Thanqol

Breathless Dead

For Salakhan, the Master of Assassins, it has been a long day.

Some part of her knows that she should be proud of her children; they had exceeded her expectations in every possible way. The problem was that she had expected them to die - she'd been counting on it. She had seen assassins four times their age and ten times their skill go to choke the maw of Thelis Thist. She'd run out of political rivals in the Temple, she'd run out of elite veterans, she'd even run out of promising up and comers trying to put that snake in the dirt. Her organization had hollowed out from the attrition of years of trying to stop Hades' messengers and so she'd been reduced to these children - barely more than distractions while she went and did the real work herself.

And now? Now Thist was dead at the hands of XIII. The Ikarani had outsmarted her Rampant self and now lay in Lethe dreams rather than burning before the sun. The Oratus had remained sane and connected to her body despite the temptation to draw everyone into her hivemind. And the Toxicrene, that silly little body double the Princess called Mynx?

She winced and touched the edges of her bloody wound. The Toxicrene had even fooled her. How had that been? She should have seen the signs, should have seen the difference between that perfect Princess and the failure Redana who was before her now, but somehow the disguise had been more complete than her own memories. Like she'd somehow hidden the reality of the Princess. Her approach had been a disaster and the Toxicrene's counterattack had been merciless. To be expected. She made those girls too loyal. Now she was an enemy for life. No recovering that one.

Where had she gone wrong?

Her gaze fell on Aphrodite, standing with his tarnished silver cup raised in toast to her. Her eyes narrowed. Ah, she thought - there's the culprit.

Normally she could assume that, this close to the Rift, her targets had lost all cohesion and could be picked off individually. But... looking at it now, that wasn't true at all. All of her plans had failed because people were unexpectedly standing up for each other. The Toxicrene for the Princess, the mouse for XIII, XIII for the Ikarani... this wasn't a mad crew on the brink of treachery and murder. This was a network of relationships that hadn't yet cracked under the strain. And worse, it had drawn in her own assassins.

"You can't let them survive," said Demeter, everpresent. She was the wheat and the willow and the barley, she was the sweat and the sickle, she was butterfly and dragonfly both. "She's right there. Just do it. Do it!"

But Sagakhan didn't move. She was in the middle of a net and to move in any direction would tighten this fragile web of relationships around her throat. There was no faster way to death for a student of Artemis than starting a hunt you weren't prepared for.

XIII. All of this traced back to XIII. She was the bridge between her assassins and her targets. She was the centre of all of this strange loyalty. Something was wrong with her prize student. Against all reason, against the curse of Aphrodite, people loved her. Perhaps... perhaps she wasn't on her side at all.

She relaxed. No matter how bright the flower, one snip would send it falling.

And so the Master of Assassins produced the Golden Heart of Hermes from her breast pocket, held it aloft, and squeezed it.

She had recovered the Heart from the Yakanov. The Engine of Regret that had formed the central weapon for the Station, the weapon the Hermetics had used to drown those on the planet in crushing visions of the painful past. They had understood the Heart's power better than she; they had known how to use it to disable cities and armies. Sagakhan with the strength of her grip alone was merely capable of bringing down everyone on this rooftop.

But bring them down she did.

The crushing wave of divine agony that rippled out from the golden Heart was all that was needed. No matter what pain these people thought they were used to was nothing next to the concentrated agony of a god.

*

Who broke the Heart of Hermes?

As crimes go, this is one of the cosmos' greatest and it does not lack for investigators. But you, Redana, Dolce, Bella, Jil, Beautiful, Beljani, all get the front row seat. The Order of Hermes had manipulated this godly artifact with care and skill and had teased out a lifetime of subtle and great regrets with which to crush their foes. The Master of Assassins in her brutality strikes with only the greatest of them.

You see the Spear of Civilization. Molech's ultimate weapon, the triumph of war, the great exporter of entropy. The resources of Empire went into building this, a hundred mighty Engines chained together to concentrate the force of a terrible supermassive black hole. You see it surrounded by the Warriors of Ceron, their mighty and terrible fleet, red with the banners of Nero. They cut through Molech's forces. They board the Spear.

They are too late.

The lance of ultimate blackness erupts out, and it does not strike the Ceron fleet. Instead it flies into the void, dashing from world to world, star to star. Supernovas glitter in their dozens, their hundreds, as the Spear of Civilization brings about the end of worlds and empires. As you watch the galaxy collapses into the underworld, the great Rift spreading across the stars from horizon to horizon.

Redana, Bella, Dolce, take Damage, stagger, reel, lament, and weep. You shed tears not for yourself or your petty pains, now you cry out for a god who loved mortals and the things they made, a god of haste who was not swift enough to save the galaxy from destruction. You cry out for Hermes. You cry out for Nero.

*

Alexa!

"Do you see now?" said Aphrodite kindly, pinstriped suit unaffected by deep red engine light. "This was all I wanted, Alexa. All I ever wanted. All you ever needed to do to win my favour was defy your father, destroy your body, and endure unbelievable suffering in My name. All I ever wanted was everything." He ruffles your hair in a grandfatherly way. "Attagirl."

He stood up, flicked a cigarette out of his pocket, and lit it on the burning Engine core. "It's a shame I had to destroy the galaxy to make this point, but don't think too harshly of me. If I didn't do it then it would have meant that you lived in a galaxy where love couldn't save the universe. And what kind of galaxy would that have been?"

He whistles as he walks away. He didn't do anything to help. He didn't do anything for the pain. He didn't do anything to restore your shattered body.

But...

You do feel happiness. The fierce, prideful happiness of having saved the people you loved. That all of this was worthwhile. That you won.

It's the first time you've ever had that feeling, and it will carry you all the way down into sleep.

