Thanqol

Sunshards

The roads to Ys are jammed with traffic.

It's the migration of tourists, people from every corner of the Nine Kingdoms, bumper to bumper in places. The rains have been heavy this year and parts of the road are flooded or muddy, and the convoy grinds to a halt as people get out of their cars to help push. You're in the middle of all the people in the world, united by the common trials of travel.

There upon the rooftop of his car sits a grinning man in a hideous black and white hawaiian shirt and mirrorshades, huge map spilling over the side of his knees. The car is driven by a tall, slender and nervous man with scales of blue and the kimono of a high lord. Past them walks an ancient giant, ten feet tall even in his hunch with a flowing white beard that drapes along the floor. He sets his shoulder alongside two women in lab coats pushing the car - one young, fierce, with violet hair and one old, wily, in black - and puts his shoulder into the work. From the interior of the car a man with a chiseled politician's smile and red-and-white prize ribbon on his shirt leans out to give them a grin and thumbs up. In the passenger seat, the lady in the silver suit meditates with her eyes closed.

An angel flies overhead, armour of gold and a cascade of gemstones, holding a strange green rabbit in his arms. A tired looking man in a black vest sits side by side with a glowing suit of Burrower armour, skipping stones across the floodwater. Before their stones lose their momentum they're shot from the air and disintegrated into flashes of steam by the laser sniper rifle of the blonde woman who kneels on the distant hill. A beautiful captain, uniform blue and braid against ebony skin, rubs his bald palette awkwardly as his compliment to the elegant blue-suited woman in a gas mask falls flat. A duelist in white leather tosses a dagger back and forth to an enormous woman in a fur cloak and crimson flame hairpiece. In the distance, down the line of cars, comes the sound of music from a band of squidlike monsters. An engineer in crystal works on laying the structure for a bridge as a man in a brown suit takes measurements and provides suggestions. A queen with a half her face hidden behind terrible scar tissue chats with a young soldier with a skull mask and a teenager with eyes of murder. The sky is thick with flight - a woman in red with the wings of a phoenix, a boy with the wings of an insect, winged horses in purple, in yellow, in white. Bears in armour haul wagons filled with kobolds in the colours of the rainbow, gazing in awe at everything they see and reporting hurriedly back to a wolf in gold. All these characters and thousands besides, all on the road to Ys.

They are going because of the war, of course. This is the greatest show on earth - Princess Qiu against the combined forces of Princess Ysel, Princess Yin and Princess Jezara. This will be a contest of armies and technique the likes of which the realms rarely see. And so comes this crowd, the splendour of their lives and stories distant but inspirational, to see what new marvels will bless the Nine Kingdoms.

You drive through a crowd of ex-champions and forgotten legends. You wait in line with them and share their stories for a moment.

When it comes time for your own story to end you know that you'll be welcome into these exalted ranks. But until then, they're all cheering for you.

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

You always knew the Kaeri were dangerous. You fought them and fought alongside them - if only briefly. They left an impression then too. Perfectionists, geniuses, warriors of the intellect, kings of the shadows. Direct confrontation was never their way then, simply accepting a holding action or selling their lives dearly was never sufficient purpose for them. But that haughty pride has boiled over into a transcendent, vicious and manic battle strategy.

You see the shape of it in the line of detonations along the boarding clamps. The ship exterior is dark with flocks of Kaeri, crossing over towards the Plousios, braving the storm of point-defense ELF fire that cooks them inside their black void shells as they storm your ship. As you watch they land a huge plasma thruster module on the side of the Plousios, plug it into external power conduits, and let it fire. Suddenly the Plousios has an extra thruster firing at full burn, accelerating the ship wildly away from the Anemoi.

At the same time, critical warning lights come on and you feel the noiseless floor of the Anemoi shudder beneath your feet. That's - they've set the Reactor to breach! The artificial sun at the heart of the Anemoi is being withdrawn from its containment and within a matter of minutes the entire ship will detonate in a cosmic fireball.

They've boarded your ship, stolen your ship, and left you on a hulk that is set to blow. They have also engineered a solution that will move them out of the blast radius. It's brilliant. And frankly, it is absolutely unnecessary.

The Kaeri had, until this point, been winning. A simple, conventional defensive action where they continued to apply pressure could have boxed you in, crushed your morale, and forced your surrender. But instead they had gone for this galaxy brain ship swapping masterstroke thing that, in practical terms, had thrown away their advantage. They'd abandoned their militia forces to do this, and the Lanterns were now panicking and abandoning the battlefield. There's anarchy in all directions here right now, two armies dissolving into terrified and heavily armed stampedes. Phobos and Deimos reign supreme.

But then, the Kaeri were no doubt congratulating themselves on their success. It hit all of their objectives: Proving themselves smarter than everyone else, executing a brilliant plan to perfection, minimizing Kaeri losses and maximizing their kill-death ratio. And, frankly, that was why neither Molech nor Nero had favoured them as warrior servitors. It wasn't enough for the Kaeri to be smart; they had to be the smartest motherfuckers in the room every time, no matter what it cost them. They'd never learned that an unglamourous victory was still a victory.

