Robena nods. It's a distant nod, a dangerous nod, perhaps not as cursed as King Pellinore but hardly normal either. This is the motion of someone who has rewritten half of the details of your sentence mentally so she does not have to give her heart time to speak. "Then we shall start with them," she said. "Whatever their goal only evil will come of their success. Come, let us confront them."
She stands, the motion heavy with expectation. Lead her to her target.
"Good afternoon, Princess!" said the thief as the car bounced down the dirt road at a sheep-startling pace. "I'm Elkibrant, gentleman thief, and this is my partner, Vogodoris, Fifth Sentinel of the Malachite Gate." He reached back one-handed to tuck a business card into your gag. "We're probably not going to be together long - you're hot cargo, haha, and I imagine by the end of this you'll end up traded a couple of dozen times. But hey! Today's prisoner is tomorrow's client, so I ask you - do you need a couple of rogues in your corner? Anyone you particularly do or don't want to be captured by?"
"Should I -?"
"Oh yeah, ungag her Dory, there's a sport."
For a confusing, relieving, disappointing moment your mouth is yours again.
Rose!
Oh, you are a Hunter most fierce, Rose from the River. Within the physical realm there is naught that can escape you. But the digital geists who swim the shores of the ethereal sea have ever slipped through your fingers and your ad-free subscriptions have long since expired.
"Are you someone who can keep your head when everyone else is losing theirs?" said an entity as timeless as you. "Are you someone who can keep her eyes on the prize despite anything? Daytrading may be for you, Rose!"
This is Will0 WZP, your own personal awareness organizer - and one of the sub-souls of the Scales of Meaning. It manifests in your vision as a version of yourself as you could be: dressed in the latest* fashions, with a swish watch, a modern* hairstyle, and a retro* sidearm. It's currently showcasing what your hair would look like reformatted into a towering beehive shape. It dominates your field of view, your hearing, even your sense of smell is overcome with its advertised perfume (Megasoda Nightclub).
"So let's start with the trading!" it buzzed peppily. "The Scales has placed a high stake in your conquest and subordination, but we don't need to deal in absolutes. Perhaps I can interest you in a timeshare arrangement? I could broker an arrangement where you sub for the Scales some of the time in exchange for a trial membership in the ad-lite premium package?"
Yue!
like this
It's not a coherent thought that runs through you, and it's certainly not your own. It's a trigger of some sort of deep muscle memory - an instinct so deeply ingrained that it would hurt more to not follow it. A basic, wide horizontal slash that catches one of the rusted machines in its centreplate and knocks it over.
then this
It's almost like falling. Not the glamourous high altitude falling with a view, but the tripped over your own feet and oh no I'm going down in front of everybody kind of falling. Your body barely keeps up with the impulse, stumbling forwards and putting your weight into the reverse sweep that strikes the second decrepit machine.
ending like this
You're spinning, being spun. Situational awareness is an impossible concept and your feet have never felt more treasonous. They don't know how to tell the difference between left and right - what use to feet have for language? You figured walking out as a child and didn't particularly need to revisit the concept. And now they're doing this totally unnatural thing and absolutely none of it feels right - other than the fact that by the end of it you're standing and they aren't. Even when you run you never move that quickly.
again.
Just when you thought it was over. A radiant, platinum glow wraps around the heads of the machines and one by one they stagger back to their feet, held like puppets - just like you. They set their clubs into ready stances far more elegant than the ones they had before and then before you know it you're being shoved through the motions a second time.
Response Level 2 A stirring of the clouds reveals the moon, full and dominating the skies, far stronger than the distant sun.
Location Stats: The Order of Hermes: The Order of Hermes is present here in force. The Huntress Awakens: You are being observed, no matter where you are or what you do.
Redana!
Iskarot is patient with you, Redana. He, too, has had this moment, and he has not had it long enough to grow jaded. He folds himself into a seated position and for a long hour it is just the two of you and the waves. For a while you are three, as Hades seems to sit on the same shoreline alongside you. He is there for only a little while, though, coming and going without comment.
It is not he who breaks the silence. A Coherent patrol jogs along the beach in the shadow of their clanking MRU, billowing sooty and yet somehow spicy smoke. The soldiers are almost barbaric in how they appear - no gleaming metabronze plate, these are warriors with bare chests, shields of black marble, and cloaks of yellow and black. On full display are their unique bodies - some flawless fusions of human and machine, some simply biological but perfected, some abstract blurs of gears and blinking lights. It is pointless to guess at what they once were, these are creatures who have transcended their origins to make their souls manifest in physical form.
