Phoe

Return to Thellamie

Eclair Espoir has never felt particularly short at any point in her life. The rest of Thellamie fits comfortably into two categories for her: shorter than she is, and so large as to not make scale worth contemplating. In either case there has never been a reason for the Maid-Knight to feel threatened by any situation or potential opponent.

That is to say that these would be new sensations for her, were she here. Or maybe there'd just be a fight right now, to simplify the vectors of possibility a little. Either way, Erika Fullbright feels entirely too small compared to the rest of this table. The huntress' muscles look as thick around as her head (she notes with equal parts fascination, trepidation, and excitement). The sellsword's wirey frame feels like it stretches all the way to the ceiling, and sitting calmly in between them even Timtam seems to be seated atop a mountain.

She swallows, once. These are the jaws of a trap. Between certainty of card draw and a total table-wide alignment toward a single goal there really only is one possible outcome. It's barely even enough to cheat because they can simply brute force her position into a losing one and accuse her of lying on the back end. The nature of the game is such that nothing short of a deck of cards up her sleeves would be enough to fight back, and that would only possibly spare her. She was not going to win any secrets that way, that's for sure.

She shifts nervously in her seat. The idea of just riding the massive loss all the way to Trouble Town floats back through the top of her brain, which makes her left ear flick in a way she finds annoying (it's such a tell! what kind of a loser has that for a poker face?) Her toes curl, and she shivers. In fear or in pleasure? She's not really sure.

And it doesn't really matter, does it? She's a private eye. And as long as a client's counting on her, she's got to do the best she can to crack the case. So when the deck is shuffled one last time, she leans forward and rests her elbow against the table. She squashes her cheek against her fist, and yawns as she watches the cards dealt around the table through half-lidded eyes.

She leans over a little to whisper to the huntress.

"Well this is a disappointment, isn't it? I've already played this game before. This exact game, I mean. Here, her cards," she gestures at the wraith across the table, "From left to right: Prince of Stars, Nine of Stones, Ten of Crowns, Princess of Crowns. Whereas I..."

She flashes her hand at the woman without having looked at it herself. It is, of course, all low value cards that would require her to bluff to get anywhere at all. There's no magic to what she's up to, this is simple marking and card counting. You simply shouldn't shuffle a deck in front of a detective if you don't want its secrets spilled out.

Is it a mistake to upend the table like this? Possibly. But the risk is so full of rewards she can't see past her big reveal.

She scribbles down a note with more hand information and flicks it across the table at the beautiful mercenary in her jewel encrusted veil, and shakes her head.

"And then you of course," she nods at Timtam, "Will declare you are playing the Princess of Knots. You like the yelp of indignation when I hear the name of such a high suit, because you know I'm not going to have any choice but to call you a liar. But when I do..."

She reaches across the table to reveal the Princesses of Knits, Crowns, and Stars all united against her Four of Stones. She shakes her head in sarcastic resignation.

"I mean, it's boring to play a game where we all know how everything goes the whole time, isn't it? We're not even going to make it to the cookie service before you've taken me for all I'm worth and then some. Er... there are cookies in this place, aren't there? I haven't made that up?"

She coughs.

"Well. Anyway! If it's all right with you, I'd like to suggest a few improvements we can make to spice things up a little. Let's have this one shuffle our deck again, and this one deal. You and I can take turns cutting the deck, if we like. And we'll all play single cards. Face down. Without looking. And the same rules and ante, of course. Let's play the odds and get a little messy, shall we? We could all stand to be a little more, mmmm, open with one another, shall we?"

She smiles a cat's smile, with her legs swinging mischievously under her seat. If she can turn the game from an unclimbable wall into a forest of pit traps for everyone to try and desperately scramble around, she will at least have a chance of trading shots, and that's to her advantage as the one with less to give. All that's left from there is to drive a wedge into the teamwork between the three of them, and then--

"Oh!" she chirps, "I guess I did still technically lose that last hand.

