Phoe

Breathless Dead

What the fuck?

Everything is nonsense. The air smells left. Her tongue tastes cold, her ears are filled with the deafening roar of quadratic equations. It's worse for having her Auspex; perhaps if she'd had both natural eyes she might have just been blind, or mapped some kind of incorrect texture over everything in her own stupid mortal understanding of the universe, but here she has just enough context for reality that her overmatched senses are insisting on delivering her correct information.

Bella stumbles on her first step. Her legs won't stop trembling and her stomach swoops with nausea. Those at least are sensations she can understand. But she clamps a hand over her mouth, and forces her breathing to slow until she starts to feel stable. If there's one thing that's gonna get her killed right now, it's puking on Olympus.

Once while she was fighting Taurus, Mosaic briefly glimpsed the true shape of the gods. In that moment she could see the curve of reality and the shackles of the rules that bound it tight. It was something of a lonely awakening, realizing that the gods she'd dreamed of having a relationship with had been much, much too large to be considered anything like she was. The anthropomorphism had been incorrect; these beings were reality itself.

But now, fighting a headache that could kill the worst migraine of her life, Bella can see everything unfolded in front of her with enough time and clarity to properly gawk at it. Her other self had only been half right. The gods were manifest. What they did changed everything, determined everything, became everything. But they moved, they schemed, they put on airs and took effort in their appearance. It wasn't the failings of her idiot brain that made her see it, the eye of Hermes assures her, the gods were the universe. But they were also at the same time and for lack of a better word, human.

For a moment, Bella forgets her nausea. She stands in place with eyes wide with wonder. She forgets decorum, neither maintaining proper posture or remembering to keep her mouth closed. She even forgets that she still needs to breathe. She just stands there, half slumped and slack jawed, watching truth and beauty so deep and indescribable that she can't even tell if it makes her feel huge or tiny to bear witness to it all.

And then the little note slips a bit in her palm. Bella turns, and stares at the little prayer her sister left for her before she'd been kicked away to stand in the same place as the gods. Her throat dries in an instant, and her sudden nervous swallow is painful. Shit, that's right. She's not just looking through a spy lens. She's here, and they'll be expecting something from her. Suddenly she can't keep her spine from snapping so rigid that it interferes with the motion of her legs. Her tail won't stop bushing, and between the arm wrapped tightly around her stomach and the one clutched desperately at Vesper's note she has nothing she could use to soothe it. Not that it would help if she could. Every part of her body telegraphs nerves and fear response.

And the worst thing of all is that she's shuffled up to Hera anyway. Hera, who wears even her imperfections as beauty and pride. Hera, who can command decorum anywhere and from anyone with nothing but her gaze. Hera, who wields the fear that only a disappointed mother can control. Bella flinches in on herself, but no storm of mirrors and shattering glass sends her elsewhere. She is trapped.

"Um," she says, "Uh. Hi. Sorry. Uh, hello."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

The temptation, of course, would be to simply fly over these wretched fortresses. But they are the product of a Noble Phantasm, the crystallization of the concept of claimed territory, and that demands a certain degree of respect. It is dangerous to wage a campaign deep within enemy territory when you do nothing to break their power; bypassing these defenses might well cost them more than fighting them would.

Not that it matters either way. Above all else, these are Berserker's castles. Avenger could no more ignore them than she could call Actia a good girl. Just the thought of it makes her quiver with rage. No, this demanded her attention. Proving the impotence of the Betrayer's alliance was of equal importance to actually killing the wretch. She could not inflict the kind of suffering that she needed to if she did not strip bare every last little plan, every pretense of power, every last little scrap of hope down to its most pointless and desperate incarnation. Even if these castles lead out of the way she would take the time to hunt them down and crush them.

"We shall not commit our forces to this obstacle."

Avenger brushes her fingers underneath Angelesia's slumping chin. The girl is feverish, hot enough for the warmth to filter through her armor. The seed of hatred within her has sprouted; soon it would blossom and transform this brave and silly girl into a proper Queen and a flame of vengeance. It would be the final tick on her ledger, a figure aligned with her and of true majesty she could repeat all of her pledges to. It would cement her power, even against the possibility of her Master getting cold feet. And it would, of course, win the war. Gather every other Servant against her in perfect harmony if you must, even the hidden Rider. It matters not. The world itself could not bring enough power to bear to outmatch the strength of her promises.

