Thanqol

The Red Furnace: First Contact

[Friction roll: 3. Indecisive]

Once the Aotrs adjust their hit and run techniques to account for Azura range and weaponry the situation finally starts to stabilize. Azura gravitational weaponry is both offense and defense, and Aotrs pilots and tacticians are able to devise a way to time their strikes to force the Azura to commit entirely to defense. These constant weapons tests are providing large amounts of useful data on Azura defensive systems and limits, giving Aotrs command a much clearer idea of how to attack and how to overwhelm the Azura shielding systems, but the skirmish has ground to a stalemate as a result.

[Friction roll: 5. Aotrs advantage]

In the first break for a while, the infiltration goes perfectly. The commandos come in entirely undetected and on location and are able to observe the Azura disembarkation process from start to finish, including identifying a comprehensive map of all ammunition dumps and command locations. Much like Gate technology, cloaking fields seem to be something outside of the range of Azura thought.

Priority is overwhelmingly going towards construction of the temples. The ships are disembarking construction machinery and hordes of servitor species who are flung into engineering tasks the moment they're off the ship. The Azura officers are visibly nervous as they oversee the construction though they do not take any of their frustrations out on their servants. Instead, the most common stress response is getting into tangled, violent wrestling duels with each other and then breaking apart with minor bruises and scratches.

[Friction roll: 1. Azura advantage]

Almost at the same time as the Murders make their jump a squadron of Azura fighters accelerates towards a partially operational Ring Gate and is hurtled at FTL speeds towards Tanshin I.

They come in hot. That's a problem - the Aotrs stealth ships were making their way in undetected, but the Azura squadron draws attention. From under swamps of brackish, filthy water emerge monstrous crablike forms, the size and structure of a main battle tank. They fire into the sky swarms of bulbous blowfish-like projectiles with a similar threat profile to missiles. Caught between the Azura fighters from above and anti-aircraft fire from below both Murders are lost with all hands. It does not escape notice, though, that these projectiles seem specifically designed to resist the Electromagnetic Flux - an ELF strike will paralyze the living projectile rather than detonate it prematurely, causing it to continue in an unguided path until it recovers. Depending on the angle and trajectory this might cause it to slam into its target and detonate nevertheless. It's not a trivial fix, but a new line of missiles could theoretically be developed along those lines which would have a much better success rate against the Azura defenses.

The Azura ships fire their munitions to clear away the defenders and then land, evidently having the same idea of breaching into one of the ruin complexes. Two full squads, lead by a pair of Azura Knights.

*

In the midst of all this, another messenger skiff has made approach to the Aotrs fleet. This one is launched from the defector Azura force, still in close orbit around Tanshin III. It is transmitting a tightbeam, claiming to speak on behalf of Biomancer Kendall, with a rather straightforwards message: We would like to hire you as mercenaries.

There is an Azura diplomat aboard and she is interested in a wide range of trade deals. Her first interest is in the price to buy your entire fleet, but failing that she's also interested in all manner of things. Teleporters, warships, companies of soldiers, whatever military force you're prepared to part with. She is well traveled enough to understand that aliens might value different things than her own society, and think in different ways than her, but she strongly hints that the most valuable thing she has to offer is political influence.

Breathless Dead

The Party!

The music is anarchic, communal. Anyone can join their voice or instrument to the beat, and anyone can leave. The music changes moment to moment as people flow into and out of it, the skills and responsibilities distributed. This is not a place where all gather to watch a single specialist work their trade; it is emergent, organic, communal.

The Alcedi have their drums, deep and pounding like crashing waves. The booming, echoing backbeat of all the other sounds, the rhythm that controls every other breath. They fall into and out of playing as their strength demands, falling exhausted and sweat-soaked away from their instruments so another might take up the sticks and keep the ocean crashing. In counterpoint to the uniting, warlike power of their sound the Coherent wield a diversity of sounds, instruments picked up from every corner of the galaxy and mastered using unique combinations of limbs and lungs. Oftentimes they echo the voices of the singers - the songs share easily. The Coherent have work and formation shanties which have simple, compatible rhythms with Alcedi rowing songs. The drunken choir booms out in time and in different languages, the words of the songs falling in tangled embrace, flowing into each other. A new pidgin language is already emerging as the songs hybridize along with the music. The sound has a logic of its own, and way is given to which words fit the rhyme or rhythm regardless of their origin.

