Thanqol

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

There is a special kind of resentment that the human heart reserves for those who make it feel old. Robena's dislike for Lady Liana is immediate and defensive. It's a reaction to a criticism unvoiced and undreamed, a criticism that only exists in the weary creak of Robena's back and the lull of her eyelids. She feels like she should explain that she was up all night pining - but that excuse weighs against the fact that she has spent many nights awake and pining and was always able to bounce back the following morning for another day on the road. Perhaps the heartbreak is worse this time, or perhaps Lady Liana's feather mattress is enchanted with the gift of blessed sleep, or perhaps she is some faerie facsimile conjured by Constance to torment her.

Robena restrains her sigh and her grumble. A hart. Xrisos, she hates hunting harts. Apricot loathes prolonged chase and she has to employ foul language from every corner of the Mediterranean to keep his pace up. And of course, if she encourages her horse in the manner he is accustomed to, she will seem very far from purity indeed. Especially in contrast to this pioneer willow girl who likely urges her horse to a full gallop with bats of her eyelashes and earnest speeches about the sacred bond between knight and horse.

"Very well, then," said Robena with a smile that was more like a grimace. When she was in Jerusalem a Bedouin trader crushed some dark seeds into a warm drink that was the equal to a week's rest. She hadn't carried any of those back to England either. Fool.

Perhaps by the afternoon she will concern herself with the state of her soul once more, but sleeplessness cares not for the devil. She seeks the stable.

Sunshards

In ancient times the skies were still free
So come, come, my darling, to the skies with me

The fragment of that ancient song hovered on the edge of perception, on the edge of mind and heart. The tune is so vibrant that it makes you wish you knew the language of music so that you could do it justice, that the wind wasn't rushing through your hair so you might try to hum it. Despite its gentle, internal presence it is not of you - it is the whispering, brushing thought of an unguarded dragon whose heart overflows with music as the distant Sky Castle appears through the clouds.

And oh, the flags! The kites! They soar in their thousands, hanging in every colour and arrangement from every house's roof and balcony, from every exposed metal strut and from every ancient stonework! They fly and twist in the breeze, wind given form and colour and a population of hundreds of thousands! Perhaps without these schools of airborne fish, these ribbon snakes, these paper birds the Sky Castle might seem a grim thing. Perhaps it might seem to be what it once was - a huge and heavy vessel with a beak to crack asteroids and suck the water from comets. This is only a perhaps, though, for even if all the gifts of the winds were to be packed away tomorrow the flat and ugly ship would still be buried beneath the waving roots of impossible trees.

When we were still children the skies were free
So come, come, my darling, to the skies with me

And around and above the kites buzz biplanes, triplanes, marvels of wood and fabric, the pride of each household's collective labour and effort. They glitter like dreams against the sunshards, bounding and leaping and diving in that strange flock logic that perhaps makes sense to each individual bird but together, from a distance, makes them subject to strange arcs and turns and dips and flows.

It's the border of the world, the Sky Castle. If you are cursed then you must come here to find a cure; if you come here without a curse you will obtain one. If you have a childhood friend who goes away to live here she'll return a daring air pirate to snatch you away one night when you least suspect it; if you go away to visit it for the summer you'll fall in love with a goddess of the wind and will ever afterwards feel her fingers in your hair when the east wind rises. If you catch the golden ladder that hangs from the bottom of the castle and climb then when you reach the top you'll find a glorious dragon with her full court awaiting you to give you a wish; if you steal in with devil magic you'll find yourself overthrowing all to become king for a glorious season before the palace coup sees you fallen back to earth again. All the stories agree: you can't visit a place like this without it changing you somehow.

I still love you and the skies are now free
So come, come, my darling, to the skies with me

You touch down onto the cool metal, softened by moss and corroded to natural colours by rust. Princess Jessic lands a moment later, pacing rapidly and flexing her wings to cool down after her long flight. Countess Keron takes the time to stroke her neck and give her a large flask of water before finally turning back to you.

"So, what should I do with each of you?" asked the Countess, moving close, serpentine. She casually takes Rose, then Yue, by the chin, turning their heads gently this way and that as her aloof dark eyes calculate. "Everything has its place, but what is yours? It'd be such a waste to throw such pretty girls in the dungeon when they might still be useful..."

