Thanqol

Fellowship: The Heart

Amazingly, Ailee broke into a fit of giggles at Lucien's comment so genuine that it snapped her out of her aura of coruscating energy. It happened so fast it was startling - one moment you'd become almost used to her being a vibrant, sibilant nexus of draconic nightmare energy, and the next she was an ordinary white-furred mousegirl trying to stifle laughter with her wrist. The transformation had a very [SCENE MISSING] energy where the wise would reflexively check their watches to see if they'd just had a run in with the time knife.

"Do another one!" she demanded.

Breathless Dead

Short story

NECROMECHANIC

The procession came through the darkened corridors of Astraxum Subcontinental Plate II, a mass of muddy saffron yellow. The devotees were swathed in their robes, thick and concealing by design, letting no hint of their deviant bodies show through to the unsullied masses who watched their advance. Though they could conceal the surfaces of their unnatural forms they could not conceal their shapes - while the crowds that watched their advance came in every colour of earth and sky, their diversity was nothing to the bizarre morphology of the devotees. Some stood three meters high, spindly tall, having to bow their hooded heads to avoid impact with the rusting ceiling, tripod legs visible in sharp edges with each step. Some were clanking behemoths, engines cast over with fabric like clothed locomotives, the sound of grinding tank treads clattering out from beneath their veils. Some were childlike, tiny things that seemed to roll or scuttle or crawl. The masses of humanity all stood within narrow bands of height, weight, with regulation numbers of limbs. Not so the cast of the procession, who strode in all the shapes and sizes of the animal kingdom's foul coupling with a construction yard.

Many held or wore candles - not an unusual characteristic, for never had the vast mechanical world of Tellus ever seen the spark of an electric light. The corridor itself was lit with burning braziers as a matter of ordinary operation. Some held flags or banners - all dyed black. The Empress may have begrudgingly deigned to allow these strange creatures to march through the vaults of her perfect world, but she would not permit them to bear colours other than hazard stripe yellow and black. Colours of danger. Colours of warning. Colours to remind the population that these creatures were subhuman and to be shunned. So the devotees had dipped their holy flags and banners in black dye, to be returned to their original glory once they were safely returned to their own realm. A few held relics. Strange wooden boxes - wood! Inconceivable here on this world of metal and rust - rested in arms, tendrils, or stranger appendages, the arcane miracles within hidden from the sight of the unworthy.

These were the Priests of Hermes. God of Travel. God of Trade. God of Technology.

They were not loved.

The crowds standing by the sides of the bestial processional was not there to cheer or celebrate the work of heroes. Parents had brought their children not as reward, but as punishment and threat. Be good or you'll be sent to join the Hermetics. Be good or they'll turn you into a monster. Be good or it'll be you shuffling underneath a saffron cage. Others were here as militia. Weapons were forbidden by order of the Empress, but every spare spanner, rolling pin, or kitchen knife happened to be conveniently in the hands or bags of every man or woman of fighting age as they watched the procession rumble past. Gangs stood in close proximity. Here and there could be seen the intimidating, black-armoured shapes of the Invigilators, the mailed fist of the Empress, but even they kept their distance from the procession. They did not want to be seen defending the freaks.

The path was blocked.

The procession ground to a halt.

The Red Titans gang had placed themselves in the centre of the causeway, standing just before the bridge that crossed a heat spire channel. They had gone further than the casual armaments of the others - bricks, bats, bottles with oily rags crammed down the necks, and improvised armour made out of the wreckage of a train. Their leader, the one-eyed meat-faced woman named Gavid stepped forwards, holding up a hand. "Back, freaks. No further."

Tension flowed through the crowd. Concealed weapons made their way to hands. Invigilators shifted nervously, sensing danger and shying from putting themselves at the centre of it. But the Hermetics of the procession remained still and silent - for as chaotic as they were in form, each exhibited an unnatural stillness now that they had come to a halt.

Finally, one spoke. Its voice was not the monstrous sound one expected from the beasts - it was soft, feminine, almost kind - but with an accent none of the humans would ever share. "We have dispensation from the Empress. We are here under her protection."

"You aren't," snarled Gavid, "taking our children."

