Thanqol

Sunshards

Countess Keron's handmaidens clasp the last of her armour into place and she flexes her gauntlet's talons, letting electrical currents run along its length. Prepared for war she cuts a terrible figure, jagged edges in black and gold, one deep red eye visible from through artfully arranged straight black hair. With a snap of those talons her handmaidens pull back and she fully allows herself to glow into the spotlight.

And you realize: you are overmatched, Princess Chen. You are not overmatched because Countess Keron is faster or stronger or more skilled at fighting than you, you are overmatched because that is her story. As the Naginata is placed in her grip, lightning running up the shaft to crackle along the blade, you see it clearly. Keron's story, her dance, her duel is that of the Tyrant. Slow, mighty, inevitable, shrugging off lesser blows and delivering massive and crushing strikes with a terrible weapon.

And a tyrant is not someone who is easily defeated in single combat. Anime has taught you this much. A tyrant is best fought against as a group. Friends together, each supporting each other against a singular mighty evil. In fact, you almost recognize a number of the influences in Keron's costume design from Jessic's anime. You recognize the stance.

So you realize what she's doing when the shockwave of electrical energy explodes out from her and sends you crashing down into the sands of the arena. She hits the sand and draws herself up, tall and threatening, mighty blade resting over her shoulder. With a flick of her talons laser-lightning explodes out across the arena and detonates, causing an explosion and shockwave that fuses the calligraphic sand into a twisted sculpture of glass.

And there, in the arena with you Chen, is Tianic and Yue. Admittedly squeaking somewhat and looking for cover from the lady with the laser beam claws, but they're here. It's a strange reward for Yue, whose heart was too big to allow her to rush from the arena, but neither is it - after the dust has settled a bit - an entirely unwelcome one. You stood your ground, Yue, and so now you're part of this story too. The ride is going to continue a little longer. One more complication between you and kisses, but it's the promise of those kisses that'll let you see this battle through as well.

"On your knees," demands Countess Keron, voice rising above the chaos. "I shall not release even one of my prisoners, Princess Chen. You too will serve me, in the harem or in the arena, I care not which."

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Yes, says Zhaojun - and so too does she say no. Half of her falls into the strength of the N'yari and the other half strains against it and in a moment there is the distortion of souls straining against themselves.

But water will not break so long as a path to retreat remains open, and Zhaojun flows up and away and to her feet, back turned on the N'yari for the duration of a couple of deep breaths out of fear that her blush might shine through the mask. She can't hear the frenzied beat of raindrops, can't feel the shining array of cerulean constellations, not over the pounding of her heart. Her heart! Far too mortal for such a responsibility.

Long fingers push her mask firmly into place. With the third breath the blue aura returns and the ethereal wind again brushes at the hem of her dress. Professional. If you can't decide, be elegant in the indecision.

"It remains," she said, "to be seen if you will even overcome lady Kalaya at all. Your record, after all, is not currently inspiring confidence."

Her fingers, though, trace and play with a silver button torn from Machi's shirt during her retreat. She folds her arm behind her back to hide the way it dances through her fingers and makes its way into one of her hidden pockets.

[Too Many Feelings: 2]

Breathless Dead

Alexa and Skotos!

You have been sent with a simple task: to figure out what the deal is with the money.

This isn't something that can be done haphazardly. The Plousios is, frankly speaking, broke. It's scavenged what it could along the way and made what repairs and upgrades were possible but skilled labour only goes so far. What few valuables are aboard the ship cannot be bartered away to the sleezy dockhands or predatory moneychangers; the ship simply cannot afford to make a bad deal here. So you've been sent down into the streets of Pomib to figure out how the local economy functions and who, if anyone, is a reputable broker.

On the one hand, it turns out that was actually a really good idea because you've just gotten confirmation that the Azura at the docks were involved with organized crime. On the other hand, you've found that out because a couple of them are following you. They're trailing at a steady distance but their heavy frames and poorly concealed weapons would stand out even if there was a crowd to hide in, which there isn't. Your first team mission is in danger of ending in kidnapping and, given the Plousios' financial situation rules out paying a ransom, slavery.

You're not in immediate danger but you are very clearly being hunted.

Vasilia and Dolce!