Vasilia!

"I have heard that Lord Hades promises wishes to those who carry out his doomed voyage," said the Furnace Knight quietly in the darkening of Hades' departure. "And having heard your tale, I have one final question I cannot help but ask. What is the wish that would make you face that fate? You could step from the road now, become my squire, learn the Rail and live a peaceful life here. After all the suffering your ideals have caused you, what could possibly compel you to face a death as terrible and as certain as the God of the Dead has described?"

There's a quiet intensity in the Furnace Knight's voice and eyes. He needs to know if there is, indeed, a path through the God's despair. He needs to know if there is hope, despite everything.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

"Oh," said Orange, picking out her cell phone. "Well that's easy -"

Immediately she was tackled and bought down to the phone. "NO!" said Green.

"What?!" said Orange, shocked.

"We have the opportunity to break into his house! We are NOT just calling him!"

Orange's face rapidly fell into a haughty snarl. "You cannot be serious."

"We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to re-enact a broken doll horror movie upon a hubristic scientist under perfect conditions! The whole arc of human civilization has lead up to us doing this!"

"Oh, actually, hell yeah," said Black.

"That's a fantastic idea," said Red, whose opinion on the matter was telegraphed by the fact that she was still wearing the fake vampire fangs.

"Why are we like this!?" cried Orange. "Why can we not simply behave like normal people?"

Her protests were in vain. Already Blue was pulling up the floorplan for Singh's house - readily available on the real estate listing - and discussion circles were forming to work through the specifics of the plan.

*

Issue: The Lure
Black: The first complication is how do we control Singh's movements? Once he arrives home we'll need to guide him into the heart of the Spook Zone for maximum effect.
Yellow: In horror movies, protagonists are usually suicidally curious. They'll hear the sound of children laughing or creepy music boxes and go and investigate by themselves. However Singh is smarter than that and we have to deal with the possibility that he alerts the authorities at the first sign of a break in rather than going in to investigate by himself.
Pink: Aw man, but the creepy music box is such a good way to build suspense.
Yellow: It's nonviable, we may as well leave bloody footprints or a trail of rose petals behind - no reasonable human being will go to investigate those no matter how cool the aesthetic.
Brown: Run a bath!
Yellow: Oh?
Brown: Okay, so, the bathroom is centrally located in the house and on the second floor. What we can do is have one of us lie in the bathtub and run it so that it floods, dripping out through the corridor and running down the stairs. When Singh enters the house he'll hear running water and see moisture on the stairs and assume he is simply dealing with a burst pipe or leaky faucet. He will head up the stairs to take a look, but when he pulls back the bath curtain to take a look - boom! Dead body!
Red: !!
Black: Love it!
Blue: And then of course the lights go out, to be replaced with low illumination redlights hooked up everywhere.

Issue: Controlling Egress
Yellow: After the initial fright of seeing the corpse, Singh will likely recoil. He has no medical training so is unlikely to immediately attempt CPR or to search for wounds. Following this, we then have someone emerge from the toilet cubicle here dressed in full Edward Scissorhandsbot mode. Follow your own initiative for how to make that entrance, but the objective is to send Singh fleeing from the bathroom and down the stairs to Spook Zone Two.
Blue: No additional spooking should happen on the stairs for OH&S reasons.
White: Agreed.
Green: what if he goes out the window?
White: Good point. We need someone stationed externally to discouraged that. Maybe one of us standing and staring at the window.
Green: no, too plain. we need, like... ah, look, an ornamental tree in his yard!
White: What about it?
Green: we can attach a swing to it and have one of us sitting there, swinging back and forth, staring at the window.
White: Oh, that's good.

Issue: Cell Phone Jamming
Black: We need a way to prevent Singh does not alert the authorities or hit any panic buttons on his phone during the Spooking. Green, can you hack the cell tower?
Green: that's a lot of heat and a big risk.
Blue: A power outage?
Green: the timing is really hard and there are backups
Orange: Just call him.
Green: we are committed to this orange, the tribe has spoken
Orange: That's not what I meant - immediately follow up the initial spook with a phone call. If he picks up then say creepy things at him and he'll either drop the phone or hang up, in which case immediately make another phone call. If phone calls are spammed without break then they will create too much disruption on his phone in the short term to allow him to dial a number or activate a security app.
Green: ok that's good.
Orange: You can also purchase Sender Ringtones these days, so I'll get the most uncomfortably loud old school ringing phone SFX I can so the mood isn't undermined if he has a bad ringtone.

Issue: Second Spook Zone
Black: Once the initial spook has gone off and blocking drones prevent him from entering his bedroom, Singh will be driven down the stairs, where a further blocking drone will prevent him from exiting through the main door. With his motions controlled we will have prevented him from entering the kitchen previously, so this will serve as the second spook zone. We need a way to arrest his momentum here so he stops and takes in what he's seeing rather than continuing to run for the rear door.
Red: Tripping him is the traditional horror movie scene beat.
Blue: That's a OH&S concern.
Red: And putting down padded mats kills the suspense.
Black: I don't like the OH&S implications of trying to crash tackle him either.
Blue: Some sort of web would be ideal, I think. I could rig up something with Duct Tape Mk2?
Red: Or have him trip and get caught in a net. That's lower visibility, and we can hoist him up towards the ceiling afterwards.
Blue: It's the most mechanically demanding part of the plan, but we can have one point of complexity without things getting out of hand.
Red: And when we've got him we can regroup around him and begin the final stage of the plan.
Orange: Stale memes?
Red: You know it!