There was a silence for a moment, as though contemplating this, and then the Hermetic resumed smoothly. "The Empress has forbidden us from all acts of recruitment and propaganda. We are to collect the sick, the mad, the marked, and the irredeemable. This will purify the world of Tellus of those like us."

"You're fucking baby snatchers, don't deny it!" shouted the ganger. "How else are there so damn many of you!?"

A ripple ran through the crowd, a wave of shared anger. The Hermetics hadn't been allowed to recruit for twenty years - and their numbers seemed the same. A great many small ills and inexplicable disasters had been attributed to an increasingly desperate priesthood determined to snatch bodies at any cost.

There was another long silence from the Hermetics.

"We have dispensation from the Empress -"

A brick smashed against its face. It staggered and fell.

It was like a dam breaking. The Red Titans charged, and other gangs followed one after another. The Hermetics closed ranks, lowering their staffs and flags in a half-hearted parody of a phalanx, but already the humans were upon them.

Humans. A loaded phrase. It was humans who grew eviscerating talons. It was humans who had their fists harden like stone when they struck. It was humans who could match the shoving strength of the giants. Even the least human being among the hundreds of billions of Tellus was a superman, genetic code brimming with exotic strengths that rendered even these emaciated, impoverished specimens deadly combatants. When flesh and bone met the augmentic steel of the Hermetics it was no unfair contest.

Chaos surged in the flickering candlelight. Shouts and screams and the sound of breaking bones and metal. The Hermetics did not, as they might have in the stories, reveal themselves to be bearing exotic weaponry beneath their robes - no heat rays, no slipphase beams, no flux sprays. If those things were here they were locked within those ornate wooden boxes that the Hermetics were passing towards the centre of their formation as though they were more precious than their very lives. Instead they fought as they were, with whatever advantages their alien physiques granted them. They pushed back but their blows were pulled, defensive, restrained even as they were being assaulted by people who did not give them anything like the same courtesy. They knew the consequences for their Order if they took human life here on the Empress' throneworld.

There was a boom like thunder. The corridor was briefly lit by light - cold, blue-white, bright light, nothing like the crackling dimness of the fire. Electrical arcs poured into the air, raking up and down the body of one of the Hermeticians and it emitted the only sound any of them had made during this battle - a high-pitched, far too natural scream. This finally broke the reverie of the Invigilators. Weapon! The Empress' soldiers finally intervened, firing their weapons indiscriminately into the swirling melee. These were not bullets, for the skin of an unarmoured human was proof against such things in this age. These were glass beads that ruptured upon impact into great gouts of toxic, choking smoke that could overwhelm even the most advanced biologies. War cries turned to panicked shouts, screaming turned to coughing, people broke and fled in all directions as the Invigilators closed in, grabbing whoever they could in a futile attempt to catch whoever had smuggled the illicit Electromagnetic Flux weapon into the dark of Tellus. Even the Hermeticians could not endure the fog of the Imperial guns and they withdrew as best they could, keeping in a mass defensive circle.

In the centre of the abandoned battlefield, wreathed by smoke and toxic gases, a young woman stood and looked down at the abandoned body of a Hermetic. It was the first time she'd ever seen what was underneath the robes of one of the mysterious creatures. This was a secret that, to her, was worth enduring the agonizing haze. She stared down at it, eyes wide despite the poison and the tears, heart pounding for reasons other than the adrenaline and the terror. She saw the secrets of the Priests of Hermes written in flesh and fur and steel, and she felt...

She was grabbed and dragged away back into the candle-lit darkness. She dragged the memory with her.

Fellowship: The Heart

You'd think that with the battle over Ailee would have transformed out of her crackling black nightmare energy princess dress. Nope. From the way she acted this was just her look now. Make eye contact with her and a crackling flower of staring emerald energy eyes bloom behind her like the world's most intimidating peacock display. There's a low danger hum as energy coils around her arms like bracelets and after a while your brain stops noticing it as anything other than a vague sense of tension. Occasionally small bits of scenery catch fire around her.

"So boring," she said, a blazing hot specter of Impatience rising above and around her. She cupped her hands and addressed Coleman: "Hey! Short stuff!" it was okay when she said it. "Can't you make this hunk of garbage go any faster?"