Breathless Dead

Redana!

You only catch a glimpse of it for perhaps thirty seconds, distant through the window of the Plover suit. It does not move fast and it is the same storm that carries it that conceals it from your eyes before you're finished taking it in. It passes like a flock of birds; sustained enough to draw someone's attention to it, but too fleeting to finish fumbling for the camera.

It's an opal. An opal the size of a skyscraper, surrounded by a cloud of fragmented chips, carried somehow aloft in the vastness of the storm. Was this some strange meteor, the cargo of the wrecked Achae, some natural blessing that has been aloft above this gas giant for so many thousands of years? You see it through the clouds, miles distant, a huge and shining silhouette in the sky below you before the violet clouds close around it again. Another mystery, glimpsed at a moment when there is no time to go back and investigate.

You might have thought it a dream if you didn't find the chips of shattered opals embedded in the self-sealing rubber joints of your Plover suit when you land.

The sea may be terrible, but it has treasures too.

It is after a long day with muscles that burn with the exertion of Hephaestus upon his forge that you make your way back to your quarters, opals clattering in your pocket. Galnius informs you in passing that they have the shapeshifter Mynx but you're too tired to see her tonight, too tired to acknowledge the statement. You slump down in your bed, your room and keep well earned by your efforts today.

And in the morning, you hear the sounds and the smells of an angel cooking you pancakes.

Alexa!

It's a fool's errand to guess at the true shape of a Hermetic underneath their robes. They deliberately create strange scaffolding to break up their silhouettes, conceal their scents beneath perfumes, run soft backing tracks of their personal theme music to mask footfalls or conceal whirring gears. Despite all such attempts at concealment, when your base material is 'elephant' there is only so much that can be done.

It arrives with a clattering, scattering set of knucklebone dice thrown across the floor. "The runes have been cast," it states in a soft, expansive voice with a hint of a lisp. "The War Goddess does not favour you any longer. So in whose name do you dare disturb my workshop and misuse my sacred tools!?"

Vasilia!

"Dunno," said Hestia. "Suited, unsuited? Heartbreak, love? That's all Aphrodite's business. What I do know is that you've never once talked about your past or your future. I know that you don't have a dream house you're just waiting to finally build. You haven't built a playlist of movies and shows, sorted by viewing age, that you intend to show to a future kid. You haven't faced your own fears enough to convincingly tell someone that there's nothing to be afraid of. I don't know why, but if I had to guess it's because I don't think you think you'll be alive for any of it."

She knows you don't want cocoa, but she pours you another cup anyway just in case you change your mind.

"You can't build a future if you don't have a past, Vasilia," said the Goddess of the Hearth. "You live like a lightning bolt, trapped in an eternal present."

Dolce!

"Dolce..." whispered Hera, her celestial peacock dress crumpling as she knelt down before you, touching her forehead close to yours. "They're all already shouldering those burdens. Every heart is already broken. Every soul aboard this ship is already cursed. And for all the brilliance and industry you see around you, all the smiles and all the confidence, nobody can manage by themselves."

"It's impossible," muttered Hades, a sapphire star in the distant black.

"Yes," said Hera. "It is. The task before you is impossible. So you cannot fail."

Bella!

Despite the smouldering chaos in your heart, the anathematic violence that seethes around the edges of the calm of Apollo, still the god smiles. Still he lays his hand on the prow of your ship and draws a spiral sun shape into the prow. Still he gives you his blessing and protection for the terrible voyage ahead.

And then you launch.

For all the Hermetic reputation for secrets, you were surprised at how plain their discussions of Engine technology were. There was a... fear in those schematics. There was the scent of uncertainty in the rawness of their language, how freely they admitted the gaps in their knowledge, the plurality of authors invited to examine each document and suggest their insights.

They don't know. They don't know how to make new Engines. They don't think anyone knows. There are plenty of wrecks in the void to salvage still, but this is a non-renewable research and the ordinary games of knowledge and power are suspended on this topic. Some of them project a future where travel between the stars might become far more difficult than it is now. Some of them were turning their attentions towards imagining how the Order might adapt and survive in such a future. Already doctrines are changing to prioritize the survival of what Engines remain, to develop diplomatic alternatives to void combat, to outlaw weapons capable of breaching an Engine core.

