Balmas

Breathless Dead

Why do they need to push the rock, though?

It keeps bugging her, you know? The only thing worse than pushing the rock is not pushing it. And she hadn't said anything at the time, because she was busy, yes, geeking out, and then there was all the work to pick up the pieces, and then she had been out there doing things, and it'd felt so good.

But the entire point of the story, right, of the guy pushing the rock up the hill, right? Is that it doesn't work. Sisyphus or whoever spends all that time and effort and sweat, and every time it rolls back down. It's like--he doesn't get that his story is a tragedy, right? He's trying to live in the kind of story where he's successful and powerful and a king and can outthink, outfight, outwit the rock.

They're fighting a losing battle.

Nobody's willing to say it, but it's true, innit? It's a good battle! She's out here, she's seeing the galaxy, being helpful, and doing something nobodyelse is doing, for probably the best cause she can think of. It's a fight she can't stomach the idea of not fighting.

And maybe that's the problem.

Put yourself in the spot of the king, right? Invincible hill, massive fuck-off boulder, and capital-S Success at the top of the hill.

But the king, at least, can find success in other places. In leaving the boulder behind. In carving the boulder into stone to build a home. Put up a plaque, In This Day In The Year 20086 The King yada yada yada'd, and boom, now you have a monument.

But for the Publica, the mountain is sentient, and fickle, and can come smash any town you might build somewhere else, and also owns the infrastructure you need to build somewhere else, and it keeps shitting all over the mountain.

And they've been winning, right? She's feeling super good about what she's doing.

But none of that changes that the Skies are building the mountain more quickly than the Publica can take it down.

Did Sisyphus ever feel like this?

It's like. She can see the trajectory if left unchanged. But the only other trajectory she can think of is, you know, a massive public campaign where she, outcast and red-robed, somehow convinces the shah and all her men to change course on a project that's been in the works since… well, since forever.

But what else can she do? The alternative to pushing the rock is, well, not pushing it. And there are too many people who'll get hurt if she doesn't. She just has to hope that she figures out something else before, you know, the worst comes to worst.

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Ah. This has become a difficult situation.

It's not that this isn't, y'know, nice and all but. Uh. Um.

She's reaching out for that like--you know, the little pinch, that little nexus, the little pit of fire that'll blossom out and--

Small, that's the ticket. Small, get out of the pinch, hope that.

D'you know, she has the weirdest mental image of like, a beartrap being sprung around something small and squeaky? Fire, chipmunk, a metallic twang?

And it's not working is the thing, right

It's not working oh crap why isn't it working

Is it girls?

Are girls her secret weakness?

Why are girls her secret weakness?

She can't transform around girls! No, no, that's dumb, she transforms around herself all the time! And Rain! And Hsien! And Izi, now that she thinks about it!

Girls would be a terrible secret weakness! Like that one movie Mr. Chan doesn't know she watched about the aliens who were weak to water, or something!

But it's not working and she can't transform and she's being squeezed and she's pushing, pushing, rising like Godzilla from the ocean, sloughing off desk and monitor and cables and girl like water, because she can't transform and isn't safe and--

Breathless Dead

Dyssia hems and haws, and holds up two hands as if to mimic a scale.

"So, to clarify, on the one hand--" and the left hand dips, cupping as if to feel the weight in it, "a life of ease, requiring me to submit to the whims of the skies, but which rewards me with infinite resources, infinite privilege, free time, the chance to perfect myself, the certainty that we have crafted the universe in our image like someone who hasn't quite learned about hubris yet."

The left hand rises at the same rate as the right hand sinks. "And on the other, a harrowing life of struggle, underfunded, underclassed, perpetually on a shoestring budget, harried from planet to planet by an empire larger and more willing to stoop to the heinous, requiring me to think on my feet in the service of people who may or may not welcome my help, with no resources or assistance and with much more demanding personal ethics while making myself an enemy of the public good in the name of

"Do I understand correctly?"

This is the moment, isn't it? The call to adventure.

Or, like. You know, the call happened a month ago. Two months? A time.

The scales balance momentarily, wobbling, and she grins as the right hand drags itself down.

It feels… liberating. Like a relief, almost. Like the shoe has dropped, and it's because she dropped it, and-- and she's able to say things she's been thinking to someone who agrees with her, holy shit--

"Where do I sign up?"

Breathless Dead

Dyssia doesn't answer right away, which is her first victory.

It's like, intellectually, there must have been a time before the Azure Skies, right? It's not that she hasn't thought about it, right? Or like, what it would be like if the Skies were different.