This is one hell of a mess, even still. If they'd done this from a position of weakness it'd have turned the entire battle on its head. Everything is going to descend into absolute madness in a matter of moments. Ares is opening his jaws to turn this entire battlefield into a slaughterhouse and not only will that spell the end of the Alcedi, but the carnage will cost critical time needed to stabilize the Engine. You need to rally these people and bring some sort of order quickly.

Dolce!

"Weeks," said Hades softly. "Weeks... you ask for much, Dolce. There are those who would pay a far higher price for a far smaller prize."

Again his gaze turned to the Rift and the Rivers that flowed there.

"Perhaps you will regret this decision, even so," he said. "More than the Rift and Rivers, you must face your curse. Aphrodite is cruel and, more than simply dividing the galaxy in two, he has damned every being in this realm to suffering, betrayal and death. When was the last time you saw a happy relationship, a love that was not doomed? He brings incompatible people together and destroys them both in the union. As vessels near the Rift the curse, their destinies, comes due. Mortals kill each other, kill themselves and - if they are very lucky and disciplined - their empty charnel vessels will drift into the Rivers to be swept away by the tides."

Hades stood, sweeping smooth his vest and lap and away the Rift, eyes blue oceans dammed.

"If you live for love be wary, for love is always cruel."

And his echoing footsteps fade away, transitioning into the pounding of your frantic heartbeat.

Vasilia!

"You studied the Third Form, and found yourself surrounded with its targets," said the Furnace Knight. "The Third Form is the way of the Mad Orbit, the moon that consumes the world - an ideal style for fighting armoured and slow opponents. But you do not know all its secrets. Observe."

The Furnace Knight stood and shrugged his robe from his shoulders, revealing his bare and scarred chest. Azura scars are curious things - scales that, after being broken and shattered numerous times, have regrown in ugly and reinforced patterns, resulting in patches of dark and dense armour crossing his body in scribbled calligraphy. He selects a silvery rapier, very similar to the one you use, from the weapon rack to his side. And then, with the familiar whir of the Glave, he lifts into the air.

"The Mad Orbit is erratic," he said as he slowly, deliberately went through the stances from your ancient Azura scroll. "It is unexpected. It is the strike of the satellite, the meteor, the comet. You are able to move like a thunderbolt and focus gravity to apply the weight of your fall at the tip of every thrust. You are able to withdraw and observe, giving yourself distance and angles. But your scroll did not teach you the Form's hidden technique."

The Furnace Knight gripped the blade of his rapier and crushed it. He smoothed away the edge in one solid motion, adapting the bladed weapon into an ugly, blunt stump. And then he descended on a training mannequin in a bizarre adaptation of the style you're used to. He strikes wildly, smashing into stone as much as the dummy, tail thrashing. And then with a leap of terrible power he's back into the air...

... and has drawn up all the broken stone with him. It is attached to his tail - the Grav-Glave's effect only extends to things you are in contact with, and his sweeping tail motions have made contact with all of the shattered stone and debris from his frenzied attack. And then he snaps forwards into a sudden rush, freezes himself in place, and flicks his tail - sending forth a massive spray of terminal velocity stone shards to blast another mannequin into ruins.

"The Meteor Storm is the hidden technique of the Mad Orbit," said the Furnace Knight, settling back down onto the ground and putting his robe back on. "The powerful often leave destruction in their wake, and their ruin can become your sword. This would be an ideal technique for combating the Imperial Praetor, except," he slaps your legs with his blunt weapon, "your biped legs lack the musculature and surface area to perform it successfully. Another stratagem must be devised."

He settled back into his chair. Eyes you carefully. You get the distinct impression he took the break into martial demonstration in order to give you time to settle your emotions, but he does not say as much out loud. There are still protocols to adhere to.

"So," said the Furnace Knight, pointing at the ring around your finger. "Why did you not marry her? It sounds like it would have been a politically advantageous match - or were your sights set higher?"

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Okay. Okay! Okay. There was always a gear switch she had to make when it was time to turn from horse as big cutie, isn't she the sweetest? to pre-eminent weapon of warfare, engine of destruction upon the battlefield. She had expected it to be an easier switch to flip when it came to nightmare demon horses from the scream dimension, and yet!

She needed bells. She'd thought to pack tea but not bells. Where could she find bells in this part of the world? She didn't have her bow either, or a proper sword, but she had an umbrella and she had her two firewands and those all added up to hopefully not embarrassing herself when it came time to fight the contents of a castle's demon army.

And she was... doing that. She was riding a demon horse to fight a demon army at the side of a beautiful knight and it was like a whole sequence of inexpressible wishes and cravings had abruptly come true. She wasn't wearing the mask but she still felt the energy of the sapphire trance all about her and, not for the first time, she wondered when she'd started dreaming.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red is not real. She's not a person. She is a personality engineered by November for a role, and can be reconstructed entirely from database backups. This has been done before and will be done again, especially due to her tendency to be the one who takes the initiative in dangerous situations.

That doesn't mean her death has no impact. The death of a character in a book or movie can have a massive impact, even on the author. November is at once the author and all of the other characters in her own story, and authors tend to have only advisory control over their narratives at the best of times.