"Well then since you were curious, yes I can see your lips through those pretty little beads. If I'm watching closely enough. And it does matter to me that you're happy. So! Is it punishment time for me, or is it enough for you other lovely ladies to know that I'm secretly aligned with one other person here? I'd be careful what I share if I were you~"

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits is a two-tailed foxgirl, the lowest rung there is on the Foxgirl Ladder. It is unlikely that she would have ever reached that lofty height without help. It is equally likely she would never raise herself to a three-tail, unless another, better fox wanted to use her to punish Cyanis again somehow. It's something she's spent a lot of time worrying about, and a source of massive embarrassment. The worst thing about it was that, in her moments of honesty, she didn't really mind so much.

There were two magic spells wrapped around her heart, or curses as foxes understood the term. The first was named Good Girl, which got her in trouble a lot and stopped her from being able to grant any but the tiniest and softest of wishes. But the other, more insidious one was named Enough. It was the magic that kept her from taking the last slice of cake when she was full. It was the magic that held her back when somebody offered a reward: she could haggle her way up to a brand new jacuzzi, but did she really need to when Yue's bathtub was so nice already? If Good Girl made her agree to help out Cyanis in way too many of her plans, Enough sent her back home after instead of wondering what might be Next.

But she still had Foxgirl pride. So when something did come along that lit up all the neurons in her brain she always did her best to pounce on it and take it home. And it turned out there was at least one thing that made her as insatiable as was proper. But what was that thing?

It was love.

Not in the sense of romance, or even friendship. It was passion that Kat devoured, and whenever she saw someone lighting up with a new love she couldn't help but swoop in and try to bask in it herself. To date she had collected exactly 99 hobbies, and even though she quickly neglected most of them and wasn't even replacement level good at all but a scant few, she loved each of them dearly.

It was hard to say if a love for the promise of the ungiven future counted as a hobby, but it was a soft and tender flame she had never quite felt before and it caught hold in her heart. All of this is to say that when Caster finishes asking his question, Kat does not hesitate before she wraps him in a big, squeezey hug. She takes his hand in hers, and pushes it down on the reset button. And her own little bit of magic mixes in with his, so that the right buttons feel pleasantly warm when they're touched.

"Don't give up," she says with a little smile, "Come on, one more try. Then we should probably go find Berserker. I don't want her to miss the fireworks. Oh, or the fried tofu!!"

Somewhere there are magic words that could fix all of this. That could point out that the future Caster is so desperately clinging to is actually the past. Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits is not that fox. All she can offer is her own magic. That is, Good Girl.

And, of course, Enough.

Breathless Dead

It hadn't been the Eater of Worlds that made Bella's flesh crawl. Vast and terrifying as it was and terrible as it might have smelled, that creature had died before she'd ever laid eyes on it. It was Odoacer that scared her: the woman who had put a ship in the great beast's brain pan and then rode that achievement to a political stalemate with the most formidable woman in the universe.

Every plate at that dinner party had been arranged in the shape of a sword. Every selected dish was both opulent and at the same time brutal; gestures meant to offend and manipulate as sure as the seating arrangements had been designed to provoke conflict. She'd sat and watched with her heart in her mouth while so many of Nero's most loyal subjects were summarily executed and thrown into the depths of space to decorate the Armada's hunting grounds.

The only thing that had kept Bella alive was that her relative unimportance put her low enough on the hit list that she'd had the time to slip away from the party and disappear into the monster's jaws, which on balance felt less like suicide. That's what it took to stand up to Nero. She's not sure who if anybody she knows ever properly appreciated how horrifying a thought that really was.

Bella looks across the horizon one more time, and barks with laughter. Zeus could make her excuses, but the truth that Odoacer had shown her is that the King of the Gods was all too willing to be manipulated.

A shiver crawls up her spine. Bella leans back and flops onto her seat at last. She rolls her neck behind her shoulders and watches Dolce upside down. And she shakes with laughter once again.

"It is really fucking funny hearing you, of all people, talk about murdering someone. Guess everybody's got a line, huh? Artemis must like you a lot. After all, she trusted you with someone much more precious than me."

Her smile is languid and graceless, split somewhere halfway between drunk and bored. Only her eyes are sharp and burning, though this is nothing new between friends.

...What the fuck is she supposed to say here? He wants advice? A pat on the head? For someone to tell him how to not fuck everything up when the weight of his world is on his shoulders? She snorts.