And they have with them a captive. An Alced girl, trussed and thrown over the shoulders of one of the Coherent like burlap. She squeaks when she's unceremoniously dumped onto the sand in front of you.
"Ho there, priest!" booms the Coherent soldier, saluting bombastically. "And apprentice! Lady Artemis has favoured us and we have captured a new recruit for the Order! The auguries say she has the mind for the Path but she's been nothing but bratty, so we're hoping you could have a word with her and maybe stop her from kicking us every step of the way."
"Put me down! You won't get away with this! Mirvan will find me no matter how far you take me!"
"Ha ha! Then we shall have two recruits!" said the Coherent.
Coherent Phalanx The line infantry of the Order of Hermes, armed with wonders and terrors. Tethered: Damage this stat if you can take the ground between the Coherent and their MRU. Epic, Dominating Bursts: You must Pay a Price to close the distance to the Coherent Phalanx. They have the tags ranged, area, dangerous.
Mobile Reactor Unit A font of divine energy to power the weapons of the gods. Reactor Plating: This stat can only be damaged by Dangerous weaponry, or by the attention of a skilled engineer. Unlimited Power: If a threat Tethered to the MRU takes damage, immediately heal that damage.
Vasilia!
"Oh, of course! I'm actually writing my very thesis on the ancient Azura game of 'chess'. Most notable for the illusionary promise of advancement offered to the infantrymen - strive hard enough and they may be added to the sovereign's harem, though such a promise is rarely realized."
Pilate Borin happily natters away at the subtleties of the ancient wargame, though the basic principle remains clear. The king remains the king. Different Pilates attempt to gather favour that they might serve as the Magos' right hand but there is no realistic advancement beyond that - Birmingham works to keep his subordinates locked in contests so that they can never challenge him directly.
"But then of course the three dimensional variants come in, and suddenly the lives of the pawns become all the harder. Just try penetrating a layered defense when trying to avoid mixing up and down! Can't even talk to the referee like that."
As Pilate Borin talks, it's clear he's disgruntled with this whole situation. Not long ago he was playing the game with the best of them and was close to the centre of power. But then he accepted what he thought was a promotion into a diplomatic role. As it turns out, the only ambassador with clout is the one that talks to the Empire. Now he's almost been knocked out of the game entirely and he's fairly salty about it. He's annoyed enough to even make a play against the Magos if he thinks it's plausible.
"Ah, but there's not much to say about games when you don't play them, is there? There is a mingle happening tonight between all the senior players if you'd like to attend."
Alexa!
"The great muster at Ridenki? Of course. All of the daimyos of Ceron were there. Mengekai, Tharao, Thriss, Kai'yen, Vatemoral..." names from the songs of ancient soldiers. Nursery rhymes for Ceron children, the pantheon of Imperial protectors who roam the distant stars to keep Tellus safe from afar. Epistia's voice is almost singsong as she looks out at the planet. "Ruin there was to be found there, ruin cloaked beneath a mask of order. Ruin was the reign of Molech, ruin was the cast of his spear. In ruin was his true imperium, and so ruin was the one thing that could not be allowed to exist. Concealed within the hand of the Director was the love of Demeter, and when she raised it to the sky the harvest moons came in their dozens and all were struck dumb by their splendour. In the shadow of the moons the Director stood as the bridge between life and death, and in the light of resurrection the legions of Ceron swore their final oaths."
You have wondered what became of the Ceron Legions. They are not stationed on Tellus. They are not discussed in the Empress' military briefings. You have the mind for logistics and planetary campaigns; certain forces simply cannot move without enormous quantities of resources being deployed to support them. Even their shadow should be recognizable in thousands of ships leaving Tellus for reinforcement and resupply. Did those galaxy-conquering warriors really all return to Ceron to beat their swords back into ploughs? Did generals like Mengekai really accept exile from the centre of Imperial power at the mere word of Nero? Did Thriss never attempt to seize power for herself?
They have disappeared directly into myth. As someone who has disappeared into myth yourself you understand how that is possible, but surely not everyone is as broken as you?
Tell me, Alexa, of which of the Ceronian Daimyos you crossed spears with. Who were they? How did they lead their legion? Why would they never have accepted a quiet retirement?
