Thanqol

Breathless Dead

Bella!

You know better than anyone what motivates an activated Diodekoi.

Pain. Pain. Pain. Relentless, driving pain, lashing forwards every blow, every death. You feel that pain now, all through your body, every part of you screaming in the agony that is your birthright. And Sanalessa...

Steps back. You lunge. She steps back. You lunge. She steps back again.

She turns her head aside.

The pain searing at her through the words engraved in her armour do not drive her any more.

She has weighed her options and knows that fighting you for another round would be even more painful.

An eerie stillness settles. Slowly, over the pounding of blood and breath, the sound of running water slowly comes back into focus. You are here in this forgotten underground glade together, alone. Hot breath steaming in the dark, pain screaming along nerves designed to feel every iota of it. Pain enough.

And above it - just barely above, a whisper pitched precisely for the shape of your triangular ears, Vesper's voice: "Push her three more steps to the left, then down into the water." Knowing what to look for you can see the shape of an immobilization trap waiting there. It will be no trouble to push the unicorn into it.

Ember and Dolce!

"Are you sure your mind controlly virus thing is working?" said Taurus, rapping on Gemini's head. "This doesn't need to be a whole thing, just make him get it over with -"
"Shhh," said Gemini, catching Taurus' wrist (an unbelievably cool maneuver she did not think she possessed the reflexes or upper body strength to manage). "Let him cook."
"It does smell good," Taurus admitted. "But what's the big deal? Eyes on the prize, goldie. We want the power."
"Oh, you!" Gemini rolled her eyes. "Listen you big lumpen brute, I happen to know a thing or two about the finer things in life and the power they can hold over someone. And what I'm seeing and smelling here is like something from a dream coming true. So you are going to sit down, wait patiently and beg like a good girl."
Taurus sat, staring stunned. "Gem, what's gotten -"
"And be quiet!" said Gemini. "Oh goodness, what's gotten into me?" she scratched at her neck hard, rough, wearing at the edges of the instructions written there. "You know, I'm starting to think a bird in the hand is worth more..."

Dyssia!

"Can't be crabs," said Iskarot. "Crabs are perfect already. They have no need for anything other than increasing crabmass."

He looked around suddenly. "Oh damn it," he said, standing up and deploying his ionic disintegration array. "How - how many people are here now? This is supposed to be a secret facility. I was supposed to just have one drink. This - they're drinking the wine. That's for the stockpile. I can't be having this. I'm going to kill them all." He deployed a second disintegration array. Then he looked at Dyssia. "I've got a third disintegration array in here somewhere if you want to help me exterminate the party-crashers."

There are a lot of them. More and more of the ship is crowding in here, to the hidden space where things are cool and alcohol flows freely. There might not be much of a crew left if he starts firing now.

Return to Thellamie

Hazel!

Above you looms the Rot Star, vast and terrifying. Its mouth is filled with the woeful yellow-green light of an empire dissolved, its scales split open to support the growth of leaves, the brackish water pours down wings carving shifting water-pattern channels of filth through the tattered membranes. She is vast, terrible and beautiful, and she is as inevitable as an avalanche.

Below you stands Cair, down one level over the soft line of the balcony. She is ninety percent coat by bodymass[1], but what is visible has an extremely trustworthy smile. She is holding a sign over her head[2]. It reads:

TRADE OFFER
YOU RECEIVE: A MAGICAL RELIC FROM THE GODDESS OF CIVILIZATION THAT WILL GET YOU OUT OF THIS SITUATION(S)
I RECEIVE: ONE MILLION GOLDMARKS (introduction offer, negotiable, financing available)

It's a small jump down. She's got a hand extended for a high five.

You feel like taking the time to haggle?