"Does it hurt? Not knowing, not being able to do shit and wondering if that was meant to be your moment?"

Bella yawns, and slides down onto her back. With her arms folded behind her head, she stares up through the crystal ceiling and watches a bolt of lightning tracing through the endless blue skies.

"Join the club, I guess. I'm aimed at Gaia. I'm going to give my sisters real lives, so they can be more than knives and bombs. That's all I can tell you. Everything I pass up is just because I can't afford to blow up before I get there. That's why nothing here is worth shit. Call me callous, but I just don't care about saving the galaxy. And I wish everybody who did would just ask Hades to do it for them and quit haring off in ways that make my job harder. That's what I think."

Return to Thellamie

Erika notices (after far too long) that she is chewing on the tips of her hair. In her defense, it has no detectable flavor. The texture is oddly natural, and if her mind were otherwise engaged it would not be surprising at all to learn that it would feel natural enough not to call attention to itself. The good news is that her mind was engaged: she'd just collected a lot of very useful information, even enough to mark another line in her ledger and begin sketching an outline of Timtam's disguise, now that she knew it was a specifically relevant detail.

That cut the need off of... you could lose, you know. You could lose spectacularly. Don't you think? Wouldn't you rather? What does winning even get you? An answer or three? Respect? What good have those ever done anyone~? But losing, mmmmhmhmohohoho! They might blindfold you, peel you bare, but -- heeeee!! -- aren't you a detective? Be entertaining about it and you might be invited behind that veil? What secrets could you pry out of her tongue using yours instead of her stupid rules? Isn't this optimal, even? Won't there never be another chance like this? Isn't it worth the gamble, isn't it the only way to win? Don't you think that, when it gets right down to it, losing is just better than winning????

Erika notices her hair is in her mouth. Again. Hadn't she spit that out? Her cheeks flush as her elbow slips on the table and she almost plunges her face into the tea. She coughs twice, loudly, and hides her face behind her teacup.

"Mmm. Aha. Then. As the ante is paid in information here, am I correct in assuming there isn't much you can tell me about our fellow players? The game within the game would seem to be learning to read the tendencies of each member of the table the fastest. It would be, ah, crass. I would say. To have invited only a single new player?"

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Mmmmmmmaybe? I mean. I don't really know how to break this to you but... I don't, uh. I don't think everybody feels the same way about Mr. Gnomesworth that you do. Oh, is it ok if I named him? You just seemed super attached."

Katherine frowns. There's something about this situation teasing at the edges of her understanding, but she can't quite get to the bottom of what it is. She clicks her tongue once, twice. It's a sound she tells herself helps her think. Then she tilts her head to the left, and then to the right, trying to take in more information from her twitchy green ears. Or maybe in the vain hope that looking at things from a literal different angle will make it make more sense.

"Wait. Is this a Foxgirl Scheme? This sounds so much like Cy that-- Mr. Caster are you really sure about this? 'Cause I don't think you'd last ten minutes on Cutie Fox Island. No offense. I don't think I would either; that's why I'm tryin' so hard not to end up there. But this gnome angle? It only ends the one way. Here, just... here."

She grabs Caster (and his gnome) by the hand and leads him away from the stall. Berserker sits still and remains eating, but that's fine. They have a connection now, the two of them, and Katherine has no reason not to trust her Servant unattended. Not anymore, anyway. It's kind of like an apology for all those frantic orders and squirming fights while they were still getting to know each other, or so she tells herself.

She walks down the crowded street, going from one wonder to the next. Pausing, but never really stopping. She hopes the sights in their volume will be enough to make the point. They pass a wall of murals made by throwing colored sand and sugar onto cutting boards. They pass a little stand overflowing with handcarved flutes in the shapes of every animal Kat could care to name or wish to eat. They pass an author waiting to hand out manuscripts for a story she's been working on for a long time about a knight with silver hands, though it isn't going all that well. She has a bright smile on her face all the same, as she explains to anyone who will listen the dramatic potential of her iron willed softgirl protagonist and all the things she beats up with punching. They pass a booth where a hobbyist technomancer has set up a television and a special display for something called the Speedrun Gauntlet, which a little sign explains is a series of bite sized beginner challenges to help people get into and understand the art form.

