Redana!
The Alced girl glares at you for a moment. She opens and closes her mouth as though about to speak but each time stumbles over the words. Finally, in an act of seeming frustration, she plucks three feathers from her right wrist. This seems to be a painful act from her, and the scar tissue underneath seems to indicate that these particular feathers have been pulled many times before.
She sets all three into the sand like nails, calamuses still wet with faint drops of blood. Then she clicks her talons - a scraping metallic click that sends a shower of green-yellow sparks. By the third click her talons seem to have actually ignited and she touches the ends of her burning talons to the end of the vane. Each feather flickers and starts to burn like a candle and the Alced girl shakes the fire off, fusing a few patches of sand into molten glass.
"Once, Admiral K'ten left on her canoe to pay tribute to the universal emperor," she said, though by the fifth word it was hardly speaking. Her voice was rapidly gaining strength and timbre, falling into a rhythmic chant. "And of K'ten's daughters she left behind Mas'ri, O'wouh, Ari'la, Captain Pth'na, Jadelis, French, and Admiral Katin. K'ten's daughters knew the currents and the tribes and they could sail for years without feeling the call of land in their bellies, and their flag was the sun drowning 'midst the waves. Their reign was great, and grew all the greater when Ari'la married Dandari from Second Fleet, and the two tribes celebrated their alliance with raids that shamed all the Fleets of Ridenki."
Boom, boom. She's sweeping her right arm over and over, the feathers clapping a burst of air each time they come down to the sand. Boom, boom. As she keeps the rhythm it echoes. It seems as though behind her stands a mighty heifer and its hooves stomp upon the ground in time to the wingbeat.
"Those days were the last, for deep beneath the earth the wolf Mengekalisk had woken from ten thousand years of slumber. At first when he was but stirring and lashing the sky with tongues of flame and soot the Fleets were confident, and they lanced him and struck him and sealed the volcanoes from whence he rose and all were merry. They thought they had his measure and thought that in time his wroth would pass and he would sleep once more.
"But Mengelisk's fury ran deeper than they knew, for he coveted Ari'la and resented her marriage to Dandari. He envied their love, he envied their canoes, he envied the might of the united First and Second Fleet, but even he could not break their power. And so the Mengelisk in fury sliced open his own belly and from it tumbled an egg, and from that egg hatched a golden rooster and named it Ne'ro - named it hunger.
"The golden rooster emerged from beneath the earth and his beak rose and fell with fierce accuracy. It splintered the ships Adelaide, Vladivostok, Remangrad, Saltzberg. With the hurricane of its beating wings it capsized the Brisbane, the Northampton, the Orleans, the Bristol. And as the Fleets fell back and reeled Mengelisk erupted forth from the world and with his burning jaws he devoured the Naples, the Seattle, the Roristok, the Zanzibad, the Modolusku, the Giza, the Logos. None could sate their hunger and the rooster and the wolf ate the islands bare and drank the oceans dry. In the end, though, it was the rooster Ne'ro who swallowed Ari'la and Dandari. Of course Mengelisk could not abide this, but the rooster clawed his face and chased him howling from the eaten world. Then, finally, content in his victory, the rooster laid four eggs in the sky and took flight."
There is more music now than just the heifer's stamping. Peacocks with beads woven into their glittering tails shake out a rattling beat, and a hundred horses march and snort along the beachside. The thunder of the waves rises and crests as the oars of canoes cut through it - one, ten, ten million, and all the horizons are darkened with the sound of breaking waves.
"At last, Admiral K'ten returned from the palace of the universal emperor, and oh did she weep to see her world broken so. In her grief she raised her spear and struck one of the rooster's great eggs. It shattered and spilled, and from it flooded all of the waters and scattered all of the islands and all of the fleets that had gone into it. And K'ten then packed her canoe with food and left once more, and once she was away from Ridenki she lit a vast cooking-fire," and here the girl pointed at a particularly bright star just becoming visible against the growing twilight, "to draw the rooster away." And here she gestures at a cockrel-shaped constellation on its way towards that starlit gemstone.
The feathers burned low. The beat of oars and hooves and beads fades and slows and drifts away. The Alced girl takes a long and deep breath, not noticing as Hera briefly touches her cheek in parting. Then her eyes snap open and she jabs her finger directly into Redana's chest.
"And you are granddaughters of the rooster who have returned to consume our world again!" she said. "See there!?" she points up at the Yakanov in the distant skies. "One of the great eggs has hatched and returned and it's as hungry as its father! Its servants eat everything, gnawing bark and swallowing stone and drinking oceans! You take Alced and you fill them with hunger and teach them to eat too! You tempt them with our own canoes, dragging them from the sea-floor and repairing them and offering them to the lords of the Fleets! You buy their silence and their slavery with our own birthright! The stars are ours, those ships are ours, and you say we can only have them if we fill ourselves with the same hunger as you!"
Vasilia!
"You're confusing cause and effects. Games are a response to conditions. As the Azura grew complacent success they diverted their passions into games of chance and strategy. Opponents became enemies - and their traditional enemies faded into shadow and memory. When the war returned their enemies struck the Azura like a cat leaping onto the game board."
The Pilate folded his hands. "As the board shrinks so do the minds of the players. By the end, the leadership of the Azura had shrunken minds indeed - barely able to see beyond the ambitions of their own pawns. I think things are very different since the Empress Nero humbled them at the beginning of her reign."
There's a moment of silence, and then a chime like crystal-laid dreamcatchers runs through the ship. Many ignore it, but some Hermetics change direction. Pilate Borin stands.
"Come. We have a party to attend."
Alexa!
If there's one thing every Empire you've encountered has been incomparably bad at it's parties. You were wondering if Dionysus was simply a fairy tale before Baradissar. Well, this Hermetic 'party' is no more likely to attract the Laughing God's attention than any other stale function. It feels more like an academic conference - a room dizzyingly full of bright yellow robes and hushed voices whispering to each other in a mechanical susurrus. Notes are shared and exchanged and adepts are constantly coming and going with papers - but there is still enough drinking going on to raise the odd voice in uncharacteristically normal laughter. The centre point seems to be a massive exposed window showing the planet below.
The Magos Birmingham is here somewhere but who could pick him out of this crowd? Though perhaps you had best get your bearing quickly, for you can see Lady Artemis mingling amidst the guests and her presence rarely omens a pleasant and quiet evening.
Bella!
You've never seen more abject terror and total obedience amongst the Hermetics - who are ordinarily a fairly servile religion already - than when you namedrop the Ikarani. The name runs through them like lightning and before you need to say another word every Hermetic is on their face in kowtow and humming a kind of whimpering buzzing hymn that expresses total surrender. Some Coherent runners leave the hall, and soon after Magi following Magi start coming before you to throw themselves on their faces and join the begging hymn.
Finally, a Coherent comes back. She's a different type from the ones you've seen so far - leaner, sleeker, with eyes like black gemstones flecked with brilliant orange. You don't smell any fear from her and you know instinctively you've reached the limits of where threats will get you - the red streaks on the collar, the veil of diamonds and pearls, the scent of power and command all say that now you're dealing with an actual decision making entity. This is someone who can make the decision to blow up this entire sector of the station if she must.
"I am Khitava," said the Coherent general, dipping into a kowtow - though the speed and power she puts into it makes it seem almost like a pushup, and one that she could lunge out of if she had to. "Prime Reductor of this fleet. Magos Birmingham begs you to visit him in person, Praetor."
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