-speckled, buttressing her bones. "Teeth!" "Oh, little Ember~"

The moment of throwing Taurus was a blur of exertion and howling. But then she'd flinched, she'd looked down at her alpha and she'd felt unworthy of supplanting her in the pack, of the crown, crushing her skull, mistress of Ceronians, hiding behind the curtain, and all around her Disappointment had bloomed, sulfur-rotten, jeering at her, and she'd run, she'd run, and she'd run so far and so hard, and she's still shivering, her tail tucked between her legs.

She'd let them all down. She shouldn't have challenged the alpha. She scrubs at her face, her shoulders, trying to make the water kill the stink of the pack's Disappointment clinging to her body. What kind of wolf can't take charge when she's right? What kind of failure is more comfortable being disciplined and punished than standing up for herself and telling the pack what they'll do? Part of her yearns to go back and throw herself at Gemini's feet and beg for more attention, more correction, more opportunities to prove that she won't break again, not when it's important.

But the girl looking back at her, with the low ears and the tragic expression on her face, can't go back and do that. She's committed. She challenged the alpha. And she won. So now she has to go and solve the problem of Mosaic herself, and she can do it her way, once she figures out her way, and just because the pack would approve of her seducing Mosaic into defeat doesn't mean she has to do it. There's another way. She'll figure one out. She doesn't need them to howl for her and forgive her when she brings them Mosaic. She doesn't need the whole pack to come and call her a good girl again, and give her headpats, and get her right behind the ears, and... and...

Maybe Mosaic would understand?

[Overcome: 8. A temporary, unstable solution.]

[Thanqol]

Mosaic and Ember!

There are two hunts.

The cat seeks the crab. Artemis must not be denied. It is a cunning thing, adapted to its environment, a dozen jellyfish attached to its head as a defensive shield. Poison tentacles gesture limply all along its shell. It clacks its claws and does not know mercy. In shadows it scuttles sideways alongside the shore, illuminated by double moonlight, seeking prey. It will take a person if it can, catch a wild deer, steal a child's pet, anything it can catch. Sometimes it reaches its claws to the skies and clacks them together, just testing to see if it can finally reach and crack and eat the moons. If it could it would do so even if it knew the consequences. Clack clack clack.

Then there is the hunter of the huntress; the wolf in the dark, secret ally to the crab though it would crush you too in its pincers if it could. The sea rises and crashes and those are the times to walk, the ocean's salt hangs heavy in your fur and muffles your scent, though the wind might yet betray you if it turns. Young muscle yearns to be used and the young night yearns too. A night of romance, and of crabs.

Dolce!

"Today we are going to meet the Princess," said 20022.

The Crystal Knight is not the only Azura around, though you could hardly be faulted for forgetting Triden. Her mountaintop monastery is an isolated retreat designed to maintain her seclusion that she might contemplate the deepest mysteries of her Path. The long and winding approach is guarded by dozens of servitors manning heavy anti-void ELF installations, huge and wicked spikes carved from wood and stone, surrounded by the thrum of electricity. Here and there like sentinels are Stoneguard, a modern and elite warrior servitor species who can stand on plinths like statues, daydreaming of endless battle, until the moment comes to step down and go to war.

The hike is going to involve camping overnight, halfway up the vast spiral staircase that wraps the mountain. The trip up is steady and brisk, you and 20022 scrambling up the steps like goats, and him politely waiting as you offer the odd treat from your heavy bag of packed lunches to the Stoneguard who probably don't get many friends or visitors. It's exciting, this ascent. It's not just a barrier, it's an art project - at different elevations the plantlife lining the road changes - delicious treasures, obscure medicinal plants, beautiful flowers, hearty tubers, Demeter's blessings in hanging herb gardens. The view surrounding is magnificent, strange decisions regarding the placement of towns made clear when you see how they're viewed from up here. The climb is hard work, too - there is snow in places, icy frost making the carved stone slippery, and strange zones of scorching heat that seem designed to punish those who have come geared for winter.

20022 talks sometimes as you climb, but he's just as caught up with the beauty of the ascent as you. For a while he talks about stairs - they are uncomfortable for snake-bodied Azura, and so having so many makes this trip twice as hard. He admits how delighted he is that his work sometimes lets him enter these hidden parts of the world, to oversee these works of beauty from the shadows. He explains the situation over a hookah of wonderful smoke - a human Princess from a kingdom thought lost has come here, announced herself, and the only person of rank to host her was unfortunately Lady Triden. The Crystal Knight does not maintain a permanent residence on the planet, you see, and in the interest of the Skies they had to impose, even if Lady Triden strongly resented it.