Kat halves her pace while they cross that one. It is an act of iron will that she does not stop altogether, though her neck still cranes around behind her shoulder as she goes.

She stops. She spins on her heels and drags Caster back, double time. With an enormous grin on her face, she puts a controller in his hands.

"Ok so for this one the trick is that you want to switch to your special 'cause it does double damage to the dinosaur compared with your beam. And if you let him grab you in his claws after you've dealt lethal damage he'll actually explode faster? I think it's 30 hits so just keep track..."

She stands up on her tippy toes. And then she hops up and down when the excitement gets too much. Please. Please. Please try it. Please love it. Please see it, at long last. That a gnome in every pot is not the dream of the Terraced Lake. That there's nothing that needs fixing and nothing brutal that needs vanquishing and no victims that need saving.

That this world is already beautiful.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Kat can only giggle in response. The laughter takes over her entire being, if only for a moment, and the table can't quite hide the kicking of her feet. Nor the back of her hand her silly grin.

"What are you talking about? If you want it that badly just say so. That's the whole point of the festival!"

She watches Caster's reaction with a twitch of her ears and a quiver of her lips, still fighting off another wave of mirth. But this is a serious moment and it calls for a serious fox. She looks down at her plate (still less than half finished in spite of her heroic efforts) and very quietly pushes it in front of Berserker. Katherine's Servant is either far less picky than her Master or just lacks her aversion to certain soap-tasting herbs because she starts eating in a smooth unbroken motion and does not stop even to nod in thanks. Perhaps this was simply a knight's duty to her princess.

Kat hops out of her seat and wanders over to inspect a gnome up close. She gives one a sniff and lifts it off the ground for a moment, setting it back on the ground with a little pat on its bright little head.

"These're really cool though. How'd you get that buttery sunshine kinda lighting in the beard? It's, like deeper than I've ever seen on a statue before. Not that I'm a statueologist right? But y'know, I've been around. It's super duper impressive!"

The fishman's gaze turns to a place a thousand kilometers in the distance. His reply is indistinct, but Kat distinctly catches the word 'yellow' in a voice like an ancient raven's, and decides to let him get back to unpacking instead.

"Well I mean, nevermind. Anyway. Does this mean you were into shopkeeping, Caster? Hey neat! I wouldn't have guessed. Like I've never understood it as a hobby? But I don't really get baking either and that's never stopped me from eating cookies, if you know what I mean. Just don't, like, force it on anybody y'know? I'm sure your stuff is really fun, but it's not the end of the world if somebody else doesn't agree. Right? Like what's the big deal here?"

Breathless Dead

What did it feel like to be the Crystal Knight?

Bella sits in silence and watches the stars. The motes of pure white that pierce the blue, in all their vast complexity and their woven tapestry of stories written in the Skies to extol the virtues of civilization. True Civilization. Ancient constellations were vague shapes and inferences, but the Endless Azure Skies painted with a far defter brush. Here the stars formed visible lines to depict their greatest moments and the highest kings in their history, things that represented true and absolute beauty in such specific clarity that it was not possible to miss or misinterpret them. Even they had a mind to, they could even backfill the galaxy with nebulae to color in these paintings and render their history in living color.

And it's awe inspiring. It is artifice that the Empire of her childhood never dreamed of. What else could you call it besides total mastery of the universe? The vast tapestry of creation was nothing but a suggestion that had long been ignored. The only thing is, as soon as you stepped away from paradise the whole thing was nothing but gibberish. The stars didn't look like this from Beri. Or to the Portuguese, or to any other gods-damned people in the universe outside of Capitas. All of this work and it only made any sense if you lived here. Did anybody who'd come here on the Plousios even know the sky was meant to tell a story in the first place?

So the trash heap didn't know what it had been thrown away to accomplish. Sure, what the fuck ever. But the Crystal Knight was Azura. She'd even distinguished herself to the point of receiving an exalted title from those on high. Surely she'd known better. Surely she believed in the greatness of her empire and all of this shimmering blue horseshit. She knew, and then they shot her off to the bumblefuck quadrant to play with rocks on a scale that was completely useless to the grand work happening in the place where they actually exported all that entropy.

