Balmas

Breathless Dead

Any wolf, huh?

The thought won't leave her head. It's been bouncing along inside her head like a pebble in a boot.

Any wolf could try. Any wolf could be shogun, if they had the ambition and the guts to try it.

… Redana's a wolf, isn't she?

It's a terrible thought, a nightmare of logistics, counter to their whole mission, a position that Redana would hate and Bella would chastise her for even considering.

But still, the thought is--

Dyssia takes the notebook like a shipwrecked sailor climbing into a lifeboat.

It's weird, right? Because on the one hand, writing things down is, ugh, you know? Like, you're pinning thoughts on paper, and making plans you just know you're not gonna keep, and setting goals you'll find unimaginable once two weeks have passed.

But on the other hand! Oh, on the other hand, words that someone else has written down! Glorious thoughts, or, or better yet, instructions! Like nectar from the gods! Stabilizing, bracing, understandable! Distraction, compulsion, immortal, eternal!

She pores over the figures, absentmindedly nodding, eyes flicking between sums and columns and supplies, and makes some quick notes.

"Yes, in this column here, I think you'll find. An addition error, perhaps."

Like they're trapped repeating the same project, over and over again, always moving forward and yet staying still. Locked into their ambitions, working towards them, making endless progress and no change whatsoever.

Aphrodite has his claws in them all.

Breathless Dead

Teeth.

Teeth teeth teeth stench meat teeth

Why are there so many teeth why is everything fire this is not sexy at all.

Trillions.

She knew, right? Like, this many planets, this big a scale--

Intellectually, right? Like, a number that big stops fitting in your head? You can't imagine a million grains of sand, let alone a million millions.

Trillions. On the low end!

Is a low trillion even a thing? Can a trillion of anything be described as a low of anything?

Is this what the knights felt like, staring down the barrel of interplanetary--

Trillions!

But they at least had--

Friends? Coworkers? Allies? Idiots whose ideals happened to line up?

She has those, though? Right? Or, you know.

Already, she's feeling the loss. They're gonna make the best world possible for them here, but--she's losing friends, nevertheless.

It's so, so tempting to say yes.

Such a relief when she turns away, like a cloud passing in front of too hot a burning sun, and isn't that a shameful little ember piercing her. Yes, let Bella take the weight--she's always been the strong one, even now, even broken.

Even now, there's a part of her that's contemplating the idea. She doesn't have a plan for what happens after the Skies, after all--she's not a dreamer, not an ideas person, doesn't have a grand art project to cast into the skies.

She can see the blood already, dripping off her hands to pool on the floor and drown them all.

What would be the harm in saying yes?

Better put, what would be the harm in saying no? Beyond, you know, trillions of lives?

If, you know, you were to think about it purely numerically. If you shut yourself away from thinking of them as people, and reduced them purely to casualties reduced.

How do you go forward, knowing that--

She's not wrong, is the thing, right? How can she do anything against the sheer scale of trillions?

… How can she not, against the scale of hundreds of trillions?

It'd be so easy. Sit back, be a toy, let massive atrocity be carried out in her name from the safety and distance of the seraglio, tell herself she's taking the moral option, the humane option.

Her hands ball into fists.

Unthinkable. She will bathe the galaxy in blood, first. If there are horrors to be done, she will do them. Dyssia the distracted? No. There will be other epithets carved on whatever shallow grave she's eventually dumped into, but they'll be hers.

Breathless Dead

The books get everything wrong, did you know that?

In the books, this is it! This is the meet-cute! This is the savage Ceronian who will be won by the guiles of the Azura temptress, and turn out to be not that bad, actually, and secretly kind and caring if treated right, and--

God, she's scared out of her mind. Is it weird to be concerned about her clothes right now? Like, she's dressed up to the nines, formal to her wits end, and--

And in the face of the savagery in front of her, it's like. It's like it all melts away. Like it's both right and also incredibly out of place. Like, just by existing in this space with her, she turns the space into her own space and now it is they who are wrong.

Which, I mean. They're in orbit over her planet, and she's the Shogun, and--

She takes a deep breath, and then a second one.

"Tempting," she admits. "Truly, it is. I intend both to rebuild this ship and cast the Azura from the skies."

She takes another shuddering breath and meets the Shogun's eyes.

"But if you wanted to do that, you would have done it a century ago."

Polite. Even. Not like she expects it to make a difference. This is not a court, this is not a place where manners can deflect. She's not being rude, not trying to offend, simply stating facts in as neutral a voice as her pounding heart will allow.

"If you wanted to govern, subdue, occupy, in the way it would take to fully kill the skies--to fully halt the inertia of self-running bureaucracies that keep it ticking along--you would not have built your planet in a way that lets you live forever in the moment of conquest. You want the glory, the thrill, the battle, the next, and have set up your planet to provide exactly that in spades."

