Balmas

Breathless Dead

"You know, the worst thing is I don't even disagree with what she's doing?"

It should be impossible for a snake to pace, but Dyssia is managing it. Up and down the window, occasionally glancing out the window at the gleaming planet below them, and then back at her friends as if she expects to be scolded.

It's like, she's been lectured about this before, right, during her training in ? You're expected to be dignified, and stately, and have your thoughts composed, and roll with the punches, and not do that thing where your hands talk as much as your mouth without you telling them to do that?

It's nice to be with friends, whether or not that sentence ends with 'who don't care' or 'who don't know better.'

"It's like, the thought of your body just, you know, up and crapping out on you one day, for no other reason than because some virus disagreed with your liver and you wore out is, is, is horrifying, right? So Cash Money, bringing that to these people, good thing?

"But doing it the sneaky way is just. It's like, you could appear in whatever town square you like, say 'who wants to not die,' and have people lining up. She's doing it to people who'd sign up for it anyway, but wants to control, wants to force it on them. She's--what's the phrasing?--she's feeling good about herself instead of helping people, if that makes sense. She's not willing to give it out on their terms, because that would mean thinking of them as people, as equals. She's treating them like a project, as objects, as things that will be ever-so-grateful for her help and worship her feet as a demigod for her kindness and mercy."

The Argumentative Portuguese. She wishes she knew what they called themselves, if for no other reason than, you know, distinguishing herself mentally from the other Azura. Meaningless, except it isn't.

"The only reason to side with the Generous Knight over Cash Money is that it'd be easy. I already have an in with her, I'm a friend of a friend, I could probably talk her over, get her to put in some supply requests for us, get us gone nice and simple. I don't wanna, though, because she's an asshole. She's technically correct, in that uplifting the Portuguese will cause a lot of short-term problems in terms of, whoops, all our supply and medical issues just got solved and now whatever power structures the Azura like are going to calcify into a terrifying cancer-clump of abuse.

"But she's also only doing it because she wants a fight that will be entertaining. She could sweep in and crush them right now without a thought, and that's not fun. Better to let them die by the millions if it means she doesn't have to wait to sweep in and crush them later on. Because let's be real, the Portuguese aren't winning this militarily--the only reason they haven't been subsumed already is because the Azure Skies aren't threatened by them enough to care. If they actually fought and won against old Genny, they'd be a target for every aggrieved knight and minor noble looking to make a name for themselves."

Like us, she very carefully does not say.

"The Synnefo is a non-starter. Just, no. He'll be polite and obsequious and oh-so-willing to help, but of course madames will understand that he cannot help just one of us, and somehow in the conversation you'll be back in the ship, feeling grateful that he's here while also having been given homework out of it. He's going to be neutral. He might care about whether Cash Money or the Generous Knight come out on top, but he's never going to let it show, and he's certainly never going to help us over them.

"The only lever he has--thank you Brightberry, this information is incredibly helpful--is that pack of rogue Ceronians. It occurs to me that if we could incorporate them into ourselves--Ember, you're Ceronian liason duty, you'd know whether that works or not--we could simultaneously remove a threat to the Portuguese, ingratiate ourselves with the person in charge of supplies, and also bulk ourselves up slightly in case of any fighting we need to do.

"So, two options as I see it. Option one: bribe NBX-462 by taking care of his Ceronian problem. Option two: try to support Cash Money and, in so doing, make the process more aligned with the desires of the people on-planet. Option one is gonna cause less problems for us long-term, but I think I'm slightly leaning option two."

Breathless Dead

You know, there are times when she hates the color blue.

Which is a weird thing to say, right? Blue's nice. Got no end of variety to it. The blue so dark it's almost black of meditating on a shifting sea floor. The blue of a lapis, polished, gold-flecked. The infinite in-betweens, the rich, the thin.
And hate is a strong word, insists her mental censor. Does she actually hate the color blue, or just what it stands for?

Has she met an alien? When could she have? Going from a sheltered existence as a backwater neophyte to thrusting herself into the arms of constant pressure and danger? When and where would she have had the opportunity?

Which isn't to say she hasn't read stories about them, right? Daring heroine first contacts an alien planet? Stories that, with the benefit of hindsight, wow, sure do involve those daring heroines showing alien people how much better life is in blue?

It's like--

Fuck, she feels selfish even thinking of it like this, but it's like all the Azura can see is their favorite food, right? Favorite food, favorite music, favorite opera, favorite story, favorite everything. And now that they've decided what their favorite is, everything has to be that favorite. If their favorite dessert is cinnamon rolls, then whatever aliens have come up with now needs to be round and glazed. Whatever music they came up with is now filled with horns, because such is the fad.