Then what did it feel like to be her? An Administrator Species member in good standing with her empire who knew that the sky she saw when she looked out from her palace ship was broken and wrong. Real beauty was somewhere, invisible to her eye. She must have known enough to miss it. Had they jettisoned her because she'd been a cruel lunatic tyrant, or did she just crack from the strain of being so far away from everything that was 'real?'

There had been a quiet desperation to her reign that Bella had missed before she killed her. All those projects, all of her tinkering... she'd been nothing more than another striving ghost, like all those people on Salib. Only whole enough to know that she'd been cracked. Who could possibly believe in all of this and not be driven insane by that kind of life?

"Oh fuck off." she says through a luxurious stretch.

Her ear twitches first. Her neck turns, and her eyes follow. Bella beholds a nervous sheep fighting valiantly to stand in place. She listens to the music of his determination, and sighs.

"I didn't do shit, Dolce. Like I could have killed that girl even if I wanted to. Do you even understand how many improvements they made on her compared to me? Trust me: not getting killed by her was impossible enough already. No, you don't owe me a fucking thing."

She laughs, though she can feel her ribs straining with every breath. She turns onto her side, away from the Skies and their condescending god and back onto the floor of her... of the ship. Her tail flicks above her head and her spine curls into a crescent as she stretches across the length of her couch.

Slowly, she rises. She walks over to Dolce and looms overtop of him in silence before she reaches down and flicks the bell hanging from his dapper blue uniform. She flashes him a smirk.

"This place pisses me off so much I can't stand it. Every new detail I notice makes me want to kill someone. But I think," she taps the bell again, "Revenge is gonna be a little harder to manage this time. It's not even the size of the place that's the problem, right? They're so fucking... vapid. All of this. Everything. All of us. For a stupid fucking color. To draw scribbles with the universe because they can't think of anything else to do with all their power. We could kill everyone in charge and I bet you the Skies wouldn't notice after a day or two."

She flexes her talons, watching the tips gleam in the light with an intensity to her face that could crack buildings. But when she moves again, it's only to toss her hair in a messy wave over her shoulder and down her back. She ought to return to her rest, but she holds her back straight and proud for the moment. Diminished in form though it is, the Regalia shines like a tiny star atop her head.

"But."

Her teeth are daggers in her grin.

"There is one thing we can do. This is where we're leaving the Summerkind. And the people of Beri, and every Pix or other person who isn't sure about our journey. Help me organize it, Dolce. Let's give them paradise, if they'll take it. I'm sure it'll be a pain in the ass to negotiate, but if I can make this place do one actually good thing before I turn my back on it I'll count it as a win.

"It's... all I can manage. Artemis has plans for me too, you know. I have to get ready her next gauntlet, if I have to hear her call me flabby again I'm going to kill myself out of spite."

Return to Thellamie

Erika rolls her eyes.

This single moment of perfect, wordless acting might be enough to buy her doubt. Might be enough to sow the seeds of confusion as to whether or not she really is the person she says she is, or if she's Eclair Espoir after all. The tiny huff and the annoyed scoff are so very Mayzie, and so very not maid-knight, but above all so smooth and natural that she can see it register on an intellectual level. Good. That is well. She finishes by twirling the end of one of her pigtails in a display of aggrieved haughtiness.

"Maid-Knights," she spits, "I was only asking you a question! I've never been here before! How did you turn that into a referendum on whether or not I have a right to be here?"

Her notebook flips open and she plucks a pretty crystal pen from her things before she starts to scribble. Erika Fullbright does not take notes in the style of Eclair Espoir. It will cause the latter no end of consternation later during review, but the needs of the client come after the needs of the job. Rather than color coded speculations and notes, Erika mostly doodles. In this case she has recreated a shuffling deck of cards to the best of her ability, rendering Timtam's hands in the act of manipulating them. She makes a pair of tally columns just above it, marks one with a big X and the other with an O, and draws a line in the O column.

