It’s six against two, and there’s no way you can lose.
You say that, but then, you've never fought Asterion.
Her feet half give out under her as she leans into the charge - shield forwards, a striking ram, throw and toss, at least so goes the theory. Instead she impacts quickly but uselessly into the incredible abs of a terrifyingly impressive reptilian janissary. She pushes with her exhausted strength but it's like shoving against a brick wall. Maybe it's something to do with leverage? If she lowered her centre of gravity... oh no, that wasn't helping at all. Oh, of course, put your hips into it... no, that wasn't it either. Perhaps...
No one has ever boarded the Eater of Worlds and lived to tell the tale. As a result, artistic depictions of Odoacer's legendary victory have been fueled by guesswork. Portraits of black-armoured Ceronians standing in moist and dripping tunnels, veins and intestines, attacked by ferocious insectoid horrors are common. Shining hoplites wading through seas of bio-muck, all the more glorious for their contrast with the horror of Poseidon. So you clutch your Plover's sword closer as you enter through the atmospheric bubble, prepared for the worst nightmares of the void to be made manifest. Who knows what evil had survived in this rotting carcass?
You were not expecting blinding, brilliant, radiant sunlight.
The brain of the Eater of Worlds is vast and crystalline and aquatic - and it is shattered by the adamant prow of the Lupincas that runs right through its centre. But its broken wreckage still hangs suspended from the midst of the ceiling-sky, shining with a thousand dazzling lights. In the centre of this immense crystal chandelier is an incomparable light bracketed by lines of black metal. It takes a long moment before you recognize that prince of engines, the heart of the Lupincas removed from its original mount and carried down here into the dead brain of the leviathan and freed from its containment. The bare engine heart shines and fills this interior world with crystalline sunlight.
From the broken brain pours water - clear, but with an edge of cobalt blue. It cascades through the ruptures in the crystal mind, falling down from the sky in a vast and eternal rainstorm-waterfall. With the artificial sun so close to this storm, light already wild by its refraction through the crystal, you're looking at possibly greatest rainbow in the galaxy.
Seas of blue. Seas of teal. Seas of green. Your eyes adjust. Immense fields of mangroves spread in all directions, thick and tangled roots weaving together to form an almost-surface, broken here and there to reveal glimpses of deep cerulean blue. The air is tropical; hot and wet, unlike anything you've ever experienced in the air-conditioned perfection of Tellus. On and on you go, witness to this most unlikely of jungles, this alien paradise.
And there, ahead, almost at the centre - a hilltop island rising above the flat. Red tiled rooftops and gentle white houses and the unmistakable shape of a temple in white marble. Fields of rice, and wheat, and barley girt by elegant bronze stone walls. No experience other than fairy-tale depictions of castle towns could prepare you to identify what this is. A town. A town, here, in the belly of the beast.
Vasilia!
The engine has come to life.
You have power.
You have your target, blissfully unaware of the threat you pose.
Take us through space.
Dolce!
"Idiot!" snapped the Hermetician. "The engine is already running! Imprecise statements mutilate the mind! What you want is forward thrust, which the divine teachings of Hermes direct to be done through the calibration of the stellar compressor and release of sequential plasma valves. However I notice that the compressor is stuck in a maximum output forward position and some sort of emergency handbrake has been jury-rigged by a syphilitic caveman out of spare adamant plates in the valves. Simply repairing the damage caused by these 'repairs' should be enough to take us into all-ahead full."
Redana's repairs aren't that bad for someone with no formal training, he's just being mean. With the Hermetician irritably snapping at you whenever you do anything incorrect, operating them is within your grasp.
"There is a shipmind here but it's suffered worse than anything," snarled the Hermetician. That's a surprise - shipminds are artificial geniuses and sages and you couldn't wish for a better navigator. "If I could restore it finding the Raving Direction from here would be trivial. Parts! I've got less than half of what I need, I need another calculating machine. Where can one be found in this region? The Empress has had them stripped from all Imperial warships to limit their mobility. The old capitol, perhaps?"
The longer you spend watching the Hermetician rant and fume, the more you become aware that the greatest danger he presents is his temper. This is not, to put it mildly, someone who has any consideration for your request to speak quietly. Even when he's being helpful he's loud and aggressive and sometimes points terrifying guns at you when you're about to make a mistake.
This isn't a trait of Hermeticians generally - they're also rude, greedy, and deceitful, sure, but this reminds you more of Azura warbands you've met while with the Starsong Privateers. There's no faster way for negotiations to break down than to try and engage them calmly, rationally and collaboratively, and it's foolish to expect an agreement to hold unchanged. But...
He's not shipjacking you. He's helping you. He's just doing it in such an aggressive, prideful way that it can be mistaken easily for him being a menace. You think that Vasilia might have actually succeeded in negotiating a temporary alliance with him, and the biggest danger right now is misreading his compliance as hostility.