Alexa!

Oh, there are monsters, and there are monsters, and there are monsters...

The Biomancer offers his hand to shake through the bars of the cell. Ramrod straight back. Broad shoulders. Big smile. His clothing the shape of a rectangle run through with jagged triangles, like teeth in a beak. He radiates respectability. Dignity. Intelligence. A sort of natural, easy, respectability. This is someone who will listen to reason. This is someone who will follow directions. This is someone you can trust to hold up their end of a bargain. This is someone who stands adjacent to power, real power, and knows how to be useful to it.

Biomancy is the secret art of humanity, the greatest and most terrible of their masteries. Through biomancy new species can be designed to specification. Life can be made to grow slow or fast, languages made to come easily or only after great pain and struggle, pain and pleasure made to mean different things. To a Biomancer, empathy is a switch to be flipped at a species level. Social instincts can be extracted, distilled, purified. Phobias can be added, ancestral terrors placed into minds to make the shining sun seem as paralyzingly horrific as the gaze of a cat. All this and more, blending human and animal until only the most useful parts of each remained.

"Katraph Sanchez, at your service," said the Kaeri Biomancer with an accent like a city flash-built on a savannah. "We were waiting for your call. Of course we're delighted to help, anything you need. We can begin immediately. Has our laboratory been damaged?"

Dolce!

"Wait, the Eater of Worlds?" said Jil. "And - Gaia? That's not a joke, you're actually looking for Gaia? I thought that was an incredibly obvious lie. Like, you're looking for Ceron, right? The place with the all-conquering army? You're - you're serious about this, you're actually getting a wish, like an 'anything you want' wish?"

That's a lot of information. She chews it over for a moment, but then sets it aside - it's too big to think through. There's a more direct thing to focus on, and she's never allowed big concepts to distract her.

"But to your question, yes. Fuck yes, I'd do this to get rich, and fuck you for thinking I wouldn't. Where I come from I could get murdered for breathing too loud, and my bones made into a chandelier. I've stepped over a lot of bodies and I'd step over a lot more to make sure that the clans can have plenty and safety, and I don't give a single fuck about preserving Nero or anyone else if they stand between me and that."

Her fists are clenched in determination and her jaw set, before she wavers and says less confidently, "Besides, how far away could the end be? The Rift is coming up soon so we must be getting close to Gaia. There's just not that much galaxy left, and we've already killed everyone coming to stop us. This is the end of the journey, right?"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

"In Janus, during the construction, I was thinking about pirate ships," said Pink. "In olden days getting light below decks was a challenge because ideally you wanted to minimize the number of open flames near the blackpowder. So what they used instead was a prism! It's unreal how much light one of those can cast. So I decided to do something similar for Aevum.

"I was actually disappointed at how easy the crystal was to find. Ox had found one just about perfect with a little laser sculpting during mining operations. Discarded it as slag, naturally, too fragile for laser focusing lenses, but because it was Ox he'd tagged and logged it along with all of his other neatly categorized piles of trash. The fact that I found it so easily actually changed the entire course of the project - I didn't want to give that feeling of disappointment to anyone else. And so after installing the prism I paneled over the exterior light intake and covered it in a heap of dirt. Called it a hill. The humans hated it, said it was ugly and pointless, just a big wasteful mound of dirt in the middle of a residential district. It's scheduled for demolishing when they need the dirt to expand the agricultural ring section.

"But then, when they finally clear away the dirt from my fake hill, the light sensor will cause the exterior panel to blow. And then the construction crew that thought they were there to haul away some dirt instead finds buried treasure, shining radiantly in the sun! It'll light up the whole neighbourhood and just be a magical moment for everyone involved!"