Blue. Blue everywhere, even if it means that theres no room for reds, greens, purples, and so on. It seems like such a small sacrifice to make--even reasonable.

Bow to their sense of art, and all shall be well. Incorporate yourself, get used to horns and cinnamon rolls, and get comfy.

And ignore everything that isn't blue.

For a time, she can spare them. For a time, she can keep them--the actual them, not the them in the stories that are told afterwards--for a time she can keep them alive.

And also, handily, keep her and her allies alive, if perhaps a touch toasty. Seems like a good deal, if they can pull it off.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

[posted in wrong window, cannot delete]

Breathless Dead

We wouldn't be coming to him, she wants to say. She's not suicidal, not stupid, she knows that assaulting his stronghold is insane.

But… If we're talking about them being deployed against us, then we don't have to. If they're a concern, it's because we worry he might send them against us. That means that all we have to do is survive one battle in good enough condition to pick up as many as we can on the way out.

If. If we survive. Fuck, she hates that word.

If. Not survive, obviously. Survive is a great word, If is less good. If means--

Reality sucks, you know that? She always knew they were fighting a losing battle, but hearing it laid out in numbers by someone who's much better at numbers than her really highlights it, lays it bare.

They're not a threat!

But they are. Not because the crew of the Plousios is a military power, but because they're a cultural threat. They represent a chance of something different, an idea apart from empire. Let one idea grow, and suddenly people get the idea that the status quo might be possible to change.

No matter how it might feel on the other end, for the ones who have to do the changing.

Surely missing one or two is--Liquid Bronze wouldn't even notice, right? They're insignificant to him, disposable, he proves it by how he made them.

But they're also his magnum opus. Losing even one is to set loose a new, uncontrollable warrior servitor species to rival the Ceronians.

How like an Azura to make a weapon with a built-in casus belli.

Psh. Like they fuckin' need one, right now. Planet lost, town stolen, knight dead, rogue servitors in an imperial ship about to go who the fuck knows where, least of all her.

Through a star, apparently.

It's the right thing to help them. It is! It one-hundred-percent is the moral thing to do.

And it's--

It's not impossible, insists the treacherous mental censor. You could pull it off.

All it would cost you is everything, but it could be done. It's the right thing to do.

It'd be suicidal to pursue it. Destructive, not to just herself, but to everyone who follows her. All of her Pix? Gone. Her newfound friends? Dead, to no end. An angry mosquito, hurling itself and everyone they care about at a bug zapper in a last, meaningless 'fuck you' to the universe.

It still reeks of cowardice to her own mind, though.

It'd mean losing Brightberry.

"I assume we'd survive blasting through a star," she grudgingly says, at last. "Make us hard to follow, or at least worth leaving alone."

Breathless Dead

That--

She hasn't felt this sick since she stood from a desk and beheld Aphrodite holding her triumph.

Behold, the triumphs of biomancy!

It isn't even from the perspective of trying to fight that, although, holy shit, we gotta talk about that. It's--

When you die, is the you that's reborn the same you as the one that died? Would they need Ikarani-fast memories and learning if they did? They're servitors--Is each one a separate soul? Are you sharing one soul with hundreds--millions--of the same-but-different yous that came before?

Servitors, with lifetime measured in weeks. Weeks, instead of--

You don't have to do this! Making their lives so short is, is, is pointlessly cruel! Is it purely for the Ikarani learning? Is it so they do not realize their plight and rise? Can't be a threat if any one given leader is gone in a month!

She has to lean against something, just to catch her breath. Let her heart stop hammering, stop beating with the--

A month! A month, for real? You can't-- Fucking monstrous--

She blinks hard, and realizes tears are there, squeezing from the corners.

"We have to--"

Dyssia swallows, hard, forces the knot down her throat and tries again.

"We can't let Liquid Bronze have them."

And again, rushing, as if to clarify:

"Not because they're a threat, because holy shit are they a threat. But Liquid Bronze's made a self-destructing, self-genociding, race of servitors."

The immensity of the task ahead is--

How do you save everyone? You can kidnap some, raise them as best you can, give them happiness, give them support, raise them as people, raise them as, as, not as godsdamn weapons, not as disposable self-genociding trash, with--

But Liquid Bronze still has the mold! Still has the secret to making them! To creating people, born to die, born to explode, born to--

She swallows again.

"Eight hours. Eight hours to finish the battle, gather the eggs, escape, and start to raise a new generation. We have to try."

Breathless Dead

Huh. It's kind of flattering to think that they count as an existential threat. You wouldn't think just one ship would merit that.