He will also inevitably rebel at some point. Challenging authority is, too, Ares' way. The only thing to do there is to be ready for it.
Alexa!
Someone is standing beside you and listening, but it is not Athena. The rustle of robes is too soft, too natural, and the feeling of feathers brush your neck like the hands of a musician. As Hera touches you in your most vulnerable place your voice falls gentler than you could have given it credit for, and the warrior's heart shifts.
Galnius touches her icon of Apollo reflexively, and that itself tells a story. She's a devotee of virtue and that is something to be deeply wary of. You're dealing with someone who believes virtue takes precedence over other considerations, even loyalty, even pride. She might not be enlightened herself but she expects that from her leaders, and she has demonstrated that she will betray even a king if she believes them unjust. Most dangerous of all, though, is that her ideal of virtue is closely aligned with the Empire's own - you do not see the imagination there to consider a better world.
"Zelok will live," Ganius said gruffly. "Faron... he was right with the gods. Not his own doing, greedy prick, didn't want to offer anything half the time. Had to keep an eye on him or he'd down his entire cup before making a libation. But I wouldn't have any of that in my unit, and even if he must have skipped some sacrifices, at the very least I made sure he was right with Hades. Seemed like the thing to do in this place, and it means he'll at least have a spot in Elysium. Anyway. No grudges," that last was half directed at his own squad. "Anything that happens in Athena's domain is Athena's to decide."
She doesn't say it, but you can tell from the way the soldiers are maintaining absolutely perfect parade-ground decorum in this situation that the reason they're putting up with all this is because they've wordlessly understood what the prize here is. If they are involved in the rescue of Princess Redana they stand to gain honour and promotion from the Empress, perhaps even assignment as the princess' personal honour guard. That's a huge incentive for all of them, but without the princess it's meaningless. What they want you to do more than anything is for you to introduce them to Redana and make sure that their names won't be forgotten when rewards are being handed out.
Bella!
Mynx stares up at you, incomprehensible mind turning over and over as you lie on that spotless floor together. Her eyes flicker left and right, observing one eye and then the other, and they go still when an unasked for spot of wetness touches her cheek. The squirrel shape melts away to reveal her sleek crimson scales, her slender frame, her hands rough and burned from the painful process of learning all of chemistry's ways to hurt.
Then she leans up directly into that snarl and there's a pinprick pain in your ear as a single fang punctures your skin. Antivenom exchanges for blood, and as the shapeshifter pulls back there's just a tiny spot of red on her teeth for a moment.
"Yikes, Bella, I don't think even I could brew a chill pill strong enough for you right now," she said. "Obviously I wasn't planning on leaving you behind," she lies(?), "I just wanted to hear you squirm a bit. No need to be such a drama queen about everything."
The Imperial Plovers are the same machines as yours. The same speed, the same acceleration, the same limits - but they are more. It should just be a matter of math.
But you're testing your limits and they aren't.
You see the mines glitter ahead, ruby tri-points blinking. They're timed to wait for thirty seconds before they arm to give their users time to get to a minimum safe distance. Thirty seconds of safety before the jaws of the trap snap shut. You only need twenty. You scorch between the deadly balls of explosives before they arm, between the clumsy grabs of two minelayer plovers, and on, and on, and on, the mere fact of your escape no reason at all to slow your ascent.
And then you're besides the Eater of Worlds.
The husks of the Imperial ships before were vast; this is incomprehensible. It fills your view like a planet, plated in bone and rock; mountains and peaks and valleys carved into its stone hide. Prismatic veins of gemstones erupt on the surface, crystal forests of Poseidon's multitude of colours, storming and reacting to the gathering storm. Oceans of sapphire blood-ice hang depressurized like rainstorms in stop motion. Ahead that distant beak could break a continent with a bite. It is so vast it feels like you are hardly moving in relation to it, though you have not cut your speed at all.
[Temporary solution: The debris field is now being mined. This will make future small craft operations in this area hazardous.]
Vasilia and Alexa!
"Uh, yes ma'am," said Ganius to the order, giving a brief salute and leading his squad away. Alexa, as you walk alongside him you can hear him muttering about "Not being an engine dog, she's just the same as the others". That's going to be a problem - this is a hoplite, and even the humble ones are proud enough to consider manual labour beneath them. It's what caused him to defect in the first place and you can sense the morale in this unit is very close to zero - and managing the hearts of soldiers is as vital an aspect of war as any.
You've got some time to survey and assess, Vasilia. You see that the Veterosk is heading directly for the Eater of Worlds. You're completely in its stern, and have to darken the central viewport to shield your eyes from the brightness of its engine aftershock that faces directly towards you. You absolutely have the element of surprise.
What's the plan?
Dolce!