The court of an Azura satrap is a curious thing. Part of you, a strong part, wants to buy into the simplicity of the Azura sumptuary laws and assume that power is simply colour coded; the bluest snake is the best snake. But there are currents here that make you feel like that assumption would be hideously dangerous.

The bluest snake is very blue though - and though that may sound flippant in a world where every colour is so tightly controlled, that means a lot. Satrap Vistica a font of light, with a dress that glows and agilt in gemstones that reflect and emphasize that radiance. In her presence everyone and everything seems drab and faded, not as an accident but as a deliberate extension to the satrap's own fashion style. The courtiers about her seem like the turbulence of cloudy skies and twilight mud, rendering that single glimpse of perfect noontime sun twice as powerful. Even the heat is controlled, with Vistica as the center of all warmth in the room, and the further you get from her the deeper you fall into chill.

This is no two bit pirate queen or planetary warlord. This woman answers to the Vizier, who answers to the Shah. She is justice, peace, and martial glory, exactly as an Azura satrap should be.

And yet the perfection of her colour is distorted by a group that stands at her left hand. They're deliberately at odds with the rest of the scene, so much so that they feel like an artistic rendition of a graphical glitch. They wear drab and dark colours in conscious asymmetry with the rest of the court, whites and blacks and even - scandalously - flashes of red. One of them carries an impractically woven ceremonial spear and none of them hold themselves with any hint of deference. You might have caught off-handed references to 'the Party', but what they are party to is a mystery.

Other nobles are in attendance, from the greater to the lesser, and the hall has room to sit or stand three hundred. Over two thirds are missing, though, their seats occupied by either elaborate abstract paintings of mountains and rivers, or brutal spherical Azura glyphs.

Already Redana and Vistica have exchanged ceremonial words and both settled into silence as their courtiers go through successively more important business. Right now you, Captain Dolce, stand opposite a curious middle ranked Azura senator named Thelis Thist who seems to be... shaking you down for money. For all the transcendent glory of the Azura throneroom this is an interaction that reminds you of your days in the Starsong Privateers.

"The damage caused by your scout to the glorious Boulevard of Pada, including the tremendous insult to the Shah and the Path caused by the erasure of the Tsolmis glyph and the near disaster that befell the Bronze, is intolerable to the Endless Azure Skies!" bellowed Thist from powerful lungs, hands held high in an orator's pose. She is addressing the crowd as much as you and you have no idea what the deal here is. "Foreign beggars have no right to access the Skies, for they bring nothing but destruction with them! You should fall to you knees and commit the I'tal thrice over before you are granted hearth and lodging here!"

XIII!

"Oh, I'm certainly not all that," said the Master of Assassins as though she could read your thoughts. Her actions were punctuated by the gentle click-click of her clippers working away on the garden, leaves falling in gentle cascades. "That's the thing about gardening, isn't it? One looks at the soil and thinks oneself mighty. Such tools you have! An arsenal of poison and blades and seeds, with years to plan and decide. And one's opposition are but insects and fungi and crows. How could I lose? But lose I did, and it's not hard to see why, really. I can go through the motions, certainly. I can apply centuries of skill and experience, I can re-use plenty of traps that worked before. But my greatest weakness is that I have options."

Her hands were so steady as those razor blades moved to sever the throats of flowers, sending a cascade of petals to the floor.

"For the insects it is, of course, life and death. But for me? I could go inside. Put my feet up. Look out at the rain and the mud and decide that I could just let this season go. Live comfortably, and all that it would cost me is a shabby garden."

She smiled at her eggplants, a single flash of gold amidst tones of earth and soil. "That is where you children come in. For you two this is life and death. That's why I'm not taking control, deary me no. I'll advise and help you however I can, but you, dear girls, are the ones betting your lives, and so I trust that you will have less tolerance for error than I do."

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The way her foot flexes out to catch the first N'yari in the chest is like the answering of a prayer. For the first moment after her strike there's a flicker of blue, the shocked desynchronization of one soul marveling at the effortlessness with which another can wield this power. For a moment, as the catgirls close in, she's frozen, and then the unity snaps back into place with a wild and terrible revelry.