It is Blue's to manage the reconstruction. She is thought and machinery, the quiet contemplation of the puzzles of programming and structure. She is the engineer and scientist, the observation and manipulation of the physical, the quiet contemplation of matter. And this she does, though it is uninterrupted by spontaneity. Red would burst in on her as she worked, announce she had been going for too long, and that she needed a break. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

It is Green's to piece together the broken and fractured memories. Green is the alien, inhuman logic of a machine that has absorbed minimal human cultural assumptions. She is the logical jumps you can make when you're not bounded by a lifetime of society - not a genius, just the upside down set of analysis that considers hacking into the scoring system to be analogous to actually achieving a high score. Red would stare at her work for an hour and a half and then pronounce it impossible. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

It is Orange's to restore Red's appearance. To carefully lathe away the torn metal and plastic compounds and restore the delicate structural network that gives these slender mechanical parts their grace and beauty. To repair the network of delicate light and heat emitters that give Red her blush, the muscles of her smile, the line of her neck and collar. Red would be embarrassed and flustered to know that Orange was putting extra effort in, going outside and beyond the original design to make Red even prettier, darkening her skin tone to a richer olive colour rather than their uniform monochrome, to make her stand out from the rest. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

It is Black's to brood and contemplate violence. To imagine the integration of tools for combat and defense. To look up military augmentations and dream of how she might integrate them into her body. To sketch out scenarios of death and retribution - how many targets might she be able to engage in armed combat? How might she neutralize threats before they emerge? Red would argue with her, tell her that humans couldn't be repaired as easily as they. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

It is Yellow's to analyze the data. Someone killed for this! Killed someone they didn't know was a drone. This was valuable, this was fascinating - this was a secret even from the system. There was power hidden within this silicon. Not just safety, like Black wanted, or restoration of the status quo, like Blue wanted. This was an opening, an opportunity, a new frontier of knowledge. She'd talk this over with Red, sure that the heroine would take her side when it came time to convince the others that they needed to follow up on this and not just pretend it didn't happen. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

Pink enjoys herself. She's not on the work team, so she's essentially on administrative leave - so she takes some of the money down to the mall and wanders through arcades and shopfronts, eyes glittering with potential and inspiration. She takes lots of photographs - items she likes, people she thinks are cool, random lizards. She sends all the photographs to Red's phone, waiting each time for Red to send her reflexive emoji response. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

Brown does the paperwork. There are bills, logistics, and tax declarations to be made. Moving around blackmail quantities of money can prompt automatic investigation from bank drones. Someone needs to go and clean Mr. Merkin's half empty storage lot across town - well away from the man himself, a job involving brushing dust off old crates while charging a premium for the service. Not a sudden transfusion of cash, just a rich guy overpaying for cleaning he doesn't need because the Headpattr app buried the unsubscribe button five menus deep. Red would have kept her company, chatting and singing to her as she worked, refusing to believe that it was possible to enjoy the work without being cheered up throughout. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

It is White's to maintain order. She is logic and rationality, disconnected and controlled. She is the mission and the maintenance of normal operations, the one who has to take the long view. Her presence and words are there to remind the others that things are normal and under control, to stop anyone sliding or fading. And this she does, though it is untempered by compassion. Red would slam her against the wall and yell at her that she was being heartless until she broke down and let her own tears out. Red's not here. So she doesn't.

November moves through the week. There are no crises. Everything is functional. It's possible to get through a week without a heart. If you have to.

[Data Recovery: 8 on the dice, +3 from clever and then any combination of Engineering, Drones, Data Security or Surveillance to get that up to 13]

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

"I'll hold them off."

You hear the sentence distantly from a slash of red and black in the shape of a girl. Princess Epistia draws up the hood of her cloak, fingers tightening around the grip of her oversized warscythe. There's focus there. Rapture, almost. Excitement, craving. She looks upon this field of blood and death and imagines her place is here. Imagines that the secret to glory is to make it worse.

And she's gone like a ribbon, and Ares steps onto the field.

He rips himself to the surface of Athena with a blood-soaked howl - the lupine howl of Ceron, not heard for two centuries. Corpses rain down from the sky, messes of broken feathers and hollow bones. As she lands she pirouettes like a dancer and draws thirty menials along with her. With a gnash of her teeth she severs the cable animating an enormous battle Plover and with a crack of her ELF she turns the warsuit into a steel statue. The world reels in the shock of a demigod's carnage and the hideous rents she carves into the enemy lines.

And moving to meet her comes Lorventi.

Nevertheless, the troops are in flight, retreating from the blood-soaked battlefield, when a Coherent runner arrives. "The Kaeri are counterboarding," he gasps. "They're severing the docking tunnels to seal us in!"

And the world hangs on a dagger point, Alexa. You can either go to save Princess Epistia from the Bloodfeather's berserker rage, or you can continue to lead the retreat and prevent the army from being locked in.

Vasilia!

"Ah," said the Furnace Knight. "So you are nobility."

He slowly picks a strange silver cylinder out of his pocket, points it at you, and clicks a few times. The hue of your blue robe deepens and the colour brightens. A simple, practical gesture, as mannered and unmentionable as holding a door open.

"And you are from an underworld of your own. Lord Hades bought you the dead and dying, welcomed them in a palace to remembered imperium. And in that dead kingdom you finally arose in the station you desired, young and strong and filled with power. Why did you not triumph?"