"But fear not. My power is more than sufficient for our purposes."

She plucks her sword out of its pedestal, and the seven factory gates snap shut. For the moment, the tide of her endless Servant horde is stemmed. She holds the gleaming blade aloft to the sound of stomping feet and crashing shields, now the very thunder of the storm itself. The castle halts, crackling with power where it hovers.

A step forward. She takes the blade in both hands and plunges it into another socket on the far wall. An observer might be tempted to say it is Avenger's sword that powers the castle. That wherever it is plugged into determines the subsystems she is activating to accomplish the specific purpose she has in mind. The lightning flashing through the clouds, then, is merely discharge. Some fantastic siege weapon has been unleashed, and this is the howl of its battery.

"Let My anger become your pain. Let My hatred become your suffering."

Another step forward. Avenger thrusts even deeper into the wall, and the entire castle howls. The mechanical roar of her army, the thundering of the machinery, the howl of animal pain. The silent gasp of the observer, understanding too late to matter that they misunderstood the nature of the creature floating in their sight.

"No god will love you. No afterlife will welcome you. What I leave behind is not a mercy, for you deserve none. Writhe, O Worm."

The castle does not fire any kind of beam. Except insomuch as a laser comprises the edge of her sword. For it is the sword itself, magnified to titanic proportions, that cleaves Berserker's fortress walls in half. This then is the true nature of Avenger's castle. In terms the modern world would understand, it is her kata. The meditation of her forms and the manifestation of her will. It is not a stretch to say that the castle itself is her body, and the woman prowling about its maze of platforms merely her heart.

"Blood. Eagle."

The fortress does not merely crumble. It screams and shudders under the light of the sword crushing it into uselessness. And it bleeds. Horrifying, impossible geysers of red stain the pure rain still falling all around it as mana vents into grotesque wounds that do not merely carve the land, but scar it like flesh. The walls stay standing even with the gaping hole carved through them, but they seem to sag and shudder, twisted into shapes that speak of pain and the desire to simply crumble, to surrender to oblivion, to not be asked to endure more of this.

But they do. Avenger leaves the territory in the hands of her enemy. She breaks only the power. Leaves it as a monument to torture, grim fury wrought upon a barely deserving target in the slight hope that the sight or the rumor of it would dim the light in her true enemy's eyes before they met face to face. And if she could not? So much the better.

She marches on.

Return to Thellamie

"You are capable of finding the truth."

Said while sprinting. No time for anything else. Imperative, imperative. Mustn't fall behind. Even this basic courtesy constitutes a risk. Measure angles, trace route for higher acceleration. Playing catch up.

"Investigate."

Spoken as command. Spoken assuming innate bond of broom crossing blade overrides organizational antagonism. Spoken while kicking Paladin in the chest as part of launch platform.

Apologies.

Noting for posterity: forgot to say that part out loud.

Grab window ledge, fingertip grip. Push off, elevation climb, aiming for alley. Wall kick, pivot, wall kick, gain roof. Resume sprint, retrieve board. Find an inside line. Doesn't need to be optimal, only needs to be faster. If located, then leap, duck, plant. Fly.

180, drop, tail grind. Kickflip, second 180, land and pump until stairs. Leap, attempt Feeblegrind for moderately better exit angle. Time leaps between breaks in rail to maintain altitude and avoid flat grind. Boardslide on landing, nosegrind through transfer, remember broom in hand at last minute. Use as vault.

There!! Eclair's eyes flash with triumph as she finally catches a glimpse of her target ahead of her. It's dark enough in the moment that the details are difficult to make out from this distance, but even just the silhouette leaves very little doubt as to who it is she's chasing. This is it, then. The cut to the end of the journey. There will be no need to double back and trouble that poor Civil Nun if she can just make contact long enough to get her questions answered here.

She should be preparing for a duel just now. But she neither draws the sword at her hip nor makes any motion to summon her heartblade. Instead she grips her board in one hand and whips around a pole with the other to gain a few more precious steps. If she can keep up the pace, she should make contact just as the pair of them enter the Welcoming Plaza. It's sure to be a commotion down there, absolute noise and chaos given the festivities, but even if that prevents the final apprehension of the Target there's so much useful data to gather in the exchange that it doesn't occur to her to worry about it.