Cautious games of grace and denial against a surprised priestess are one thing; the whirl of battle against a N'yari warband is another - and the craving that Zhaojun answers is her own. She pulls the umbrella from the ground as the catgirls close in and as she falls she spins and strikes it against a skull with one hand. Her other hand spears the ground with her chopsticks and balances her by her fingertips above the mud as her heels lash out in a whirlwind of kicks and silken blue robes.

Then the game is reversed again; and the momentum of her latest strike carries her forwards, umbrella opening and closing with snaps of colour and radiance to conceal the flow of strikes and stance changes. She is dazzlement and delight, just look at her! A flower opening and closing and warding away perilous foes with her beauty, a true maiden of the Flower Kingdoms, a battle the N'yari are prepared for and know how to engage. And so she lures them along with their own instincts, letting them fall into the tactics they use for fighting mortal maidens.

But Zhaojun dreams of claws and lions.

With a whirl she casts away her umbrella, tangling it into the crowd of warriors, and pounces as pure and vicious as any N'yari. She catches Machi in the chest and her momentum carries them both to the ground. It is not claws around Machi's neck, though - it is chopsticks held between her knuckles that she uses to tilt the head of the proud warrior up with delicate force. Her hair, tangled and wild from the surge of action, has fallen down to cover one of her mask's glowing eyes, but even on that blank surface is the intention of teeth.

"I am already here to grant your wishes," she said through heavy breathing - a body straining to keep up with what was demanded of it. "I am already here to bring you glory. Follow me and I will serve you the greatest knight of the Flower Kingdoms and her retinue," she was close, hot breath against stone, bamboo wood against flesh.

[Fight: 7
Flirting with and gaining a superior position]

Breathless Dead

The stars burn violet within the Endless Azure Skies, and this is but the beginning of their marvels.

From the right angle, with the right sunglasses you can see the Spike driven into the heart of the star named Olean. A subtle megastructure, almost invisible from a distance except for a strange black dot against the sun. In radial lines stretching out from the Spike all throughout the solar system, from the closest sun-baked ball of molten metals to the most distant storm-wracked gas giant, asteroids marked with gently blinking teal-blue guiding lights and wrapped around with the gleaming patterns of gravity rails drift in impossible orbits. These intersystem asteroid belts chain together planets, managing orbit and rotation. Even the planets themselves have monolithic equatorial carvings visible from space channeling the might of the Azura miracle. Why let the growth of the Azura be contained by the number of planets that happened to fall in the narrow band of stellar habitability?

But the Azura forgot the lesson of Atlas when they rearranged the sky. When their strength slipped so those endless skies did fall.

One planet, Manaemede has accelerated beyond all control, spinning so fast that its days last hours and continent sized chunks of rock break off into the void from the centrifugal force. It whirls in a chaos of broken math through the star system, flanked by a too-thin cascade of Azura ships who might be attempting to tug the wreckage of the planet back into a stable orbit - or perhaps just keep it from colliding with any of the surviving planets. Once this planet was the mausoleum of a Shah, hauled into place and worked with endless art to commemorate unparalleled victories. Half of the mighty pyramid still stands on the planet, a mountain range monolith sinking into the exposed magma of a flayed world.

One gas giant, Igorthian, has been turned inside out. Through some sorcery of gravity the Azura have extracted the hyperdense core of metal from the heart of the gas giant while leaving the gas itself somehow frozen in place like the ghost of a planet-sized storm. Cosmic industry is at work on the huge ball of exotic metals, explosive-based strip-mining where the tumbling fragments of hyperium and quadranix are sent along the asteroid gravity chains toward the Spike where they will be smelted and refined in the heat of the sun itself. The metals will return to Igorthian where they will be sent back into the core of the gas giant in new configurations. When this megaproject is complete the Azura will have built a space station inside of the gas giant, with views in every direction of a planetary storm held in place with tricks of gravity. An unbreachable fortress wearing a storm as a shield, an art installation unmatched anywhere in the cosmos, a brand new ghost city built for a civilization that can't half fill the cities it has already.

And the sector capitol, Salib. A perfect, textbook Azura planet. A luxury in oceans and shores, a bounty of open space and engineering miracles. A proud regional hub with bases of the Party, the Orrery, the Aspects and the agents of the Shah. The pride of the Sector fleet hangs in orbit, a sleek and curved supercarrier named Fraternity and Tyranny surrounded by swarms of spinning fighter spheres. No matter that whenever the carrier's orbit passes over the eastern continent those fighter spheres descend into atmosphere to launch a bombing campaign to support the loyalists in the ongoing civil war there. No matter that with each flocklike descent many of the spheres do not return.