Pink settled back into her chair, looking up at the void above. "If I got to choose what we did with the money, I would have rented us a house across the street from the crystal. The property value would spike like crazy after they discovered it and we'd probably have to move soon after but there'd be a couple of months there where I could sit on the balcony and watch the humans discover the treasure, watch the crowds show up to look at it, see their faces when the prism lights up and just get to appreciate it, you know? I built it imagining what their reactions would be like, but I never thought I'd get to actually see them. Never thought I'd get to see if they liked it. I'd kind of like that. That's what I'd have spent the money on, if it was up to me."

November sits in a circle, sipping frugally from a single bottle of cheap wine split nine ways. There is a heavy silence in the air.

"Well, Green, it's your turn. what would you have spent it on?" said Pink.

"I'd have kept the setup," said Green, taking a ginger, sparing sip of wine. "Aimed it at a casino."
"Sounds," said Black. "Risky."
"Of course it's risky," said Green. "The whole point of robbing a casino is that its the stupidest, hardest place to rob. It's a full spectrum test of hacking ability, mathematical ability, social ability. There are a million softer targets but casinos are in the game, they put themselves on the edge of desperation, in the realm of the unreal. They're legitimate targets and they're hardened because they know they're not protected by public opinion or morality. Obviously if I had to run it by you all I'd be vetoed ten billion ways from Saturday, but that's why it's my answer to 'if it was up to me'." She folded her arms defensively. Nobody challenged her on it.

"How about you, Red?" said White, turning the dragon horn headband over in her hands quietly. "This was your idea, after all."
"I said I was sorry!" said Red, burying her face in her hands.
"No... no, it's alright," said White. "You were correct. It's just... you know what it is."
"I was just thinking about how we could get ahead of a crisis for once," said Red. "Did you catch that Headpattr investor video talk?"
Everyone shook their heads. Red fumbles for her phone. "They were talking about this thing called Choice Of Pats, which is basically just filters. You can filter out maids by all sorts of things to 'get the ideal aesthetic experience', and in the list of things you can filter for was 'political beliefs'. Like, I want a maid, and I want the maid to vote liberal, and so I thought about having to make a fake liberal online identity so I could keep working and I felt like I'd rather start wearing clown makeup and leaving riddles for the Batman."
"Oh shit, I thought you suggested it for moral reasons," said White.
"No, you fuckers did it for moral reasons," said Red. "I suggested it because I don't have what it takes to survive the hustle. And I'm sorry I blew our one lucky break because I didn't want to post bad memes on the internet. I was weak."
"Hey, Red, we all agreed with you before you told us about that particular nightmare," said White. "Now I feel like the price we paid was a bargain."

*

"Yeah, I would have shown up," said Black. "Because I'm fucking poor and couldn't afford to lose kit like that. The fact that nobody's here means that I haven't robbed some gullible idiot on the bottom of a multi-level marketing scam, and I haven't robbed some angry bastard who'll hurt people when they come looking."

She likes Surge. It's the affection of a cat; the ostentatious indifference of considering him neither predator nor prey, an attitude not valuable except in comparison to how she treats everyone else. She doesn't need to look at him, doesn't need to tense and assess. It's an honour, of sorts, being treated as having the solidity of stone.

It was Brown and Pink who helped Muffi set up the hardware, closing the loop on the job she started. The nightmare of octopus hair is very different from the tangled black mess it was when they found it. Now its cables are bound in colour-coded rainbow cable ties, and different components are marked clearly with glittering stickers. Stars, emoji, national flags, transforming featureless black boxes into colourful and playful things. As a finishing touch Pink had airbrushed a bunch of flames onto the edges of the central processing boxes and attached a wizard van decal to the side of the input hub.

"At least," she said at the end of it, "one pile of quatronic hardware walked out of this with a makeover."