"Stop! Don't run from me!!"

She couldn't, even in retrospect, explain what made her call out. She especially couldn't explain the note of desperation that edged into her voice, or the sudden unpleasant lurch she felt in her stomach as her pulse raced in wild and uncomfortable rhythms. It couldn't have been fear of repercussion, that was unknown to her. But then what?

Was it the sense of uneasy nerves that came from circumventing the traditional investigative process? Was it the sense that flung herself into a trap? Unlikely and impossible, respectively. But then what? But then what? It couldn't be that she, that Eclair Espoir, the Violet Flash, was afraid of learning something?! Or, or, or!!

"YOUR PENMANSHIP REMAINS AWFUL, FOR THE RECORD!"

Breathless Dead

Later. Later. There'd be time to figure out what the fuck Vesper just said later. She could tell already it was the kind of gossip-bomb that Beautiful used to drop as part of a mission; the kind of stupid and dangerous comment that was really laying groundwork to destroy something later when all the implications sunk in. But it turns out that knowing the trick and following its path were different things, and every moment Bella spent gasping stupidly was another one Vesper could use to set herself on fire.

Her muscles don't even tense. Her tail does not flick. She skips straight from standing to pouncing without even enough warning to keep up with it herself. There might be a trap in this. There might be several. The air between them might be filled with wires even the eye of Hermes hadn't spotted, or there might be poison on the ground she can't smell harvested from Mynx Redana when she wasn't looking or there might just be a gun, or the trap might just be designed to get her to offend some god by her actions that would turn all of her blessings and talents into curses before she died within sight of her dream. She might even just knock a screw loose somewhere in the room, and who could even follow the shape of that trap?

She flies in slow motion. Her mind races; she can see the progress of every last millimeter of distance she gains in excruciating detail as if she'd had minutes pass between each one. This was the problem of trying to get ahead of Vesper. She couldn't tell what level her sister's mind was operating on, and that made it impossible to understand the implications of anything at all. Maybe everything she thought and did had already been predicted, maybe a single impulsive decision was about to undo a masterpiece of scheming built atop a pebble. Maybe she needed to be smarter about this. Maybe she needed to be less herself. More Mosaic. Or less. More Bella. More someone else entirely.

She wishes she had Redana's talent for changing what it meant to be herself.

This is taking forever. She can't read the expression on Vesper's face. She can't even see it with that lighter taking up so much of her vision. Her nose is telling her everything about every tiny corner of the room (nobody has dusted under the bed since the ship was dredged. Something spilled recently near the door, but it was frantically cleaned up. The drawer nearest that typewriter contains something rotten, like crab meat that's been left to sit for a year in the sun) that it isn't telling her anything at all. All she can feel is the resistance of the air against her fur and skin. The only noise to be heard is her own tortured grunt as she thinks and thinks and thinks and thinks about everything and nothing of a decision she'd been committed to before she could catch herself making it.

None of it matters. You could unmake Bella and spin the pieces into something or someone with three hundred times' the brainpower and she'd arrive at this same moment anyway. The word is still sticking to all her thoughts, and every time it echoes it makes the conviction stronger: 'sister'. She tossed the word around so freely. She'd never thought about the why before, but here it finally makes sense.

She couldn't really be Vesper's sister, not even in the sense that both of them were born grasping for the same flickers of moonlight. Bella was the final effort of a long dead program with nothing left to kill; just a pawn to distract while a queen moved elsewhere across the board. But the way Vesper talked sometimes it was perfectly possible she was not only the older of the two of them, she could turn out to be the first Ikarani. And her mind at any rate operated on such an unfathomable scale most days that connecting felt impossible. An idiot ball of muscle like Bella must be the most useless, boring companion she could ever be inflicted with.

But duty didn't connect the Assassins of the Temple of Artemis. Their personal experiences were each so distinct that they would forever be stepping on each others' toes the closer they got to one another, so that wasn't it either. But sisters. Sisters. Sisters. The word always stuck. Because Artemis' children were all connected by one single, horrible thread:

The desire to die.

Yes, that want. The need, the overwhelming intrusive thought that drove each of them to seek suicide in the way that made sense to them. It was more than the simple wish to end so much as the nature of it. Gentle, slow, without pain or suffering. Just sit still, drink your wine, and wait for starvation to do its thing, Bella. Just wear the armor and let the names wash clean until they wash you away along with them.