This, then, is the Olean system. Grand beyond imagining, opulent beyond reckoning, and merely one of the many systems in the Endless Azure Skies. So too is it riven by natural disaster, technology failure, civil war, and impossible monuments built in the desert.

*

To the crew of the Plousios!

Take a minute to reflect on the Azura and their works. Then tell me: what specifically do you hope to gain here? You are on the threshold of wonder; do you seek power to help you in your quest? Knowledge of the perils of the rift? Or even just to see the sights of a place that has so long been distant?

The gods of relevance in this place are Poseidon, Apollo and Artemis. You may wish, too, to make offering to them.

XIII!

You were a child when you met her. Less than a child. You were unsold property, unworthy property, barely fit for the kennels until she picked you out. Out of all the world it was she who saw your potential and raised you to the station of Imperial Pet.

You did not know then that she was the Master of Assassins. You remember grey hair and deep wrinkles and a gingerbread smile. You remember hands stained with soil and bone meal and eyes the green-gold of the harvest that could see an ancient oak in an acorn. You remember kindness from a passing stranger, because whenever you saw her in the palace she would glance around and stealthily slip you some home-made treat or vegetable and a wink that was just for you. You didn't see her often, but she liked you. Saw you. And was perhaps the only person who ever did.

The smells of the Anemoi are sane again. The Lanterns are safe, hidden in the shadows where they have always lived. The Kaeri are more prominent but lack their previous sense of arrogant cruelty. They are unsettled and shift restlessly and seem as drawn towards the dark as the Lanterns. But the light is warm and yellow from a dozen red paper lanterns, enough to illuminate a strange and darkening garden. The Master moves through rows of roses and daffodils and peaches, always seemingly to have infinite layers of vegetation between you and her, and despite your Auspex you constantly lose track of her. There is a riddle here, written in the soil. All of Artemis' greatest murders are riddles.

"I honestly don't get why she likes you so much," huffed Beljani, adept of the Oratus Temple of Assassins. Her jealousy is palpable. "No disrespect at all, of course, I love what you've done with the dress, but we happen to have a transcendent super-genius genetically designed for engineering perfect plans in a box and we're running frightfully low on second chances."

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

In the ancient stories, was He not offered the same choice? To leave the world of pain and vice and betrayal and heed the call of blood? To escape the X and the days spent in agony as each drop fell from His heart into the waiting chalice? Compared to that suffering a swift blow to the neck seemed a mercy, but still her heart recoiled from the inevitability of it the moment she saw there was another path.

A hungry light filled her eyes, and she took Constance by the hand. Her blood, so hot, so base, so human spoke to her as it did to Him. Her heart pounded and the passion seemed like it would overwhelm her as it had so many times before.

And then, at last, she understood.

"I crave life," she said. "I crave it as I crave drink. I crave it as I crave battle. I crave it as I crave glory and praise and riches. I thought that my vices were individual things, a collection, an array of seven. I thought that because I could stand tall upon the field I was not a coward but the rage and battle lust felt to me then the exact same way as I felt when I craved your offer, the same feeling of passion that had me strike down the cursed King."

For a moment the grip of her fingers was so hard, so trembling. She thought of battling the demons of her horse, and though the demons were no longer garbed in a tonne of muscle they were far more fearsome for all of it.

"It is all one vice, Constance. One craving. My flesh hungers and my spirit is silent, and so hunger is my master. If I take your offer, unreconstructed, I shall become a faerie indeed but one from the worst of stories. Craving made immortal, grasping hands in an eternal garden, thief of children, shameless and free. I am not a flawed knight; true, but for one damnable mistake. I am a dragon caged in flesh no less than Lady Sandsfern, and the devil at the crossroads revealed the end of that path as a lesson to me. And here I stand upon a second crossroads, and this time the question of wishes is put to me alone."

Her hand slipped away from Constance's as easily as air, when a moment before it had been holding with the terrified and terrifying strength of a fearful giant.