Standing aboard a ship is always about the Engine. Muffled, distant, still its rumbles and echoes and moods run through everything like a distant bass chord. Aboard this skiff it's a different matter. Now every rise and fall of that machine's breath is as close and present as your own, and as it starts to burn and you start to pick up speed, so the Engine's breath raises like a runner's. You can feel it shake through you and struggling against it promises every bruise. At the same time you need to be tense. You need to be tense and alert and run without sleep or pause because there is no room for mistake at these speeds. You need to fight it even as it fights you. It's going to be one of the longest and most exhausting fights of your life.

But sometime the middle for a period that could have been seconds or could have been weeks you weren't fighting it. You were somehow in tune with it. Every part of your body was relaxed and still your hands were steady and every motion and correction happened in a timeless, endless, perfect moment of sheer unity with the forces of the stars. For just one eternal moment that spiral sun seemed to glow and you understood Apollo. In that moment it felt like you were seeing reality as it really was, unburdened by the expectations of your own mind. You were matter guiding energy, the brain of a shooting star.

You're not sure what triggered it, or what broke it in the end. But the experience would not be one that was easy to forget, even as the spaceport of your destination appeared dark against the distant golden sun.

Fellowship: The Heart

It's the easiest thing in the world to be as he is. She just has to, for the first time, really relax.

Do you know what it's like to go through the world with a mind like hers? Always aware that she could rip out hearts, abuse and torment, escalate to violence before anyone else would dare to think of it? To be a fountain of will in a world of retiring sheep, having to cloak her true nature in fluff to avoid spooking the herd? Harsh language was not a sign of rudeness, it was a soft wrapping around the fury in her blood. She casts it aside here now.

Now to cross her is obliteration. Not in blood or death but in the shattering of the ego, the psychic demonstration of exactly what the hierarchy of the cosmos was and where you fit in it. Her thigh-high boots step across kneeling backs.

To have a fire like Ailee does is to be afraid. Constantly feeling out the edges of people to know how hard they want you to step on them. Making decisions to reveal jagged edges to those who you guess are foes and hope that you're choosing the correct enemies. To pretend that you're not imagining those before you on their knees and struggle through a conversation with them as equals. Now she lets that resonating willpower speak all of its hidden toxic whispers. Now she lets her magic, infinite if you're prepared to pay an infinite price, boil out of her. And that's the secret the rats are blind to. They seek to maintain themselves, to scratch at the dripping blood of power, to be their wretched selves but somehow more. It's the same secret the so-called Archmages of the University were blind to, thinking themselves mighty if they could bind a single word at the end of a lifetime of study. She bound five in an afternoon.

Her father once told her that if you borrowed ten pounds from a bank it was your problem, but if you borrowed a million pounds it was the bank's problem. She feels King Dragon stir. She doesn't think he expected this, even as he dreamed fitfully of her approach. He thought like she had thought, of the world as a vortex of sycophants and delusional slaves, scratching around the edges for a power they could never look directly at. Now here she is, cutting directly towards the Heart, looking him in the eye.

It would be a mistake to say that they are the only two people in the world that matter, because neither of them would for a second acknowledge the other's validity. One of them is the King Dragon, the King of the World, the Heart of the Heart, and the other is just like everyone and everything else - a subordinate, a slave, a toy. But as Ailee steps deeper and deeper into that violent rainbow both realize that this toy is insane. It is insane to dream itself a king, and it must be fixed and broken.

"Get out of my Heart," said Ailee.

Sunshards

This is not the first time you have flown, Yue. Your adventure started with you whisked off into the sky in the arms of a girl with the grace and power of the full moon. Your feet stepped upon empty air as though it was solid and you felt the wind run through your hair and dress and heart as though they were transparent. That was different from this; Hyra's flight was the magic of dreams. This is the machinery of muscle and fire. The forces involved in each flex of those mighty wings, each rush of air and rise and fall across those strokes of wings, it all contributes to a fearsome respect for what flight is. Flight is not a game for Princess Jessic, not least when hauling three maidens bound together in a tangled net along with two riders. Gravity is not a trivial force to be disregarded. It takes not just the power of shining muscles to send a dragon aloft but hard-won skill, understanding of wind and momentum, when to climb and when to dive and when to glide and when to angle your course to catch the thermals emanating from long black roads crossing the land below like ribbons. Flight is natural for dragons, you may have thought! Well, running for days at a time is natural for human beings.