[1] Seven thousand percent if we count the contents of the coat.
[2] Cair investigated using the Omnibanner, a sacred relic from the depths of the Stacks used to empower and inspire battlefield troops even as it shifted its heraldry and colours to communicate messages. After realizing that each charge of the Omnibanner was priced at around 16,000 goldmarks she opted for instead for a hunk of cardboard and one of Tsane's used-up markers.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Fine then!" said Caster. "You believe this place is a paradise? I did not wish to break your illusion and your heart, but you leave me no choice. Let us put it to the test! Master! Adam! I will ask you again the questions I had when I was summoned: Is the government better or worse than it was in my time?"
The blue lights running through the rainforest flashed brighter. "Worse." It said in a dozen cool, emotionless and heartless voices.
"Is the world more or less prosperous?"
"Less," said the voice of Adam.
"Has suffering increased or decreased from my time?"
"Increased."
"You see?" said Caster. "Adam is an ancient machine built to quantify and measure every aspect of the universe. His calculations are comprehensive and complete, and my magic sees no deceit in him. As soon as I was summoned I sought his opinion and he told me the truth, and I knew all my fears had come to pass. Because I did spend my entire mortal life helping the people of Brazil. I ended slavery. I built a public education system that spread literacy to the poorest and most vulnerable. I slew a dictator, established the arts, and transformed a backwater into a prosperous nation. I spent my life in service to a utopia and, at the end, saw it dissolve in an instant when the whims of the greedy saw profit in ending it. I am sorry, child, but I cannot accept your rebuke as anything other than naivety, and your heaven as more than a fallen version of my own. Question Adam if you must, if you still have the heart to hear all the terrible details about how this world has fallen, but it will bring me no joy to see the scales fall from your eyes too."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"What things are like now..." the old man gently, quietly laughed. "Little fox, did you think that the people who built this place died? Were they struck down by God for their sins? There is no used to be, Katherine - they are. Out there, beyond the sky you shelter under. They took all they could from this world and they left, to find more worlds to take from, and they take still. One day they will squeeze the galaxy so dry that even what little they left behind here will begin to look appealing. Then they will all come back."

He threw a handful of leaves on his weary little fire. It couldn't help itself. It sighed, and burned brighter. Sparks of it reached up to lap hungrily at the stick that Katherine had just pulled from its clutches, scrabbling at the edge of the pit with a sad yearning.

"Even we came back, after all. To this world that buried us so long ago."

He slumped backwards, seemingly exhausted by the effort. "I don't know where your Saber is. Perhaps lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike. Perhaps getting a head start on running from Lancer. It doesn't matter. Together or alone, Lancer will finish the Servants and get her wish. If you have any power at all, it is to beg her to choose a different one."

Breathless Dead

Bella!

This is what it is to fight a God.

One move into the next. The opening parry is not even relevant; throwing her into the air is barely worth noticing, and anyone could have performed the first, second or third kicks in the sequence. But then comes the fourth, and the uppercut, and the throw - and oh. The first moment of interest comes at this moment where the bone unicorn snaps across space, a replication of the just-demonstrated teleportation technique - to catch Bella at the apex of her arc. Kick, strike, slash with the heavy weight at the end of her tail, crash with the horn. Bella hits the ground so hard she bounces, but before she can recover then a hand crossbow is firing electrified darts. Distractions, irritants, but just enough to distract attention before Sanalessa hurtles down from the ceiling with a full body kick.

Finally the combination is over. The unicorn settles back down into her ready posture. Bone plating covers her eyes, blinding her, but still she stares. She does not advance.

Bella was wrong; this is a teachable moment. The lesson is not one of strength or endurance, not how to inflict or suffer damage. It does not come from the auspex or biology, both remain dumb and mute. It comes from the single drip of blood that runs down Sanalessa's brow, staining bone crimson.

This is what it is to fight a God. Though all the universe tells you no, you can make it bleed.

Ember and Dolce!

"I shall forgive you this once, on the grounds that I am dealing with long-established sillyheads," Vasilia sighed expansively, setting down her empty teacup. "But my heart has already been moved once today, and it shall be all the more difficult to move it a second time. Fail, and I shall throw the whole raucous lot of you in the dungeon."

She sat back contentedly, happy with the stakes she has set.

Dyssia!

"Evolution is junk. It's garbage. Evolved DNA is enormous quantities of legacy, wasted space," said Iskarot, scratching furrows in the wood of the wine cast. "It's computation done by dirt. Takes forever, doesn't understand anything. That's why I don't believe in it! I think that Prometheus and Zeus built all of the optimal shapes out of clay, at the beginning. Then Zeus changed the mathematical laws of the universe that those optimal shapes would be evolutionary lagrange points, or plateaus, or destined equilibrium. Then the animate dirt all across the galaxy begins to crawl its gradual blind way forwards until it stumbles across one of the pre-set perfect shapes - the cat, the crab, so on - and then it stops. Biomancy isn't about the meat and bones, that's what Liquid Bronze never understood. It's about the mathematics and symmetry. Triangular ears overperform because Zeus changed the laws of physics so that they were optimal, and not the other way around."