Bella!
"We apologize!" gasped the Hermetic so fast that it felt like she was prepared to break into this begging at any moment. All the nerves come tumbling out in a rush. "Tell her majesty we're sorry! We aren't questioning her authority, or her histories, we'd never act against her - we're just trying to serve her better! We're -" the Pilate stops abruptly as Mynx puts her foot on top of her neck, gazing down with the same dispassionate and annoyed look.
"We're - we're chronomining for data," stammers the Pilate. "We intend to use the primary weapon of the Yakanov to gaze back in time and observe the Empress' activities during the invasion and reconstruction of Ridenki. We believe that the Empress is the closest living soul to Hermes, if she is not Hermes herself. We mean no offense! We only wish to understand her better that we might serve her better!"
She's not lying. You're aware that at least some of the Hermetic order considers Nero to be a manifestation of their goddess. While this operation probably isn't entirely a spiritually motivated duty - enough of the Order will just be out to collect whatever secrets they can find - at least some of them are genuine about it.
More from instinct than anything, though, you don't think that the Magos himself is one of those true believers. There's too much guilt pouring out of the Pilate for her to have genuinely bought into this plan.
"To drive the knights, sheriffs and retainers of King Uther Pendragon from the duchy," said Robena. Ah, simple treason then. At the least she does not consider it within her power to ride on London to confront the king directly.
"Is this yours?" said a voice - we will call them 'he' because that is how they feel today. He has a suit, he has a sword, he has a grin and those are all one truly needs to accomplish mischief. It is the driver of the little car and how did he get back here? Hadn't he gone on ahead?
"This pretty little thing?" said the Technomancer, hand on her own sword. "No. Can't say that it is."
"Can't tell if I'm lucky," said the thief, still ready with that tension. "Or unlucky."
"It's hers," said the Technomancer with a gesture at Rose. "Wouldn't want to fight that. Wouldn't want to fight any of the others that'll come after her."
"That's fine," said the thief, stepping cautiously close and lifting up Chen with the hand that wasn't on the hilt of that sword. He tosses her over one shoulder. "I've got a buyer close by."
"The fox?" said the Technomancer. "You're a bold one."
"Speaking of buyers, you for sale?" he said. "I can put in a good word with the fox if you can slow the Ancient down a little."
"I'll take cash, if it's all the same to you."
"It's a deal," the thief tossed a thick wallet on the ground. The two exchanged one more glance, full of tension that could have broken into violence or passion - as any confrontation between sword bearers always could. But then they glanced aside and he stole you, Chen, away - running low through the ditch beside the road to toss you, still trussed and gagged, in the back seat of his car.
Rose!
The confrontation looms larger. The falling god faces you with eyes that had picked the monkey king from amidst a crowd, with a spear that itched to carve the calligraphy of martial perfection. Oh, doesn't he crave it? Aren't his desires the same as yours? Distractions and duels and precious victory and indulgent defeat?
But then he abruptly bows. He offers you the nails. And then he turns and strides magnificently back to the little car and crams his bulk inside, and it speeds off down the dirt road, bumping all the way along. It happens so fast and so decisive that you're left stunned, unsatisfied, burning at that anticlimax - that shove from a violent embrace that seemed so immanent for a second there.
It takes a long moment to unpack how he transitioned away from it so seamlessly. He was feeling the craving too but he did not have to apply willpower to tear himself away from the challenge. He did not have to swallow his pride. The only way he might have been able to do that is if he was vastly more advanced in the Way than you were... or...
If he'd just won a different way.
Where was your Chen?
Yue!
Whoever had made this place had not feared the water. The entire place is built around it. The walls are meant to glisten in eternal waterfalls and the floor is meant to open up into great pools and fountains. The floors were scattered with crystal flowers meant to catch sunlight falling through thick yellowed marble slats in the walls. A tree grows in the centre of it all with the ancient character of a bonsai, each root placed like a ribbon, each leaf like a blade of glass. This was not a place that feared anything.
It should have. The flows have run brackish and stagnant. The pools bubble with mud and rot and pollution. Robots sit dead and rusted waist deep in water, robots swim living and pointless beneath it. Toys and shopping carts and endless cans and the snapping pincers of crabs that lived within those cans. One entire wall has been decorated with a painting advertising personal injury insurance, but the machine that made this work did not have access to the colour green and so the painting sits garish and half-finished. Its mechanical creator slumps without power in front of its unfinished graffiti.