To fly so long and strong over such a distance while carrying five humans - that's not something you can do just because you're a dragon. That's something you can do because you're an athlete, because you train for it, because you're filled with passion and dedication and the desire to be the best you can be.

This might be the first time you have flown, Chen. Certainly, you glide regularly, and Sourcefall is an enormously vertical city with many brilliantly designed elevators and marvels of vertical transportation. But flight? Upon wings of fire, overland, from this altitude? This is a rare gift indeed. You might even find more time to appreciate it were you not somehow on the bottom of this pile, crushed beneath Rose from the River. Perhaps you would be able to appreciate the soaring rivers and valleys, the strange rectangle clusters of houses, the distant horizon where you can even see your home surrounded by clouds and mist, along with the glittering space elevators that ring the equator at regular intervals. If only you were not being so crushed by a girl too good to even say a harsh word to.

This is the first time you have flown, Rose. The ancient world had no use for the open sky, filled as it was by the feared and hated suns. Even when the suns had fallen they did not turn to flight in atmosphere, instead weaving mighty elevators all the way into outer space so that they could bypass this clear and blue sky entirely. The ancient world, for all its hubris, never dreamed of flight. If anything was to take to the air it was to be drones or demons.

And now here you are. In an open sky beneath a shining sun and a glittering orbital ring of sunshards, performing an action that your programming never conceived. The blockage of your cognitive functions emphasize rather than dampen this effect. You've got no way to rationalize this, no way to compress it into your worldview. You were born ten thousand miles below ground and the fires of the planet's core warmed the forge where your alloys were smelted, and now here you are above it.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

The shuttle doors open revealing a howling hurricane beyond. Within the atmosphere of the gas giant is a storm worthy of Poseidon, a colossus of destructive fury larger than some planets. Even the bulk of the Plover suit struggles against those squalls like boulders, even the pulse of the plasma that floods the suit's engine through the thick cable whines from the stress of the celestial forces.

Down below, far below, a mighty cruiser hangs suspended on a curtain of hydrogen more solid than steel. The ancient derelict has been hanging here atop the storm winds for many hundreds of years, a lost marvel half consumed and holding strong. Its faded nameplate is recognized by your Auspex - the Achae. A legendary warship destroyed in battle with the Azura, its corpse marked by the Order of Hermes and left for future recovery. That day is now.

You, half a dozen of the Coherent, and two Magi wear mighty Plover suits on this mission. The goal is to sever the mighty beak of the Achae and raise it from the gas giant's depths for the Plousios' new crown.

It's time to jump.

Alexa!

Your quest is for nothing less than the favour of a wizard. A perilous mission indeed.

The ancient autodog limps behind you through the decks of the Plousios. The Coherent were no help - they're manual labourers, and something this old and complex is beyond their limited abilities. What you need for this project is one of the true, ordained Magi but in the ancient tradition of wizards they are aloof, unapproachable, and endlessly busy. As a mere petitioner with no ties to their order or history of devoted service you are finding it extremely frustrating to corner one. The autodog watches you without judgement or understanding. It knows you're doing the best you can.

So what is your best in this case? How are you going to gain the attention of a Hermetic Magi?

Vasilia!

Hestia makes more cocoa. She does not magically conjure it, she does not pour it from some ever-full horn. Such is not her way. Her way is the joy of the quiet moment of the kettle heating. Of fiddling awkwardly with the packaging before leaving to find scissors. Of the gentle wafts of steam and the taste that isn't miraculous but for the promise that you could have something this warm and sweet every day from here till Hades.

She sets down the cup in front of you. She's wordless, just leaning down on her elbows and waiting patiently for you to keep telling your story.

Dolce!

"Once upon a time I had a pain like yours," said Hera. "I wondered if my wife's wandering eye was my fault. My weakness. I wondered if I was simply broken and I had to fix myself so that I would be worthy of love."