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Whatever it takes. She'd put herself in between him and the world in a heartbeat, throw herself away - but she wouldn't lash out in return? What kind of sacrifice was that? Who was she protecting like this? She flinched back, looking away, eyes watering. Who had she saved like this? Who wanted her to be like this? Who had asked for a hero like this? Why couldn't she be who they needed instead?

Shamash would do whatever it took. Tirzah would -

Sudden tears blinded closed eyes.

It was war. Occupation. Rebellion. A time for soldiers, not heroes. A time for feudal warrior-aristocrats and not knights. All she had to do was finish what had been started and crack her broken heart and draw her sword from it. It was time to put away silly ideas like chivalry, love, redemption...

Her heart pounded. She was being asked to make a sacrifice, and who was she to say no?

"Yes, mistress," she said quietly, not meeting the Cat's eyes despite the order. "You're right. Of course."

[Accepting the shift]

Breathless Dead

King Jas'o!

The arrow hit the soft spongey surface with a soft thud. It hung there in the centre of the bullseye for a minute - and then was sucked into the target. It vanished inside the spongey plant entirely, leaving only a discoloured purple bruise where it had started. Inside the arrow would be digested, dissolved, turned into nutrients so that the plant could regrow the other injury it had just sustained - across the field, linked by a long winding vine, a branch was rapidly regrowing another of its strange fruits. Long, straight, synthetic feathers at the end - a perfect arrow, ready for the archer to snap off with a twist of his fingers and fire it right back in cannibalistic cycle into the plant's core surface. Once again he fired the shot, and another perfect violet bruise right in the centre of its bullseye was added to the plant's strange surface.

"Princess Jas'o? Are you - oh!" The voice came softly from the owlgirl servitor, a gentle announcement of purpose from a creature whose silent movement swould otherwise be entirely undetectable.

"Hey," said Jas'o, nocking and firing another arrow in a fluid but mechanistic motion. "Sup?"

"Your father sent me to collect you for your Tanderil geology lessons... you've shifted, highness?"

"Yeah," said Jas'o, gesturing at his now-flat chest. "These were getting in the way. Not badly, but I've got more range of motion like this, and every little counts."

"Ah. Um. Would you like to change your pronouns too?"

"Sure, whatever," said Jas'o, arcing and firing another shot. "Don't care."

"Would you like me to change as well, highness?" she said.

"Also whatever," said Jas'o, snapping another arrow from the branch. "Do what you want."

"And... will the prince come with me?"

"For what?" he snorted. "Geology? No thanks."

"Your father will -"

"Do nothing!" snapped Jas'o, and landed another perfect bullseye despite the rising tension. "He will do nothing! His father will do nothing! Honestly, Hili! What the fuck is the point of any of it! We're never going back! Even grandfather hasn't seen this planet we're apparently supposed to rule, and father's spent his entire life standing ready to swoop in and administer the shit out of it the day he's finally allowed to. We're let's-pretend kings sitting in a desk drawer, learning two hundred year out of date information, and I am," he fired another arrow into dead centre of the target, "too old to play pretend."

"Ah," Hili said quietly.

"The only thing in this world that matters," he said, focus never having left that distant target, "is war. The only way anything is going to change. The only way to advance. The only way to get out is by being good at something. By being too good to keep locked up in a drawer. It was war which brought us all here. Empress Nero's throne stands atop a pile of spears. Only Pallas Athena can change anything in this world. How tough are you?"

"Master?"

"I'm sick of shooting stationary targets. I know you're fast. How tough are you?"

"I... I am not entirely certain, master. But somewhat. I am designed for bodyguard duties and can probably endure a fair number of arrows, so long as nothing vital is pierced."

"Good enough," said the prince, drawing another arrow. "Start dodging."

Alexa!

How did he get to be such a frighteningly good shot?

You can see Athena herself draw in an impressed breath as King Jas'o turns and puts an arrow directly through your heel, an Achilles-slaying shot fired in perfect flow from one moving target to another. You're sent crashing to the ground but before you land Galnius and another hoplite catch your arms and continue carrying you forwards.