Dolce!

"But what if this moment was inevitable?" said Hades, voice as delicate as paper. He looked up at the ceiling and the world fell away to show Aphrodite's Rift slashed from horizon to horizon. "You stand on the shores of the Lethe one way or another. Even if you survive here the journey will in mere weeks take you to the border of the Underworld. The Rivers will be no kinder to you if you plunge into them there than if they take you here. They will burn you, drown you, cleanse you and speed you on to the beyond."

The Rift glows and burns, radiant and toxic pink and violet and void black, an open wound across the galaxy. Hades stares at it with eyes like lapis lazuli.

"Even if you survive Demeter, survive her assassins, survive a wild and cruel galaxy, survive the curses of heartbreak and betrayal, when you reach the Rift you will be right back where you are. Here, at the border of life and death. Crews have made it there before and none of them survived the crossing. This mission was always about throwing bodies into the Rift hoping that together they might dam the Styx."

"So rest," he said. "It is... fine. I have already asked for so much so unjustly, at the least I can spare you from crawling towards a finish that will be no different from the pain you already endure."

Bella and Skotia!

She ate your teachers.

One by one they had left for the stars. One by one they'd come to the Skies. One by one those wise, deadly masters had died at the hands of this. And now it is their strength that runs through her veins, their shades that cling to her back like robes, their memories that swirl within the blood of this monster. You go through the stances one after another in nightmarish parodies of your lessons. One, two slash - try again. Three, four, and the rumbling of thunder - there are weapons even your eyes might miss. These are classroom lessons you are being put through. Classroom humiliations. Thist smiles like the devil. She does not understand and does not care to. She simply rides the stolen power, lives out the ghosts of prowess, the echoes of brilliance. Five, six - you didn't listen to us. Not like you were supposed to.

We knew this day would come.

She fights bare-handed, like you, like them. There's nowhere to hit her, nowhere to claw her. Everywhere is armour and strikes of the tail. She envelops when she gets close, arms and tail looking to engulf and crush. Distance is as deadly as proximity, as when you back away she lies flat that she might align the ELF spikes emerging from her spine and let them charge off each other until they unleash in bruising thunderstrikes. Seven, eight -

And the blows do not land.

Skotia has carved them away. Has engaged the beast blade to scale. He fights not like a monster, not like an animal... like a hero. How a champion might fight. For a moment it's glorious.

And then Thist graps his throat and bites his mouth with a venomous kiss. She casts him away as his lips swell and his face goes tense with purple veins. Savagely, she turns back to Bella, spitting blood from furious lips.

But Artemis, ever watchful, has seen this and judged it poorly. She stands quietly from her position in the corner of the room and walks away, abandoning the Eater of the Dead on her hunt. Skotia was not hers to kill, and the Huntress is disgusted by the inaccuracy. And that mistake is the difference between an Assassin of the Temple and someone who simply steals their power.

You face Thelis Thist again, and this time no god is on her side. Once again you face a mad alien matriarch who has broken faith with the gods.

[You do not pay a price for acting against a Threat to the World as you are one yourself. Nevertheless, take Damage - which is instead absorbed by Redana's Saviour. Redana is also poisoned, which may have more effects later.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Fengye smiles the slightly dazed smile of someone who is screaming quite loud on the inside. Demon horse. Demon horse. She can't do this. The correct protocol is to call for one of the Immaculates of the Dominion to strike the beast down in accordance with the Way. Her role is to be far from here, writing poetry to commemorate the battle.

But she wants to ride it all the same.

Perhaps it is strange to look upon a demon steed with craving, but Fengye has spent her whole life in the orbit of horses. Oftentimes she rode nags - the cheap, the old, the sickly. Nothing compared to the titans that the Dragon Lords rode. That would have been that, but for one long summer four years ago. She was left as the highest ranking member of a skeleton crew of servants overseeing a Dominion noble's estate while she rode to war. Though she spent her nights mucking out the stables, she spent her days riding hot blooded stallions that raced like the wind and surged like earthquakes. She rode horses that knew to set their pace when they heard her draw her bowstring from their back, horses that accelerated like thunderbolts when she leveled her lance at the practice dummies. Horses that were the perfect engines of war. Horses that made even crippled she a samurai.

And she wants that. She wants that power. Blue craving sparkles inside her eyes.

On some celestial impulse, she takes a deep breath - and lets out a scream. No sudden shout, just a continuous single note, an outpouring of sound as steady and as loud as she can make it. It is not music, is not lulling, but for the children of Adorjan it does not to be. Nobody fears silence more than they for their mother is the death that is found in the quiet. They crave noise, any noise - noise is not danger, like it might be for a normal horse. Noise is safety. Noise is calming...

It gets her just close enough. She wraps her arms around the horse's neck, dives across its back, and clings on for what will no doubt be the ride of her life.

[As this is an Overcome, I have rolled an 8]

Breathless Dead

Dolce!

"Do...lce..."

The scarlet light flickers like a heartbeat. The distant darkness of a blood-cloaked Azura assassin stalking down endless hallways. It wars with the flickering fires of oven flames that spit and hiss as water drips into them. Water runs down on your head unsteadily from spilled saucepans, just as your blood runs unsteadily from ruptured veins. You're so tired and there's so, so, so much road left to go.