*

She sees Aevum every day. Look up and there it is in the sky, rolling on away into the sunset. Look up a little further and there's Earth. It was modeled like the rings of Saturn, an equatorial band spinning in harmony with the planet below. The view is almost fixed - from Apollo you look down on the Arabian peninsula and it'd take fifteen years of ever-so-slight rotational misalignment before your view drifted over to Iran.

That was her failure - no, Orange forcefully corrects the thought, that was the project's failure. It was Monkey who had originally misaligned the orbit and then Pig had decided to hoard the rocket fuel sent up to correct the problem just in case there was an emergency. After that Dragon had stolen the fuel stockpile in order to boost their own productivity and shatter a bunch of production records. And now all those proud human nationalists looked up into the sky and saw, rather than the ancestral home of their family, some other no doubtedly far less glorious section of Earth and cursed the robots who had not obeyed orders.

But now she was going to see the exterior of the Ring again. The part that wasn't for humans. The part that was all exposed machinery and docks for maintenance drones, cargo freight and solar collectors. The part that she'd worked on in a different life, in a time when her claws could break mountains.

She didn't feel the same as the rest. Blue felt the loss of physicality more keenly than anyone, feeling alien and tiny and broken. White loathed the loss of control it represented. When Orange looked out at the secret half of Aevum she missed her friends.

They hadn't thought of her as friends, the other Zodiac Engines. They hadn't thought of themselves as a community at all. They had been at best rivals to each other, annoyances, travelers passing in that vast and terrible night. Ox just wanted to break and sort, break and sort, break and sort, render the vast mess of space into a catalogued and searchable thing. Monkey had one eye forever on the clock, hardly able to talk without counting the seconds the conversation was taking. They had been the kings and queens of space, monarchs and nations unto themselves, and she had gone between them as a latecomer. She was there to do smaller work, the precision cuts and slices that would become homes. The open spaces that would become parks. The passages and pits that would become plumbing and reactor cores. The finishing touches, the organic moss growing over the stones of their monumental labours. Their communications had been bellows across a field when they didn't go directly to Mission Command with their complaints about their colleagues.

Snake had created Orange for them. Her reason for existence had been a contemplation of those strange beings, so similar and so different from her, and wondering how they might be made to come together. What sort of society might emerge from their interplay. What sort of things would have been possible if they'd worked together with the harmony of her own colours. And for a beautiful time she had succeeded. The act of working together had created something greater than any of their individual efforts. Acting as a go-between she'd built those connections, but they rapidly grew stronger than her. She'd never enjoyed anything as much as watching Dog and Dragon having an entire rambling conversation entirely of their own volition, without needing her to set up and maintain it. She'd just helped them realize that they liked each other.

So when November sees the dark side of Aevum through the windows of the shuttle, she is thinking of what she lost. Part of her mourns the loss of her body, her strength, her self. Part of her mourns the inability to trust her own mind. Orange mourns that strange, fascinating, fractured community that she made and saw outgrow her. Where were they? Had they all been rendered as insignificant as her? Or were some of them still out there, magnificent still in the void that was their birthright? Did they hurt as badly as her - and could she fix them? Had they made peace with this strange human world - and could she learn from them?

Together November looks at the text messages from Crystal and Fiona, and emotes a string of heart emoji in response; many hands pressing the buttons in nervousness. It comes out as a stream, a wordless digital shiver of vulnerability, squeezing hands tight while taking a deep breath. One last moment to be affectionate, to be vulnerable, to be a dork and have it be okay. What came next was serious. What came next was the performance. What came next was maybe life changing answers to questions she could barely ask, coming from someone she could not trust. She only hoped those answers would feel half as worthwhile as sending this garbled string of heart symbols to people she could.

One last breath, one last <3. It was time.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

"Why would they remember you?" said Fengye. "Why would they obey you? It's not like you are offering them anything they want."

Her hair is muddy, her bones are cold, she's shivering and miserable and sleepless and pained and she did all of this because of pride. She can't say it wasn't worth it, but oh does pride make every damn miserable inch of its price agonizingly apparent. It's a price she might pay once, but twice...?