"But - but what happened to those original clay sculptures?" said Iskarot. "The templates that every creature is trying to approach? The very first fox, the very first cat? They're still out there, I think. And what if they're behind everything?"

Return to Thellamie

Rurik!

"Loyalty," said Rurik, pulling himself from the ground. He appreciated the silk, not for the first time, for how it might cushion a fall. "Loyalty, earned!"

He got to his feet, snapping his scissors. "For a thousand years the Hero of Ages has defended Thellamie. Against you. Against her. Against every threat, every wickedness, every curse she has stood triumphant. Today is no different! The clouds will gather, the lightning will flash, and all that you are will be gone with the thunder! Even if you have not yet learned, I have!"

He reset his stance. Alone. "Feel the time ticking down, Thendragon! Every moment your annihilation draws closer! And though I might fall, I will drag from you fistfuls of your precious time!"

It's the least he can do. To repay her. It's the least the world can do, to repay her. All she needs is time. All they can give her is time. He regrets that the world only sent him, the least of its champions, to stand astride the gates of hell.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Caster nodded slowly. "Ah yes. Young fires, fresh from the sun. Of course they're joyful, being new to this world. I do not resent them for it."

He dropped a heavy stick onto his fire; it flicked low, half-smothered, as the tendrils tried to reach up and into the wood.

"But this is an old fire," said Caster. "And it remembers what it was used to do."

He ran his hands through his hair. "I was there when it all began, you know? Not when man invented fire, but when he learned to flay it. It became possible to carve away the heat and the smoke and get to fire's purest essence, the raw force of it. We thought that we were purifying it, removing the choking ash and the corpses of fossilized trees, letting it free into the world to shine as beautiful as reason. But, as you observe, we'd also cut away the warmth of it. I lived long enough to see a world where fire no longer breathed, where it ran through the world as a corpse. That's why I'm not surprised by this place. Like a single seed grows into a tangled seringueira, so every corridor and pit here was contained within the spark we used to illuminate the world."

Breathless Dead

Bella!

"St -" Vesper starts to say, and then bites down the word hard.

The little glass marble, filled with a solid teutranotoxin blend, scorches right by Bella's open claw. If she'd turned her momentum even slightly it would have hit. Instead the interception comes a full second later, the bone shield interposing itself between Vesper and her in her flight. With a crash like an earthquake in the elephant's graveyard, the two assassins fall to the ground.

"Oh - oh motherfucker," said Vesper. "I wondered why past me didn't gag me. She lined up her traps assuming I'd warn you about them and then she must have microdosed Lethe water to forget the details. But - but I'm smarter than her now. Every minute expands my cognition. I just need to figure out her scheme -"

While she's busy trying to outsmart herself, Sanalessa whirls into place like a Geiger painting rendered in ivory. A spark flashes, and a section of the words on her shoulder burn smooth - a branch of prophecy closing forever. She flexes her deadly, empty hoof-fist and you can feel the shape where a weapon should be there. It would have been easy for Vesper to just write your name, but she couldn't - this entire elaborate choose-your-own-adventure novel carved in bone is her trying to capture all of the possibility space of this fight in such a way that your survival is as guaranteed as your defeat.

A new set of words come into focus. The unicorn flicks her tail and lowers her head. You can feel the charge gathering in that startip-point like an arrow readying.

Redana and Dolce!

"Just so you know -" said Vasilia, tracing one claw around the rim of the cup, "- and do not take this as criticism. It is clear that you are enjoying this, and I am definitely enjoying it as well. It is such a darling side of you. But, just so you know," she smiled as she raised the cup to her lips, "I cannot imagine this tasting any better than the tea you make while wearing only your frumpy singlet, in the quiet of our room, with no makeup or performance."

"And, I love the performance," she repeated. "But do not think that I am capable of loving you more than I already do."

Dyssia!

"There is one, one thing I demand to know from you as an Administrator Species -" Iskarot was saying. His hood was down and his robe was loosened, the aching points where his flesh had reconfigured around his re-attached augmentics still raw. "It's, I know how it all fits together. I was on the Ikarani project, and I was on when they bastardized it into the Summerkind project, and it's all like a big investigation into the nature of intelligence and how it's not bound to the physical architecture of the brain in anything more than a symbolic way, but... look, man, how do you know that you're an Administrator species?"