[Damage your Grace]

The King's troops pile into an open practice square, filled with dead Ceronians, forming up into a phalanx. You arrive a little behind them and see three figures waiting for you there - Princess Redana, unconscious in the blood-soaked arms of a feline servitor. There is another servitor nearby - a Ceronian, holding a terrible gleaming scythe, blazing with the dark glory of Ares. The ground is littered with bodies she's made.

"On your knees!" shouted King Jas'o, darkly menacing as he strung a thunderbolt to his bow. No hesitation now - he was lit by lightning, the centre of a thunderstorm, ready to land his fourth perfect shot of the day. "Step away from the princess!"

Vasilia!

Energy is crackling from the engine-sun. An overflow of power is ionizing the crystal waterfalls, condensing them into dark clouds that billowed out to blot out the ceiling-sky, brimming with dark and violet light. Winds start to pick up. Zeus and Poseidon together have spread the terrible storm that dominates the void into the interior.

"The gods are angry!" said Admiral Odoacer, never one to let a good divine omen go to waste. "They are giving you a final warning - serve me or perish!"

"What do you command, Lord Admiral?" cried a Ceronian, dropping to her knees - in second the army was again kneeling, united in fealty.

"There is only one way to make this right," she said. "An opportunity you were too distraught to see was in front of you before. Seize the princess! Bring her to me in chains! And if you happen to see a cutie of a catgirl, bring her to me in chains also!! And gag them!!"

There's a bit of staring. The Admiral seems to have gotten caught up in a rush of... something.

"Don't question me!" she said. "It is important that it happens like this! Go!"

The army of Ceronians stand fluidly, and then march into their city. The Admiral fanned herself with one hand, grinning in a flustered kind of way, and then hopped down to follow them. You'd bet that she's heading towards the palace - you don't know what the Admiral is like in person, but you get the impression that for whatever reason she wants to be sitting on a throne when she receives her prisoners.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada is outside the Sealed Tower. At the base, on the stone drawbridge over the river of fire, hand over her heart - shaking and mortified. Oh no. It had happened again.

Her speed was a strange and inconsistent thing that didn't operate fully under her control. It wasn't a linear acceleration, it had to do with the speed of her thoughts - and she never moved faster than when she was afraid. She'd once watched a horror movie with Tirzah and Asterion and had jump scared herself two suburbs away and had never been able to live it down. She took deep breaths, heart still pounding, and then groaned with her hands over her forehead and began the long, slow slog back up the stairs.

She slumped back into the room under the withering gaze of the Cat, swallowing and flinching back under that eerie intense stare. Oh boy. Oh damn. Terror and humiliation swirled in her head and she did her best to focus on the humiliation because that at least probably wouldn't kill her.

"The, uh, Horse Headed God," she said. "It saw me too. It's..." she swallowed. She was already dying of shame, it wasn't the moment to start giving her weird dumb ideas about how it was more a mental state than a single person. "It startled me," she finished lamely.

Breathless Dead

Redana and Bella!

Princess Epistia looks down at the body of her mother. Everything had happened so fast. The whole world and all its laws overturned in an eyeblink. She took a breath and looked away. She couldn't regret it. Just like in the ancient stories, evil parents had to be slain for the world to take shape. Some matricides were holy.

And some evils needed to be ended.

The scythe came into her hands again as she stood and it's moving to its unnatural purpose before she even knows it. It cuts through the hollowed-out bodyguard in a wave - a crude, unthinking strike but it is nevertheless rewarded with red ruin. She starts, eyes shocked as she's carried through into the counterswing, bloody fury of Ares igniting in her veins. Her next move is faster, far more frightening, and takes another of the terrible, zombified soldiers at last to a true ending. Faster, faster, the speed and flawless precision of a girl discovering her true purpose in the midst of the war god's dance. Blood and death comes to the slaves of Hatchan.

It is a terrible freedom - or a glorious final curse from Zeus.

Vasilia!

Hades stared at you for a long moment after his priest fell to the ground, unreadable energy in those brilliant blue eyes. And then, without commentary, he is gone.

"Warriors of Ceron!" cried Admiral Odoacer, standing over the crowd. "Rejoice! I have returned to lead you! Rejoice! You shall have another chance to fulfill your oaths and return to the grace of Zeus Cloudgatherer! Rejoice! You shall be returned to glory as the bloody speartip of the Imperium!"

