Balmas

Breathless Dead

Don't think about it.

Don't!

Ignore the way even the air feels wrong in her presence, like oil, skittery and shiny, is clinging to everything inside of you and choking you with her very presence.

Don't pay any mind to the way the hairs rise up on your neck. Shove those protective instincts, every one screaming that here is a tiger about to leap, way down to the point that you can look at her without shuddering.

Tell your gut to settle down, to stop writhing and churning and kicking like a dog in a sack.

Biomancy. Humanity's hubris, their arrogance, their downfall, the reason that trillions across the stars suffer. The idea that you can not just give someone their ideal self, explore expressions and powers beyond their wildest dreams, but can then turn around and cut someone else down. Can tell them that they can be reduced to a set of instincts, a number of aversions, and pointed at a task like a program.

Think about Mynx. Think about why you're here. Think about how much you'd like to spend more time with Mynx, see that cheeky grin in her eyes, and how you'll never see that again if the bomb in Mynx's biology tears her apart.

Don't think about it. Don't think about letting Mynx go under the knife of a biomancer. Don't think about the harm she can wreak, what she can do to her don't think about it don't think about it don't think about it

You are here because she is to serve you. You are calm. You are in control. She can't hurt you. Nobody can hurt you. You're here for Mynx, and you won't let her hurt Mynx.

"I'm sure we can find or manufacture replacements as needed. Katraph, when was the last time you halted a rampancy, and what was the outcome for the Adept?"

Breathless Dead

It's not a stretch to say the Kaeri are monsters.

She's been aboard the Anemoi. Seen, in the cramped, dark quarters, the ghastly furniture. Has seen, only barely, the Lanterns taking them apart, recovering fathers and aunts, sisters and children, giving them the rest denied by their murderers. To be seen is to face cruel death, just for the pleasure of killing.

And that, just from a regular rank and file member. More terrifying still are the genetic engineers who made them, who pushed for that perfection, who looked for a design that could revel in efficient death and silent cruelty and seek to improve on it.

There must be another way. Surely, there is. Someone among the Hermetics who could help. A Coherent who knows a guy who knows a guy.

And if she had time, she'd chase them down, and find them. If the fuse weren't lit, she could relish the luxury of the best option. If Mynx's time weren't counting down, if she could believe that Mynx wouldn't light the ship ablaze in the pyre of her Rampancy, she wouldn't be down here, talking to the Evocati, and feeling only glad that the Kaeri were not allowed to pillage their furniture from the Anemoi.

"I don't want to lose my friend. You don't want this ship to burn. We have a shared goal in this."

Breathless Dead

"Wait!--"

Alexa pauses, one hand raised, and lets it fall with a sigh.

"Look, I--"

Zeus's tits, what an idiot she is. Could have let it sit, it's settled, no awkward conversation, but nooo.

"I hurt a lot of people, back in the day. I am still trying to make up for it by being better. Genuinely, I am happy you're changing, and it is for the better.

"But remember--change is destructive, but destruction doesn'tt always mean change. I spent two hundred years hating myself for the mistakes I made, telling myself that only my death could pay for the wrongs I'd done.

"And it didn't help. It wasn't until I found friends that I was able to forgive myself.

"I'm not sure where your path leads. And I'm not sure I can be one of the people who helps you. But… Just. Don't make my mistake, okay?"

Breathless Dead

You know, an apology almost makes it worse?

Up until now, she's been able to put it out of her mind. It's been non-stop crisis, one after another. It's been Salib, and Sagakhan, and Barassidar, and saving the ship again and again. Even when sprinting across the ship to save him, she could focus on finding and saving Mynx from herself.

But now here he is, and here she is, and he's in front of her, and she has no choice but to remember the good month or two where every time she saw a vent in a hallway, she passed by on the other side. She has to think about how she jumped at every noise from the wall in her quarters until eventually she moved the furniture to block the noise. She has to remember seeing him in ship meetings and surrounding herself with friends out of, out of some idea that if she's surrounded by other people, she can't be hurt.

And he wants to apologize, and all she can do is clutch an arm, and stare at him, and wish she still had a throat full of moss.