There is at minimum no more room to doubt that this is the woman herself. Card games were Timtam's signature escalation within the Manor and the Great Game, and while she might have played on that via a proxy, nobody could make a deck dance across the table the way that she does. She has such finite control she can alter the fate of every player with nothing but her fingertips even while using a fresh and unfamiliar pack of cards. This is how she strung up her opponents in the manor, luring them in with runs of "good luck" and sloppy play before miraculously betting big or playing aggressive (depending on the sort of game) and without mercy taking everything her opponent had on her (and sometimes also the opponent).

There have been attempts among the more creative members of the Manor to create card games, in particular strategy card games with simulated monster or heroine battles to combat her skill by making the game of choice complex enough that Timtam simply didn't understand it on a level that she could affect the outcome so certainly, but that edge only ever held up as long as it took her to find some obnoxious combination which she would mysteriously trigger a turn before losing every single time. In the arena of games of chance in general and card games specifically, Timtam was an unparalleled warrior. Nearly untouchable. It made sense that she would choose this as the means to accept the challenge Eclair had laid down for her.

But even still.

Erika plucks up the teapot herself and rather inelegantly pours a pair of cups. She sniffs at her own and adds five sugar cubes, and then sits there, staring and stirring with equal intensity.

"I'll play. Obviously. Wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't. But see normally in my line of work the way this goes is I just ask you questions and then you either answer them or find a way to refuse me without giving away what you think. That's the game of it, if there is one in the first place. Liar's Hand? Never heard of it. So since I'm early, how about you use those soft and precious lips for something useful and fill me in on the rules while we wait for the table to fill out? I promise you I'm a quick study."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Hwbegh?!" said Kat while leaping two feet into the air and bringing her arms over her face in a defensive posture.

"Oh! Oh right. Right right right. Phew. Jeeeeeeeez. My heart! You've been so quiet I, uh. I mean. I thought you wandered off or something. Fsshhyaaa, my heart!"

She pats her chest as if to demonstrate and then very awkwardly clears her throat. Her other hand holds a plate piled high with Mystery Fried Rice, a small bread bun that had turned red during baking from all the spices stuffed inside of it, and exactly three (3) crab(?) rangoons(!).

She sniffs at the rice and makes A Face. But she sits down to eat it anyway with a shrug and a very tactical reach across the table for a can of cheap cola, aka the wine of the foxgirl world. A lot of foxgirls would tell you that wine is the wine of the foxgirl world, but Kat was simply not good enough at crime to get her hands on any, and thus the expression.

She watches Berserker eat for a moment and smiles at the odd combination of voracity and refinement that settles over her Servant. With her chin leaning on one hand and a set of chopsticks lazily floating between her own food and her mouth, she turns to regard Caster again.

"Sorry, what were you asking again? Recycling? I don't know her. What's she got to do with all've this? Like, I dunno what you mean by so little. Like if anything we've got the opposite problem? Have you never gone through that thing where you pick somethin' up all fulla good intentions and then it just sorta... sits there? And then it piles up and piles up and the next thing you know it your life is full of clutter and no longer sparks joy? No? I swear I... oh, mmmmgh, what did they put in th-- oh no is that cilantro? Blegh!"

Cough cough, spit spit, sip, sigh. Kat tries to sit up and carry herself with the slightest extra bit of decorum, to go back to feeling like she could maybe be some kind of princess or something. She doesn't push her plate away, though she does focus on the bread for a while before braving the rice again.

"I mean, I dunno. It's just good to get rid of stuff sometimes. Otherwise you get weighed down and stuff. Like, Cy always says that's dumb and you can't ever have enough stuff, especially gold and luxury goods, but um..."

She shifted her eyes nervously about the pavilion and waved Caster closer to her. Closer still, until she could lean in for a conspiratorial whisper.

"Don't tell her I said this? But I think she might be a sillyhead. Like I know she's a cool big sister type fox and all but her schemes always end up with us in bondage and skimpy outfits and stuff. Damn Fox is real busy on her 500 year plan to steal a bunch of fried tofu so she doesn't give a lot of advice but you'd trust a nine tail before a three, right? It's a bigger number! How'd you even get that many without bein' real good at foxin'?