He took a deep drink from the wine.

"Like, what if there's another, deeper, secret administrator species out there and you Azura are just middle managers? You have the obsession with the colour blue and this whole elaborate aesthetic system justifying this galactic terraforming project, and you live and die fighting on the front lines to advance it. Is that reaaaaally what the masters of biomancy would choose as their own lifestyles? How do you know that you're not just high ranking servitors and the real, immortal intelligences are just out of sight, as invisible to you as I am to the Summerkind? Maybe this entire galactic, you know, principle is just a little ant farm to them?"

Return to Thellamie

Rurik!

So it came down to this.

He couldn't put his faith in Sayanastia the Dark Dragon; she was a shadow of herself. He couldn't put his faith in Injimo; she was a shadow of the Hero. He couldn't put his faith in his granddaughter Tsane; she was an uncontrolled hothead. He couldn't put his faith in the tricks of Cair; she believed in diplomacy even in the face of the apocalypse. He couldn't put his faith in Kalentia; she didn't even believe in herself.

He had armour. He had endurance. He had patience. He had time. He had waited fifty years. He would not fail to wait now, when it counted most.

The Seneschal of the Hero of Ages drew at last his Heartblade.

"Silk!" he cried, and his suit erupted in an ocean of tangling fabric. His sleeves unraveled and expanded, his cravat bloomed like a flower, his coat tails wove out like twin scorpion tails. The dark colours exploded into a vibrant patchwork whirl of different dyes and textures, crashing over the Rotwalkers like a tsunami. At the same time the fabric wrapped around him, hardening into steel plate that merged seamlessly with the sharp angles of a suit and the blossoming ruffles of a dressmaker's swatch.

"Silver!" said the Seneschal, and from the knee-high silken waters rose a dozen mannequins of gleaming silver metal. Each held a spear like a needle, and each wore a dress like an angel. They stood on tip toes like ballerinas, and with a synchronized whirl and slash they took their dance's first steps, cutting down the horde's entire first rank before returning to their neutral pose, each one separated by one second's movement.

"Serenity!" said Rurik, clapping his hands above his head. He forced his aching left knee into a wide slash outwards, and then traced the arc forwards. He bent down despite his aching back and pulled from the silken ocean a pair of gleaming crystal scissors. Their edges were so sharp that they severed the light of the Rot Star itself, breaking the diseased yellow gleam into a burning rainbow.

The searing light of his transformation faded. The end result: his left half the sharp black and red suit of a butler, professional and precise, squares and triangles in perfect and dignified order. His right half was a floral explosion of a hundred dresses, ideas overlapping and entangling, a mood board of different ideas and concepts. Fabrics for every occasion, colours to channel every kind of mana, options for every way to be. An arsenal to help the Hero of Ages to choose whatever inspired her in any given moment. The silver mannequins fell into close formation around him, needle-spears held in ready repose, weaving their way through the forces of the Rot Star as they approached.

And Rurik stood ready in the center of their circle, scissors held high. Press too hard on any of his defenders and he would swoop in to relieve them, disassembling the horde with the focused precision of a craftsman unraveling an incorrect stitch.

And there he stood astride the battlefield, a castle of cloth and cutting. He did not advance, did not try to cut to the center of things, only destroyed in defense. In his mind the tick-tock metronome of the counting clock was already counting down minutes, hours, weeks - years, if it had to be. He had waited this long for Heron to arrive, and arrive she had. He could wait for her to arrive again, to do what none of her handmaidens could. This was his blade, his faith: the confidence that all the Hero of Ages needed was time.

Time he could give, and the time he gave would be filled with the creation of ten thousand battle dresses.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"I am not your Saber," said the old man by the fire.

The depths of the rainforest were closing in tight. Veins of digital blue ran through the leaves and down into the roots. The insects that buzzed had glittering blue LED lights for eyes, and in the jaws of the panther that waited in the dark cost/benefit analysis dripped like saliva. The fire was small, and weak, and barely seemed to warm the old man, but he expected no better of it.

"I don't like it down here either," said Caster, beard like a spent stormcloud. "But I am not surprised. Are you? After all, it doesn't take many people to build a place like this. The strength, the intelligence, the sweat - everything required to measure, carve and dig is easy to acquire. The Earth, too, is a willing participant. She has always been ready to eat her children when they are offered to her. Come, sit by the fire with me. You must be hungry too."