"In that world you would be a maiden trapped in the talons of a dragon. Though you did not answer my question, you did so by omission: in that world you would not be happy. So I tell you, faerie-devil, Constance, one who I love too much to crave, I tell you of the one wish I do have: That you somehow find happiness."

She looked away into a light, gleaming and distance. "Whatever that happiness is, I shall fight for it. I shall slay dragons for it, even if the dragon I must slay is within myself. A knight can do no less."

Sunshards

Just for a moment Tianic is the center of the world.

Everything has turned to her; everything is waiting for her. She just needs to take a deep breath and trust herself to do something good. She needs to let her sword move and feel out the shape of the dance. Even in a moment like this it's not free flowing, she'll take a stance and then second guess herself and take another. She'll backtrack, hesitate, and then commit to her original intention, maybe perceiving the flaw lay elsewhere all along. She stops for a moment to think but even as she thinks the dance has its own momentum. This isn't anything special. It's just her thoughts and daydreams and the work of her stuttering hands.

She doesn't feel like doing this will make her be loved. Love is such a strange and scary thing and there's no way this humble offering would be enough for that. She doesn't feel like doing this will make her beautiful. She's an amateur, a beginner, and she doesn't really believe she'll be a real princess one day. She doesn't do it because she has to, although she does has to. The sword comes into her hand like a compulsion, like an addiction, like sleeping - she practiced it all these years because it didn't let her not. But that doesn't make her good at it, doesn't make her confident in it, even now. She's not from a famous line of warriors, she doesn't have professional training, she's not friends with anyone and she's not even sure she could become friends with anyone. She has a hobby that she has to do because she's been doing it for so long she doesn't know how to operate without doing it but that doesn't mean she's good at it. Doesn't mean she's good enough to show this to anyone else.

But she was asked to show it.

And... nobody ever did that before. Nobody took an interest in her, her secrets, her heart. She would pour her heart into the sand every night for so long and that was just between her and the sand. Even if people knew she practiced it wasn't like they wanted to see it, just to comment on it, maybe encouragingly tell her she could be a princess someday. If she had practice partners they didn't even really want to see it either. She could just fall into being a mobile training opponent for them, constructing a test of steel and then sitting back to see if they could solve it. And oftentimes they could! They soared and exceeded themselves and mastered perfect techniques and became heroes and she smiled for them so happily and planned the next test. Nobody had asked if there was anything she wanted to work on, nobody paid attention when she did, nobody would carve for her riddles of steel that she'd need to become better than herself to solve. And so her secrets remained secret even as her hands became steadier and her flow became more confident and her technique became refined. She learned the styles that were popular and dreamed of the ones that would be satisfying, and that had to be enough. Because as far as she knew she was the only one who took an interest in the techniques of her opponents and if she took the time to focus on herself then there wouldn't be anyone like that left in the world.

And she didn't mind! She didn't mind at all, being the mirror. She got to see such marvels in bladework, got to see so many maidens blossom as they learned to navigate her webs. She got to indulge her habit, her reflex, and see wonders along the way and though she envied her opponents it was a good natured, wistful envy. It wasn't ever about her, in the end.

Except for now. When it suddenly was.

The world had turned around in this strange moment and she was its center. She was the storm which every eye was focused on. She was being asked to lead. She was being asked. Someone wanted to know her secrets. They wanted to see what was in her heart. Even when she'd come into this arena, resolved to win, she hadn't imagined for a moment that she would. She didn't ever see herself as the hero of her story, and so to lose to a wolf in the first round had seemed as easy as lying. But somehow the moment had come, the story had found her, and she wasn't just a riddle of bladework any more. She was Tianic and she'd been here all along and her story was written in the sand, line after line. Nobody could do this. Nobody could do this like her. She knew that, and she wasn't proud of it - she was just touched that somebody had wanted to see her do it. To see what she was capable of. Who wanted to see her heart more than they'd wanted to express their own.

So that was why she was doing this. She was doing this because she was asked. She was turning every flowing ripple of sand into the unfolding lotus pattern of her dreams because she had been asked. It wasn't the refined elegance of her riddles, her learned reflection patterns by which she could draw the skill out of her partners. It was a technique rehearsed in her heart but never to find true expression. She'd never thought there'd be a world just for her but here it was and while she never wanted it to stop she also knew better than to cling to it. When she was done here today she'd clean and sheathe her blade and go back to being Tianic again and the only difference would be that the world might know what secret arts were merely a request away.