Mynx, who only wanted to die in the arms of someone who loved her. Someone she'd spent her whole life trying to save, so that when she finally succeeded she could pass on knowing for those last few seconds that whoever she loved enough to die for loved her back enough to let her. The violence of the fantasy hid the need to go out on a soft kiss and a hand on the back of her neck.

Beljani, Gemini, who needed to constantly be distracted from her own power so she didn't simply slip away into it and never return. Her death didn't even need her to make a choice, it didn't even need her heart to stop beating. All she had to do is wander into a crowd and hide there until her face disappeared into it completely.

And here was Vesper, on the verge of collapse for the second time that Bella had seen her, winding up a machine so subtle she wouldn't be able to follow the mechanism back to its beginning when it clicked on and signaled her doom. She'd die accomplishing something, a hero freed from the need to think anymore.

Except that, the last time she'd set something like that in motion she'd already put Bella in the way of it and quietly prayed to drift off to sleep instead of absolute oblivion. A break from the weight, not its absolute removal.

So what made them sisters? The Ikarani, the Diodekoi, the Oratus, and the Toxicrene? Well that was easy. So easy that Bella had missed it for years. Without ever asking to, they lived their lives as bombs. That meant they were the only ones who could hear the song inside the death wish. That quiet prayer to the moonlight instead of the darkness shrouding it. That hidden cry for help.

And in the face of that understanding, did it really matter what Vesper was up to, or what she might accomplish if someone let her roll the dice?

Together, they go toppling across the floor and collide with the stripped down wall opposite the horrible typewriter. Bella heaves with terror atop the body of her sister, hiding the little lighter from view as best she can while clamping a hand over Vesper's mouth. Her eyes tremble as the room shrinks too small to hold anything but this awkward embrace.

"Ves, don't..." she growls, "I'm sorry. Don't finish that story. Don't do this..."

Return to Thellamie

Aadya - Idiot/Assassin/Chariot/Power Sweeper... name sparks slight familiarity.
Check with previous notebooks?

Sniff air, turn head. Quizzical frown, for effect. Finger on lip, pose. Keep this girl on toes. Not for sake of posturing. Leverage, leverage. Important to foster respect, but failing that will settle for awe.

Eclair pulls a piece of clean paper from her side bag, and rests is on her tablet. In her personal ink (and with her personal quill), she writes a message to Lady Vessenmer. It contains an order for a shipment of dyes matching the full range she'd identified by herself in Timtam's message/warning/possible taunt (that is a personal identifier. Here she simply lists the colors and intensities). She marks a location outside of the city as a delivery point, leaves instructions for billing the Manor, and signs her name in swooping, florid script. She writes nothing more and nothing less than this, then folds the sheet into a paper crane and floats it across the room and through the door, where she notes the sound of it striking the good Lady on the side of the head.

"From your manner of dress, the state of your armor, and your basic understanding of posture, I can conclude that you lack the organizational authority to compel a goddess to an examination that would be equitable for my situation. From your expression I further conclude that you were aware of this, and that the true aim of your offer is to trap me in a net of bureaucracy, possibly in misguided retaliation against my earlier (earnest) praise. I could not say. I can only tell you that you are the second person in this same evening, in this same room, who swapped from aggression to sudden conciliation in service to impeding what should be a very simple investigative process.

"I have nothing to hide. I deny the very implication it could be otherwise. But as an innocent I similarly have nothing to gain from, from..."

Trail of thought lost in sudden sensory detail. Context of entire situation changes. Colors smearing in a skirt. The most dangerous thing in the world -- no. The only dangerous thing in the world is the risk of not witnessing the source of that grind. Exit from the premises is now essential; no distractions or delays can be tolerated.

Seize Aadya by the wrist. Shift weight, pull. Use shift in momentum to break into run, drag her toward the door.

"NeverthelessForTheSakeOfGoodwillIAcceptLetUsBeOffComeOnStopStallingWeGoGoGoGoGo!!"

Must see it. Must. A Sister? A Heretic? A Hobbyist? Can't be left to interpretation. Cannot.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Not to belabor a point that has already had too much made of it, but a King would falter here. The tendency of a crown is to gather power to itself, and the temptation when offered an infinite well is to try and drink it all anyway. It would be pointless. The vessel can only bring so much power to bear at once, and recharge is already effectively infinite. Taking the rest of it inside a single unit would be as pointless as spraying someone with a hose plugged into a waterfall.