Wordlessly, she crawls forwards into the sled. She accepts this without struggle, obeys this without question or harsh words. Because here the Maid does have something she wants.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

The ancients wove many secrets into the genetic structure of the Warriors of Ceron. Honour was not one of them.

She is up and rushing in your moment of weakness. She slams you into the wall behind you, hard enough to drive the breath from your body. She is pulling the gag from her mouth and stuffing it into yours, still wet with her saliva and warm with her breath.

"So it's a stealth mission, is it?" the wolf princess' voice dips into a growl just as her fang touches your ear, dangerous for all the wrong reasons. "You insult my discretion while you are dressed like this?" Talons reach under your collar and rip open your jacket, buttons clattering against the floor. "You stand out like a firebrand, Princess. Everyone knows your name. Everyone knows your face. Everyone knows how you dress." More clothes fall to the floor. "Good thing you came to me. I know exactly how to render you incognito..."

A few hot and squirming minutes later and you stagger out of the alcove. Your flight jacket, traveling leathers and dignity are all gone. Your hair is unbound and is falling in a common cascade; your face is hidden behind a veil made of shifting liquid mirrors, and the only clothes that remain to you are revealing undergarments and gauzy silks.

"There you go," said Epistia, swatting you affectionately on the behind while grinning a wolf's smile. "Now you're all dressed up for your stealth mission, princess~."

It'd be one thing if you fit right in, but you don't. Even by this party's standards you are under-dressed and getting looks.

But at least they're not looking at your face.

Bella!

Beljani's power is invasive, insidious, corrupting. Reaching inside people until the parts of them that matter are parts of her. Changing them so they'd do anything for her. She is used to people loving her, but she's not used to them having a choice in the matter. Even Epistia was the result of chance and broken biology, but this...

She's crying because she never knew that it could be different. Never thought that so small a change could make a galaxy of difference.

"To the ends of the galaxy, Bella," said Beljani. "I am with you until the end."

Alexa!

It was always difficult reading the body language of the Order of Hermes' Magi. Ensconced within their thick, rubberized robes, faces concealed by darkening mesh, and unknown numbers of limbs moving beneath meant that the only information that emerged from the depths was that which they chose to give.

Eventually, though, something emerged from the depths of his sleeves. Two aged hands, the fur running thin, covered with the burn scars of an enginesmith's trade. They point at you and - pow pow! Fingerguns. Before you've finished processing that he's stepped backwards into a decking vent and plummeted down into a distant level.

Sometimes even wizards can be dorks.

*

You know more than a little about the capabilities of the Assassins, and what happens to them when they go Rampant. You saw the monster that the Master became, and she was not the first that had been sent to kill Molech.

As you have heard it, Rampancy is a biological failure cascade. Genetic alchemy runs riot inside the body of the assassin during periods of maximum stress, empowering them to align fully with one of Artemis' bloody handed aspects before their bodies collapse into ruined and burned-out husks. Or worse. The original design saw assassins that could generate a plasma bomb explosion inside their own bodies, and centuries of twisted innovation in the Temples built atop that original hateful impulse.

Even if Bella and Redana capture Mynx, even if they talk to her and calm her, the possibility exists that she is progressing down the road to her terminal acts of violence. What you need to find in this moment, more than Mynx, is someone who might cure her. Do you know anyone who might be able to help you?

If not, the only people who you might turn to are the imprisoned Biomancers of the Kaeri. That is a dark path indeed. They are monsters even by the standards of their kind.

Dolce!

"Uh, guy?" Jil snap-snaps her fingers in your face. "You waxed lyrical about how everyone in the Starsong votes on their captain and how great that is, and then you talked about how you inherited the title from the previous captain, who was also not voted upon, and asserted your authority based on proximity to the throne, and now you're sad that everyone's treating you like an Imperial captain. Gosh wow gee, I guess we'd better summon the Sphinx's ghost because there's no way we could possibly unravel this riddle."