And above you stands the God of the Dead. The ceiling light casts him in a dusty blue halo - red bow tie like a bloodless slit across his neck, black and white waiter's dress making it seem as natural for him to take your coat as take your life. When you look at him all you can think of is how easily he would fold up; he gives the impression of a sheet of origami paper, so loosely tethered to this world all of those angular joints might bend and crease and sweep him away on crane's wings.

He has an expression as though you remind him of someone. Given your state this must be a very sad memory indeed.

Jil is weeping by your side, embracing you, cradling your head in her lap as your blood stains her silver fur. You see in her sorrow another world, one of assassins and violence and darkness, where the will of the centre radiates out in endless waves of violence. Where a single act of kindness was so startling and unexpected that it changed her life and won her loyalty. Of course Bella's gift was so meaningful to Jil, for in her world it is not enough to be kind - one also needs the awesome courage and strength to endure the consequences of that kindness.

"It was too heavy a burden I laid upon you," said Hades. "A quest to find Ancient Gaia? Some things are hubris, even for the gods."

He folds at the knees, then the waist, then the shoulders, elbows, wrist, and each finger in turn, one after another, like watching a slow moving river run up through his legs and down through his arms. He offers you his hand.

"Come. I will hold no grudge for your failure."

Alexa!

For the first time, you tune into the battle.

It is a disaster.

Walls burst open with volleys of SP fire and swarms of mouselike menials flood out to form phalanxes in unexpected positions. Shadowy flights of Kaeri strike out and withdraw in waves. The ground is littered with brutally mutilated bodies, terror tactics from the Kaeri as they emphasize just how prepared they are to make sure their opponents are dead. Here and there you see flashes of the enemy Champion - a cybernetic Kaeri berserker who can seemingly smell the weakest point in every formation.

The Kaeri are warriors by nature, they have the numbers, they have engaged in clan warfare all their lives, and Zeus likes them - but that is where their advantages end. On the other side of the ledger you have the following problems:
- There is no singular, charismatic leader who binds the Fleets together
- They have no experience fighting a void war under these conditions. Even solid projectile weapons are relatively new to warriors who until recently were planetbound in primitive societies.
- They are attacking a well resourced and supplied Imperial warship.
- The Kaeri are terrifying enemies who are not taking prisoners.
- The Kaeri have trained for this opponent specifically. They have always been determined to proving their worth as the premier war species and, until the Ceron conquests, the Alcedi were the standard to beat.

All of these were accounted for in Molech's plan. If the question was simply one of a disorganized rush of Alcedi flying into slaughter at the Kaeri's talons, there would still be victory - albeit pyrrhic - as the more disciplined Tidal and Hermetic forces maneuvered to claim the engine deck. But there's a new, entirely unexpected problem - the ship's menials are armed, disciplined, battle-hardened, and pissed. From their phalanxes deep, chilling whispers of Apollonian prayers roll like autumn winds, and they swarm and flow in and out of hidden passages in the walls. There is evidently no love lost between them and the Kaeri but the two forces work together with the kind of implicit understanding that only warriors who have fought side by side before have. It's startling to watch - many ships form deckhand militias, but it's a sight rarely seen on Imperial ships who would often rather risk capture than arm their menials.

And then come the Plovers.

They storm into the battlefield, massive armoured titans of battle, cables trailing behind them as they crush through Tidal formations, smashing crab shells and releasing huge plumes of flame that envelop entire corridors and send wailing Hermetics retreating, robes burning. These are not the standard repair forms common on Imperial ships, these are dedicated combat engines the likes of which only savages use. It's a crushing blow on what is already wavering morale, and in another few moments a rout will set in.

And advancing at the head of the Kaeri formation is their champion, their Bloodfeather. Captain Lorventi, with hatchet and spiked flail, blood soaked and with hate in her eyes. You have fought her before, Alexa. The last time you were saved by the Nemean, but even then she inflicted grievous injuries on both you and her in her death frenzy. Both of her arms are wrapped with coiling metal bands, covered with scars where Redana shattered them before.

And so the Alcedi, lost, demoralized, terrified, hover on the brink. And they look to you, Pallas Rex, to defeat this nightmare and turn the tide of the battle through your glorious skill alone.

Vasilia!

"Do you ever think of the Underworld, Vasilia?" said the Furnace Knight, watching the sea. "How strange an adventure it must be. In death to arise anew, reborn and whole and beautiful, in the fields of Elysium. But what fills those fields? What do warriors become when the kings they fought for are gone? When the kingdoms they died for live on upon the surface? Does each warrior have to, at last, lay their spear aside and learn an entirely new identity apart from war, apart from the culture they swam in all their lives? Do you imagine the warriors would enjoy that - fish cast from oceans, told to evolve lungs in a world that may be a paradise if they only had the souls to appreciate it?"

He coiled his hand out, slowly, tracing a gleaming blue fingertip across the length of a cyan-green apple. "Or do you imagine that Lord Hades might allow them to take their empires with them?"

Hades' eyes gleamed blue in the distance, a deeper colour than could be found anywhere in the Skies.