And here was an interesting lesson that 20022 was laying out for you. He, a humble Synnefo, had told an Azura what to do. He had in fact forced her to do something that she specifically did not want to do, without needing to get the direct authorization of the Crystal Knight. In those fluffy little hands was real power even over the supposed dominant species of the galaxy. That was certainly a revelation.

Dyssia!

Howl.

The siren is hand-cranked. As the wheel turns the howl rises, the warning of wolves. Abandon ship. Abandon ship.

Lights. Broken metal. Slashing dust and hurricane winds. You see a landscape from a dream - a twisting network of vast canyons. Layered red stone, orange, brown, white, cream, grey, down and down and down. Unnatural, carved into the planet from orbit by colossal plasma vents. From up here it looks beautiful, a stone forest in hurricane winds.

You're being carried. The shellshocked and the walking wounded are pouring out of the ship, well trained enough to be weighted down under prepared supply packs, the full panopoly of an army on the march even as they struggle free from this blessed disaster. It's raining. It's raining. It shouldn't be raining on this planet, this desolate masterpiece, this world that in ten thousand years will become a jewel in the Endless Azure Skies, but you have made shipwreck upon its shore and Poseidon's sea is coming with you. Even now you spot a crab emerge from underneath the sand as though it had been waiting for this day.

The banners are going up. Pix are rallying to their unit flags and their evacuation formations. Orderly phalanxes, glorious though everyone would suspect that the Wolves would do better in that same situation. You are being taken towards the head, to the command phalanx and the Captain, away from the howling. Abandon ship. The ship is still dangerous.

[Phoe]

Under the cool caress of moonlight, she discards her shirt. Even this light tanktop is too much for the moment. All of the sweat and the dirt and the dust she's caked it in today has left the fabric damp, clingy, and itchy. It is a distraction, and worth less than nothing as protection. And in any case a hunt against one of these superior crabs typically turned into a bath in the sea. Salt and silt were terrible for the skin on her back (her curse, Mosaic supposed), but it was a minor irritant at best compared with the agony of soaking a cloth with the stuff and leaving it against her all day. Nothing would be better than that. So it is Nothing that she wears.

She does not hide. It is not in shadows that she hunts, but in light. Sunlight, Moonlight, Starlight, Lamplight. It's all the same. What matters is the feeling of it on her eyelids, the pressure the seeps through her skin and adjusts her breathing to the shock of someone who is Caught. What matters is the subtle bursts of color that splash across her fur. The crab retreats, slowly. She follows with large, single steps.

Her hands are in her hair. She smooths out the tangles. She ties it all into dozens of tiny, crisscrossing braids. Creating order from the chaos. Fixing what had broken down in the morning brawl and the afternoon construction. She hardly watches the crab as she works. Forward, backward, clack clack clack. When it shifts from being hunted to hunter, she will know. She will respond in kind. Her breasts lift up as she stretches to tie the final ends in her hair. Sweat soaked, slick, they glisten in the pale light of the paired moons.

Her lips are closed, and turned up into the shape of a quiet smile. They part slightly to allow her breathing, but no word passes through them. Her challenge is in silence. Her prayers are in silence. The clacking of crab claws, the squirming of tentacle armor in the salty night air, the churning of waves and the clattering of shifting rocks. These are her language, and her song.

She lifts her hands higher, above her head until her back arches in line with the rotation of her shoulders. She is a constellation, fallen to earth. She is a bowstring, taut and bending backwards, waiting to be plucked. One by one, the sights and sounds and smells and sensations of the world disappear from her sight. The beach shrinks and the ocean retreats. The moons shine only on her and on her foe, but do not exist in the sky. There is no sky to begin with. The smell of a wolf hidden among the rocks vanishes completely.

Her world is the hunt. Nothing else is important enough to be acknowledged. The clacking of claws is slowing. The creaking of carapace replaces it. One massive pincer lunges at her like a javelin. Mosaic relaxes out of her stretch, and empties her lungs into the breeze. Her tail twitches. Her arm snaps forward, whiplike, to strike the joint behind the knuckle.