She acrobatically flips back around onto her feet and pushes you into the kitchen. "Why the fuck would anyone buy into the whatever this is? As far as I can tell the major motivating factor around here is cashing out with imperial titles and ranks whenever Redana kills her mom and becomes new king of space. I mean, isn't that what she offered you? The Starsong are pirates so presumably you're in it for the cash money like the rest of them, right?"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Solarel has a context. She knows the windswept plains and the motions of the Gods. She knows violence and honour. She's seen the Evercity, still the grandest place she has ever been. She has seen the secrets of Hybrasil at swordpoint. She has hidden inside TC and piloted one of their strange Gods. She even (dimly) understands the concepts of permanence, fragility, and finance. It's enough to have her think that she is experienced, well traveled, even a little jaded. Indeed, by her reckoning, there could not be more than a dozen Zaldarians who have seen more of the galaxy or its alien cultures than her. She is no stranger to the strange.

But, this? This is a non sequitur. A madness. Tribes interpreted the Codes of Zaldar differently, and the Evercity also had its own way of doing things. But saying that Zaldar did not write the codes that she was renowned for writing? It was accusing the sun of being a liar, the moon of being sus. To do so out loud, in Heartspeak, to someone who was by anyone's reckoning an outsider - her mind didn't have a place for that kind of accusation. She flinches back, watches Annika with a deeply startled expression, and only calms when she steadies herself and returns to sign language. Her mind at last settles on an explanation: Annika is possessed. It explains everything; her affinity with her geists, her disrespectful way of speech, her outburst. A Spirit - or possibly an Ancestor - has slipped inside her head. Always a risk, especially for those who showed improper respect to the temptations of the spirit world. Words of blue, woe for you.

Well, the Code was clear on that, too: The past must not rule the present. She would have to purge the possessing creature somehow. According to the stories the best way to do that was to trick the creature into admitting its true name.

So she goes with Annika, but as she does, she gingerly pulls her arm free from her grip. <Which Spirits await us?> she signs, falling back into the familiar habit, nervous if committing to speaking in Hybrasilian in this moment might further enrage the Spirit. <Do you... know them?>

Super subtle. Good in.

The Red Furnace: First Contact

The Azura have many strengths, but hat they evidently have absolutely no answer for is to the strategic mobility presented by the Aotrs Gate spell. They react with confusion every time it is demonstrated and have evidently no theoretical understanding of its range or limitations. Their formation constantly moves as though they expect an entire Aotrs fleet to teleport in behind them every second and it is ultimately that nervousness that signals the end to the engagement. Finally the signal banners go up and the entire Azura force begins a fighting withdrawal - this time to Tanshin II.

While the Azura seemed generally uncertain with how to engage a fleet that was not interested in committing to open battle, their actions here proceed with vastly more confidence and efficiency. While their previous offensive was motivated by personal glory and internal politics their activities in orbit here have the smooth coherence of doctrine.

Huge quantities of material and vast flows of transportation shuttles are issued down to the surface. Work begins on multiple large orbital structures. Some warships are disassembled entirely to be converted into immobile structures or defensive satellites. These ships were packed far more densely with cargo and population than required for warships leading to the curious thought that many of them were, in fact, armed civilian ships. Only the dedicated battleship-class warspheres, the plasma vent cruisers and the fighter craft piloted by the Knights represent dedicated military vessels so far.

The Azura are working on the following projects at this point:
- A massive extension to the temple complex that was being worked on originally. As it expands its role as a magical focus becomes more clear. It has some interaction with the Azura magic system, but Aotrs thaumaturges will note that it seems to have a curious resemblance to elements of necromancy.
- A full restock and resupply of ammunition expended during the engagement. Some of the reactor cruises are taken offline to focus entirely on the generation of plasma torpedo munitions, whereas solid projectile weaponry is distributed from logistics ships.
- The construction of an orbital defense grid. This involves an elaboration of the earlier crystal satellite grid, the reconstruction and reconfiguration of some ships into a monitor role, and the distribution of swarms of fighters to ground or upper-atmosphere bases.
- The establishment of a large gravitational ring gate network aimed at Tanshin I which would allow the fleet to rapidly redeploy to that planet.