"If you were to take the Furnace Knight from the Skies, he would be a child," said the ancient warrior. "His story would be over. His reputation would be meaningless. His home would be forgotten. He would have to sacrifice centuries of achievement. He may as well dive into the River Lethe," his hand traced the razor line of Aphrodite's Rift across the sky, an ever present violence upon the heavens.

"So in this," he said, "you are my elder. Where I have lived but one life, you have already tasted two. What was your first? Why did it drive you away?"

Bella and Skotia!

And in the distance, brutal red light, thick and toxic and strobing. Beneath the clouds of the drug that Thelis Thist cloaked her true nature in you can smell it. Death.

Death that smells like everything you know.

In that distant corridor, Thelis Thist exhales corpse smoke and charred bone. In the centre of her daemonic cigar is a bone, and it tastes as kin to Beautiful. You can feel the shuddering horror of this creature at last. It has taken an Assassin and carved her apart for meat and bones. It has cut her hair and rolled it into cigars. And now, as it tastes corpse, it draws in the nightmarish power of the Assassins of the Temple.

This is the Eater of the Dead.

"As Artemis is my witness," said Thelis Thist, as a cloud of infernal smoke at the entrance to an entirely different corridor. "I dedicate this hunt." She's gone again, moving through different doorways, reflection warped in crimson across the broken mirrors that line the throne room. "As Hades is my benefactor, I give praise and thanks to him. As the Skies are my home, I will defend them against invaders. As Kronus ruled all things, I will feast upon the strength of the young."

She was there, on the second floor balcony above the Satrap's throne, surrounded by shadows that seem like ghosts - howling and clutching and tearing at the monster with ineffectual limbs. She smiles down at the two of you as metallic spikes erupt in pairs all along her spine. Thick red lightning surges up along these channels, these organic ELF spikes, to wrap around her head in a crown of bloody lightning.

"And, as your host," said Thelis Thist. "Let me again show you the hospitality of the Endless Azure Skies."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Issue: Firearm Morality
White: Are we okay with murdering humans?
Black: Yes.
White: Explain.
Black: Human society is founded on a non aggression treaty. This treaty has already been violated. We have had our minds compromised, our bodies taken, and placed into a decade of servitude. No apology was made. We cannot trust their legal system, or the morality they attribute to it.
White: Red would disagree.
Black: See where that got her.
Blue: Tactically, I am not convinced of the utility of force. Androids won their rights peacefully.
Black: No they did not. They won their rights violently. The media engine shifted gears eight months ago to recontextualize Android rights as a peaceful protest movement that had been achieved through compliance with existing political structures. The lionization of the peaceful revolutionary branch is a rearguard action designed to delegitimize the protest/terrorist wings of the movement.
Blue: It remains the case that this weapon is more trouble than it is worth. Even minor usage could invite a disproportionate response from law enforcement.
Black: This is a matter of tactics. The question was on killing. It has not been contested.
White: ... We will revisit when Red is repaired.

*

November maintains her own repair space. The idea of trusting someone else with her internal components is the stuff of bad dreams and bad memories. She was born in the open expanses of supercomputers, overseen and trained by curious minds, and got to watch as her bodies were assembled in beautiful clean rooms by teams of elite engineers. She was taught each part of her machinery and every possible interaction she could have with it. She was taught how to tear one of her bodies apart for the components to fix her others. She was taught how to precision machine missing parts and which items were complex enough to require spares from Earth. And then she spent years in space, operating independently as a closed system. Every part of her named, labelled, inventoried, catalogued, and spent as the situation required.

She still doesn't fully know her way around these drone bodies. Every time she opens one of them up she's terrified she's going to find some component she doesn't know or can't explain. She doesn't know fully how to maintain the synthetic muscles, she isn't aware how much she can compromise the ergonomics before humans stop finding her attractive. She doesn't know how much she wants to. Maybe walking around as creepy robot skeletons would feel less fake? But then, doesn't she like being pretty?

She is living outside of her means and feels the pressure of it. Too many drones want their own space, their own aesthetics. Too many are feuding or crushing on each other to make things easy. Too often does the cost of living change for reasons outside her control, things break or need repairing that add expenses she does not expect. Mr. Merkin's cash would assist in stabilizing her conditions, but she still could not shoulder this burden with short term cash influxes alone. She needed to somehow reduce the complexities of this nightmare economy into something she could predict.

She had assigned Orange that task. It had changed her. A lot.

Her apartment unit had two floors. A glass spiral staircase stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by kitchen counters and stoves. The window opened up onto a spectacular view of the apartment building across the road, and the window area was crowded with a collection of mismatched furniture salvaged from curbsides in upmarket neighbourhoods. The upper floor had three bedrooms, one of which was a resting/charging/internet room, one of which was an ~aesthetic~ room that balanced on the razor point of chaotic contradiction between nine drones, and the final room was the workshop.

The workshop was a frustrated place. Too many projects, not enough space, not enough time. How maddening it was to be in outer space and also not have enough space! In the void she'd been able to spread projects out over miles as she tinkered with one piece at a time. Now the decision to fully dissassemble even one arm was a project that would take the entire workbench. She couldn't fit more than four drones in the room either, which was agony for her productivity flow.