Granted, yeah, it's an imperial warship. Which means basically full access to the galaxy, without needing to stay coastal and use the regular shipping lanes. Full of Ceronians and three-quarter--

Actually, you know what, retiring that joke. The Pix are more than just tinier Ceronians. If there's anybody who oughtta know that, it's her.

Buncha clingy rapscallions. Fuck, she doesn't know what she'd do without them.

Anyway. Imperial warship with access to the entire galaxy, full of two full complements of warrior servitors, as well as seemingly half-a-planet's worth of support servitors. All led, she just knows people will assume, by a knight. Which is fair, because, you know, they still haven't spent five seconds with Mosaic.

God, she wishes--

Well, she doesn't wish she could go home. But she kind of wishes she could see the look on Merilt's face if she ever found out. Fuck, they're an existential threat.

Which means, of course, the naturally disproportionate response.

Honestly, she kind of wishes she could talk to the Oracle again. Talk about cats. She's met this super cool one recently, you know?

"So running doesn't work, then. We can't provide nearly the level of sacrifice they can. If they want to find us, they will. Do we have intel on the new drone species? How hard would it be to get someone less psychopathic into the role? Any counter-assassination prospects? What options do we have that don't end with us swarmed with drones?"

Breathless Dead

Hmm. Maybe if she--

No, no, uh, let's try--

Negative. Nope, nuh-uh, nix.

You know, she read a story once about a king who cut a sleeve off his robe to avoid disturbing his sleeping lover? Privately, it always struck her as kind of a weird story because, y'know, cutting even a nice robe is pretty meaningless when you have hundreds of robes like it? Even a minor nobody like her had a closet full of them?

How would the king escape if both arms, torso, and tail were pinned? Did the story cover that? She's pretty sure it'd be outside the scope of the tale, which is frustrating.

Also it doesn't really address the question? The answer is normally "grudgingly, at somebody else's behest." Like, if the sun wakes her up, great, she can accept that with good grace and a note to bundle the curtains tighter tonight.

Not that that actually works in, you know, space, but it still feels like--

Like, you know, for her sanity she has to pretend there's a day and a night that happens, outside of herself?

Or, failing that, if there's absolutely something that has to happen, it's normally something like a cascading series of servitors: wake up, it is two hours to the thing. Wake up, it is one hour to the thing. Wake up, it is twenty minutes to the thing. Okay, five minutes, actually time to get up and going and churning.

Fuck, she really doesn't want to get out of bed. Foxgirls, right? Who knew? Perfect blanket analogue. Warm, fuzzy, heavy, capable of licks and snuggles.

None of which makes it easier to get out of bed, and in fact judging by the deathgrip somebody--Oddja, maybe?--has on her wrist, actively makes it harder.

So. So so so. Priorities.

First priority source a new grav-rail. Be so much simpler to make her way to the edge of the carpet of foxgirl if she did not, in fact, need to make her way directly over it.

Under? Under appeals. Tunnel through, gingerly shifting through bodies without, at any point, pressing on them. Risky. Risky. Less risky than over. Work with it.

Free the wrist? Pros: easier to escape everything else with one wrist. Cons: how to free the wrist? Could dislocate the thumb, but first, ow, second, easier to just--you know--wriggle it just that--got it!

So, one limb free. Progress.

Carefully, she burrows through the pile until she's able to scrabble free from the edge. Never goes too far from the pile, though--she's not going to disappear on them again.

"I." Swallow, remuster. "I'm sorry for getting captured."

Breathless Dead

Oh, this is going to end poorly, but she can't be bothered to care. She needed this, needed it more than food or air. This press of bodies, this desperation, this--

It's like, everyone is so distant. Every Azura is so distant, she corrects herself--plenty of servitors willing to touch and share, even if only incidentally. But for Azura, words and distance and formality and politics and--

She's openly weeping, hugging back, desperate to touch as many as she can, hug as many as she can.

You can only call it love, right?

Well. I mean, you could call it a lot of things. Family is actually probably a better word, now that she thinks of it. That intimacy, the easy touches, the--

Would it be weird to date one of them? Feels like it would be, with the power differential? Like, even if they put aside the relationships of Azura to servitor, it'd feel like it's taking advantage of the knight-soldier relationship?

Hold that thought. Examine it later. Unpack it, look at it from weird angles.

Right now, she has foxgirls to cuddle and reassure.

She has a family to care for.

Breathless Dead

Her teachers would be furious. Idiotic, foolish, silly girl, to spend so much time and effort on someone who… Was she real? Did she exist? Does she exist, still, somewhere else, scrambling and recovering and checking for tigers? Silly, to work so hard and risk so much for someone who--

It's like, she doesn't even know that Composite actually is a Dyssia? If the philosophers are right?

But she can't bring herself to feel silly for it. Can't, won't, internalize that she should stop fighting, even if it's just to save herself.