Besides, there are proscribed ways to hunt a fox. It is not accomplished with a giant spear and a single strong arm. A fox is caught with sound, with company, with swiftness and unity of purpose. With fear.

Avenger slides off her partner's back and lands waist deep in the center of the river. Thunder peals above her and drowns out the sound of her deep, misty breath as the first splatters of rain burst against her mask. The water is tainted and unsafe, but that is why she covets it. It hardly even requires patience until the first of the demons come rushing out of the currents to seize her.

They are scrawny creatures; small, distended, and long in strange ways that bodies shouldn't be, though each twisted into unique shapes. None of them are powerful except in their numbers, mere imps to terrorize simple farm girls walking home on some fine evening. They leap and pounce and shriek at this new intruder, who stands stoically in place and allows their teeth and claws to penetrate her armor. Their cries turn from war shouts to panic as one by one they fail to pull away. The claws and hands in her cloak grab at each imp and pull it screaming into the darkness. Each time it takes a new victim it grows my hands, more teeth, bursts at its tattered edges with more dangerous and solid seeming creatures before they melt back into mere shadow. Avenger gathers this army by the hundreds, until the moaning of her cloak signals the shifting of the waves.

These drones are more proper soldiers, armed with spears and the curved folded-steel swords of Lancer's wet dreams and even longbows which fill her back like a pincushion. If these manifestations have names they are utterly beneath her notice, but the skill and ferocity of the assault is enough to obligate her to at least swing her sword. The blurring light turns columns of river water into clouds of steam in an instant, and everywhere she passes more demons tumble screaming into her infinitely hungry cape. Now it sprouts wings on occasion, or tails both draconic and sharklike. The more it fills, the less still it is, until the constant tearing of shadow creatures has it billowing against the direction of the winds.

Her final meal is a tower made of masks in the seeming of human faces in all manner of expressions of emotion. An odd creature to make her jewel, but more than fitting for the job.

"That," she un-whispers in the downpour, "Will do for hounds."

Avenger lifts her sword toward the sky, already humming with power. Lightning crashes down in response, and for one terrible moment she outshines the sun itself. The river weeps. The river roars. And in the heat, the river rises to feed the storm clouds. Darker they grow, and thicker, flashing and rumbling with constant and unceasing sparks and bolts. Filled with so much tainted water, the nature of the clouds starts to change. Now the rain burns like fire. Now the thunder sounds like cannons and screams. Now the lightning surges in red and purple.

Now the clouds turn blinding white.

Underneath the diamond lattice of her armor, Avenger's tattoos disappear in a sea of red. But the glow does not fade. Not blood, then. Her runes have merely changed their nature: Command Seals. She cracks her neck, and with an answering rumble, her fortress rises in answer.

It would be tempting to say it sinks, but that's just the perspective of mortals too used to living on the ground. No, the forces rises out of the bottom of the clouds, the inverted castle of electro-spikes and gleaming white towers representative of her legend and pressed to the point of snapping. So long as her soul resides there, it can never know defeat. Docks and landing platforms extend from the tops of the towers, ready and waiting to receive her, or to launch an army.

"And this will do for a hunting party."

She places a hand on Jezara's neck, and strokes it softly. She pauses one more time to lift Angelesia over her shoulder again, and together the three of them take flight toward the shining fortress that would be the final form of revenge. In and through the twisting, gleaming corridors, to the central hub where seven gates feed from seven walkways toward a single massive throne. Avenger strides toward it, and sets Angelesia's sleeping frame in the spot of the queen. She turns and plants her sword in a mount just behind it. Lights trickle like tiny rivers toward the gates, and one by one they whir to life.

A single sunshard was powerful, but the limitations of the ritual it was involved in meant that it lacked the ability to summon more than a single proper servant. But empty class containers? The simple idea of Sabers, Lancers, Archers, Riders, Assassins, Casters, and Berserkers? These could be created endlessly. The merest shadows of the heroes they were meant to be filled by, but these empty suits of armor were a perfect compliment for a fox hunt. Avenger's voice(s) echo and warp across the empty space of the Grand Chamber.