He's doing better, yes. He's going out of his way to apologize when he didn't have to. To admit fault--he, the head of all Hermetics on board, admitting he made a mistake! In public, in front of his peers!

And is sitting there, doing the polar opposite of fidgeting--as if by stillness, he can pass on the nervousness to her and force her to fidget in his stead--and damn his eyes if it isn't working.

"… That's the first step," she eventually says, still not meeting his eyes. "And I am glad that you are making that progress. It is always difficult to change."

Breathless Dead

It would be nice to just relax into it. Mynx is gone, with nothing to mark her passage but a cryptic message and two darting-deerlike shapes in pursuit. She could simply lie down amidst the flowers, breath deep the spores, and let the vines have their way with her.

And that's exactly the reason she can't. That thought pushes her, staggering, to her feet. She can't stop here. Maybe she'd be fine. Maybe she'd just have a relaxing day to herself with her thoughts. But she's had far too many of those as is, and she has things to do. There are people she cares for, and miracle of miracles, she's one of them.

Aphrodite is a villain, yes. He destroys for love. But thus are all gods, and she loves herself too much to lie down now.

Someone--she doesn't see who--catches her when she staggers out of the fog. She's slow, too slow to chase, but she can at least scrape the moss out of her throat enough to speak and try to make some order out of the chaos of fleeing magi and scattered phalanxes.

Breathless Dead

[Paying the price of losing the Aegis, probably by dropping it in the fall. Overcome: 2,3,2, +2, squeaks by with a 7.]

None of this is right. She's stone and metal. Who uses poison on a machine? Who expects that to work?

Dread creeps across her like the vines. Because it's not poison, is it? You don't poison a machine. You sabotage it. You throw grit in the gears, drain the oil, contaminate the fuel.

Already, she can feel stone cracking. Roots as fine as hairs seek out pinprick imperfections and expand, doing in minutes the erosion of centuries. Moss tickles at her ears, and then the world dulls, muffles as the moss grows down and in. Vines tease around her eyes, and she can't squeeze them shut tight enough.

Her chest isn't tight--it's too full. The stone has nowhere to go, nowhere to expand to, in the face of the invading plants. Already, she can feel the plants spreading in her throat, pressing out, binding the flow of sounds.

[Damaging Sense.]

"Aren't you supposed to be her friend?"

She only has seconds, and she needs hours.

"Redana doesn't want servants! She wants people to like her, she wants friends, and she'd be more destroyed if she found out you were coercing people to be her friends than--"

A knee buckles, and she sags against Mynx, as much holding Mynx down as holding herself up. '--if they left' dies in her throat, choked out by the vines and impact.

[Damaging Grace. 1,2,6, +1, 9 on Talk Sense if Mynx cares to listen]

Breathless Dead

There. Alexa fixes her gaze on the one yellow hood, and stares at it. Don't let her out of your sight, don't give her a chance to melt back into the crowd, keep your eyes locked on her. Move across the catwalk as quickly and quietly as you can, but don't lose her.

What even can she say? "Please stop poisoning people?" "Help me understand?" "I've been a terrible friend and I'm sorry?"

Finally, she's over the hood, takes a step off the catwalk, and drops like a stone.

The floor buckles, and yellow figures scatter around them, but that's not important. What is important is that she's got her, she's hugging her as hard as she can, and--

"Mynx, please, tell me how I can help you."

[Hold Them Back squeaks by with a 5,1,1, +3. 10. Probably gonna spend hold on Talk Sense or Speak softly after Mynx responds]

Breathless Dead

Alexa sits on the catwalk surrounding the cavernous engines, and decides this is probably the best case scenario.

Well, no, of course it isn't.

Best case scenario involves Alexa pulling her head out of her own ass in the days leading up to this. In a perfect world, she could have paid Mynx the attention she obviously needed before she poisoned a dozen people and plunged the ship into chaos. Best case scenario is not "Alexa picks which of a hundred identical yellow hoods holds a disguise."