(And isn't that a telling phrasing, her inner thought-checker remarks. So much easier to keep going to save someone else than it is to rest for your own good.)

Composite is out there, her gut insists. Alive because of her.

And it's like--the philosophers can't be right, right? Because she's pretty damn sure that this would be a firm memory in her own mind. Unless it's been a super-long lifetime, which, you know, could in theory happen? Not exactly likely, given the trajectory her life is taking--criminals and traitors tend to either win or have much, much shorter lives than normal--which could be a good sign? If she has a lifespan long enough to forget about this encounter, either it means that the rest of her life is so much worse than this that it wipes this encounter out of her mind, or it means that they win.

Um. Derailed train of thought. Right the cars, reassemble the rails.

Philosophers are wrong, she's almost sure of it. Can't be certain, not 100%, not without asking Mosaic to--do you think she'd--no, no, she's busy, can't grab the sword, she'd--

She starts to shoo away the shieldbearer. Can't you see she's busy, she's occuppied, she needs to help, needs a spear, give her your spear, needs to help, and--

Carefully, Dyssia fishes the knot of ribbon out of the corner of her cheek, and does her best to unfold it, wring the moisture out of it, irons out the wrinkles between her palms.

She made a promise.

Oh, she knows what the promise meant. Knows that returning the ribbon doesn't mean she didn't break her promise. Knows she deliberately broke her word and, yeah, maybe turned the right, but still.

Wants to fight. Wants to advance on the spotlight, paint her regret, paint her apology over the scene, write how much she wants to help in the sky.

But the actual apology--more than helping, more than words, more than giving back a ribbon here and now--has to start with action. She broke her word. Mosaic, she's going to start by keeping it now, making sure she gets home safe, and trusting you to come back to her so she can give you her ribbon back.

And, she thinks as she ducks under the shield, maybe things might be alright in the end.

Breathless Dead

How would she cook an Azura?

It's a terrible thought to have at a moment like this, says the little bit behind the eyes that watches the other thoughts, that thinks about how she thinks, that banks the anger for later, saves it up.

Probably slow cooking. Big animal, tons of fat. Roast, spit over a fire. Break down the meat, melt the fat into flavor.

Idle thoughts. Pointless. A distraction. Shouldn't be thinking of eating, being eaten. Wouldn't want someone thinking of how to cook her. Hopes her other self isn't thinking the same thing. Hopes her other self is better than her.

Honestly, yeah, that is the hope. Because she knows that if it came down to her or herself, she--god, this terminology is confusing--if the only way she, Dyssia Prime, could survive was by shoving Dyssia Composite into a meatgrinder of teeth then… Well, she's hoping that Dyssia Composite is as good or better than she is, because Dyssia Prime would rather keep her clone alive.

Dumb. She knows it's dumb. It's gonna get her called naïve. There's no guaranteed that Dyssia Composite would even stick around, or help her friends. Shoving her to her death means she survives, means she gets to make it back to her friends, means she can help so many more people. One person, in exchange for all of that.

Is that what her clone is thinking too? The twitch in the back, that clench of muscles--are they bunched in preparation for the shove?

A ribbon drifts into the pit.

It's a false dichotomy. Kill or be killed. Feed or be fed on. A false choice. It's there, she acknowledges what it says about her, can admit what she would have done had she had to make it, but it's not the only option.

It's not her ribbon, though. She can still feel it clenched into the corner of her mouth, a knot of torn, burnt scrap, solid like an anchor between her teeth.

A second. A third, drifting through the smoke and darkness like a piece of meandering dawn. Like a messager bearing news to a besieged castle.

It's a gamble, is what it is. Is her clone thinking what she's thinking?

There's no time to verify.

She's big, is the thing. The tigers are bigger, yes. More powerful, yes. Faster? She's fat by Azura standards, yes, but that's plush wrapped around a twenty-foot core of whipcord muscle. Bunch the tail, whip it around, and the tip might as well be a hammer in its own right.

She grabs her clone by the wrist, and slithers over the stunned body of one tiger, rushes to the wall.

There's no way for one person to get out of this pit. You could boost someone else out, yes, lift and stand.

But then you'd be at their mercy, and at the mercy of however many tigers are left. You'd need to hope they turn around, offer a rope or an arm or a tail, something to lift you out as well. Hope they don't do the calculus and come to a more sensible conclusion.

Wordlessly, she points to the lip, and offers a step up to her Composite. She'll take that bet, no matter how her heart jumps in her chest, or how it takes a second to restart when her Composite bends to pull her out.

[Get Away, 5, 3, +2. Get there quickly and without harm, while bringing Dyssia Composite with her.]