"So anyway yeah? Like, yeah. It's just good to rid of stuff sometimes. Nice stuff, icky stuff, old stuff, new stuff. We just do it like this 'cause it makes it more fun. And if you make it fun then nobody has to feel guilty for letting it all pile up. And like, somebody's gonna want most of it, right? This is the best way to make sure it all gets to where it's gotta. Or to find out if it's got nowhere left to be after all. And it... eugh. Goshies. It'd be... it'd be rude not to finish this? Right? Dang it."

Katherine's chopsticks return to motion. Though her tails and ears droop to taste of soapy rice and over chewy bits of meat(??), she cleans her entire overladen plate like the good girl that she is. Gross as it might be for her, somebody worked hard on this. She doesn't want them to feel sad, like they failed the challenge set before them.

Breathless Dead

When she'd encountered the Azura for the first time in her life, the only emotion she could bring herself to feel was awe. The quiet of the city, ghosts flitting through ruins with a sense of unknowable purpose and a dignity that not even an Empress had been able to shoot out of them.

She had perched on the rooftops and watched a woman clean glass off the streets for hours. It had been the most beautiful thing she could remember seeing, until she'd come across the bakery. She'd seen true mastery, held in her hands and felt the grease between her fingers and the warm paper until she'd put it in her mouth and nearly come undone at the seams. She'd watched their ships in sometimes lazy, sometimes hypercoordinated and impossible seeming patterns as they drifted through the strange tinted skies in grand patterns she'd been happy to lose herself in trying contemplate their meaning and their beauty.

For all its seediness and artifice, even the office of Thellis Thist had been a wonder she could barely stand to comprehend. Every fake, cardboard cutout of a bookshelf and every stain and burn on her beautiful but absurdly uncomfortable couch felt purposeful, calculated, and deliberate. There was an art to how cheap she was, not just in hiding her ambitions under the guise of legitimacy but in hiding even another layer of desire beneath the disguise itself. She'd thought it honest thievery at the time. And then it had turned out that Thellis Thist was the Eater of the Dead, the woman who had killed and stolen the abilities of every Assassin in the Empire born before her generation.

Even their ugliness had been beautiful. Even their meanest had a kind of silent poise that had pulled unwilling awe across her face and silenced her many complaints about the world outside of Tellus. They were the true lords of the universe, she'd been certain of it. What could the heart of their empire look like if not the grandest possible version of the sight that had once brought an arrogant Praetor to her knees?

Bella plucks at the fabric of her dress with a scowl.

They'd turned everything that was gold into platinum. Everything black into various shades of blue, adjusted the cut to be a little more modest, a little bit tighter, and to less aggressively pool at her feet. The pattern in the skirt had changed into a stylized representation of a fish breaching the water, which as far as she could tell was the only reason they did not completely rewrite the base of her skirt. All of it in various impure shades or with a thought toward complimenting those, or to shift the way the light reflected off of her so that the fur on her limbs would tinge blue instead of its natural white.

"I made that myself. Stupid fucks." she snarls.

Even the Regalia hadn't escaped realignment. Its fundamental power belonged to Nero, this they either could not or did not see fit to alter. But no longer was it a harsh and impressive ornament resting on her head. Nothing sharp, nothing dark, nothing heavy. Nothing real. Now it was just a pretty little tiara glittering with diamonds, like a lattice of tiny stars adrift in the tarry ocean of her hair.

Bella leans forward on her couch, which is now sitting on a massive open deck on the new Plousios where she could enjoy the perfect atmosphere and limitless horizons of Capitas. The absurdly giant flock of birds with striking plumage (all of it blue) still fly with unhurried, practiced grace between the planets of this system, blanketing the sky and her vision on a scale she would not have thought possible.

She sees rolling clouds in twisting columns and vast swaths of glyphic complexity drifting all about her in the blue. The air is sweet, the way a cake that is flavored with roses might be sweet. The temperature here is cool and perfect, with breezes in highly controlled patterns of intensity and direction that she could spend days making a game of learning to predict as they tug on her hair and her dress and ease the feeling of heat welling up inside her skin.

"Stupid. Fucking stupid. This can't be it, can it?"

This cloying, saccharine perfection. This pompous, saturated, grand and arrogant ultimate work of the greatest civilization Bella has ever known. It feels exactly like drowning.