It was a catharsis to finally sculpt this mandala, incorporating all the gashes and tears of a girl who was a wolf, who didn't know the shape she was building towards but wanted to see her build it. Who let herself be a mirror, if only for a moment, and reveal the shape of a love that had always been waiting to express itself. Because in this moment of blades and dance and beauty Tianic finally got to show what witnessing a thousand perfect moments had done to change her and make her ready to reveal one of her own.

So wait a moment more, maidens of sun and moon and stars. Wait a moment shapeshifters and prodigies and heroines. This moment was offered to Tianic, this question was asked of her. Yes, she's having fun. More fun than she's ever had. A victory, too, if she wanted to reach out and claim it. Enough to make her a legend in her own story in the same beat that it started.

She won't take it, though. And she's smiling as she realizes why - it's because she has more to show than even this. She has so many battles still to fight before she can accept that victory so sweetly offered. It's not that she has to do more to earn it, it's not that she doesn't want it. It's that she's not ready for it. She has a long road still to walk before she's as perfect as this wolf girl. This isn't the triumph of her story. It's a beginning for her. And so she decides, and with a final clash of blades her sword falls from numb fingertips and the blade of Yue is beneath her chin.

And she smiles, with a tear in her eye, and says "Thank you."

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

"If I cheat the axe," said Robena quietly, "Will I no longer be dead, and will you smile and laugh and revel in the miracle of my resurrection?"

Breathless Dead

The Plousios!

The ship is its own city. For a long time it has stood empty, halls and gardens and parks and monuments acquiring rust and starfish. Now things are different. Now there is labour on hand to clean and refurbish a throne room and now there are warriors enough to fill it. They organize themselves by tribe and by rank and in their diversity and splendour they speak the language of power.

The Assistant Secretary of Fear and Doubt is perhaps the most visually impressive of the leaders, enshrined upon a palanquin born aloft by four mighty battlecrabs. He is sprawled in an opulent mess of jewels, fat as only an octopus can be fat, tentacles wafting in the air as he relaxes. As a fragment of the Eater of Worlds the replication of that mighty creature's ecosystem exists inside him and he has spawned over a hundred aquatic creatures, including a small cluster of subservient octoscribes who diligently take notes on scroll paper as they adjust and maintain the swarming creatures he commands. None of these creatures is underdressed merely because they are inhuman, however. Poseidon has guided them through the flooded sections of the ships to find fine banners and robes and fabrics with which to wrap themselves. They stand as the finest dressed and wealthiest creatures present, inheritors to a galactic legacy.

Next in splendour is Galnius and their Imperial soldiers, armoured in shining metals and with cloaks of Imperial red. Though they are humans, and though they are proud, they have shocked those who did not think highly of them by recruiting. Princess Epistia of Ceron has joined their ranks, having sought the fellowship of the greatest warriors aboard the ship, and they have trained and armoured her. Even proud praetorians such as these would not find themselves too far stretched to acknowledge a divinely blessed warrior of Ceron into their ranks, but Galnius has actually gone even further than that. Their numbers have increased to thirty, a tally that includes the finest recruits from the Coherent, the Alcedi, some recruits they picked up from smaller waystations along the way, and even a Hermetic Magi. The power they wield is drawn from their ambition and their courtly graces more than their numbers,

The Magi of the Order of Hermes are next. Though they huddle both together and apart in the disorganized way of rival academics, and though the encoded markings of their robes are inscrutable to those beyond them, their wealth and might is plain in the artifacts they carry. Sacred stasis-crypts containing deadly spears, floating spheres chained with plasma, an elaborate grandfather clock stuffed with cotton that it may not tick, their mobile roadshow of battlefield antiques inspires curiosity and dread in equal parts. Were a fight to break out here while the Order might not win they could certainly guarantee that no one else did either.