You know that face - you've seen its cold stare in paint, looking out over the shoulder of every Imperial bureaucrat you've ever had the misfortune of being challenged by in the void of space. But here!? With no entourage, no fanfare, no vast court of sycophants and hangers on? You never imagined that the Admiral of the Armada could be so... humble.

But there she stands, atop a rock, addressing the crowd of Ceronians.

"But the Empire has changed, friends - it is a different place than you remember it! Lies, intrigue, betrayal, civil war - the situation is chaotic and perilous, and it is for that reason alone I did not have time to seek you out before now. Serve me - but beware! Many will attempt to deceive you, and many things that you thought were true are different now. Only I can be trusted. Only I can redeem you."

Alexa!

You plough through the feeble line of skirmishers like a locomotive. You and your phalanx cut through them while hardly breaking stride, shrugging off the ragged volley that tries to slow you on your shields. Ahead King Jas'o urges his men into as fast a run as they are capable of while carrying him, calling for triple-time as he turns to face you, hand once more hovering over the shaft of the next deadly Thunderbolt in his quiver.

Neither phalanx can stop now. Whichever one stops running and falls into a shieldwall will be able to be bypassed by the other. The situation is strangely akin to a chariot race through the streets of the city, a contest of speed and endurance.

You could attack the enemy phalanx directly - in its disorder it could be Finished - but committing to the charge will leave King Jas'o with a free hand. He could shoot down your soldiers, making your victory bloody, or he could abandon his men to the brawl and once more commit relentlessly to his objective. With another man which he will choose would be more of a mystery. Alternatively you could commit all-out to winning the race, attempting to get to the Princess before the King does and fall into formation there - this will be a Get Away.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

She didn't so much look upon the Horse-Headed God as she placed herself between it and the world.

A shadow on the sun. The outline of something enormous and terrible. A... violence and intensity that she could feel from here. It wasn't the brutal cruelty of the Bull-Headed God destroying things weaker than it, it wasn't the aloof menace of those who spy and subvert and break. This was like her - a terrible vision of her. Broken just a little further. Pushed to the point where the pain became funny. Where regret and honour and love were transmuted through the terrible alchemy of madness into laughter.

This wasn't strength that she was staring at. It wasn't a shadow blocking out the sun.

It was a pit.

Deep and wide and in the centre of the road she was walking upon. A hollow place carved where light should be. She didn't know how she'd avoided that emotion so far. Had she already touched on it? Was she already in the process of falling into it and just hadn't hit the bottom yet? If she thought about it she could feel that same laughter welling up inside the darkest place in her soul, and who was there to save her from it? Anathet had said that these weren't the first High Gods...

She pulled her eye away from the telescope - biting her lip, fearful tears glistening. Oh, stars, of all the things that could have been at the end of the Great Chain. She'd thought the Annunaki at least had the direction right - that the chain went up instead of down.

Fellowship: The Heart

Ailee, don't provoke them. Ailee, don't get angry. Ailee, don't hit that clown. Choruses of restraint right up until the moment she actually showed some. Indecision - that was it. Not just a word, a vice. The presence of the King in all his shadowed glory. Hellbent energy. Thank you for helping her bring it out, friends.

She breathed it in deeply. Power to chain. Power to bind. Power to lock entire lives away inside themselves. Exactly right.

Pride burst around her in its jagged emerald flames, spreading in technicolour black and poison green eyes. She was going to demonstrate why she was worthy. She was going to bind a Vice in real time. Willpower struck the flames and carved them into runes. Her eyes closed and she levitated off the ground, traveling cloak falling to the ground to reveal long, bare limbs covered in elaborate arcane sigils, burning green. The green and black caught and carved around the muddy maybe blue-gold-white. Pride dragged the fog into place, sharp and smiling with triangles like the Coyote in the moon.

She spun in place, wrapping the blackness around her in a dress. Midnight satin, jagged zig-zags of green, short and sharp and with a long flowing train behind her held aloft on their own dark wings. Her fur-sigils flowed and merged into brilliant green painted eyes, looking about everywhere with pure white irises. Her hair undid its loose, casual brushed-back state and resumed its destined form - as long and cascading as a unicorn's mane. The tip of her tail burst into emerald fire and left aftertrails like a paintbrush across canvas. The sword-smile settled into her hand, an optical illusion impaled on its tip.