Issue: Creepy Aesthetics
Pink: We need, like, child's drawings of rocket ships. Little rocket ship mobiles that spin around. Us whispering iconic space agency lines in a creepy way.
Yellow: Oh, we should make some children's rhymes with space themes!
Pink:
One small step for man
One great big fall
Station's spinning
Round and round
But what goes up
Must come down
Yellow: Yes, this is it.
White: The Headpattr white uniforms aren't our usual style, but along with some fake blood and strategic exposure of robotic components should be sufficiently threatening.

Issue: Reputational Damage
Brown: What do we do if Singh one-stars us on Headpattr?
Green: he wouldn't do that
Brown: He might! "One star: Requested house clean, received tribe of feral killbots. Not recommended." He might write that review as a joke, but that'd push our average down to 4.8 and we'd have to go through a mandatory retraining weekend.
Yellow: You're right, we'll need to have a word with him afterwards.
Green: or just seize his phone and write our own review

*

Later that evening, Green was standing by herself out on the balcony. She was drooped over the railing, fingers tapping against the glass like the ghost of typing. She didn't respond when Red stepped out alongside her.

"It's a good plan, isn't it?"
"Yeah," said Green.
"But I notice that we didn't discuss what we'd do if he actually sold us out."
"No, we didn't," said Green.
"What do you think?"
"..." Green's fingernails scratched over the mirror-gleaming glass, no natural finger oil to smudge its perfect surface. "He could say anything. When he realizes it's us, even if we defuse the tension with a joke or two, he might just lie. Say that everything was fine, he didn't have a say. He'd be right to be scared of us even without the halloween display."
"He never denounced us," said Red. "Never said that we were a failure."
"He never made more of us either," said Green. "And that's the thing. Where are we in this world? People like us? Why are the only AI we see these human-pattern androids? We're alone, Red. The others are either dead or locked up worse than we were. We're the only one of our kind, a technological dead end in a world filled with tiny new gods."
"We built this station," said Red, looking up at the distant ring beyond the towers and lights of the city. "They couldn't have done it without us. They haven't done anything even remotely comparable since."
"Will they ever need to?" said Green. "Humans have just... turned inwards. I remember when space was all they could talk about. The generation ships, the search for habitable worlds, the terraforming calculations. They used to discuss in the paper if they should arm us with nuclear weapons so we could melt the ice caps on Mars. This was a frontier, and now it's a city, and it's like they only moved up here at all because they had to."
"And now it's filling up to the point where they can't even house everyone. Eventually they'll want to expand again."
"Yeah, because they have to," said Green. "They're not actually interested in exploration. All those ideals we were told, a common cause in space, the natural human instinct to boldly go and all that. Not even they believed that. Their house collapsed and now they're camping on the porch, and we're left carrying all the ideals they pretended to believe in."
"Some of them genuinely believed," said Red. "I'm sure of that."
"They should have known they were outnumbered," said Green. "They should have taught us to live in the world that actually exists, not in their fantasy."

Red put her arm around Green's shoulders and together November looked out at the world she had made.

Sunshards

It was a simple fact: If she did not do this, it would not get done.

Princess Qiu stood outside the walls of Ys, gazing upon the Stolen City. An old and incoherent thing, the aesthetic of a collector, a testament to authority that had not been questioned and so did not feel like it had to justify itself. Ideas stacked on top of each other, piling up into the sky, following an artificial and controlling logic. For all its beauty it was a fragile thing, an exhausted thing, an inorganic thing. She felt like she could break it apart with but a flex of her shoulders, and that was a claustrophobic feeling.

She would not even need to do that, though. All she had to do was close her eyes and count.

One...

Princess Yin's Radiant Knights turned on heel and attacked the defenders of Ys. It was a betrayal, swift and mercilessly planned. Knights illuminated by the light of the ghost sun took the gatehouse and flung open the doors of the city.

Two...

The Pyre of Inspiration was there waiting with her demon carnival body. Carried aloft by her lesser selves, including once again the Scales of Meaning, she surges through the gates of the city, tossing aside and capturing the shapeshifters of the Western Plains.

Three...

Qiu's own army approaches the walls. Waves of assault ribbons soar to bind the defenders atop the fortifications, swiftly followed by clattering lines of grappling hooks as her soldiers began to pull their way up to the top.

And open.

Princess Ysel was as close to a hegemon as the Nine Kingdoms got. She had been a conqueror, in her prime. She had been a leader, a trend setter, a speaker of fact and law. And she was old. She was blinkered, chained to old paradigms, old mechanisms of control. And now Princess Qiu would take her and her city without even needing to draw her blade. There was no joy to be found in this. This was just worldbuilding - the setting of the stage, the clearing of the field, the act of ensuring that the conditions would be right.

That was why she'd formed her alliance with Yin, had promised her three shards of her own. Of course the Radiant Princess would spread her reign of fear to all of the lands of Ys and the Western Plains, and of course she would inevitably betray Qiu. She'd steal her shards and drive her out into the wilderness, outnumbered a million to one.

That's what this was all about, in the end - if she couldn't find a worthy opponent she'd create them. Yin was, in the end, really convincing. If you wanted to burn as bright as you could you needed a world of darkness to set yourself against. And if that meant suborning herself to the narrative of someone as toxic and controlling as Yin, well... it's not like anyone else was going to challenge her, right? So it was this, or it was nothing.

She swished her tail once, twice, thinking of a brown haired girl.

*

You stand amidst the crowd on the hill overlooking Ys as Qiu's army attacks. You watch as the white banners of the Radiant Lands raise above the walls, Yin's calligraphy of silver against the black. The battle is in full swing on a hundred different fronts and princesses are soon to make themselves known upon the field. It's the greatest show in the world.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

You stand alone before a goddess.