But it's in terms of eons, if that makes sense? There was a time before the Skies in the same way that there was a time before the planet existed. There was a time when the Azura lived in the oceans, before they surfaced and looked at the sky. It's ancient history--it happened, yeah, but nobody's old enough to remember it or for it to be relevant.

He was there. He's over five hundred years old, which--

It's like, you're immortal, I'm immortal, we're all immortal here.

Unless you're a servitor race that's been created with a short lifespan. Or created to be fodder. You know, things that are, again, heinous shit when aging has been eliminated and the only reason for their suffering is to optimize for the betterment of the empire.

But five hundred years just-- it's like, it refuses to fit in the mind. Stops being a period of time that is understandable and devolves to just a number. What do you even do with that much time?

What do you do, knowing that you have infinite resources, can build whatever you want, create whatever you want?

"That's insane," she eventually says, horror struggling with--no, actually, yeah, just horror. "That's not an argument for the Azure Skies to keep being around. That's-- That's hundreds of thousands of millions of people, all playing a never-ending game, all suffering in the name of pleasing the neurotic psychopaths who want to paint the galaxy blue.

"That's not justification for an empire. That's justification for the empire's destruction--for breaking it down so entirely that the name loses meaning, and replacing it with something--

"Infinite resources! Infinite time! The ability to go anywhere, do anything, with anyone! Get as good as you can at anything you want!"

Oh fuck stop talking before he--Dyssia, you're shooting your mouth off and you don't know--why can't you--

She can't bring herself to stop, staring at the night and hoping against hope that he gets--

Please understand her.

"There's got to be a better answer than 'everybody dedicate themselves to this one idea that's hurting everyone,' hasn't there?"

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

One the one hand, interrupting a mystical sage during their meditation is probably definitely almost certainly a good way to wind up cursed. Possibly even accurséd, which like double cursed but with extra syllables!

On the other hand, if she's a mystical sage, then is she virtuous? Is it possible to be an unvirtuous sage? A sage of, of, uh, spreading bad virtue? What's the word for that? She should know this.

She should figure that out. After all, if she's a virtuous sage, then she'll support this plan!

She takes one paw away from the power strip cables--because she doesn't have any ropes, you see--and wriggles under the desk so she can get between Izi and the keyboard. Perfect location where she can look at Izi's face and, purely by coincidence, put her ears at scritching height if someone were to be so inclined.

"Pardon me, great sage, but would you like to help us bring virtue to the wicked?"

Yeah, that's the word! Wicked sage!

She's so good at this.

Breathless Dead

"Fifteen-hundred Ceronians."

She's going to die. She's going to die because she opened her stupid mouth to make a joke that only ever made herself laugh and that only in her own head. The flush is starting at her head but she can feel it surging down her tail like a fire. Just bury her ashes in the ground here and find something more pithy for her tombstone than "fifteen-hundred Ceronians."

You know, with all the trees having sprouted, the soil's probably nice and soft, could do the burial nice and easily.

"What?"

"In-joke, sorry. It's that each Pix is, uh."

Bail. Pivot. Topic change now.

In all her years she's never seen a more compelling question of wife or life.

Fuck, fuck, change back--

Because on the one hand, whoof. The silver scales? The scars? The shape, that armor--

Note to self. Invest in armor. Find a tailor, invest in armor. Research tailoring, invest in armor. Hell, she's already half a blacksmith, and they can probably pick her forging gear out of the wreckage--

God, she could climb him like a mountain.

But it's like, it's not just the physicality, right? Not purely the sex appeal of a big buff guy made more buff by armor?

It's the confidence, is what it is. Every inch of him says that he knows what is right, has bound himself to live it in both word and deed, and to look at him is to want to do better personally.

Red, right on the face. Red, right where people can't help but see and know and be confronted by and--

What other people think doesn't matter. This is his virtue, he shall live in it, and the petty opinion of the Azure Skies will not change it.

Fuck, she actually has to explain why she did it. The words bubble up--excuses, lies, witty sayings--

But looking at that face--looking at those eyes, those eyes--the words gurgle and die in her throat. It's like, she doesn't need them? Doesn't actually need the full reasoning, either, it seems. She could explain her reasoning, explain how it happened, dance around the fact that she wasn't exactly in control of piloting while still accepting the praise (and she's realizing now that the praise of this man abruptly matters quite a lot), could spend a whole lot of stammering and words to say not very little.

But there's a certainty here that cuts through all of that.

It's like, she's heard questions like that before. Dyssia, why would you do that? Dyssia, why are you like this? How could you do this? Why would you not do this other thing that nobody told you about but which somehow everyone is supposed to know anyway? Always with that same air of Dyssia, you moron, you fuckup, you embarrassment to your family, clod, idiot, like getting stabbed by knife after red-hot unspoken knife.