Vasilia - you are among the Magi, for Magos Iskarot has fulfilled your wish and granted you a purpose. You are to carry an egg - black, speckled with blue, sitting snug inside a brass box that maintains a heat just high enough to be uncomfortable. It is a simple duty but nothing about the Magos' manner indicated that it was in any way a condescending one. He has not told you what might be within an egg like this but its heft, its weight, the sense of destiny that hangs off it. This is a duty too important to be entrusted to a common caretaker, but too mild to give to a warrior destined for the heart of battle.

The Coherent are but a short way behind them. No disciplined phalanx like Galnius' praetorians are they; watch as they slouch and mug like a gang of roughs who have snuck into a fancy party. It is perhaps the most evident here that these are not phalanx soldiers, though they would no doubt be able to manage an approximation if called on. Neither are they sleek and armoured skirmishers optimized for tactical deployments. These are labourers, free and unchained. They might build you a pyramid or tear one down, but they know the value of their strength and will not trade it for empty promises.

Finally, the Alcedi flocks, downcast and humiliated. They are bitter and restive that it was not they who triumphed in their ritual conflicts, that they sail aboard a warship they do not lead. That they have no victories of note, no chancellors of rank, no earned place aboard the command staff, that their wealth and organization pales compared to those around them, that even Zeus is disappointed with their failure to seize power and confirm their value. But someone always must be last in line, and the hungry eyes of the flocks wait for opportunities.

Above all is Redana, sitting upon a throne with an Apollonian halo around her golden hair and a gown of white. There is no pretense with her and there is no need to be. She is as natural as the engine, a lifetime of lessons making the perfect leader.

"We are entering the Endless Azure Skies," she said. "And what We find there will be strange. They are the binders of djinn, the wielders of philosophy, and the survivors of many rounds of coups, revolutions and political disorder. Even those of Our crew who have visited their realms cannot say for certain how power is distributed there, and so nothing can be taken for granted. Empty yourselves of expectation. We may fight or We may dance but We shall do so according to the designs of the Gods, in whose hands We place our offerings and Our fates."

Alexa - you may be a long way away from sentry duty, but you recognize Mynx when you see her. So many days, so many hours, listening to her and Redana practicing the same speeches, the same tricks of oration, repeated back to each other like mirrors so they could judge each other's progress. This isn't even Mynx trying to impersonate Redana, though - this is Mynx trying to set an example for Redana to copy.

"And so I commend the specifics of our course and approach to the Captain," said Redana, gesturing Dolce forwards. And oh gosh, Dolce, you're being asked to give a speech and a plan to this room full of armed and deadly warriors! Who knew Captaining would involve public speaking!?

XIII!

You climb to the top of the world.

The spaceport stretches to beyond the atmosphere, where it opens like a flower. Ten docking petals, each able to service an entire Cruiser. If one were to examine the raw mathematics of it, this structure does not compare to the Hexdock, a vast megastructure outside the Defense Envelope of Tellus that allows the servicing and maintenance of the tens of thousands of warships in the Grand Armada. But the Hexdock was something to be glimpsed through windows, as distant and unreal as a painting. This wonder may be lesser than the greatest works of gigaengineering in the cosmos, but it's a mountain that is here, now, that you can climb.

If there is a limitation in the Azura imagination it is no doubt climbing. To move up a surface like this is beyond the reach of those sleek bodies and so they have unconsciously discounted it. If they need to scale a surface like this they would do so with the sleek precision of their gravitational spherecraft. So there are no ladders on the exterior of the stardock, but so too is their no need for ladders. This surface is rough, uneven, irregular, filled with unlocked access panels and cabling extensions wrought with the carelessness of those who thought this approach inaccessible. Plenty of handholds, then, and plenty of places to stand.

You partly climb as you ascend, and partly you run up that sheer vertical surface. Perhaps too you fly, if just a little, your sweat-soaked ears twitching as they hear the gasps from observers below who never imagined that a tower like this could be scaled so swiftly and so well. You race up the stem of the flower and feel the way that gravity changes beneath your feet. Imperial spaceships have artificial gravity, charged metal plates, but they are used simply to keep down as down, no more thought required. The Azura spheres both project their own gravity and respond to the gravity they pass within. You feel the waves of it wash over you once, twice, and then your instincts are ready - and you pounce.