Magical transformation complete, Ailee snapped into the air like a curse, carried by fire and vision into one perfect strike and fade. Her feet have touched the ground and her sword is already fading back into her smile - and Indecision is lodged in the heart of the Wreck.

A terrible vice for such a creature. Should it stay in its shell, or burst out from it? Should it threaten to detonate its gunpowder or avoid it for fear? Should it attack or flee? It stands paralyzed by the branching paths. Every second its options change and so it has to reassess - again and again. It's still considering its options when its skull is crushed by an out of control locomotive, bringing an end to its malformed existence.

[Finish with hope because she just damaged her Pride: 6,1,6 +1, making the total lucky 13.]

Breathless Dead

Redana and Bella!

Ceronians are built around formation instinct. It's the deepest, most enduring part of their biology - the chemical telepathy that allows thoughts and responses to be transmitted instantly through a unit. Even when everything else is hollowed out the instinct remains.

So it is that Queen Hatchan's mindless soldiers fight and die the same as they might in life. Without fear or hesitation they move and feint, paying with their blood to establish the Athenean circles. Many of them die in the process. Without the War Goddess to favour them each mistake is paid in blood from that rending axe. The due is claimed one way or another. But there are enough of them and the noose tightens - a volley of toxic, choking solid projectile rounds, an escape route blocked by shields and spears - and a Queen racing forwards in a high, arcing leap, talons trailing streamers of bloody crimson lightning. She'll drag you down even if she has to spend every soldier she has to do it.

But Bella! Without Athena to warn her of hidden dangers that obsessive focus is dangerous. She's lost all perspective, doesn't see you, doesn't respect you. You can Finish her before she can close this trap around Redana.

Vasilia!

"As I thought," hissed Ivory Smile. He'd abandoned further applications of magic and was fighting in earnest now, inklike shadows pouring after him in jagged, vicious aftershocks. "You have no control. You fight like an animal, unable to restrain your emotions. You're a failure who has lived a life of failure, and all of those failures are coming due now."

Cloaked by a razor twist of energy, Ivory Smile frees his book and snatches it open into his hand. Indigo tendrils of light burst from the pages, and Hades reaches over his shoulder to turn the page to the correct one. "Perhaps if you'd done one good thing in your life you'd be able to resist this," said Ivory Smile, pushing his glasses snidely up his nose as power built. "Alas."

Dolce!

"I am a loyal soldier," King Jas'o said. He snapped his fingers and a soldier stepped up and condescendingly patted you on the head. Strange thing to have a hand gesture for. "And I wouldn't dream of abandoning my responsibility to Princess Redana by having her miss out on an opportunity to fulfil Zeus' will. However..." his eyes narrowed. "These soldiers are probably somewhat worthless as they stand now. Very well! Ceronians! Purify yourselves! Make obsolescence to the gods! Right yourselves first with Zeus, then Athena, and then join me! The rest of you, onwards!"

The shield-platform accelerated into a march, King Jas'o holding out his spear pointing forwards like he was posing for a painting. The soldiers he'd brought with him stormed past into the city, leaving the disconsolate and furious Ceronians to fall into chaos trying to determine how to make things right with Zeus.

But over there Vasilia is in trouble - but she's still holding Ivory Smile's full attention. If you go to her now you can Finish him before he completes his terrible work.

Alexa!

The Ceronians do not bar your way. They are confused, demoralized, falling about in lamentations to the gods or desperate sacrifices. They are in no condition to obstruct your progress. But your sprint is taking you in the same direction as King Jas'o - you see him, towering high on the shields of his men, focused razor-keen on the palace ahead. Behind you, you can hear the struggling run as Galnius and their soldiers struggle to keep up with you, refusing stubbornly to abandon you even now.

He himself pays you no mind. His phalanx continues its relentless pace forwards. But a rear guard of skirmishers detach from the main force and start opening fire with their toxic solid-shot weapons to deter your charge. Bereft of support, though, and with a phalanx at your back these soldiers are nothing more than a speed bump to you - you can Finish them if you wish, or you could roll to Overcome to simply bypass them at speed.