(And then they never stay for the answer, by the way, which is even worse. Because it means it's not actually about getting an answer--it's just about making her feel like shit in a way that doesn't make them feel like shit.)

But he'd asked as if there was… Admiration? No, maybe not, but at least certainly approval. Curiosity. She'd done something interesting, something unusual, something he approved of, and now wanted to find out whether she'd done it for the right reasons. And he was listening, as if what she said actually mattered. To him! To a knight of who knows how many campaigns and seasons!

"How could I not?"

Four words. As if they were the most simple, obvious thing in the world. Because if the world is one where they aren't, the world is a shitty place that Dyssia doesn't want to live in.

"They were going to--"

She gestures emphatically at the forest around them, as if nothing she could say would say it better than just looking around.

"As if it were their fault that we, you know, made them. And then decided that we didn't like the way we made them. And so because we made them in a way we didn't like, somehow that means we also have the right to murder them all?

"S'like, what part of that says that we should be the ones with the fingers on the trigger, huh? We fucked them when we made them, we fucked 'em again when we played around with them, and then when we can't twist them into something useful, oh well, we did our best, obviously we can't be blamed for this, we'll do a little light genocide in the morning and then go out for brunch after?"

Probably a bad first impression to have that much bile in your voice, but she can't help it.

"They're people. People who are different from us, yeah, but whose fault is that? Who picked and bred and programmed them and then decided they weren't needed? What's a ship compared to them? What ship would replace them? We can make more ships, or we could, if--"

She bites her tongue just in time to cut off the treasonous sentence. We could make more ships, if the system actually even fulfilled its promises. If the Skies existed as more than a phantom of its former self.

Would she want it, even if it did?

"… We shouldn't be killing people. Like, bare minimum. We owe them too much to even contemplate anything but trying to help them as best we can."

Breathless Dead

Holy shit?

Like, she keeps trying to come up with other words but holy [i]shit???{?i]

A knight! The Dust Knight! Career knight! Career knight she knows!

Or, you know, not knows, knows, but has! Has heard stories about! Like, in the canteens and docks and--

Ho-oly capital S H SHeeeyit!

She doesn't realize she's been gnawing on the halberd in awe until it comes into two halves in her hands.

A knight! To save her! Holy shit does that--no, no, she's probably not a knight, but she could be! Oh shit, she could parlay this into-- Well yes she could parlay this into fame and fortune but not actually and really she wouldn't be happy with the kind of fame and fortune that just dropped into her lap and--

Amycix's training knocks against her skull like a club to the hindbrain. Iron. Red. Now's the time to strike, dumbass, she had to train that into you hard enough.

She doesn't do anything dumb like stare at the two halves of the warhammer in her hands. No, there is rescue, there are the gods, there are slightly less than fifty thousand Pix, and she is leading the charge into the drones with a warcry.

Well, more like an ululating howl. Warcries are supposed to be more articulate, she thinks, bear a message of some kind.

Tyrants of tomorrow. Holy shit. Holy shit holy shit holy shit.

He is the coolest person she has ever seen, and she's going to be just like him someday.

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Smart?

Smart?!

She's never been smart before! Oh, this is going to be fun!

Because, you know, it's occurred to her that they don't exactly breed celestial lions for their smarts, right? It's probably bad for the job. Qualifications: must be able to stand for years in a garden, doing a whole not of not very much except glowering at anybody not on the list. You don't want smart guards--you want stolid idiots who can't be talked around or persuaded that they're allowed in the garden, and certainly never convinced that actually, cookies are great before bedtime.

Mind you, champion glowerers. Won't find a better glowerer here or there than celestial lions. Glowers for days.

You know, glower is a fun word. You say it enough times and the word just stops meaning anything. Gllllll-ower. Premium mouthfeel, would say again.

… What was she saying?

Right! Smarts, comma, how she is!

Carefully, she starts feeding Hsien's other arm into the slot of the vending machine.

"Do you think we should put Izi in there too? S'like, you're virtuous, and I'm from heaven and therefore virtuous. But Izi isn't virtuous, right? If we're putting the Princess in a vending machine to help her avoid temptation, then logically"--

Oh, that's another good word. L's and G's, that's the stuff.

--"Logically, we should do the same to everyone else to help them avoid temptation! So Izi needs to get tied up too!"

She's out the door and into the main cafe area in a flash.

They're gonna need a lot more vending machines.

Breathless Dead

Dyssia bears down on the Biomancer like a ship under full sail.