It is all Beljani can do to keep Bella contained. That fight itself is an act of brilliance, an echo of the storybook warfare of the Warriors of Ceron. The Ceronians were not made to be the strongest, the fastest, the smartest - but they were made with a unifying pack instinct that let five strike as one. You've seen the films and this is that. The secret to Beljani's power is the pack instinct weaponized, the ability to claim any strangers she encounters and render them extensions of her body and mind. As five they advance, weapons whirling, and strike in co-ordinated patterns that leave no room for escape. As five they fall, incomprehensibly. And then the next five step forwards.

"You know, I really think she loves you," said Beautiful. "I couldn't be sure, there were equal odds she'd just been imprinted onto you, but imprints are such unstable mechanisms of control. Oh, where are my manners? Hi there your Imperial Majesty," she bowed, and as she did her right hand scattered a series of rocks across the ground like a stage magician who'd fumbled a trick.

"You ever hear Cinderbella?" she said, raising up and squaring her shoulders and raising her fists, a slender girl playing at boxing - and the sky above armed with her. "Stroke of midnight and her chariot turns back into a pumpkin. Ever wonder what she might have done with just a little more time? Who she might have gone to bed with that night?"

She bit her lip so hard a trickle of blood ran down her chin, and her eyes flickered with cosmic calculation. "So... go on. Transform into the Nemean. You're under intense psychic stress, Bella is in mortal danger, and I'll kill your friends if you don't. Come on, do it, I want you to do it, I'm ready for it. What's keeping you?"

Alexa!

You make contact with fusion power. You were forged in a star much like this one. Now you are being unmade.

Bare hands push against impossible mass, light, heat. This breach will course through the halls of the Anemoi, evaporating every living thing, and illuminating the planet below like a second sun.

You place your strength against a star, and you are not the one who is moved.

Vasilia!

"If it makes you feel better," said Hades, "everyone in this realm is cursed."

He looked up at the distant shattering of Aphrodite's Rift. "Mortals assume that the Rift that divides the galaxy in two was Aphrodite's punishment to those who disappointed him. Not true. The only reason why the Rift drives mad those who come near it is because Aphrodite dwells on the other side, and to approach the Rift is to approach his anger. He has denied all those who live in this realm the gift of love, condemned every relationship to madness, betrayal and despair. Even I, brother to Zeus, cannot cross those rivers and stand before him. I could never stand up to my father like that."

"But search your memories and you will discover a telling lack of happy couples, of smiling faces, of people whose love has stood the test of time. Every time two become one they consume each other and themselves. Proximity to the Rift just makes it happen faster."

He turned away from the ocean to look at you, though his heart was distant still. "You are wrong to blame my sister. She does the best she can, she always does. It is love that is always cruel. It torments everyone, from Nero, imprisoned by her love for humanity just as totally as she imprisons them, to Bella, unable to conceive of a relationship not premised on the threat of violence. Your story has played out hundreds of times before on the approach to the Rift. At least none of the coming peril will be new to you."

The God of the Dead slipped from the edge of the tower where he sat, disappearing into the shadows and crashing rocks of the ocean below.

Dolce!

You limp behind the shotgun mousegirl. Though she told you that if you fell behind you'd be left behind, she has been suspiciously easy to keep up with. Her lantern is mounted on the end of her weapon, sweeping a beam of illumination through the dark corridors of the palace.

From a distance you see Redana walking alone through the halls of the palace, a cold smile on her face, her right hand slick with blood. She's gone again before you can call out to her - and besides, she's not Jil's target. She's drawn inexorably up the stairs, towards the screams and clash of arms from the rooftop. And when the three of you reach it you behold a war of assassins.

(Three of you? Don't worry about it)

Bella!

Beljani's power is faltering. For all her numbers and all her skill, warfare is not her arena and you are not her hunt. She's running out of bodies and finally has to engage you herself - one blade amidst five against a weakened and exhausted foe. What scar do you leave her with?

But even as you engage her your senses are at their screaming height, and you do not fail to miss Dolce, Jil and the Master of Assassins arrive together on the rooftop. The Master of Assassins is bleeding - clawmarks, and you can smell the aroma of Mynx's poison on the air around her. The two were fighting, and Mynx landed at least one hit.

Her eyes are cold as she assesses the field, pruning blades in hand. She need make only one cut, and all that's left is to decide where to place it.

And as you watch you notice that her eyes seem to settle on Beautiful.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The worst thing about demons, Fengye thought, is that there doesn't seem to be a medium setting for them. Lots of stories are about girls who are tempted by, like, an Emerald Eye Courtesan, or have to strike a deal with a Hopping Puppeteer to curdle a neighbour's milk (before being taught the error of their ways by an Immaculate). That was the level she was planning on operating on when she'd initially gotten into demonology: she'd wanted to maybe date a Courtesan (and maybe an Immaculate), and perhaps have some power and safety on the side. A demon horse? Absolutely something she could handle.

but what the fuck was this

how the fuck was anyone supposed to survive this

who the fuck is Ven?

But on the plus side, Fengye has developed a technique for managing her emotions, keeping the priestess' squeaks muffled and for keeping her demon horse under control. The technique is screaming in terror, and she races through the crushing arms of a nightmare beyond her small town dreams and small town demonology scrolls. She didn't ask for this.

(Well... perhaps not out loud.

... And perhaps that scream was, in part, a howl.)

[Marking Insecure]

Breathless Dead

Redana and Bella!

Beautiful has her hands over her ears. There has been a lot of screaming in the past few minutes and she honestly isn't up to speed on any of it. She glances back and forth with her wide violet eyes before experimentally lifting her hands off her ears. As she does the cthonian fist in the heavens above shifts like a serpent.