Her eyes curved along her arm as it flicked out, threads of divine sleeves ending on nails of perfect shape.

"It drove me to madness for a time," she said quietly. "Do you know of the torment of Sisyphus? It is not, as many think, a tale of the cruelty of Hermes. At any moment the king could step away from the boulder, but he does not. He thinks the flaw lies within him. He's sure if he exercises enough, if he perfects the angle, if he approaches his task with a clear and perfect mindset he will conquer his mountain. I watched him for many years and with each failure he kicked himself and declared himself insufficient. Not once has he blamed the boulder."

Bella!

Say what you will about the Order of Hermes, they know how to manage an evacuation. All void-capable ships were launched, the vast majority of escape pods have been fired, and they somehow did all this while leaving no one behind. All you have access to is the escape pods, which will fire you directly down at the planet; the problem there is that you'll likely land somewhere in the ocean, and you understand instinctively that if space travel is bad then traveling via water would be truly wretched.

That leaves you with the only mode of available transportation the grim products of the repair deck. Apollo lights this place up, seated quietly below a tool rack with that smile upon his face. It's an entire floor of the station, a massive area of stilled foundries and exotic tools carelessly dropped in the middle of a job. The reactors hum through the walls and all manner of marvelous and archaic machines can be found here; tall MRU walkers, in-progress cybernetic limbs, some manner of mechanical hydra, and there at last - a voidskiff.

Starships are almost always immense things. The smallest ship in the Fleet still has a crew complement of almost five hundred. You understand vaguely that this is to do with the massive size and expense of a true Engine making anything smaller impractical. It was only too late that your attention was turned to the threat of a voidskiff when Redana escaped on one.

Voidskiffs are the toys of daredevils, smugglers and adrenaline junkies. They're barely armoured by Imperial standards but built for ludicrous speed and agility and can cross interstellar distances at a pace even full warships can't keep up with. They pay for that, though. You grimly remember where you found Redana's abandoned voidskiff - torn half to shreds from the stresses of deep space travel and crash-landed on an alien world. Cautiously stepping away from the cursed thing and seeking an alternative is the natural response - even if you gather from Apollo's position that this is going to be your only real option.

Fellowship: The Heart

Things fall down into the Heart. People, religions, ideas, seeping down from the distant surface like rain into subterranean oceans. But of all the things that have been sent below the greatest is the grand city of Lothbruk.

Grand Jelt and Skotsheim were eternal rivals; two petty kingdoms struggling for control of the same muddy island. Skotsheim chose to invest its resources in a mighty army, a glorious city and overseas colonies. Grand Jelt chose to invest its resources in magic. Turns out that was the winning evolutionary strategy, because on the glorious Seventh of August the Arcane Council wove a mighty spell to hurl the entire city of Lothbruk physically into the Heart. The anniversary of this terrible weaving was made a national holiday and referred to euphemistically as 'The Act of Union', the day when Grand Jelt truly became grand.

As for Lothbruk itself? It was the payment taken by King Dragon and the perfect canvas for him to express himself upon. What could be more Wasteful than to have an entire city to oneself? What could satisfy one's Curiosity more than rummaging through every house and office, learning every secret in the entire fallen kingdom? What Judgement was more mighty than acting as adjudicator of nations? What better target to vent one's Wrath on than one of the world's greatest cities?

And what would be a greater boost to a king pride than to make one's solitary nest here in this dark and sunken city?

Bit by bit, Lothbruk was sinking. Here and there it was burned. It had fallen far, even though it still had much falling to go. It still made a worthy throne for a dragon, but before too long it would be time to seek out another.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

"Sir Liana, as you live, never disappoint a maiden," said Robena. "Even the grave is no release for the chains your heart will be made to wear."

Robena pauses, tired and grumpy. Something about pouring one's heart out to a pretty stranger just didn't feel the same when sober. In no mood for flirting, commentary, or maintaining her mortal coil in general she released the tension in her elbow which sent her face plummeting unsupported directly down into the basin. She listlessly let her head bob under the water for a moment before she came to the conclusion that she was too hungry to drown in her handbasin. She raised her head, dripping wet, and miserably took a bearlike bite of the bread and chewed it with grim determination.