Breathless Dead

Dyssia chews her own cup of coffee slowly, eyes fixed on nothing so much as the inside of her own head.

"Somehow, that makes this so much easier," she finally says, and adds more sugar to her mug.

"Because you're not wrong, you know? All this time, I thought it was…"

She shrugs, not meeting Hestia's gaze, and contemplates her mug.

"I did think it was me. That I was, you know. Broken. That I was spending all this time fighting a system that others found acceptable, and maybe so were the Publica, and while I wasn't gonna let that stop me from fighting, I also kind of.

"You know, kind of hoped? Like, at some point, I'd figure things out. See the big picture. Have the moment that has me sprinting from a bathtub, crying *'Eureka!'*"

Carefully, unbidden, she tops up Hestia's mug, and pulls a biscuit from what her fingers insist is the wrong drawer.

"But it's the whole thing. It's broken for everyone."

What even is the point? So much time, so much effort.

"It's a system that serves no purpose except its own continued existence. It's a system that demands everyone deny themselves, subjugate themselves, abase themselves before the might of capital-C Civilization because the alternative is letting go. Because, having spun up the engines of empire, they've found no more worlds to conquer--or, you know, none they can conquer, which is surely the same thing in the end--and have spend the last two hundred years doodling pictures in the sky for no other reason than to have something, anything that makes things feel like they have a point."

She stares at the dregs of her cup, and drains them.

"That makes wishing its spine broken so much easier."

Breathless Dead

Disillusionment tastes like caffeine.

Which, actually, is its own flavor, thank you very much. It shines beneath the surface of the drink, bitter, sharp, acrid.

Like, it turns out, attempting personal rituals when--

"It's like, I keep trying to do what normally calms me down, right?"

She inhales the scent of the coffee, and is bitterly grateful that at least the drink isn't blue.

Which is, alas, more than she can say for the rest of the kitchen.

Is it weird to say that she's going to miss the taste of crab? It was their defining meal, their cultural foodstuff and--

She grits her teeth.

"And this keeps happening. It's like, it's the same drink, right? The same food. The same ceremony surrounding it.

"And yet, no the hell it isn't. I keep--keep, you know, going to reach for something. Reach for where something was, where it ought to be, only to find that some fucker rearranged the drawers for better symmetry.

"It's a hearth, but it's not. Not my hearth."

Carefully, she tips the carafe into a mug--beautiful, fluted, delicate, wrong--and offers it to Hestia.

"Sugar?"

Breathless Dead

"All of the suffering, all of the work. Centuries of war, of effort, of empire. Of painting the sky with royal azure blue."

Dyssia is still staring out the window--the too-large, too-open window, the better to display the universe with to the gloriously new bridge, aren't you so happy you came--with hands limp at her side, shoulders sagging.

"For a picture in the sky."

Where's Irassia? What speck in what quadrant of which picture?

She's not angry.

Which is, itself, strange. It had felt so strong, so pure, just seconds ago. A god just called her scum. She should be foaming, righteous, upset, not--

She should feel something, surely?

Is there--

"Do you think they have a department dedicated to making it happen? Like, you know, some happy cluster of Synnefo, smiling at whoever wants to wreak their will in starlight? D'you think they'd want to outsource their immortality or micromanage every aspect?"

It's…

"How much effort is dedicated to this? For something that's not visible until they turn off the lights? All because…"

Because they recognized, from the beginning, that their grand artistic design was a lie.

Like, sure, paint the map blue. Bring civilization to the frontier. Expand the center. But there will always need to be, you know. The outside. The frontier. The backwater. And there will always need to be people there.

It was never going to happen. It was--

It was always a lie.

Breathless Dead

"Of all the arrogant--"

Hot tears are pouring down her cheeks.

Helpless, is the word. She was helpless to stop it from happening. All her thoughts, words, skills, and still the Azure Skies had violated them--stripped them, pulled them away, put them back in someone else's idea of perfection. No room here for a hidden still, for notes still not discovered--she checks, sometimes--no room for a clunking old relic that vibrates when you run the engines just right, no room for--

No room for choice of any kind. Wouldn't you be so much happier if you simply fit in? Isn't it all so beautiful? Aren't you so happy you came?

And like, yeah, duh, it is. It is beautiful, and that doesn't give them the right to--

Did anyone even--No! No, nobody was involved, except whoever decided to enforce their perfection via assault bird!

Blue. Endless variations on the same color, picked out by somebody else who obviously knows better than you do what will be good for you.

Perfection that others will never be placed to view. Perfection that those placed to view it will have no choice but to participate in. The forces of empire, turned towards one massive, endless, useless art project.