It is the duty of a Valkyrie to gather warriors for the final conflict.

"We exist for one purpose. We exist for two promises. Our corpses will build the bridge the new Queen will walk to take her throne. Our will shall erase the pain for which these skies weep. My Master suffered incalculably at the hands of our enemy. We need not hold back. By blade, by fist, by scream, it matters not. She will know the Blood Eagle. We will kill Actia, and all that align themselves with her evil."

The clouds stir. The fortress moves across the sky. With the wind or against it, what does it matter? There is only one place it can go. There is only one place this storm needs to reach.

Return to Thellamie

"Hrm."

Assassin/Idiot/Chariot/Power Sweeper--

"I require your name, if you please. My notes are becoming cluttered."

indicated yet more new information.
Mildly contradictory, unclear the degree to which she is herself involved in deception versus merely being deceived.
Newest testimony alleges Sister Tammithyn possessed preexisting knowledge about my investigation, its likelihood of turning toward her, as well as misinformation regarding my intentions.
Mentioning again for posterity, I possess no prior knowledge of this woman.
Accusation stands thusly: that I (subject Eclair Espoir) am dangerously in love with her (subject Sister Tammithyn Murr) to the point where I will threaten her connections and livelihood if I am spurned.
Firm conclusion cannot be reached without an interview with this new subject.
HOWEVER!
Circumstances suggest a single obvious responsible actor.
Communication with the Manor can no longer be assumed to be safe.

"I fail to understand how more Paladins would make her safer, if she is not safe from me already. But I appreciate your sense of deductive reasoning nevertheless; most people I cross weapons with tend to cling to the possibility their loss was a fluke. Your commitment to duty has defeated that delusion already. I commend you. Truly."

Pause, blow ink dry. Leave notebook open. Seek eye contact, hold. Five, four, three, two, one. Blink. Tilt neck forty-five degrees, rotate ear forward. Observe patterns of breathing, consider availability of information.

Next question, ple--

Her tablet pings. Eclair is lost in reading the missive, vulnerable for the moment in the soft wonder of receiving direct communications from one of the Dreamers. Colors smearing, the impossibility of getting them out again. Indeed, indeed, indeed, that is the conundrum in the moment. The idea keeps clinging to her. The threat of a theory that attracts facts, when she needs it to go the other way.

The name, pressed into her fingers even through her gauntlet in the form of paint. Who could know enough to namedrop her and even follow the thread of her musings several steps in advance? Timtam. Only Timtam. She mustn't think it. But now that she has, it fills her entire mind. Her target knows. Already the chase is not secret. Lady Evening, that means...

The warning that had sent her hear to start with. Frustratingly impossible as it was to read, it was left specifically for Eclair's eyes. Hers alone? That was the question that needed answering.

"...What is your evidence that there are only two possible liars?" she asks, dreamily, "Certainly I could be spinning an ever more elaborate tapestry of lies, and certainly the good Sister could likewise have set a trap, little though you respect her potential as a combat threat. But what do you know about the person who told her about me~?"

There is a trap here, more than likely. But Eclair cannot feel its jaws closing just yet. The path unfolding under her feet leads only in one direction.

Breathless Dead

"Vesper, I..."

Bella is a very practiced sort of careful when she swallows. She curls her fingers in habitual, ritualistic patterns only. The old claw squeezing and circling, a flex at the knuckles, and a release. She has to fight to keep her breathing steady, without it appearing to be a fight. Nobody understands better than she does how much information can be conveyed without words. What could she control? Not scent, not touch, but surely sight and sound? Pitch control and intonation, rapidity or hesitation, posture and ear position and tail height.

The trick was burying the trick. If she can't keep her breath even, she has to start pacing. Rhythmic and controlled steps make it easy to fall into a pattern she can maintain indefinitely, it helps hide the beating of her heart in physical exertion, using only old responses to old problems. Hiding something from Redana. Being concerned about Sagakhan's orders and intentions. The deep fear that Mosaic carried for her sister's health whenever it was necessary to tend to her. Use both sets of memories, to make sure she gets it right.

It is... probably unnecessary to try this hard to hide her sensory data. Vesper shouldn't have the same blessings of observation that she did. Except the first time she saw those intense, lantern-like eyes, she watched them follow a single speck of dust that had snuck into her prison room aboard the Anemoi with a hunger that wouldn't be satisfied with an entire star.