She was in luck, though. She'd have a day to rest and saturate in her misery. After yesterday's hunt only the devil herself would have the energy to go riding again.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

Ring, ring, ring the hammers! Industry is unleashed! Pipes and violins and sweat! The saffron is ablaze, flesh concealed and flesh revealed. D-Scythes roar and the engine burns thick and hot and heavy.

"Atlas tried to build a man!" roared a Hermetic Priest in the voice of the mountains, choir-master alight with sacred candles atop his formless robes.

"His eyes were cast from gold
His fur was spun from silk
His mind was built from shining stars
And his spine was made from foil!"

The refrain was picked up by the united voices of the Coherent. This is a labour song, held in time with the engines. Three time the call and reply go out, a steady and endless rhythm designed to hammer away the time as much as the steel.

"Molech tried to build a man!" called the Priest, voice rising in passion as the song built power.

"His arms were carved of stone
His spear was forged from steel
His mind was built from spinning gears
And his soul was black as coal!"

Everything moves to the beat. The MRUs manage their steps in time as they roam amidst the sweating workers. Backs bare and furred and scaled shine and stink and are slapped as they tear down walls and rip up floors. Flashing sequences of datacode subvocalize through the din, laser-lights patterning out morse code to augmentic eyes. Wherever specialist work is to be done, the priests seamlessly arrive with their arcane arsenal to conjure matter from nothing or melt away a key bulkhead in a single gesture. Whenever there is hard labour to be done the Coherent surge in with hammers and picks like the tide.

"Nero tried to build a man!" called the Priest, voice relishing this line particularly - and the roar of approval rippled up through the assembled workers. A particular bloody, husky passion filled these next lines.

"His ass was soft from pillows
His stomach was full of fat
His mind was built from theatre shows
And his feet never left the soil!"

It was incredible how young the Order of Hermes seemed to be. How vital, how passionate their civilization and culture. They wouldn't last a fraction of a second against the Armada, naturally - for all the shock of them having a fleet, having heard the numbers and stories from Iskarot you now see that your tutors were not blind to think of them as harmless. You half wonder if Nero could destroy their entire civilization with the Assassin Temple alone.

Today she could do it easily.

But if they kept working like this? If the empty galaxy was left to them for another two hundred years?

Was this what the future looked like?

Alexa!

The grass ripples. Shifts. Cracks. Tears. The soil pours off, wet and thick and clumpy, still bound together by the roots of a thousand different varieties of grass. The mound splits and cracks apart and what is beneath is indistinguishable from the soil that it had been buried in. A creaking leg screeches its protest as it reaches out and scratches at the earth, unsteadily testing its weight. It sinks slightly into the damp soil but it holds. With the second step the whole bulk of the creature pulls itself free - four legged, hunched, creaking and clattering and with the gentle and pained screech of metal rust.

The ancient autodog takes its third pained step towards you. And then from its mouth it drops a single clod of earth - no, not dirt. A ball. This machine has slept here for unknown hundreds of years, ball in mouth, obediently waiting for the day that someone would come to throw it once again.

Vasilia!

"So, uh. What happened to stop your heart from being bright and young?" said Hestia. "You're not much older than either of them and you talk like an ancient mariner. What happened to you?"

Dolce!

"The Rift," said Hera. "Aphrodite's Rift. It's a wound in the heart of the galaxy, in the most literal sense. The closer you draw the more savage its effects. Each of you is cursed. Your hearts are uncertain and broken and they will become more so. Any flaw, no matter how invisible, will grow and grow until the void becomes insurmountable and it consumes you all."

"It is the blackest of curses," murmured Hades, kneeling down to place his cake in the oven. "Each soul carries the seed of heartbreak. No matter how they try, it is impossible for anyone to cure themselves."

"Any relationship is destined for destruction if you stay on this terrible path," said Hera. "But perhaps if you are strong enough to stand alone you might yet survive it."

Bella!

You should have known. The Hermetics weaponized music against you before. Why not again?

You've got the theme song to the movie stuck in your head. Chan-barra-chan-barra chan-barra-chan! The rolling, confident theme music of Prion Paula as she enters each new room of the ship fills your mind. It runs deeper - every entry she made was so smooth, so confident, so effortlessly sexy that it's almost impossible to avoid hesitating in each doorway, the pose half-struck. Chan-barra!