The best meat on the beast for you, Lady Artemis. This dance for you, Lady Artemis. Not a scratch on her body or she will cease the hunt immediately. All for you, Lady Artemis. May her efforts please you. May you find her worthy of bathing in your night airs.

May you smile. Like your brother.

[TheAmishPirate]

It sounds so natural and sensible to hear 20022 speak of it, he doesn’t catch the implications at first. There is a Princess that needs housing. There is a house capable of housing. It’s inconvenient and uncomfortable, but what else is there to be done? The pipe is halfway to his lips when his thoughts encounter the bump in the road and launch into the stratosphere.

“...pardon, you did what?”

This smoke is wonderful stuff, and thank goodness for that. He fumbles his way to a deep breath, and blows out a wispy tuft of cloud that hovers lazily before him, too sluggish to rise any further. With his free hand, careful and quick, he draws his hand through it, spooling and twirling the semi-solid fluff. Round and round his fingers it swirls, lighter and fluffier than any of his swirling thoughts. Activity of the hands to let the mind free to pick up the pieces. Lovely stuff. Lovelier to share.

“How…how did you do that? I thought you just assisted the Mayor with secretarial matters, give the odd bit of advice. I wouldn’t think unexpected royal visitors were your purview. Is there a form you have to fill out afterwards for review of emergency circumstances? Will an inspector come by someday to take your statement? Will there be meetings?” Because surely, surely this sort of authority had to be official. Maybe it was also a secret, and that’s why they were talking about it in a hidden alcove halfway up a mountain. Maybe this was something only official members ought to know.

But when you’ve spent a day climbing up a mountain with somebody, marveling at the same wonders, helping them over slippery patches, laughing in moments only for the two of you, and you’re camped out for a well-deserved rest, then. Well, maybe propriety matters just a little bit less, and that’s how Dolce can ask such a question without couching it. Maybe that’s enough for 20022 to share a little insight with an uninitiated novice too.

[Rolling to Speak Softly: 4 + 6 + 3 = 13. What is the nature of 20022’s authority? Forging another Bond with 20022]

[Balmas]

No. Don't.

Leave her.

She just.

Why are you helping--

Brightberry. Where is Brightberry. Brightberry's okay. Brightberry has to be okay. Where's her friend?

She's fighting them--poorly, weakly, no strength left in her. Should be fighting like a demon possessed, with the fury of a madman unconcerned for her own safety. She should howl, surge, thrash.

But that's fled, leaving her to cry, to struggle, to weakly demand that they put her back, leave her, she's dangerous, you can't, she's sorry, she's sorry

she's so sorry

[Tatterdemalion]

The huntress in Ember, the one that has been slowly trained to be part of the pack, knows that the turning of the wind will be her ally. Not all hunts are carried out by stealth. She can almost hear Taurus in her ear, telling her that she needs to be ready to run just fast enough to keep Mosaic at her heels, which is to say, as fast as she can run. You run to the pack, you pull the apex predator into the net, you have to just look like you're incompetent, do you think you can do that, Ember?

But that's an almost. Her treachery is in her instincts, and it will betray Mosaic, because her thought is on a silver leash of moonlight. Her chin sinks into her palms as she watches from the nearby outcropping, her tail wagging uselessly behind her, as she drinks in the moon and the night intermingled on Mosaic's back. Her own strength's all lean and quick; she's the wiry runt, but she's got a rabbit's own feet. But Mosaic reminds her of a statue. (Maybe one with four arms?) Her decadent softness, her curves, swallow up the moonlight and beg for more. Sweat shines on her marble skin, each bead as precious as ambergris.

When the demigod lunges, cracks open a leg, exposes the scent of the soft white meat within, Ember rolls over, yanked on that silver leash. Upside-down, she watches the constellation of the Huntress do battle with Iolaus's Bane, a titan striding across the star-choked beach. Her toes curl on the rough-textured rock, and her breath hitches as her lover strives underneath the gaze of the gods. She can look. She's allowed to look. Why is that thought so breathtaking? That she is free to look, and lust, and to admire the perfection of the finest artwork that the gods ever shaped, the daughter of a mountain and a moonbeam?

Whatever did she do, little runt of the pack, to deserve the bedroom laughter and the gentle fingers of this apex predator, this slayer of crabs, this vision in shifting white and black?