"Don't understand," she finishes at last, "Did you build that out of the walls? But you said you simulated an entire universe? I know I'm not an expert on, uh, whatever that is, but what the shit? How is that possible? Explain it to me Ves: how did you get this thing to work?"

She frowns, and cocks her head. Of all the ways she has to help, this was both the most practical but the least effective. Certainly the cruelest. 'No new information' as a mantra was really nothing more than stalling tactics. But what was she supposed to do? She can either double back over Vesper's old thoughts as a distraction until she can figure out a novel way to knock her out she hasn't developed a counter for yet, or she can beg her sister to 'just hang in there'.

Yes, fight the curse of your own genetics. With what? Incredible insight, Bella. All the while they fly further and further away from the source of the medicine that held her stable for so long, and toward total oblivion. Knives in her throat. Needles in her heart. The sting of failure, in every little motion.

...When she was fading under the curse of XIII, she received a miracle and pulled herself free. Redana. But who could that be for Vesper's sake. Not her. No, not Bella. Not Mosaic, or any other name she'd worn over the years. All she could be was inadequate. As a leader she was subpar. As a sister she was distant and bitter. As a warrior she was constantly scraping by, just short of killing herself. And none of these things were good enough. They didn't even amount to a halfhearted prayer. So all she could do was stall. Pace and twitch as carefully as she could manage, and ask stupid questions.

Wait. When did she start glaring at Dyssia? What is Dyssia doing here? Didn't she? No. She didn't. In the middle of her panic she forgot to give orders. She snarls before she can catch herself.

Fuck.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"...I see. Farewell then, my prisoner. My final effort. We will not speak again."

She had been born wanting to be a hero. She lived her life desiring to be a king. That was the vision she'd spotted sailing over the waves of her sea when she'd been too young to understand anything. It was her love for the man who wore the glittering crown that first pulled her up from the water. It was a desire to be called his son that twisted her flesh into the shape she'd worn ever since. Arms and legs strong enough to hold a people's hopes aloft. Hands with a good, firm grip that would never relinquish a sword if that man would only trust her with one. As beautiful a face as she could conceive of, to sit beneath a crown and invoke the dawn in every eye that beheld it.

But the king had heirs aplenty. He commanded enough heroes to last him a lifetime, and had slaughtered many more by his own power. He saw no value in either title for her. Instead he called her 'Valkyrie'. Instead he called her 'Weapon'. And for love of the man who wore the glittering crown, she'd tossed aside her dreams to fit his vision. And when he was cruelly cut down by the cowards he called his enemies, she did not rise to take his place. Once more she cut away everything that did not fit, so she would be light and fit and strong enough to burn the world in his name. It was only in the ashes that she'd found her crown.

But she, too, had been cut down by cowards before she could build a land that lasted into the future.

She'd been born again wanting to be a hero. She lifted herself out of a bathtub clutching at the chance to walk the path of kingship one more time. Incarnation, and the chance to contend in earnest with the world one more time. To prove that she could do it right from the beginning. Learning the nature of the land in the current age only made her anticipation burn stronger. As fine a thing to want as a hero could dream of. It felt fitting that she'd beheld a face that looked strong and determined in the way that would compel her to climb out of the water again. That would be one more thing she could fix this time.

Saber rises to her feet and stretches her arms toward the sky. Already she can feel the flood of mana rushing into her system. But this is not a moment of celebration. She is merely taking what she requires to perform the only act that matters. Her tattoos glow with such intensity they begin to drip light down her torso. Where the rivulets of light roll off her body they coalesce into chains that hang from her waist. Another and another and another, until they form a barbed and rattling skirt.

The light spatters itself across her body like paint. It spreads across her canvas, transforming her into a vision of revenge for this new history and all its glittering excesses. It locks her in plates of fitted carbon composite armor, harder than any steel she'd ever known, blinding white and cut through with diamond strips that let her runic tattoos shine through and continue their good work. The plating extends beneath her new skirts and consumes her chain leggings. The boots that encase her feet, by all appearances, seem equipped with some sort of rocket.