And with that pounce into the aftershock of a passing Azura sphere you fall upwards. You fall upwards thirty stories and hit the side of the tower at a sprint as the wave passes. Up you run, clinging to the side as spheres pass downwards and leaping into their wakes as they ascend. Through flying, through falling, through sprinting, through climbing, you soar to the top of the world.

And you arrive a full eight minutes before the loading ramp of the Anemoi begins to open.

Eight minutes of ultimate, dizzying, triumphant adrenaline atop a tower with a view of oceans below and mountains as peers. Eight minutes where the fire that's burning inside you is running so hot that if you're not going to run you will at least need to scream in triumph. Eight minutes of victory, eight minutes that are yours, your prize, unbound by any empress or god, shared with no one, your reward for having raced a starship and won. Eight minutes for you alone to be happy.

Sunshards

A shattered world for a moment realigns.

Strange that this should feel like it's the natural state of things, and yet it is. For a long time the broken nature of the world felt natural, normal, but it wasn't. Even when the world was made whole you hadn't noticed it at first. It wasn't until Princess Qiu's transcendent skill carved the cosmos into three parts that you realized how unnatural and how artificial the separation was. How wrong it felt that these were three stories in parallel rather than one story in blended colour and motion.

A sword rises in the air, the sky and it's so natural here! Flight is carved into the bones of the Sky Castle, it is the truth that radiates from the Sunshard in its hidden depth. To scale upwards, by ladder or by engine or, indeed, by sword. Perhaps you didn't even need to be a Princess to fly atop a sword in this place of Jessic's dreams - but you would at least need to dream of becoming one. As eyes raise to watch Chen fly above the arena spirits lift too, the symphony of hearts who still haven't grown used to leaving gravity behind.

And below the sword, on steps of stone, is Rose at the feet of Countess Keron. She hasn't been watching the fight - she's been a bad girl and so is serving today as a footrest. But for all the gently wrapping ropes that correct her posture and bind her shapeshifting form into an ideal body she still has enough freedom to raise her eyes up and see her saviour above. Her heart fills with the thunderous uncertainty of knowing that there will soon be a fight over her. She is not a warrior today, she is not a hunter, she is not a tool - she is a prize to be won.

She can only watch as Countess Keron stands, handmaidens swarming around her in shielding curtains as they armour her from toes to breasts in razor sharp leather and steel, lightning-crackling war gauntlets clicking into place, streak of red battle-dye sliced into her hair. The Countess does not fight for love, and she knows that puts her at a disadvantage, but she fights for other things - for confidence, for self-respect, for the dignity of every girl who puts their trust and allegiance in her hands. She has promised those who kneel before her that they kneel before someone worthy of their obedience, someone who will guarantee their safety, someone who will hold them exactly as tightly as they want to be held. Those are no small promises, and they will defeat any small or fickle loves that stand against them.

But it is no small love that sings and slashes in the heart of the arena. It is still a duel that takes place there but the Princesses themselves could not promise better performance. It is a duel of dresses and fur and silk and swords all whirling under the sun upon a castle built on clouds. It is a duel that leaves its shape in the sand, the divots of turns as sharp as knives and the delicate dimples from footsteps as light as air. And that was all from before the world healed.

For the first time today blade meets blade and the strength of slender arms presses into each other, even as blue and orange dresses kiss at the hems. Two maidens lock eyes with the same speechless conviction as they did when it was maiden and wolf. Perhaps Hyra noticed the flow of magic from this strange moment and took advantage of it, or perhaps it is simply that a pure heart is stronger than all the Sunshards, perhaps it is that the full moon has risen out of fear that if it is not proactive in serving the needs of maidens then it might end up shot from the sky like the suns before it. Whatever it is, for a short while the curse is eclipsed and the warriors engage as equals.

And this is no longer a clash, it's a canvas. The sweeps of Tianic's long and slender blade aren't the guarded, hesitant strikes of someone afraid to break it, these are the sweeps of a brush. Her objective has changed and she isn't looking to overpower Yue any more than a painter seeks to overpower her paint. Ebb and flow and flick and spin and step and step and she takes the chaotic patterns cut into the arena sand and starts to formalize them, to organize them. If she attacks you this, this, that, and runs her blade through the sand like so in the offense she can write the first line of a mandala into the floor of the arena.

A clash of blades, a painting in sand. That would make a good Daily Affirmation of the Way <3