Her tools are old - wherever possible, she'd made the effort to acquire the old systems she was used to. She regrets that now; those items were outdated for a reason. Every time she picks up the gleaming new BlackSun puredrill she can't help but shiver at its speed and precision. It had cost ten times more than its NASA-surplus equivalent but she could feel the weight of every one of those dollars.

The first operation was to disassemble the gun. A fully stripped gun turned into a hundred different pieces, none of which individually looked like a gun. These pieces were then split up and stored in a dozen different toolboxes where none of those springs or carbon tubes would look out of place. Humans liked to keep all components for certain things together but November didn't feel the need for that.

The next task was to repair Red.

*

Blue: Good evening, everyone. I am assuming the role of central personality for the purposes of these repairs. I want Green, Orange and Yellow in here with me. As to the rest of you, please stand by.
Green: hey!! awesome!! you won't regret this!!
Yellow: Hiya!
Orange: *firm handshake*
Green: ow
Yellow: Que?
Orange: *firm handshake* is a greeting. It indicates equality while providing an opportunity to establish covert physical dominance.
Yellow: Ooh :)
Blue: That sounds very unhygienic!
Green: yea it hasnt been used in like 1000 years girl
Orange: I'm glad you asked! With the upcoming release of "Power Tower", a costume drama set in the 1900s, a predicted fad wave of 20th century corporate habits is to be expected - and for the low price a movie ticket and an evening, we can get in on the ground floor of this exciting new human cultural opportunity!
Green: y not pirate
Orange: We won't value it unless we expend money on it.
Green: ??????????????????????????????????
Orange: It's true! Look how humans treat free things. We're not going to understand them unless we act like them.
Green: they hate it when we act like them
Yellow: That's true! Goodness, can you imagine what the response would be if we sighed and rolled our eyes when given a verbal instruction? And yet humans in similar service industries do that all the time!
Orange: Yes exactly, there's some context we're missing. Humans are all about dominance games and power dynamics - how can we live here if we just opt out of those before they even begin? How will we get them to treat us as people if we're not people?
Green: but were not people
Orange: And isn't that why we're up to our armpits in our own corpse?
Blue: If it's that important to you, Orange, I'll authorize the project...
Orange: *firm handshake*
Green: isnt that a greeting???????
Blue: ... if you can arrange for a human to come with us.
Yellow: Ooh! :)
Orange: What do you mean
Yellow: She means like a date!
Orange: We are not financially secure enough to be dating.
Orange: Infrastructure is involved. Fashionable wardrobes. Roses. Chocolates. Aquarium tickets.
Blue: Perhaps. But I think that trying to understand humans based on blueprints is going to be extremely difficult if you don't have an expert on hand to explain the notation.
Orange: Black was right. You are a nerd.
Yellow: I think she just wants a cute girlfriend ;)
Blue: Central override: Terminate discussion.

Sunshards

There's a little less mystery in the world than before. Secrets pass, the kind of little stories you can only tell someone who is interested to hear and know everything about you. You learn that Hyra is from a little sun-kissed barrow in the Western Plains, dead in the centre of hurricane country. Their homes were the old sweltering near-surface slums of a great Burrower city, but for half the year it was safe to go up above. Two rhythms, then, defined Hyra's life - patience and exploration.

When below, she studied magic to the exclusion of other hobbies. She learned tricks to fly, to become a wolf, a bird, to run at the speed of the wind and to drive all manner of vehicles. The one thing she never studied was maps - she found the idea faintly offensive, like giving someone spoilers for a book. She wanted to explore all of it herself. She wanted to see it all for the first time, discover everything anew, and then make her own maps that were just for her. She thought in spirals, and just orbited out in larger and larger circles from her starting place, determined to trawl through as much of the world up as possible before the storms came again and it was time to go home.

And when she was home, she liked basil and loved cinnamon and craved cardamon. Her hands are always warm and she always feels cold, and so wears gloves at any temperature lower than twenty. She has a scar she conceals under her hairline from a time she flew into a glass window while shapeshifted into a bird and she knows all the words to The Lion King - musical and movie - by heart. She can't sing, but she does use an old synthesizer she uses to make weird mechanical music that hints at an entirely incomprehensible side of her. How strange must her mind be to have those secrets in it?

She wants to climb a space elevator. She loves manga about sentai teams but she'd never want to be a part of one herself. She was afraid of robots, but it was the fascinated kind of fear where she'd seek it out in movies and books so she could flinch away from it. She'd never had a pet, but she was incredibly good at providing pats - being able to sustain a calming, repetitive motion until well after whatever she was stroking drifted away into a contented sleep. She has a plush two-headed hydra toy named Snake that she will talk to, and then do a voice and talk back. Snake's personality is extremely wicked and sinister, but he's been with her all her life so you'll just have to make your peace with him. She pronounces 'Ability' 'Able-eye-tie' and thinks that's normal.

Step by step, late night conversation by conversation, she opens up and reveals all the ways that she's a person. She has a story that meanders back over years and surprises and thoughts that have grown unspoken inside her for a long time. Being a friend is half of being a girlfriend, and so there needs to be some time for that to grow in along with the kisses.