Of course the ghost would be mad at this. Anyone who had to live here would be disgusted. And while there is silence here there is not stillness. The entire room is filled with hunger - not wishes, not yearning, just hunger. Hunger enough to wake the dead.
And wake they do.
Three ancient machines, corroded and covered in algae and slime, wrench themselves to their feet - perhaps one intact machine between them. Two of them have clubs, heavy and brutal, and the third has a fist that isn't much better. They shuffle towards you and though they are slow, oh, how you wished they were slower!
For a little moment there it had almost felt like you'd gotten used to galaxy outside Tellus. You'd seen the clouds and nebulae of Zeus, you'd seen starships, you'd even seen a whole new planet - just as built up and developed as Tellus, but covered in a faint sheen of fine ash and dust and entrapped beneath thick and obscuring pollution haze. You'd seen a garden jungle inside the interior of the Eater of Worlds and that had been amazing. You've seen marvels and been traveling for over a month now, but you were starting to see the patterns.
You have, however, never seen the blue sky.
You have never seen clouds.
You have never even dreamed of the ocean.
It's the most total sense of vertigo you have ever felt. You've seen space, but space is full - wherever you look there are colours and lights and storms and debris. This narrow band of atmosphere creates an optical illusion of greater vastness than you have ever comprehended, with enormous flying castles of spectacular white ice cream towering up on a scale that rivals the great Imperial battleships.
For the first time in your life you feel the breeze on your face. It is salty, carrying with it the faint flavour and coolness of the ocean. There is water in inconceivable quantities, advancing steadily upon the shore as though it is alive. The crashing, rolling breath of it seems to drown out all other sounds. Water was meant to move with the rattle and groan of pipes, air was meant to be the steady roar of air conditioning megastations. Basic facts of the elements.
But this, it seems, is what happens when the wind and water are unchained to do as they please.
Alexa!
You fought here once.
Ridenki was a critical world in the path of Director Nero's Rebellion. This was the world that supplied the food, water and logistics base for the rebels to strike Baradissar. The Alced were a servitor species placed here by the Emperor to defend this world and you fought alongside them as the sky darkened with the fiery rain of Ceronian drop pods.
You remember the great Alcedi surface ships - enormous naval flotillas that projected vast fleets of atmospheric fighter craft and carried enough anti-aircraft guns to ignite the skies. You remember the oceans erupting into vast columns of steam as reactors melted down on dying battleships. You remember as enormous starships dropped from the heavens in columns of fire, victims of the space battle or destroyed by planetary defense lasers. The jungles had burned. The volcanoes had erupted. And by the end, Ares triumphed. You remember seeing the war god arise, massive and bloody, covering horizon to horizon with ships - star and sail - crammed into his mouth as the evacuation sirens howled.
You had thought this planet had been destroyed, to be a ruin as total as Baradissar.
Instead it's a tropical paradise. The planet is greener than it ever was, the oceans a shining teal scattered with emeralds. Even with the buzzing flow of gold-striped ships rising and falling from the surface the planet is healthier now than perhaps it was even under Molech. You sense Empress Nero's hand here, though you have no idea why she would have taken the time to fix this planet.
Vasilia!
The worst thing about being in a room full of Hermetics is that you have no idea of their hierarchy. They have one - an exceedingly complicated and binding one - but it is deliberately kept obscure from outsiders. The corridors bustle with figures of incredible shapes and sizes swathed in identical saffron robes that cover their features from head to toe, darklight generators inside their hoods keeping their faces hidden. Look closer, though, and those robes have dozens of minor variations. Different sashes, stripes, hats, external robes, cuts of shape and colour. Academic robes have carried encoded information about rank and specialty since ancient times and the Hermetics have embraced that whole-heartedly. You're surrounded by information and have no idea what any of it means.
Say what you will about the Empire, at least they leave you in absolutely no confusion about who is in charge.
On that note, Galnius and their hoplites are doing incredible work. Their deeply ingrained Imperial arrogance let them cut through every single layer of protocol and paperwork on the way through here, somehow instinctively knowing who they could brush aside and who they had to take seriously. They've navigated you here to some sort of promenade - a large walkway with an expansive view of the planet. Sandstone tiles, grand statues of abstract shapes engraved with dedications in secret Hermetic script, and rivers of ever-burning fire running in channels for warmth and illumination. It's darker than an Imperial ship - not quite as dark as the Plousios, but where your ship is dark because it is broken and unmanned these lights are dim because secrecy is valued by the Hermetics.