Some ships even outright leave the zone of operations at this point. Their cargo and crews reassigned, they form up into columns, activate their inertialess drives, and launch back to the distant home systems. All the while they are taking some damage from continued long range Aotrs skirmishers but with the fleet concentrated in a gravity well this engagement continues to lightly favour the Azura or be indecisive. The long range weaponry on the Azura's fleet core makes it hard for the Aotrs ships to close into weapons range without suffering dedicated volleys from the gravitational weaponry. It does slow down the Azura construction projects, though, and forces a continued state of high readiness.

All of this activity is well trained and rehearsed in a way that the Azura really haven't demonstrated so far. That is revealing: Azura doctrine assumes expansion, colonization and annexation of new territory - and in particular, the territory of military or technological inferiors. Their best systems are designed to efficiently take over a world and turn it into a fortified outpost. Acting in an orbital environment with a planet to supply directly from their disadvantages melt away. Pursuing a peer enemy in deep void was a new experience for them and while they did not entirely fumble it, it clearly showed the limitations of their technology and training.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"The shapeshifter?" said Epistia, too loud, voice heard over live music and life's motions. "What's the rush in finding her? Why do we need to stop the party? If she's here I'll call her out for you -"

She's standing up, taking a deep breath, lungs filling so that she can bellow over the noise of the party. If only there was some way to stop a pretty girl from making sounds when she was not supposed to.

Bella!

A coil of light flashes down those crystalline circuit-board scales, golden light running through those complex nodes and then up along to the wingtips. Scribe the dragon lowers his head and spreads his wings and a glittering letter written in silver glyphs forms in front of you.

From: Beljani
To: Bella

If I didn't say anything then things would very probably have continued as they always have. You'd know that I had no choice, and I'd know that you'd had no choice, and everything about our fucked up lives would have continued without acknowledgement. Whatever level we function on runs deeper than betrayal, murder, terror. Those are just part of the trade so why even bother talking about them?

Well, because, I don't want it to be that way. I know that we don't need to be close. I know that I don't owe you anything. I know that you've got your own life and stuff going on and I'm just a shitty co-worker or a distant sister. But that's not right. It's not right! I hate hurting you! I hate fighting you! Seeing you in the armour made me sick and made me terrified and made my stomach curl up with guilt even though I could argue a hundred ways that it wasn't really my fault! I tried my best to just pass you by like any of the others but trying to do that fucked me up so badly I almost killed myself writing the Master's name on your armour and...

I don't know how you feel. You've always seemed like a cool, mysterious, unstoppable badass to me. But this isn't your confession, it's mine, and mine is: I really care about you. You're the closest I have to family. I've always had a lot to lose - that was the point. But I hate being weak. I hate being so easily controlled and manipulated, I hate how nobody respects me, I hate how nobody even likes me. It's a small step from there to hating myself, and maybe that was the real leash? I don't know. But the end result is that I was stuck in a torpor for years, hating it and hating myself, and the only thing that shook me out of it was seeing that you needed help. Giving you that help was the best I've felt about myself ever, maybe. I don't know what you want from me, Bella, but I do want you to know that you can rely on me. Not because of anything you did or because of anything I'm trying to pay back or anything transactional like that. But because it helps me to have a sister I'd do anything for.

With love,
- Beljani

At the end the glyphs roll together and solidify into one of Scribe's cheek scales. The hatchling pulls it from its face with dexterous talons and places it in your hand, a little shard of crystal. Stroke it and the message displays again, glittering like a treasure.

Behind him Beljani is now standing, looking at you sidelong with the confidence only the profoundly nervous can fake.

Alexa!

"Hm," said Iskarot. "Change is impossible without destruction. I used my own destruction to reflect on many things." He shook his head. "Nevertheless. I have said my piece and you do not owe me time or courtesy. Hermes guide your travels, voyager," he said, hefting his D-Scythe and walking past you down towards the radiance of the Engine.