The blade of her sword rusts away even as she grips the hilt with a desperation that betrays her attachment to the plain, unspecial old weapon. A new edge errupts in blue-white light as it grows to the proportions of a greatsword sized for her towering frame and emits a constant thrum of dangerous feeling energy that denotes it as a laser sword. Something much more akin to the weapons wielded by Odin's true Valkyries, and yet somehow entirely wrong seeming in her hands.

The vague shape of wings wraps itself over her forehead, covering her eyes in a visor of dull gold and silver in three sharp, segmented lines joining together in a "V" atop her nose. Meanwhile, the shadows deepened by the glowing of her runes coalesce instead of scattering, forming a proper cloak wrapped around her shoulders that drapes down to her ankles. It is black on a level that feels wrong, feels hungry, feels ready to swallow starlight and never release it again. Shapes like hands and claws seem to tear at the edges before they dissipate into ephemeral nothing.

This is what power is worth. A Valkyrie is an ancient warrior wielding superior technology; as the latest incarnation of one it falls to her to don a fitting mantle so as not to disgrace the sisters gone to the final rest ahead of her. She is an ancient's idea of the future, a petty revenge against the aesthetics of the planet she now walks, a sterile sort of clean with a monster's sensibilities tucked away at the edges. She opens her mouth to sigh, and it is even more full of sharp and jagged teeth than it was before.

When she spoke to Lancer, she'd dared to count herself among the heroes. Perhaps that was arrogance. Diaofei's heart was too hurt and full of regret to accept the kind of figure she'd spoken of. It had been a fitting way to be summoned: for the second time, she'd pulled herself from the water only to learn she'd done it wrong.

Her Master did not need a hero. She did not need a king. She didn't even require a Saber. Let go the pain. There is only one name responsible for this betrayal:

Actia.

She crosses the field with ghostlike steps. Her visored gaze meets Jezara's eyes as she briefly slips past her new partner. A fist slams into Angelesia's stomach, and an arm extends to catch her when she slumps. A shoulder holds the third place regional swordfighting champion as well as any bed.

"Saber is dead," she breathes in the echoes of several voices at once, "I am Avenger. But I shall honor her final pact. Once the war is all that remains, I shall ensure that you are its lone and unquestioned victor."

Avenger hops lightly into the air and seems to glide along some unseen surface in the air before she alights on the transformed Princess' back.

"Come. We have much to do." she says, looking up at the sky that now twisted itself full of storm clouds on her behalf.

Return to Thellamie

There is a need to follow behind those large, aggressive sweeps with something more careful and delicate. Those not used to cleaning tend not to understand. When you drag The Instrument with intent to merely be finished, a trail is left in the wake of your efforts. It would not be satisfactory merely to take the piles she creates and sort, store, and trash them. There is also a need to cover the tracks, as it were.

Good muscles on this one. Attractive spinal structure, curls well into butt. Lean, lack of meat, muscle definition creates sense of curves. Stance slightly open for counterbalance; quietly confident, naively trusting. Tempting to knock her legs out from underneath and show her. But, no. Best to just admire. This is also quite "cute". Akin to watching a kitten trapped in the body of a championship arm wrestler.

Eclair smiles. The only time her broom stops moving ('dancing' the more appropriate word) is when she shifts focus to organization or applies oil to another surface to polish it; then it is a rag underneath her foot that dances in its stead.

"A simple question with an obvious answer: I am not. I do not have the slightest idea who Sister Tammithyn is. Until her name fell from your lips I was not even vaguely aware that she existed. To this point in time my sole line of inquiry within this establishment has been to the sourcing of a dye sample I collected from a mural I deemed connected to my mission. Evidently that question has one very obvious answer, but to the extent I care it all it is only via its connection to my work. A civil nun has no reason to fear an hour's worth of questions, I shouldn't think."

Bend ear toward Lady Vessenmer's office. Track sounds, movement, breathing. Attempt to determine position and maintain tracking. Something is up. Assumption of kindness, or even the lack of a second knife after the first one has been buried in her pillow is a direct threat to the integrity of the mission. Impropriety of calling her out directly is unacceptable. But deference ends with silence.

Open notebook. Hover.

"However I am professionally curious in the information you were provided with. What was the Sister expecting? What did she fear? Did any specific names come up as the conversation transpired? Please use exact quotations where possible. Summation is preferable to paraphrasing where that becomes impractical. Please, Miss. The only unsatisfactory answer is a lie."