[Thanqol]

Dolce!

"Civilization has two responses to Biomancy," said 20022, producing another set of beautifully painted powerpoint slides. He was ready for this conversation also. "Apollonian and Dyonisian."

He flipped the first panel, showing the Azura equivalent of the grey aliens, the icesnakes. Theorized to have evolved beneath the frozen oceans of a frozen world by a pre-spaceflight Azura artist, the icesnakes are cute with large yes, dark brown with attractive purple and blue patches, and with massive walrus tusks for cracking ice. There was a family of them, making thinking-emoji expressions.

"Until the discovery of biomancy, civilization is constrained by material possessions. It is an all against all contest between the citizens and nature to produce material possessions. During this period many great works of culture and acts of glory are performed and the gods reward the civilization with blessings and knowledge. One day, at the peak of the civilization's power, they grant it the ultimate secret: the power to create and sculpt life."

20022 flipped the page; it showed the happy icesnakes standing on a hill watching a legion of servitors with pickaxes smilingly proceed towards a mine.

"Suddenly there is no scarcity. Material abundance is conquered. Every individual can, if they choose, become the head of a civilization of their own, dedicated entirely to their own personal pleasure and satisfaction. Higher needs can be solved too; the perfect companions and lovers can be devised, art projects can be worked on a massive scale, an individual can wield a military, grant themselves immortality, clone themselves a trillion times. All of the logic of the old civilization breaks down."

He folded out the leftmost panel. Underneath a violet sun with the eyes of Dionysus' mask the icesnakes are partying, cups overflowing, eyes glassy mirrors. Some are meditating in satisfaction, others are embracing their servitors, others are shapeshifting into increasingly strange forms. The art is beautiful but unpleasant; the subtle implication that this was neither good nor healthy.

"To follow the god Dionysus above all others means to give the former civilization over to the feast," said 20022. "To embrace madness. To fracture from a single organized unit, beloved of the gods, into a trillion tiny tyrannies. Material abundance, infinite pleasure, and boundless love are solvable problems, and trivially so. The civilizations who follow this path, which are most of them, fracture. Collapse. Weaken and wither with nothing to drive them and nothing to unite them. In time they will drive themselves extinct as they drown in pleasure or assimilate into their servitor populations. The wreckage they leave behind can continue, self-sustaining, for many generations."

Then 20022 flipped the other panel; a line of icesnakes forming into the beautiful, sweeping structures of an Azura court, a great pyramidical structure up below a blue sky and radiant sun.

"To follow the god Apollo means rising above hedonism," said 20022. "It means recommitting to the ideals of civilization even in the face of infinite pleasure as a temptation. It means setting a new goal, a higher goal, than mere material abundance. With this new goal in place, the reborn civilization has secured both the love of the gods, a respite from madness, and most importantly moral authority. Moral authority allows the Apollonian civilization to do the unthinkable - to interfere with, to constrain, and to bind a biomantically ascendant civilization. Where ancient governments would override the will of individuals in the name of the civilizational goal of greater material abundance for all, an Apollonian government can override the will of individuals in the name of a greater and more glorious galaxy. As the Apollonian government has moral authority it can wield techniques that seem regressive and cruel towards its greater end. The resumption of material scarcity has become not an unthinkable crime and civilizational struggle, but an incentive structure to ensure that everyone, from the lowest to the highest, acts in accordance with the virtuous ends of the government's highest vision."

20022 folded the panels down. "This is to say, the whole point of the Endless Azure Skies is to empower its agents to override the individual pleasures and will of its citizens. There are, of course, methods for petition and review; a citizen can demand an investigation be launched into any given decision. But the only way a decision can be assessed as good or ill is with regards to the greater glory of the Endless Azure Skies."

Dyssia!

They are taking the auguries. A rooster is being slaughtered, knife moving swiftly and carefully. Skin and feathers are removed with expert precision, keeping the heart beating. Gloved hands reach into bloody guts and read the future.

"The omens say we must prepare for war," said the oracle.

The bloody wreckage of the rooster collapses. Tiny crabs swarm in all directions, tumbling off the table, burying themselves in the rock.

"War?" said the Captain. "Here? Against who?" She stopped herself, raised a finger. "Wrong question. When? How many?"