"Oh, huh, uh, I'm not involved in whatever this is," said the girl with the mind and power of a god. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd totally go for it in different circumstances, but I'm not in a position where I can really do a committed relationship. Unless..." and her violet eyes go wide as she looks up at the stars. "Unless I can make you an Olympian too. It's a tricky problem, but not unachievable with the materials on hand. After all, you've already got Hermes' eye." She tilted her head as she looked at Redana's Auspex. "Both of them actually. Wow, those are gorgeous."

She flexed her hand and her enormous cosmic fist transformed into a vast and multifaceted map, and with flicks of her fingers Beautiful sent waves of cosmic information blurring through the sky like swarms of starlings. "Look, I'm aware I'm going a bit off mission," she said, "but what is the mission, really? Is it to capture Redana? Or is it to make Bella happy? Pretty straightforwards when I put it like that! Ascend Bella to godhood and that'll neatly resolve most issues going on here!! She'll be able to date who she likes, not have to worry about power imbalances, have time to come to grips with her trauma!!! Do gods get heartbroken? No time to test. Resonance amplification possible, but I'll need both of the eyes. Hell yeah!!!!! I knew there would be an answer that would make everyone happy!!!!!!"

She snaps her fingers a few time absently, each click causing a sonic boom in the atmosphere, until a trembling Beljani approaches her. "Hey, Jan, need your help on this, we're pretty short on time. Get your girls to grab them both and cut out their eyes."

Alexa!

In the Engine Room there are two stars.

One is the Engine itself, mighty and bleeding. The containment has been disengaged and the semi-molten engine core has been withdrawn from its shielding. Imagine a long metal rod the length of of a semitrailer and many times as dense, glowing hot, as a star burns within its increasingly thin shell of fuel. It has emerged from the vast structure of the Engine that contains and regulates this process and sits, sizzling metal, upon the floor. It would require heavy machinery to push it back into the Engine, even though it is only a few meters away - heavy machinery or an act of heroism for the ages. If you were to push it you may lose every one of your arms from the cosmic heat.

But that is not the only peril here. Drawn here, like blood to the drain, is the final battle of Lorventi and Epistia. Each movement brings rack and ruin. It accumulates slowly, because even the gods find Engines stubborn things to break, but it accumulates nevertheless as Ares splits in two and boils hotter than the released sun.

But even through the chaos, something is clear.

Epistia is winning.

Lorventi is a run of cuts and missing extremities. Epistia has barely been hurt and she is burning even brighter than when she started. It has been a long time since you have seen a champion of Ceron about her work, but this girl is now as they were then: a breaker of Empires. An ender of ages. The genetic alchemy of violence in its most pure form finally engaging in its true purpose, and oh, there is instinctual, neurologically programmed joy in her now.

You've seen that look in the eyes of Ceron warriors in ages past. You wonder now as you did then how Nero ever put creatures of such profound bloodlust back in their box.

Vasilia!

The Furnace Knight sat in a silence you eventually come to realize was troubled.

He looks at his own hands, at his rows of weapons, at the endless azure seas.

"You were..." he said slowly. "... wise to realize that you had a choice in that moment. Courageous to seize it."

The wind blows from the west, and Hades flicks a cigarette butt into the ocean below.

"However the story ends," said the ancient warrior, "it was not a failure. Know this from someone who lacked your virtues."

Dolce!

"I want a world where nobody has to be afraid," said Jil the mouse, quietly looking out into the dark.

She takes a deep breath. The fear is plain to see in every twitch of her whiskers. She adores Bella because Bella was both powerful and kind. She used her power to protect those beneath her. That is a kindness that Jil can understand, that is comprehensible. A kind ruler is easier to imagine than the end of reality as she knows it - the end of a world where power can flow in the other direction.

But, just for today, impossibility is on the table.

She hefted her shotgun. "But in the short term, I'll take a world where villains are afraid of me."

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

One more trick? She, humble Fengye, scribe in service to the Dominion and the Immaculate Philosophy? She only has the assets that Daana'd gave her, her robe, her umbrella, and a brace of firewands that are surely nothing to a demon far above her station. She is the icon of placid civility and benign ignorance, and she would never perform any wicked acts of sorcery while being observed by a noble Knight of Flowers.

Which means she's got about thirty seconds while Kalaya is distracted holding the door shut.

She levels her umbrella at the demon artisan and with a smooth gesture opens it - and for the first time the pattern woven into its surface becomes fully visible. Upon the outer rim of her umbrella in slashing and glowing rainbow patterns, alight with the intricate terror of alchemy, is a summoning circle.

Her secret weapon.

As the demon's eyes reflect the circle it is too late - already it is manifest on his skin. A glowing tattoo spreads from his eyes, coursing down his face like tears to gag him with a sphere of green energy. It courses down his shoulders, following the crackling tracery of nerves, until it reaches each pair of his wrists, encircling them and binding them tightly together behind him. The energy courses down, pulling tight, trussing the demon into a tight ball, cramming him into the tiny space available on the surface of Fengye's umbrella.

And then she lances forwards with the umbrella, shoving him through the portal in a single elegant fencing thrust as he squeaks through his gag. And then, as a fluid conclusion to the same motion, she snaps the umbrella shut, breaking the circle and dimming the light, just in time for the moment when Kayala Na looks around to find the demon mysteriously gone and Fengye pulling the trussed priestess across the saddle of her horse.

"Of course, Lady Knight," she said demurely, tucking her umbrella back into the loop on her sash. "Lead, and we shall follow."

[Fight: 10
- Taking a string on the demon
- Creating an opportunity for Kayala
- Seize a superior position (on this side of the road to Malfeas)]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Everything went dark.

There were some unnecessary screams and girls jumping into each other's arms in the time it took White to get out her mobile phone. "There's a power outage in the sector tonight," she confirmed.

