Balmas

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!

Breathless Dead

She takes the proffered array instantly, because when someone who you're about to fight offers to disarm themselves and arm you, you let them do it.

She pushes the barrel of one array up with a finger, towards the ceiling and away from the partying masses.

"I'm choosing to believe that you are drunk, Iskarot, which means you didn't actually just promise to hurt people I care about to protect the secrecy of a project. Because A) If you try, I'm gonna reluctantly have to stop you, 2) if you start shit in here, the still is gonna get destroyed anyway, so why bother, and D) I'm pretty sure that murdering guests in your home is a good way to get the entire ship cursed even further."

Around them, the world parties. Servitors wind around the glassworks and each other. The satyrs demand kisses traded for wine, and get them gleefully. The wine doesn't slosh, because it's much too thick for it, but were it more of a liquid, then sloshing would definitely be occurring.

It's a very noisy silence.

"So please, friend, put the weapons away. There will be time for rebuilding later, and you have my word I'll help you do so to your satisfaction."

Breathless Dead

"I don't… I don't buy it, friend. Not for, not for, for, one second. Not for one second."

She's not stuttering, which is itself a victory. The speech lessons paid off! Each syllable is precise, articulate, and enunciated clearly.

Multiple times, admittedly, but small steps.

"Because, see, let's say you're right, and there do exist perfect, platonic ideals that Zeus warped the universe to make perfect.

"Then why bother with the step of making. King. Ing. Making middle managers?

"Think. If you were a perfect being, would you want some imperfect being trying to interpret your desires in the way you'd want? Would you want multiple of them? You gonna invent Azura and humans?

"One, I could. Could see. After all, if you're a perfect being, then what do, do, do the normal things even interest you at all? Your best hope is to, to be left alone, right? Make your own projects. Then yeah, you'd arrange it so that you just fade into the background and you never think about it again.

"But two? We have enough problems with two servitor species in the same ship as each other. You wanna pretend they set up two galaxy-spanning civilizations that have butted heads through their history? Naaaaaah, that. That. That's a mistake, or--"

She pauses, glass halfway to her lips.

"Or factions inside them. That's two perfect beings, thinking of different things they want, different projects they wanna build, and making servitors to do it for them so they can pursue passion projects. D'you think the Azura were built by the foxes, the cats, or the crabs? My money's on crabs. Gotta be."

Breathless Dead

"It's a nice thought, you know?"

Dyssia swirls the glass in her hand contemplatively, and watches the three glasses in front of her spin.

"I'm not a fuckup, barely less fucked up than the rest of her culture. I'm not a throwback or an aberration, I'm just somebody's pet project. This culture--the whole Azura shitshow--isn't, you know, billions and billions of people consistently making the worst choice in every situation, we're just. Somebody's pet mechanical intelligence, whirring and ticking away.

"It's like, I don't know what's more terrifying--the idea that there might be someone programming my actions, or that I'm actually the final word on what's ethical and right. But then I remember…

"If they exist, they're assholes, right?

"It's like, what function does…" She shakes her glass, as if to encompass the galaxy. "You know, all the wars and infighting and shit with Azura and Ceronians actually do? Is it all just a game to them? Rolling dice, prodding the little people, playing games with what happens? Moving us about like pieces on a board? 'You can't play the sexy wolfgirl faction again, they're overpowered?'

"It's like, at least the gods have the good decency to be, you know, present. To make their will known, to be imitated and seen and bargained with and befriended, if that's even the right word."

"If they exist, take my word for it: Assholes, the lot of them."

Her glass is empty, she realizes, and holds it under the spigot until more molasses-textured liquid gloops into the cup.

"Actually, you're probably a better judge of that, right? What with, you know, the. The, you know, evolution? Self-made biomancer, kinda deal. Mayflies and such. Surely you're better suited to seeing the seams in the pattern, if such can exist."

Breathless Dead

"And you made this all yourself? You're incredible!"

Dyssia, it turns out, is a happy drunk. And a careful one, for what it's worth! This is not a large space, and she is a large person, and even through the fog of drunkenness, there's no broken glass anywhere, which is a massive win! She's woven in and through at least a dozen barrels and glassworks, and every little thing threatens a glass-shattering giggle-fit, but she's staying strong!

The bottle in her hand is feeling much lighter than she remembers. It's evaporated away, surely--no, no, look, the cork's gone. Did she open it? She doesn't remember opening it?

Or tapping the barrel, but she must have done that too? There's the glass spigot, and she does remember nodding to herself about how yeah, glassworks makes sense, because anything metal would just get eaten through, smart, smart, very clever these Hermits.

And she must have been the one to invite Dionysus to bless the festivities, and invited friends, because how else would there be two--three? Three satyrs? Stop moving so much, you're being very difficult to count.

And it made sense in her head when she first popped the cork on the bottle as an offering. Or. You know, it probably did, or else she wouldn’t have done it, and they wouldn't have agreed. She thinks? Not entirely sure on that last bit. But the important thing, the thing to remember, right, is that the alcohol's getting drunk. And the more alcohol inside them, the less there is in the barrels, and the less there is in the barrels, the less there is to evaporate, and the warmer we can make the room!

That makes sense, right?