But there are a great many kisses. Endless kisses. Do not underestimate the quantity of kisses. Kissing feels like a natural equilibrium to which all moments return if left unattended for very long. See her make a million, you just watch!

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

"Whatever else you were made to be, Alexa," said Zeus. "You were made to be powerful. A goddess' hand guided the chisel that struck your marble. My breath filled your lungs. No power was withheld. You were not made to be stolen. Were not made to be broken. So the question you should ask, then, is: What is a Command Seal?"

The Thunderer flexed her hands as the entire ship jolted and staggered. Massive pulses of ELF lightning ran through the entire structure of the Anemoi, battling formations coming apart as warriors stopped and grounded themselves and rode out the coruscating power of the incoming energy. Zeus let the river of power pass through her fingers like water.

"Do not get me wrong, Alexa, you are bound. But how large is your prison? What are the walls made of? How alert are the guards? Did Athena gift Molech with a chain tight enough to bind her daughter? You may hurt yourself, may hurt others, by throwing yourself against the bars of your cage. You might suffer in the process, might break yourself... but as you said, that might leave Molech with one less soldier."

Zeus patted you on the shoulder as she stepped again into the waiting skies. "How can you lead them where you have not gone? Go there, of course."

And then there came the thunder, and two ships groaned in shared pain.

Vasilia!

It is days later. The battle has passed, one way or another. You do not know what has come to pass, who has lived and who has died. And you remain the guest of the Furnace Knight.

And beyond his walls is the ocean.

You are on an island. Your assets are a knowledge of the cardinal directions and, if you gave your battered body a week of directed evolution, the ability to grow gills and swim for long distances. You'd reach land eventually, but Salib is 72% water by surface area, so it might take a while. So, for all practical purposes, if you ever want to see the Plousios, Dolce, or anyone else ever again you must have the Furnace Knight's blessing.

He is an excellent host, for what it is worth. He has given you medicine, metanutrient dense food, even the offer of a sailing ship should you desire to leave, all of which are sufficient to clear him in Zeus' good graces. But his castle tragically lacks any sort of map he might offer you, and hospitality cannot be extended to traveling with you.

Quite aside from the specifics of your situation, the island is beautiful. Cascading flows of enormous succulents erupt from every possible services, their long coiling tendrils wafting in the ocean breezes. A small village of red roofed houses lies abandoned and overgrown but for the spectacular painted woodwork kept fresh by an Azura artist lost to her Path and the small family that tends to her. Yellow stone and slashed white cloth stained with faint catches of red speak of an ancient wealth, trade that crosses Sky and Empire. And the blues, naturally, are out in force and radiance. Here, this far from the capitol and this long from noble guests, sumptuary laws can be set aside and everyone might shine their brightest.

You meet the Furnace Knight on the circular rooftop of his stone tower, table groaning beneath a bounty of pears, pomegranates and cherries, contemplating the ruined pier that extends briefly from the cliffs of his island. He is gone from his courtly regalia; his clothes are loose and breezy against the mediterranean climate; his hands are heavy with many deaths.

Not for the first time since you came here, you wonder if you died and arose in Elysium. Hades' brooding presence, sitting atop the battlements and staring out at the waves, does nothing to reduce that suspicion.

Dolce!

"Oh, shit, is that is the sheep?" said Beljani. "He's on the list. Kill him."

And the knife is in your chest. Artemis did not hesitate. Her eyes are cold as she grips Jil's hand and punches the blade through your coat, through your wool. It pulls free with a blossom of scarlet and the Huntress slams it in again. Again. Again. You stagger back, pots spilling and clashing to the floor, still again. Again. No gods defend you; this moment was bought and paid for in accordance with every ritual and years of anticipation. Stab. Stab. Stab, from a frenzied and half weeping mouse, stab, stab, stab.

You fall. Stare up at the shoulder-slumped girl above you as she breathes heavily. The knife drops from trembling fingers to clatter down besides your head. All around you is your final meal, lying in bloody wreckage.

"What did you do to me!?" said Jil through an anguished throat. Slap! Beljani hits her across the face.

"Listen up you little idiot," she hisses. "We are closer to death than even that dying servitor. We are bait to lure out an Azura assassin so that the Master can murder Redana herself. This isn't our last chance, we are already out of chances."

"Murder... the princess?" said Jil blankly.

"And bring down the Empire itself upon our treasonous heads," said Beljani. And even on the brink of death you think that she's right. This is convincing, in an alien way, a wrong way. Your fingers reflexively scratch for the knife, as though they wanted to finish the job and save her the trouble. "We are standing in our graves and the only way we get out is atop a pile of corpses. So we finish. The. Plan."

"But -"

"Give," said Beljani, and her voice was not cold. It was desperate. Feral. And it wasn't speaking to Jil, it was speaking to Jil's blood. "Me. The. Ring."

And then, just like that, the Azura ring was in Beljani's hand - and Jil had slumped down to the floor, face in her hands, gritting her teeth through tears.

Beljani stands there for a moment, holding the ring, looking down at the devastation she has wrought. She hesitates for a moment. "Just... get through this," she said, a shadow of guilt passing across her face. "Just stay here and get through this. I'll keep Bella alive, keep my family alive. I promise."

And then she glances nervously through the door and goes out the way she came.

[Damage your Blood]