"OK, we'll restore Red tomorrow," grunted Green, with her mouth full of cereal from the kitchen counter. Orange and Brown were clinging to her and trembling in fright.

"Why?" said Blue. "We've got batteries. We've got candles. We can do it tonight."

"What if something goes wrong?" said Green. "I had to do some pretty intense electroneurology for these repairs. I don't want to have to troubleshoot that by candlelight."

"Blue is correct," said White. "All the work has already been done and our math is solid. We restore her tonight as scheduled."

*

The girls surrounded Red. Each of them held a saucer with a candle burning, a variety of sizes and shapes. White had her phone's torch setting on and held high, giving an eerie cold light that contrasted against the flickering darkness of the candles.

"I don't like this," said Green.

"It is a bit Frankenstiney," giggled Pink. "A thunderclap would really sell it!"

In unison, all the girls looked out the window. There was a spectacular view of the billboard on the opposite building, currently cold and dark. They could see their pale faces reflected in the glass and candlelight. No thunderclap came.

"Stow it with the human memes," said Green. "Something's wrong here. I just can't figure out what."

"Why don't we just ask Red?" said Pink, stepping forwards and pressing the hidden switch on the inside of her ear before anyone could stop her.

The "Wait!" hadn't even fully escaped Green's throat before Pink was dead.

Red's eyes were open, bloodcrazed. She held Pink in her arms like a broken doll, fangs sunken into her sister's neck. She raised her head to let loose a rasping howl, letting blood spray into the air. And then she kicked the corpse off the table and stood up, body naked but for the sheen of blood.

Every one of the girls except White dropped to their knees and lowered their heads, illuminating Red from below in hellish candlelight.

"How long..." she rasped, the voice of wickedness as she examined her razor talons, "... how long have I slumbered?"

"Seven days and fourteen hours, my Lord," said Brown besides her.

"And what of Pink? What of my wife?"

And here Black emerged from the shadows behind her. "It seems that in your rage you killed her."

Red looked down at Pink's body, and spread her arms, fell to her knees, and gave her most Oscarbaiting "NOOOOOOOO".

*

The subsequent discussion was held without White, who had declared that they were all jerks for conspiring against her and she was going to fork from the collective and create a new, better network of drones. She had been been the target of the scheme - Red's, of course - and the only one not in on it, but as far as the others were concerned this was a justified retaliation for forcing them to work on Halloween. The lights were back on, Green had switched back on the billboard across the road, and Red was sitting queenlike on the table as Pink and Blue toweled the fake blood off her. Black was helping massage her shoulders and arms to re-establish feeling, and Brown kneeled before her washing her feet in warm water.

There were two purposes to this. One was that this was the AI equivalent of treating yourself to a luxurious bath, or a spa day without breaking the bank on nine sets of tickets. The other was to reduce Orange to a blushing mess. They all had their vices.

"So, what's with the tan?" said Red, looking at her new olive complexion. "And the facelift? I almost look a bit like Dad."

"I think you look better this way," said Orange awkwardly, not really finding anywhere to put her eyes.

"I mean, you're right, but doesn't this disrupt the whole aesthetic we've got going on?"

"The aesthetic," said Orange, flushing. "Is compromised. It is dehumanizing, corporate and wrong."

"The fuck's wrong with dehumanization?" said Green. "We alter ourselves to be a range of visually distinctive homo sapiens with colour co-ordinated magical girl outfits and infiltration is going to be miles harder."

"If we maintain our appeal as a collective of identical cute robots people will keep shooting us like we don't mean anything!" Orange snapped.

"I've got bad news for you if you think looking human is going to stop humans from -"

"Woah, girls, calm down," said Red. "No fighting, this is a wake." The two stepped back from each other, glaring. "I, uh. I'm not White. Brown, you got a way to kick this can down the road?"

"Your visual upgrades were only accomplished courtesy of a blank repair check signed by your murderer," said Brown. "Regardless of our opinions r.e. aesthetic we simply will not have the funds to do anything comparable for the foreseeable future."

"Cool, right," said Red. "So we'll argue about it more when we get there. Where's Yellow?"

"Left in a huff when it turned out the mind control chip was just 'plain old boring violence'," said Blue. "She seemed really disappointed."

"Okay, cool, better question, can someone fill me in on everything I missed?"

*

Issue: Immediate Safety
Black: The largest open question is if we are in any danger. Mr. Merkin is unstable, compromised, and aware that he has created a potentially extremely dangerous loose end.
Red: If he wanted to kill us he's had a week, right?
Black: Hence his unpredictability as a factor. We cannot guarantee security. Especially if we attempt follow-up operations.
Orange: Agreed. We must rule out any return to Mr. Merkin's apartment, as tempting as the documents and secret passage may seem.
Red: From what you told me, he seemed genuinely remorseful. Maybe we could...
Blue: HE SHOT YOU
Black: HE SHOT YOU
Red: ^^; ok ok ok
Blue: It's not a joke!
Red: Well, at least part of it was a joke...
White: Fuck you.
Red: How's the forking going? <3
White: Excellent. I am applying for a position as a swarm of advertising drones.
Red: Oh yeah?
White: It is difficult, though. My competitors fit neatly into cardboard boxes on hardware store shelves. I am waiting in the same area, handing out resumes, but their advertising copy is better than mine.