Another rooster is bought out. It is a glorious thing, raised and loved by hand for many years, the champion of many cockfights against its rivals, marked by Mars. Now its death is offered to him. "Hours," said the oracle. This one's death transmutes it into a blooming armful of wheat, heavy with seeds. The oracle sweeps it from the table and lays down the next sacrifice. The knife flashes. A hawk leaps into the sky.

"They are millions."

It is not dismay on the Captain's face.

It is elation.

She takes your hand. Raises it up.

"Dyssia of the Azura!" she yells to her command phalanx. In the distance relays repeat her words down and down through the line. "Has bought us to war!"

Fifty thousand spears clash against fifty thousand shields. A great roar goes out from the assembled legions. Not the howl of Ceron, but a vast cry of challenge. A glorious last stand against impossible odds. They were built for this.

[Phoe]

To hunt a crab is to hunt the sea. Sometimes crabs are small, mere mouthfuls and hunting them is as simple as spearing them with a claw tip. This is akin to robbing the surface of the water of its least treasures, the flotsam and the seaweed. Sometimes the crab is more spine than shell, and to claim its life takes practice and careful dedication, but little in the way of specialized skill. These are the moments where someone (looking to say they had an adventure), dives down to a shallow barrier reef and plucks a single gorgeous pearl to bring home to a sweetheart.

But a true Battle Crab will never succumb to something as paltry as the loss of a single claw. It has another, and ambition to crush what even its full healthy body might not have. To fight this is to know the sting of jellyfish armor, the wrath of the tides. To dive deep, deep, deep into the blackness in the middle of a storm, where once the craft of some inventor had dared to face Poseidon and failed utterly to please him. The bone crunching pressure. The all devouring currents. The equally perilous journey back to the surface, to success but not safety.

Mosaic's arms are burning and sluggish. She has retreated backward, to the waves of high tide, out of respect. The water soaks her body, and though she stiffens at its lash she is calm. Her shoulders are low and loose and her claws drag through the foam. Her tail curls behind her and strikes the waves as a whip. Her challenge is a song, not the pounding beat of her morning ritual but a high and lilting call to the moon that radiates through the water and sends schools of curious fish darting this way and that to be clear of her path. Their scales shimmer in the light of the night with all the seeming of rent armor as their clusters split further and further apart, and dim as they sink too far below the surface to keep shining.

She does not forget who the predator is. She rises against a high wave, and pulls her hair back down over her back after it slaps against her. One more move. One. Her feet sink into the sand; the squish is pleasant against her toes. She is a silhouette against the backdrop of the stars, seeming large enough for a moment that she might walk out to meet them as friends.

She leaps. Her song is laughter now, her body is an arrow launched from the bow of a goddess. She flies straight with one outstretched arm to test against the thrusting of one good claw. The crab open the pincer, revealing lethally sharp spines growing out of clusters of shell harder than the strongest metals of the Skies. They catch her at the shoulder, they close and paint the ocean with her blood. But her hand has found a sweeter treasure still.

She falls to the beach again. The smell is salt and the sweetness of fresh flesh. The sound is tearing carapace and a shower of wet sand flopping into a retreating wave. Six armored legs tremble under the weight of her blow, stagger, and collapse. Splayed and still. She tears the other arm off as she rises, and wrenches it free from her own.

A deep breath, held. Meditation. Thanks. Her body glistens in the moons' light, no less beautiful for the colors that run down her now. Her eyes close, and she holds her hands aloft.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And only on the third verse does the world return to her.

[Balmas]

… Ah.

You know, somehow she feels like she should have known that her story was always gonna be a tragedy, right? What else could it be with such a flawed protagonist?

Already, she can see it in her mind. DYSSIA, picked out on the posters in an aggressive serif font, playing now at your local theater, with orchestra scored for organ and tympani.

Please, please, please get someone hot to play her.

Not Merilt. Fuck Merilt.

And she's not having THE DISTRACTED tacked on, either. You try to write that sign and she'll come back from the grave to break your wrist, see if she doesn't. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but cross her and you won't have hands left to hold them.

What kind of tragedy, though? Morality tale? One of those hubris things where the lesson is "don't fight the gods, don't fight prophecy, especially don't try to avert the prophecy?"