{EXPLAIN}
The blasting, blaring static-fulled artificial voice of Iskarot from immediately behind you knocks you off your feet.
A monster in robes the colour of hazard stripes towers over you. Its eyes glow a malevolent red and glittering lights fill it like a tiny galaxy. It brandishes a fistful of brightly coloured severed cables, still sparking, limp like a severed limb.
"The status of this warship is DEPLORABLE," shouted the Hermetician, throwing the bundle into your arms. It steps right over your prone body and begins applying maniacal limbs to the console you were looking at. In a much softer, more gentle voice, he intoned "Blessed be the holy engine, for your mighty wings will bear us to the Golden Lord - HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS CORROSION? Has this ship been UNDERWATER? Nothing here is sterile, there are teeth marks on the multiphase interchange, the balistrades are rusted shut - WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?!?!"
He shifts right past you again, not even looking at you, ripping a huge console off the wall and unscrewing multiple burned-out and damp bulbs and tossing them irritably on the floor where they shatter one after another.
Bella!
This place isn't clean.
The smells of the cleaning chemicals, too fine for human senses, are obvious to you, as sharp and unpleasant as orange on ulcers. It's overpoweringly thick, like an open bottle of the stuff has been spilled, but there's no sign of it. As unpleasant as it is, the smell of cleanliness should at least should be comforting - but it's not. Something is wrong. There's something it's not entirely covering, and the thought of having missed a spot raises a horrible tension.
The wine is the same. It's so full, so rich, it passes beyond your ability to comprehend - but it too doesn't quite cover something. This is royal wine - the bar servitor gave you royal wine, not the lower class stuff that would fit a servitor's station. The kind of stuff that sent your eyelashes fluttering when the Empress poured herself a glass from across the room, the kind of stuff that parallels the molten sunlight honey-cheese flavour of divine ambrosia. It's so smooth and crisp even the roughness of your tongue feels smooth and golden, glowing, drifting light saturates your body. It's divine. You almost can't move.
That smell. It's not dirt. It's something else, something familiar, something...
It's not almost. You actually can't move.
The bartender leans across the table on her elbows, blinking sideways to reveal her slitted reptilian eyes, incongruous against the soft and squirrelly face.
"Hey, Bella!" said Mynx, waving cheerfully, bubbly smile filling every part of her face. "How are you doing?"
Mynx. The shapeshifter. Princess Redana's body double and your ally and rival in the Imperial Household, you've known her almost as long as you've known the Princess. She's spent so long imitating Princess Redana that she's almost her mirror in personality - bright and courageous and heroic - but there's always a little edge of mischievous darkness and cruelty that comes with knowing how the world actually is underneath it all. That's the smell you couldn't quite place - she isn't able to perfectly conceal her scent from you without burying it under other things.
And she's sedated you. You can still move, but you're tired and weak, and you're not sure you could stand successfully. Just like Redana - you presume the ropes and the closet are going to be next...
"Hey, don't worry!" said Mynx, and you can't tell if she's being genuine or condescending. You can never tell with her. "I've got this. Redana is safe with me, you'll see!"
Just like Redana to go off ahead. Just like Mynx to try to steal her from you. Aphrodite, behind your back, gives a satisfied little smile.
Mynx Your worst best friend in the whole wide galaxy! Shapeshifting Bodyguard: When someone is successfully Finished, Mynx can reveal that she was secretly that person all along and negate all effects of that Finish. Toxicrine Temple: If you eat or drink anything Mynx could conceivably have touched, it's possible she has poisoned you.
Ailee contemplates for a moment. Carefully turns Jackdaw on her side into the recovery position, opens her mouth and jams her fingers inside to induce vomiting. Then she lays her on her back and starts a percussive and remorseless regimen of violent compresses and mouth to mouth rescue breaths. She does not mess around or hold back or pay attention to anything else that's going on - it's a textbook cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
It is quite impossible to rest while this is happening.
"That's rough, Jason," said Canada. "But I think the worst part of that is that it's not even dying on your feet. It's dying in a pit. Their rules, their game, their system right to the end. They don't even have to lift a finger."
Again, the shield is a pillar. The only support she has. She lifts herself up on it, aching joint after aching joint pulling her up, all that weight resting on the top of that mighty shield. Without it she'll fall, so fast and so far and so deep.
"The least you can do is make the bastards work for it. Right?"
"Yeah," she said. They both know the truth. "So, what are you in for, Jason?"
It's an extremely obvious question but she's confident he'll bite. After all, if there's anyone in the world he hates more than her right now, it's whoever put him in the arena in the first place.
Jasper soaked in the knowledge like a sponge. Her eyes were shining beacons of curiosity and she kept moving around Dulcinea to try to keep eye contact. Her eyes shifted left and right, focusing on one eye then the other, hanging off every word. It was like a vision of another world and she could feel the weight and importance placed on every part of it. This felt like a quest, an adventure, something to aspire to. A devil queen searching through infinity for...