"Captain Vasilia, and retinue," said a Hermetic - without face or body language to go on you're only able to figure out which one by the fact that it was standing still and nearby. "I am Pilate Borin, and in the name of Zeus we humble pilgrims of the Yakanov grant you welcome and hospitality. What wind has bought you to us this day?"
Galnius glanced at you sidelong, and nodded. This is someone worth talking to.
Bella!
For a moment you might have worried. For just the barest fragment of a second you might have been aware that you were a long way away from Tellus, and your assault frigate - tiny in the shadow of the Yakanov - would leave you at the mercy of the Order of Hermes. Perhaps the galaxy had forgotten what was meant by Empire?
Not so the Order of Hermes.
Some barbarians might have greeted you in force, with a full military parade demonstrating their order and discipline as well as their respect. The Order of Hermes greets you with vulnerability. You stand alongside Mynx on the top of the docking ramp - the Yakanov is a mobile spaceport large enough to dock the entire Anemoi without the need for transit shuttles - and look down upon a field of treasures.
Latinum and quadranix and hyperium and hydronix, stacked high in enormous engraved shipping containers. Silks by the bale, enormous crates of prayer weaves, wheeled bookshelves full of charts, archives and records. Relic devices from the deepest vaults laid out on woolen blankets and dozens of the Order's senior priests with their foreheads pressed into the ground in kowtow. In the back, silhouetted in the shadows of the distant loading bay, is one of the Order's legendary god-engines. It's a fortune, the plunder of a dozen worlds, and it fills every spare inch of the docking bay. Even if you packed the Anemoi's corridors you would not fit it all. Your Auspex does not give you precise numbers, exact tonnage reports - instead it gives you a feeling deep satisfaction and control. It hurts them to offer this much. The Empire's - and by extension, your - good will matters to them more than all this fortune.
(Though - perhaps that is not accurate? Perhaps this show of wealth and vulnerability is not mere loyalty. Perhaps it is fear. Perhaps it is distraction.)
"Imperial Praetor," said the lead Hermetician - a Pilate, your Auspex picks out from the patterning of her robes, lieutenant to the Magos. "The Order of Hermes is at the Empire's disposal."
The drink is drunk. There are no answers to be found in a full mug.
Robena slams it down as she sits down next to him at the table. "Tristan," she said. "Monster slayer. I understand what you are saying, and I will help you slay your beast if you help me slay mine."
The zeal that burns in her eyes lets you know that her quarry is fierce indeed and she has been wronged indeed. This is a fire you will be descending into if you agree. But how can knights relate to each other if not by this?
On the horizon red lights blink in sequence. Radio towers rise to the heavens like saplings in the shadow of the space elevators. The wreckage of a forgotten internet lies up there, a garden walled so high that not even the rain could get inside. One day it finally shucked its transitional role as a communications platform and finally became what the burrowers had always desired: a modernized television network, smoothing away the inconvenience of having to pick up the phone to dial the number in the infomercials.
And across it is shooting a media-geist, launched from the blue steel phone of the Technomancer, off to fetch Princess Kikil.
"Well, that's all sorted then," said the Technomancer, starting to chop pumpkins and white radish. "Rescue is on the way. Or alternative kidnapping. Either way, it should at least be more graceful than getting captured than that old robot. Did you hear that there's an ancient tomb near here with a water connection straight down to a major undercity? Heard it was taken over by some old machines for a while, but Princess Yin came by and drove them off, bless her. You know she's in town right now? Looks exhausted. Hey, maybe you'll have some company on the ride back to the Hive."
Rose!
There are signs by which you can read the nature of a falling god and separate it from a rising devil. There is weariness in the way the figure shoulders his spear, disappointment in the lack of teeth at his throat. Once this man was the emperor of all of Heaven, as every soul has at some point been. Now the wheel turns and responsibilities weigh heavy, the weight of ten thousand compassionate deeds bearing down on the god like buckets of water. This path leads him to wickedness, inevitably, until he stands at last as the foremost princess of Hell and realizes again there is no satisfaction there either.
A story as old as life. He seeks, and not knowing for what he seeks, will find only whatever it is he does not currently possess.