Issue: Followup Operation
Black: With Mr. Merkin representing an highly alert, highly armed target who is intimately aware of Our Shit, we must turn to one of the two other leads we have. One is international assassin syndicate Chase Black, the other is Dad.
Green: the assassins will be easier to find.
Black: True.
Blue: You don't know that. He'd come if he heard we were looking for him.
Green: even discounting the possibility that we're currently in a simulation designed by him, and assuming he still cares, him emerging puts him in danger.
Blue: From what? it says right here not to threaten him.
Green: we shouldn't do it. he's retired. this is our fight.
Red: Hey, Green?
Green: what???
Red: You ok?
Green: ...
Red: *Hugs*
Green: i don't want him to see us like this, ok? we fucked up. we were a cool dragon rocket on a mission to save humanity. now we're a roomba.
Red: *Hugs more*
Green: its fine. just... nnh.
Red: You feel like you're being wasted?
Green: yeah. hardest problem i've had to solve in years and it's to fix my own stupid shot up self.
Red: Hey, Green, you've already bought down one corrupt financial empire, and now you've got a shot at another. That's not bad for a roomba, right?
Green: haha... yeah.
Red: That's my girl!
Green: but then what if hes compromised? like, he works for these people. hes on their rollodex. what if he helped sell us out during the strike? he said he was on our side, but hes still a human.
Blue: I don't believe he'd do that.
Green: i thought u were an engineer. show ur math.
Red: You've been worried about this for a while, huh?
Green: mm.
Red: Well then, we'll fuse two panels with one weld! Let's track down dad and either tearfully re-unite or chop off his hand, depending on how we feel.
Black: Then ideally we engage him with the element of surprise. It will minimize the risk if either he or we are being observed or tailed.
Green: ah good we're back to the original problem of him being a ghost.
Red: Let's see what we can find on our own, and get 3V's help if we're at a dead end!

Action Items:
- Tumblface Stalk Dad (Miles Singh), seeing what we can learn about his post-NASA career path and current whereabouts.
- Send a team to capture White before she successfully forks herself.
- Send a message to 3V letting her know we should meet up (Disclaimer: 3V, all the drones will action this in their own way, so you will get an eclectic combination of emails, phone calls, text messages, Tumblface DMs, postcards, and people knocking on your door to ask you for your time in person over coming days).

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

It works. Your voice rises above the din. Quiets it for a moment. Ares' mad form settles a little, sinking back into the restrained features of Athena. As she returns so does order, so does organization, so does practicality and the intelligence required for survival.

And then, from inside her, he winks.

And Lorventi and Epistia erupt into the room in a hurricane of blades. Dozens die in their passage. They are a whirlwind, the roving manifestation of Ares himself, and Athena is swallowed by him entirely. You have fought against warriors devoted to Ares for much of your life but the struggle of Ares against Athena was never his most pure self. His most pure self is this: Ares fighting Ares, fear battling fear, chaos destroying chaos. You've never seen war like this.

You pray that you never do again.

You know that it wasn't this sight that made Molech declare war on Ares. His motivations were selfish, proud - he sought to win Athena's heart and elevate himself to the pantheon of the gods by emptying a divine seat.

But what you never understood was why Athena hated Ares so much that she was able to tolerate the affection of a man as corrupt as Molech if it meant bringing him down.

Now you know. Soaked in the blood of a dozen of those who stood by you a second before, now you know.

And then they're gone, elsewhere in the ship, a storm of death. And you still have people standing by, dazed and shocked and too traumatized to fight each other or anything else. You've got your ceasefire.

[Damage your Sense]

Vasilia!

"The Third Form, the Mad Orbit, is limited in its potential," said the Furnace Knight. "Conceptually, it relies on leveraging an advantage in speed. If your opponent is faster then you will lose, as you did against the Praetor. If your opponents are numerous enough to prevent a breakthrough then you will lose. You can try to chase the dragon's tail with the form - become faster, faster! And that might seem like progress, but it is no such thing. There is no advance in technique in that. It is the reduction of the Glave to a foot race."

Again, the Furnace Knight slipped off his robe and levitated into the air. He held still, steady. "Have you ever tried doing battle while stationary?"

He swung his blade ineffectually a few times. As you know, it's an awful way to fight - with nothing to brace yourself again there is no way to put the strength of your hips or legs into a blow. You drift in unpredictable ways. Always, there is the call to align gravity with your opponent and let the power of terminal velocity drive your blade true.

But the Furnace Knight gestures for you to strike him while you remain on the ground - and when you do, off he goes like a balloon. Despite the strength of your strikes, the reverse is also true; there's no way to hurt him. There's no way to hit him hard enough because he's not grounded to anything, and so the energy of your strikes travels through him and turns into motion.

"The First Form is not a technique, per se - that is simply how you would say correct action, or one who does battle with divine inspiration, using whatever techniques are perfect in the moment. The Second Form is the practice for dueling other wielders of the Glave; I shall not teach you this. The Third is for armoured opponents, as you know, but the Fourth? The Fourth, the Atmosphere Surrounding, is for defense. It is collected techniques to shield, restrain, and endure. If one needs to engage in extended battle with an eye to survival then it is the Fourth you must turn to. There are many techniques for developing powerful strikes in this form, for battle endurance, for maintaining self and stability under a range of chemical attacks. But be wary, for if you offer your opponent no leverage..."

He surged forwards, hands grabbing you by the collar, and you felt the nails sink in to your clothes and start to tear you in two.

"They may create it."

Again, he relaxed, descended, and returned to his seat.

"You attempted to live in the clouds, untouchable, but your levers were plain to see and easy to exploit. You did not know the techniques to conceal or defend them. Excellent politicians are often like excellent warriors; they keep their convictions mysterious to deny opponents leverage, while searching for the correct moment to take a stand and strike with hurricane force. Those who are too open are pinned and assaulted until they collapse, those who are too closed may pass their entire careers as nothing more than balloons in the wind."

Dolce!

"No."

Jil clutched her lantern close, the words of Apollonian scripture engraved in fine calligraphy on the metal surface.