Why did she want to come here again? Why did she think it would any different from exactly the thing that drove her out in the first place? Its purest expression?

She's staring around the ship at someone else's idea of her friends, and she resolves that if it takes her a hundred years, she will restore it the way it was. Or, no, not the way it was--but different. In the way that they decide.

Breathless Dead

The worst thing about knowing you shouldn't want something is that it doesn't work. Desire runs on different pathways than thought--bypasses the brain, the hands, and goes straight for the stomach. Tell yourself you don't want something all you like, tell yourself all the reasons it's a terrible idea, but the stomach knows the hunger pangs, the mouth knows the saliva, the nose knows the wafts of smell.

She's pressed to the glass as if she could open her mouth and devour it all in a bite.

Capitas! She's…

She's always wanted to come, you know? This is the heart of the empire, the heart of the grand encivilizing of the galaxy. This is the culmination of the project, its fullest expression, the fruits of all the labor of everyone in it.

She stares out the window, and in a glorious moment of clarity, she understands the Endless Azure Skies.

The thought of not being able to experience it fully--of willfully shutting her eyes, or nose, or mouth--is a knife to the gut, twisting the more she takes in.

It has to be smell, right? Smell or taste? They're basically the same thing, anyway. She can still see, and touch, and hear any of a thousand vistas.

Gods, she could step out of the ship right now and jump to the closest one. Swim lazily through space, and never, in a million years, run out of things to see. Never run out of things to do.

Everyone in their place. Every person contributing perfectly. Endless satisfaction in endless beauty. Bliss. Perfection.

Millions of planets, arranged for a perfection they will never see.

Arranged for a perfection that--

No, no, cut that thought off. It could work, given time and effort. Everyone could be happy. It could spread, could achieve this level of perfection across the galaxy.

Arranged for a perfection, she decides, that they will never be placed to see. Never see how the black hole scatters the light, see how the three planets align, see how the binary system twirls through the sky like a firework, because they will never be in Capitas.

Everyone happy in someone else's art project.

Perfection, she thinks, even for the Ceronians. No need for actually holding territory, or bulky supply lines, or anything but the rush of the moment of conquest, the acclaim, the victory, and then on to a new planet.

Maybe touch. She'd hate to be blind to smell at a moment like this.

Breathless Dead

How had she gotten to this point?

Above her, a Pix is thrown through the Coherent line like a bowling ball, hurling invectives and blue-tinged epithets all the while. Make a note, follow up on those, she thought she'd been taught most of the swears, and some of those are creatively interesting.

It's like, at no point in the night had she made a decision that, looking back, she wouldn't--

Hmm. Okay, yeah, no, the kegstand was dubious, but--

Behind her, the Summerkind reload.

Would "Belay that order" work? She could try pulling rank, right? Might work on some of them? Probably not enough, right? She could--

She considers trying to thread the needle with a second beam. In between the arms, the shields, nail the knee, drop Iskarot--

Was it the satyr where things went wrong? The bottle? The vents?

No, no, she's impossibly drunk, far too much risk of hurting one of the Coherents.

No, no, the sun. The sun was the fuckup. Like, everything here, the coolant, the vats, the everything, the war at the center of the ship, all because of the heat.

Iskarot's shouting something about nukes? She should do something about that, she's pretty sure.

The heat. The coolant. Her eyes pan across the battle and then up, up. Coolant. Pipes. Veins, pulsing with trapped potential. The prize of prizes.

She takes the deathray, lifts it as if in a dream, and fires it into the heart of the Hermetics' hoarded cooling.

"Withdraw!" she bellows, to as many people as will listen.

Breathless Dead

… Ah.

D'you know, somehow, she didn't see this coming?

Like, obviously, she wasn't fooling herself or anything. Ares, right? As much madness in those bloodshot eyes as there is in her own familiar purple, that same pulse-pounding drive, the same drumbeat-chested urge. He's not gonna hug it out.

Also the wet, sticky trickle down her neck is probably her ears bleeding? It'd explain why the world is fuzzy, instead of a roar--why all that surrounds her is her heartbeat, singing faster and faster.

But yeah! She totally fucked this up! The entire ship was too small for everyone to coexist peacefully, and she packed them all in one room and added turbo-cohol!

Whoops!

Still, she finds herself whooping with laughter as she rises, scythes one leg of the tripod with a sweep of a death beam, and starts tossing people bodily through the holes in the walls left by Iskarot's deathbeam. Hell, let's get some more! Wide setting, aim where there's no people, and tszhoom another barn-sized hole to toss people through!

After all, the faster the party leaks out into the rest of the ship, the faster people get a bit of space, and the faster the fighting stops, like sparks tossed far from a flame!

In theory! She hopes! Unless it actually spreads it further, like sparks landing in fresh tinder! Let's roll those dice!