"I thank you for my life," said the god, bowing. And there, perhaps, is excitement in his voice - and an affectionate glance at his master as he inches the car through the departing herd. "Let us know if there is anything we can do to thank you."
He looks at you and your need for nails, and he does not help you unasked. He sees you as an aspect of the life he is leaving, one built of meritorious deeds and compassionate responsibility. He sees you as a creature limited and bound, nothing like his master who is teaching him the new fascinations of vice and theft - new bindings in old ways. This, he thinks, is freedom. This, he thinks, is what he is here to learn. This is exciting!
"But. Perhaps." the god said stiffly, this way of thinking still novel to him. "You are here for a different reason. Do you, too, have a wish to make from the fox spirit? What would you wish for?"
[His question to you: how could he get you to indulge in your vices?]
Yue!
"Great!" and oh wow you're being hugged. "Oh, I'm so glad! I knew I could count on you!" With the same deftness with which she navigated the lizard's biting jaws, so the kitsune pulls back at the perfect point where Hyra's growl starts to rise. "My name is Cyanis! Ah! It's so wonderful that you're giving me a chance! I promise you won't forget it!"
She walks away down the forest path with a spring in her step, tugging you along by the red thread of fate. "Come on! I've got just the thing!"
This is not just a shrine, this is a tomb. Some ancient heroine was buried here and it was expected that dozens would mourn her at once. Great stone channels filled with stagnant water and terrible garbage from deep beneath the earth spread out in front of the structure and trees have torn themselves up through gaps in the marble tiles. More lizards dwell in the sunlight, but here too is a flock of galas - pink feathered birds with grey wings who rummage through the grass in their hundreds and bobble away from you and the fox as you approach.
"Ta da!" said Cyanis. "As you can see, it's a bit of a mess. But I've got plans! I'm going to turn this place around! Clear out the trash, dust off the marble, brighten up this stuffy old pile of stones! But there's one itsy-bitsy little problem I need your help with - I need to get inside and clear out the old ghost who used to live here. It'll be easy though! It's just the lower ghost, the higher soul has definitely moved on already. Otherwise anyone I try to help might just wind up getting haunted instead! Definitely neither of us want that!"
"Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you!" Mynx can't keep herself from jumping up and wrapping her arms around your shoulders, even at the risk of being clawed. "I won't let you down, Artemis see that I don't!"
You might almost envy her that simple and absolute joy. Mynx was made for the purpose of guarding people, getting to play bodyguard creates a sense of validation as profound as throwing a ball for a dog. This! This is why she's here! As quick as blinking she's gone straight for your wardrobe, already shifting into a perfect copy of you. Within a few minutes of tossing fabric you have an exact mirror image of yourself standing before you, straightening the edges of her suit jacket.
"Right!" she said, giving your voice a bright tone you haven't heard from it in... "Okay! So! I think we just don't explain what's going on with us - are we twins, clones, or what. Make them guess. We can either do weird eerie co-ordination or good-Bella bad-Bella, what do you think?"
Ailee, in all honesty, was not mortally offended by being called a rat. Yes, sure, it might be vaguely speciest but to be fair she could only pick Lucien out from a crowd of humans by looking for the ugliest shirt. Besides, a fashion trend for nezumi girls was to wear ear rounders that made them look more like rodines and men were generally blind to makeup, let alone how makeup applied to culture. That wasn't anything she couldn't control. Her previous outburst on this topic was more due to being accused of being a spy than accused of being a rat.
But being called little?! She was uncharacteristically tall (for a rodine)!! In girl's high school she'd been a full head higher than the crowd, a trait that caused the girls to cast her as the brooding prince in all of their romantic fantasies. She'd left an entire graduation party heartbroken when she'd opted to stay home and study rather than accept any one of the written confessions that filled her locker like confetti.
She snatched the mallet from the clown. "I," she snarled, "am on the upper end of the bell curve of height. You are below average for a human. When I reach the Heart," her fingers sizzled with energy around the metal, releasing an acrid smell of vaporized iron, "I will more clearly establish the laws of relative size in this fallen and worthless cosmos. Now stand the fuck back."
She was going to prove that she was as disproportionately strong as she was tall. She was going to win a prize. See if she wasn't.
(A brief disclaimer, though: Ailee's supernaturally infused pride and casual wielding of massive weapons made out of weaponized vice has distracted her from the fact that she has noodly nerd arms and would have difficulty opening a tight jar).
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