"How close are you to the perfect bowl of ramen?" asked Jasper - because of course there was a perfect bowl of ramen out there. The idea of subjectivity simply didn't occur to her at all. By the same token, it was impossible that she had already found perfection or else she would not have such detailed thoughts. "What are the rules of composition as you have discovered them? What must be included, and what paths of study are inherently wrong?"
There's no freedom like flying a powered Plover suit.
You scorch through the wreckage, able to turn on a dime, responsive and sharp enough to dance in. Oh, miracle! Is there any better way to see the heavens than this? Still yourself, but with the contained celestial power needed to fight the stars on their own terms? You dart hither and thither like a little thunderbolt, leaping off wreckage, carried along the currents of Poseidon's winds, and it seems that light itself couldn't run this fast.
And then from behind you, lights and fire.
The Veterosk has accelerated, and as fast as you are moving with your borrowed power, the immense force of a true Engine will eventually outpace you. Where you have to dart and weave and dance between the clutter of perished legends, the enemy warship simply rams them aside - its vast, cruel prow carving a path like a sword through space. Fires of rose and salmon break out along its port side as it charges heedlessly through the cascading sheets of Poseidon's lightning. And ahead of it it launches its own Plover suits, little sparks at this distance to hunt you, box you in, and prevent you from using your superior agility to exploit the abysmal maneuverability of the mighty starship.
Imperial Plovers Engineers in powered armour who are never mistaken for true soldiers. Windrunners: Imperial Plovers can move freely and swiftly through hazardous terrain, including starship interiors. Damage this stat if exposed to ELF fire. Battlefield Support: Given time, Imperial Plovers can set mines, traps, support equipment or entrenched weapon emplacements.
Vasilia and Alexia!
As the Hermetician falls it withdraws into its oily robes like a hermit crab and skitters across the floor using limbs unbounded by the practical logic of organic biology. There are flashes of light from the bullet holes underneath the fabric, incomprehensible mechanisms at work below. It's not hurt - but neither did it get the opportunity to unleash its arcane arsenal on you. Small blessings.
"Request denied," it stated. "You possess insufficient force to compel my obedience - whereas your obedience is not required for me to achieve my ends."
In the space of a single breath it has a panel off the floor and has skittered into the vents, gone before there's time to react.
Galnius gulped. That was a hell of an omen to commemorate his new allegiance.
But there's no time to wonder where the cyborg has gone. There is a crash as the Veterosk decouples and accelerates away into the debris field. It's long, rolling surface passes above your bridge, washing the Plousios with the aftershock of its engine. It's so close you can see every loose panel and bolt, every inscribed prayer to the gods of battle and glory.
Dolce!
This ship is old. So old. What other kind of ship would the God of the Dead have?
It's probably just it being old that is causing that banging and rumbling sound from the pipes. Just that, and not some underworld demon at work.
Bella!
Like everything else, the Admiral's shuttle was designed for intimidating civilian flybys rather than practicality. It is an elegant, sweeping eagle of silver and sapphire, wings sculpted into feathers, landing struts as mighty talons. It'd take three days to fully clean and polish the exterior to that standard. The hangar bay itself is similarly designed for luxury - here by the entrance are wheeled vehicles for carrying important figures that final distance to the boarding ramp, a small bar where a servitor awaits with refreshments, and a brass band playing the Admiral's theme music in a heroic, swelling score.
You see the Codexia in the distance, by the landing ramp, evidently bored and playing a game of jacks with herself. You see Pallas Athena put her hand on her shoulder and whisper in her ear. You see the Codexia glance around, scoop up her game pieces, heft her spear, and vanish inside the ship.
"Don't play her game," Aphrodite mutters ill-temperedly besides you. "Not only is she better at it than you, she also cheats."
She shifts. Gets the shield underneath her and pushes. She props herself up to a sitting position and takes a steadying breath. Every motion hurts so much and that hurt shows in every flex of muscle.
For a moment there's rage. For a moment she feels that same choking, all consuming spite and fury that Asterion feels. It hangs before her like the sweetest ambrosia, the ability to just block everything out; to slay her emotions with a sword of spite. She could just attack and attack and attack and there'd be nothing left of her afterwards to hurt. Please. Let her have this. Let her blot herself out. Let her scar over.
What a luxury that would be.
"What's your name, kid?" she asked, gingerly rubbing the dirt and muck from her sleeve. There's a steady, calming confidence in her voice now. She still has this to give.
Ailee is uncharacteristically silent. No jokes. No quips. No smiles of delight, declarations of intent, or expressions of impatience. She just looks at Lucien, looks at Coleman, and then ties the rope around herself as directed.
Even with the rumble of the train's engine, it's the quietest it's ever been down here.
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