But if she has to pick Mynx out of a crowd, this is perhaps the best case scenario. Mynx is a perfectionist, but the nature of secret societies is that they are, as it were, secret. Even if Mynx spent time on nothing but infiltrating the ranks of the Hermetics and learning of them, she can't have mastery of every detail. She can't have the perfect mastery she normally would.

More mastery than Alexa, more's the pity. Alexa doesn't know the rankings of the Hermetics, the intricacies of their robes, the secrets.

So instead of trying to interpret, she's only trying to notice the patterns. She follows them, one by one, noting garb, responsibilities. What pattern of robes, who do they talk to, where do they go, what levers do they pull? She's building an index of robes on the fly and not understanding a bit of what it means. But she doesn't have to decode the robes, know who's who--all she has to figure out is which cog is turning just that little bit slow, which one is not fitting in.

[Look Closely: 5,4,6, +1 Sense. [b]12.[/i] Which one is Mynx?]

Breathless Dead

But why is she doing this?!

That's the one question she needs to answer, she's sure of it. Solve that, and everything else falls into place. There has to be a motive, and that motive will dictate who the target is.

If Mynx wants to stop the journey, then Redana's the target. Redana, with her open heart and with her bonds to the crew and with her desire to cross the rift. Kill her, or poison her, and the journey ends.

But we have two ships! They're not both crossing the rift! If Mynx wants off, off is an option! Redana would...

Well, Redana would be a bit hurt, of course. Would do her best to avoid making it a thing. Would let it happen. But hurt nonetheless.

Revenge, then. Bella did a number on her back on Sahar. Mynx is probably the only person who could track where Bella is, but even with a disguise, Bella's probably too paranoid to let anyone close enough for poison. No habits to exploit, too much risk for a good fight. Stir up chaos...

Table that. Call it a maybe. Even if it's Bella Mynx wants, Bella's about as hard to find as Mynx if she doesn't want to be found.

She dismisses Dolce and Vasilia almost out of hand. Either one would be ridiculously simple to eliminate, simply by taking the form of the other and waiting for the opportune moment. No chaos necessary. Hell, chaos would make things harder, if for no other reason than making them look at each other harder.

Maybe chaos itself is the point. Make enough problems, and somebody has to pay attention to her. Acknowledge her. But if that's the point...

She'd even baked cookies. That stings, somehow, almost as much as the murders. They're still in the meeting room--Alexa hasn't been back yet to check whether they've been touched yet.

The list of leaders is dwindling, at this point. Jil of the lanterns? Potential. And it'd fit, if Mynx wanted to start a war, to assassinate both leaders and point each side at the other. Only slight problem is that Jil's not on the ship. Iskarot? Has some of the same issues Bella with being harder to find, but with none of the motive. Ramses? She'd only be a target by association with the Hermetics, it feels. Maybe the Assistant Secretary, to plunge the Tides into chaos?

And finally... Well, she's not so naive as to think she, herself, might not be a target. She's involved in other groups to at least the same degree as Redana. And while her death wouldn't mean the end of the journey

So, then. Call it probably six possible targets. Three more likely than others--herself, Bella, and Redana. Only one actionable out of that list, apart from herself, is Dany.

But... Well, her gut says that Dany isn't in immediate danger. Even if she is the ultimate target, she won't get hit until others have died. And she trusts Dany to take care of herself.

So that just leaves Ramses and Iskarot to find and protect.

Breathless Dead

Alexa's heart drops out of her chest, hits the floor, and starts to dig.

Only two people could have done this. One of them is still on Sahar.

She's not entirely sure whether she wouldn't like it to be the one still on Sahar instead.

"Evocatii," she says, quietly. "I think I've found your soldiers. But we have a new problem."

There is too much to do, and too little time in which to do it.

"I have the dizzying task of finding a consummate shapeshifter, possibly rampant, amongst thousands of people on this ship. If she does not want to be found, I will not find her. Please, calm your people. And spread the word to them, because any one of them could be her. Tell them, 'Mynx, I just want to talk where we talked before.'"

It's dumb. Mynx doesn't want to be found, has no reason to come. But it's the only thing she can think of to draw her out.