Because seriously, it never works. Maybe she's weird, but if some soothsayer told her that one day she'd be stabbed by someone born in june, she would not immediately jump to "murder all the kiddies born in june," right? S'like, sure, you start with one purge, but once you start murdering you have to keep murdering, and while you might get lucky and manage to nail the one bastard kiddo who's gonna stab you eventually, you've also guaranteed that half the country has a daughter or brother or parent who's been affected by your binge of purging, and suddenly there's a lot more knives aimed at your back, right? Seems like a whole lot of effort to go to when you could just make sure your will is updated, your successor well-trained, and the bucket list complete by the day of.

Would the stars of a tragedy do anything differently if they knew they were in a tragedy?

Because she could, though. You know? Here's all the Pix, raring for a fight that they probably won't survive. A glorious battle! 50,000 Pix--37500 Ceronians--in a fight to the extinction against a million--no, against multiple millions--of foes! And if anyone could survive a battle of that sort, yeah, it would be them. But it would be slow, and it would be grindy, and it would be legendary, and the perfect distraction to let her grab her servitors, grab Brightberry, and leg it to the nearest spaceport.

Dyssia, the planetary hero who led the Pix to destruction and made it home alive. Stick that in your pipe and choke on it, Merilt.

But…

It's like, she can look at that plan, and it's a good plan, and it's a smart plan, and it gets her home with the minimum of fuss, and any Pix that survive this battle--if they survive this battle, "if" is good--will not have the strength to come back to eradicate her planet.

But she keeps hearing the praise, and the adulation, and the captain claps her on the back with a full name and "brought us to war" and it's wrong.

She didn't plan this! Didn't realize there was a planet here full of battle crabs or whatever else exists in millions! This wasn't a brilliant move by a leader, or a cunning strategy to save her planet, or whatever.

They're so happy to be exterminated. Legendary battle! Warrior nerves rising! A story for the ages, of the last Pix Captain's glorious last stand!

It's not like she wants them to die, either! She looks at the crowd, and she can pick out the friends she's made, cheering just as loud as the people besides them.

They were built for this, and she has no idea how to fix it. They're excited to die. She could have saved herself some time and let the drones have their way.

Is it her job to fix this? She didn't make them like this, the humans did. She can stand tall on the moral high ground, secure in the knowledge that she doesn't have to look at what the high ground's made out of.

And she doesn't even know how to fix it!

Would they want her to fix it? They want this! Would actively punish her for robbing them of their glorious defeat if she tried! Would never be happy knowing they aren't fulfilling their purpose!

But they're going to die, other me! You have to admit that you don't want that!

No, but they do!

But that's fucked up!

Yes, we agree!

But what do we do?!

And the problem, see, the real problem with being the star of a tragedy is that they would make the same choices, even knowing who they are, knowing what will happen, knowing what kind of show they're in, because that's who they are.

If Dyssia didn't care, she wouldn't be in this mess. She wouldn't have poured herself into trying to stop their--what was the word? Some biomancer word to euphemize, to soften the hardness of fuckin' genocide into something palatable--retirement. Rehab. Something with a D. Decommissioning, that's the word.

Decommission. S'like if a weasel were given shapes on a page--slinky, dirty, probably about to go for someone's throat.

But if she didn't care, she could have gone about her day. Waited for the inevitable. Gone home. Wouldn't have snuck around, wouldn't have poured herself into a plan, wouldn't have spent so many godsforsaken days watching Yaji, wouldn't have declared war on Aphrodite for a puppet she didn't use, wouldn't have crashed the ship--which, by the way, is still kind of buffering mentally, it takes time to fit that kind of thought in your brain--

In short, if she didn't care, she could escape now. She could let them have their legendary battle. She could cut and run and never feel an ounce of guilt over letting her kidnappers die.

But if she didn't care, she wouldn't be her.

So it's her who steps to her servitors, and pleads with them that if they care about her, they will run. They've done their job, now's the time to get while the getting's good. It's her, pleading with Brightberry to forgive her.

And it's her, walking up to the Captain, and asking for some binoculars and a score of jetpack'd Pix, and offering her service and rail to perform some aerial reconnaissance.

And if the Pix must die to be happy? If she must perish in this tragedy? if the crowd has to boo and say "I would simply not do that, she's an idiot?"

Well, then at least she'll have the satisfaction of knowing she died as herself.

[Look Closely: 4,6, +2. 12.]
- Tell me about Brightberry. What are they doing? What will they do next?
- What is going on here? What do my senses tell me?
- Is something out of place or hidden? If so, what's sus?