It's like an optical illusion, right? She's seen the ships in the yard, coming and (it seems to her, nowadays, more often) leaving. And it's amazing how slowly they seem to go, right? So calm, as if they're not mounting the heavens on a spear of flame.

The effect is very different when you're standing directly in front of one.

Words like impacable, unstoppable, inevitable come to mind. She is an avatar of Mars, suffused with a golden glow, and you could no more turn her aside than dam the sea.

Because of course, from a certain view, the biomancer is right.

This isn't her fight. She's acting completely against her own interests, and against the interests of her people, and against the interests of the Skies.

If she does nothing, she gets her life back. She saves her planet. She'll be hailed as--

Hmm. Well, no, no, let's be honest, she won't be hailed as a hero. Too much baggage to be a hero, too politically embarrassing for Merilt for her to have succeeded. No ticker tape parade for her--though can you just imagine the lemon-sucking face Merilt would make to see her back?

But her planet will survive, and balance will have been restored. She will have driven a useless species already on the brink of decommissioning into the loving hands of her biomancers, and the Skies will thrive.

She'll have exercised her right as the ranking Azura--you know, out of a total of one--to make a decision that will affect an entire species. She has the power of life and death, of reshaping life to better suit the skies, of deciding when foxes should go and when they should be remolded into adorable.

But.

But it would mean admitting that. You know.

Even the thought sticks in her throat, like a bit of food that you realized was bad too late, and is trying to come back up.

It would mean admitting that Aphrodite was right. That the Skies are more important than any sacrifice maid to maintain them. That so long as the machine functions, it doesn't matter how many people are ground into grease for its weels. That the system works.

It would mean accepting that she--Dyssia, Distracted, Fuck-up Supreme--is nevertheless the best person to make those decisions, just because she's an Azura.

As if Azura are magical, somehow different than the Servitors around them. As if they're not made of the same things. As if the blacksmith back home doesn't hide the little marks where the changes happened, and occasionally curse the way they did back at their home.

It would mean believing that the Pix--that all the servitors--are somehow less than people. Wind-up toys to be tweaked and tooled and decommissioned when no longer useful.

Her planet would survive. Dyssia might even be hailed as a hero, a saboteur.

But what would come back would not be her. She'd have lived, and have been gifted a dozen reminders of who she gave up.

Because, fuck you actually, you're dead wrong, and this is her fight.

Because if the system is right, and the system works, then she is more broken than the Pix. If she doesn't fight with everything in her to save these people, then who will fight for her? Who will stand with her if she does not stand with them?

She says none of this, but just brings the hammer down with a too-meaty splash.

Breathless Dead

Rescue isn't coming.

The sand hangs in the hourglass, perpetually on the precipice of dripping from present to past. Frozen, forever on the edge. The dribbled water out of the bucket slows to a crawl. The candle burns and burns and refuses to inch downward the hours.

Rescue's not coming, and it's his fault.

Would she be one of the ones turned into a crab? Honestly, she wouldn't mind that. Strong preference for snake, right, but crab is up there. Nature's most perfect form.

Demeter won't halt this. The planet is gorging itself, verdant, green, full of life. A jewel, seeded by rich fertilizer. Demeter's flourishing.

It's the nitrogen and acidity, you know. Though technically that needs bacteria to break it down. Does Demeter do bacteria? It'd suck to die and have just, you know, a swarm of invisible lifelets come out.

She stares at the watch as if it were a hypnotist's pendant.

The God of love. What a hateful thing.

God of love, with that clock tick-hating away in the background? God of love, resentful, all devouring? Watching, forever, the children that got away. God of estranged parents, convinced all along that really it's their children who are abusive, and always have been, and only exact obedience will prove their love.

Honestly, when you think about it, it's only natural that a severed penis would turn out to be such a massive dick.

Ah, anger.

It's honestly refreshing, you know? She's been so full of everything else--hope, despair, desperation--that having that knotful churning at her center is…

How dare he? How dare he sit there, with his smug smile and his stinking cigars and act as if this is best?

There's a hammer in her hand. No, no, wait, she knows this. Something old and fancy sounding. Crow's beak? Long and vicious, with a slender hooked spike on one end and a four-pronged hammer on the other.

She stares down the shaft, and up at the god handing it to her.

How dare he stand here, in Mars' battlefield?

A knot sits in her throat, and at the god's nod, she fires up the rail and soars over the field. She is not a master of hammer or rail, but she is buoyed up, borne in Mars's hand--a puppet on his strings, bouncing and breathless and bodyslamming to his tune. A toy soldier piloted by a toy soldier, a spinning rocket with a hammer at one end.

Rescue is coming, dammit. Just as soon as you're gone, this can end. And if that means she needs to do this herself, then so be it.