The story was simple to the point of parody. The bad guys wore red and spiked armour and the good guys wore blue kimonos, chan-barra! The wicked were powerful and the good were lowly, chan-barra-chan! Fights were staredowns of unutterable tension, long shots of staring eyes and subtly trembling hands, sweat dripping down foreheads until everything exploded in seconds of unutterable violence that were so swift and so skilled and over so quickly that they left you stunned and mouth dry, still trying to process as that shining swords was returned to its sheath. It was a movie that did not for a second exceed its ambitions, did not for a second feel drawn to add any complexity, did not have any of the nuance or subtlety of Imperial stagecraft. It was a story of good and evil, and after much struggle - chan-barra! - good triumphed.

And that's possibly the most frustrating thing of all. The movie, despite every expectation, is not dumb. It doesn't make any mistakes. Doesn't get anything wrong. Nothing that makes an easy criticism and dismissal. It's just... simple. Straightforwards. Catchy.

Sunshards

Many souls have imagined themselves riding a dragon. This is a very mundane hubris, too simple and mild to even mock. It's a fantasy that's driven away by the flash of rippling muscle and glittering scales and constant motion - and it's the motion that breaks fantasy into a breathless reality. If an illustration of a tiger is cute, the tiger in motion is heart-stopping - and a dragon in motion is beyond parallel. Primal instincts are overwhelmed by complex body language, the flick and flow of wings, the paradoxical gentleness with which stone-shattering talons brush the earth in landing, the vocalization of tail and neck and scales of winter skies fading to scales of summer skies. Every motion is hypnotic, every mannerism is deadly.

It takes a rare soul indeed to stand in the presence of a true dragon and decide nevertheless that they will ride it.

Tall leather riding boots touch the ground, gripping black stockings beneath a dress of midnight rose patterns, wrapped in a long buttoned overcoat. Hair imperiously straight is tied back into a long ponytail by black leather gloves. Her eyes know exactly what she is capable of, and the bruises on her slender neck tell of how she pushed those limits. Her approach is predatory and pulls the dragon in her wake, looming over her shoulder like a wartime mafioso's favoured muscle. To wear a dragon princess as such an accessory is a mighty fashion statement indeed.

This is Countess Keron of the Sky Castle. Her eyes flick from girl to girl, coldly and appraisingly. Finally they settle on Cyanis who is visibly sweating and trembling, a street pickpocket in the presence of a crime lord. She hurriedly bows and tucks her sunglasses behind her back. "Countess Keron," she half-squeaked. "Princess Jessic. Uhm."

"You," said the Countess, snapping her fingers and raising her hand. "Have our attention." Smoothly, Princess Jessic places a bottle in her outstretched fingers and she takes a brief sip.

"Oh! Well, um, I have captured a Princess, plus friends," said Cyanis. "And I was hoping to...?"

The Countess had taken Chen's chin with her hand and was turning her face from side to side. "Princess Chen," she said. "Pathetic. Trying to trick us like this?" With one harsh movement she grips and pulls a rope expecting it to come loose - but instead it tightens and pulls your whole body taught. A razor eyebrow arches. "Oh? Could it be that you're actually caught?"

"She is!" squeaked Cyanis. "And she's for sale. I caught them all!"

"Hm," said Countess Keron, sweeping over to Rose and looking down at her. "And this is that troublesome monk, isn't it? And you expect me to believe those ropes actually hold her?"

"I've stolen her mind!" said Cyanis. "She's perfectly obedient, I promise -"

Keron hooked her leg around Princess Jessic's right foreleg and pulled it forwards, raising the talon almost to Rose's neck. "Prove it," she said to the fox.

"R-Rose, I order you to clean the Princess' foot," said Cyanis, wilting.

And finally that harsh gaze turns towards Yue. Countess Keron kneels down before the knightly maiden, eyes sharp as knives and staring right through to the heart.

"You I don't know," she said, her voice dropping a fraction too low for Cyanis to hear. "And I do know foxes. If she tricked you into this just nod. Nod, and she will take your place - carried back to a dungeon in the castle in the sky, while you will be free to go."

So what of it, Yue? Are you a knight, or are you simply dressed as one?