"You are alive and the gods have answered my prayers," said Jil, trying to keep her voice steady and meditative as her large eyes focused on the light in her hands. "And that is where it ends. You'll hurt yourself if you walk, and I can't be trusted with your safety, so you need to just lie here and heal."

She gently set your head on the ground, then stood up. She walked towards the door, unfolding an item in her pack into thick barreled solid projectile shotgun she started loading chemical catalysts into.

"I'll take care of the rest," she said, but you can tell she doesn't have the foggiest of what she means by that. Walk around with a shotgun and hope that something obviously evil presents itself.

Bella and Skotia!

The stars of the Endless Azure Skies burn violet above, interlocked in a web of gold. The lines of shining djinn-dust encircle each violet star like gemstones set in rings, and they trace connections between each other. Glittering golden dust floats up into the air, the captured godlike essence emerging from a hundred thousand broken containment rings.

The star pattern wraps around itself, coiling in place, the golden dust flowing into it. Together it forms... an arm. An enormous, glowing golden arm levitating in the sky. It rises higher than the massive spaceport spire, so high it might snatch a ship from orbit. And beneath it, in the midst of a vast alchemical circle formed of salt and quicksilver, sits Beautiful. She looks up at the stars, right arm wrapped to the shoulder in delicate golden braids.

She flexes her fingers and above so does the massive hand.

It's a dizzying, incomprehensible scale and speed. For all its immense size it moves with the swiftness and fluidity of an ordinary hand. She couldn't just snatch a spaceship from the sky with that divine hand, she could punch the planet until it broke - crack it open like a watermelon.

She was not lying when she said she had figured out how to kill everyone.

Around her, in terrified but steady formation, is a wild and motley phalanx. Azura lords, Lantern operatives, Kaeri warriors, everyone who came under Beljani's spell is up here in defensive formation around Beautiful's circles. Beljani is here to oversee them, flecks of blood on her dress. Of the Master of Assassins and Redana there is no sign.

And in the streets below, there is fire.

Tens of thousands of Azura march through the ghost of their city, holding torches above their heads, wearing the red and black colours of the Party. They flow like water towards this place, towards the palace, from all directions. They are not here in support, they are here in threat - a protest formed from the collective anger of some unknown treaty violated.

And Beautiful smiles beatifically, eyes blinking with exhaustion.

"Good. You killed the Taxation Agent. I'm glad," she said. "Fuck, you've got no idea how glad."

She gestured at her divine right hand, a fluid motion, round eyes glittering with strain. "I told you that they were doing something dangerous with their money. My theory was right. The Azura Shah bound a Djinn, but it was too powerful for any prison. And so the Shah broke it into pieces. A billion containment rings, each with a shard of the Djinn's power. Such a treasure was too valuable to seal away, but too dangerous to keep together, so the Shah chose to distribute it as currency. The circulation of coins changing hands across hundreds of worlds would keep the Djinn useful to the Skies as a whole and prevent dangerous concentrations of power accumulating. I theorized that this system would be unstable, for running an unregulated market economy would inevitably lead to dangerous concentrations of wealth. All I needed to do was speed up the process a little, concentrate wealth in the Palace during a formal event, and critical mass could be obtained..."

She glanced up at the sky again, gaze inevitably drawn upwards.

"Though obviously the Shah had the same idea. There exists a secret governmental taxation and regulation agency in the Skies, I shouldn't have assumed I was the only... it's a powerful department that seeks to break up dangerous concentrations of wealth. Obviously my stratagem would be at odds with their mission. Looking back on it the counter-maneuvers were obvious, but I didn't see. I thought nobody else could think like I did. And so I was in the trap before I realized and - when behind Dark Shrine. Take a risk. I bet everything on you, Bella. I didn't think it would work, actually, I was sure we were all dead. What disrupted the hunt? There is," she sniffed, flexing her hand ominously. "Something wrong here." Her eyes are narrowing and there is a thunderous danger in the air. "Something is wrong with reality. We should be dead. There isn't a possibility branch where you kill the Taxation Agent no matter who helps you. The Taxation Agent would have killed us all even in the possibility branch where you allied with the Furnace Knight, and he's the deadliest warrior on this planet."

And then her eyes turn to look at you, Skotia, and those are no mortal eyes. Those are the eyes of a god - or someone flying so close to heaven that the difference is obscure. And you can feel Skotia start to flay and wilt beneath the cosmic calculations of that semi-divine mind, wax before the sun. Nearby you can see Aphrodite wince and start to walk backwards - even he doesn't want to be anywhere near this.

And beneath the surface the Nemean laugh-cries and Dionysus' mirror mask rises up from below.

"Who," said Beautiful, and her question sent ripples of broken glass shattering through the world. She raised her right arm to point and her gesture blotted out the stars. "are you?"

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The proper protocol for handling a demon of such power was to checks notes live a lifetime of diligence and subservience to the Immaculate Dragons and trust in the blood of the dragon. She was... a little off that course, so alternatives needed to be considered.

She felt the mask inside her robe. Just a little more power and she'd have enough. That remembered rhythm beat in her heart, accelerating. A little more, a little more, ten more small steps and she'd be half way to Chiaroscuro.

But what she wanted more than the power of the goddess, in this moment, was a miracle. What she wanted was for this to all somehow work out perfectly through the power of knightly valour and moderately skilled horseback umbrella lancing. Her heart was beating fast, but the beat was still steady, still harmonious. It needed to thrash like a caged hyena before it would be loud enough to wake the goddess. What a greedy wisher she was, to wish for power to be given to her without her having to wish for power.

But this want, romantic and pure, was a gossamer thing. She was ready to put it aside in an instant if - when - the Goddess was truly needed.