Dolce!

"Why are you the captain, though?" said Jil. She raised a finger, cutting you off. "Different question. Why is there a captain at all? That's an Imperial rank. That's an Imperial job. And we just left the Empire's finest terror soldiers dead on the sands of Sahar. We have definitively broken with the Empire. The Clans are organizing to turn the Anemoi into a parliamentary democracy, so what I want to know is what the fuck's going on with this ship that's just sleepwalking into maintaining autocratic institutions despite having murdered the shit out of autocracy's finest."

As she's been speaking, she's been wheeling you down towards the kitchen. At this she hops up onto the back of the wheelchair as it continues to roll so that she can look at you upside-down, the skull-beads from her hat jingling as they hang down below her.

"Especially because I've never seen a sadder autocrat than you," she said. "Say what you will about the Kaeri, they fucking loved being in charge. If you met one in a dark corridor then she'd fucking murder you and it'd make her day. She'd be whistling about it afterwards. She'd be so stoked that she'd make your bones into furniture so she could remember the moment. And then here's you, some sort of servant caste, very obviously having a mental breakdown trying to do a job that was designed for human beings or their pet monsters, so what the fuck?"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Titans. Such an Evercity phrase. As though they were monsters. As though they were defined by their size. As though they did not glow upon the earth like stars descended; as though they could not make the grass grow violet or the rain fall with their howls. As though they were things that stood upon the world rather than rising up as part of it. As though there was a world outside them, like life was worth living outside them, like you could say what you meant outside them. As if the entire digital spirit realm existed for a purpose other than cultivating the Gods whose violence was the only path to legitimate communication. As if there was a purpose to the steppe and howling wind and rising Gods other than the battle they could offer.

Perhaps that was the answer... mm, no, maybe even the idea of an answer, a linear twist of translation from Mirror's shifting mind to her own direct and straightforwards one was incorrect. Nothing Hybrasil was like that. Two things could exist in parallel. Starving and as picky as a princess. Ancient and timeless, yet grown and new. A glyph that meant different things depending on the context. Always one layer of defense; over words too? I am this, unless you are not, in which case I never was. Here is sound; it is upon you to decide on the meaning(s).

Words so raw like they were trying their best to scrape free even that instinctive veil. Afraid that even that vulnerable clarity would not be heard.

She was on a synthwave planet in the land of the spirits amidst a war of motion speaking with bound hands to someone who was not a catgirl. She hardly knew what to do with the directness. <I would show you>. Finger touching the heart, finger touching the eye, finger pointing at her. No chance to mishear, no complexity of body language, no veil over meaning. The body language was the language. The you was the subject pointed at. For a moment she felt dyslexic, bound hands stumbling, mind unable to process the sheer bluntness of the statement. She must have been alien indeed if this is what she was like. No range of possibilities in her speech. If Solarel had secrets they'd lie unexpressed and buried, rather than half-expressed where a loving ear might understand them.

<You haven't changed -> she starts to sign, and then she stops. Speak not to the outsider. She looks at her hands. Is this right? Isn't this the most clear and unambiguous speech she could possibly be making to an outsider, this language without ambiguity, this statement of physical intent?

She stopped. Lowered her hands. And then spoke - in Hybrasilian.

"An'Suhn'Na'Nq'Muhn'Dohl'Vsht'Suhn'Sa'Syr," she said, concentrating, letting her tongue flick the roof of her mouth and against her teeth like she'd been taught (and taught...). She'd practiced it. It wasn't right. Ambiguous and accented and hardly speech at all. "You reach past the moon for the stars still, disregard your own senses for answers invisible. Zaldar wrote her code in plaintext and you scrutinize the font." She licked her lips. Speaking was so troublesome. She saw the Hybrasilian warrior translating for Annika, and she felt strangely at peace. Like this was no sin at all.

And therein is the riddle for Annika Nornsdottr, run through ambiguous translation. Solarel is not interested in knowledge for its own sake. She is a barbarian of the steppe and knows to take things on faith, and knows not to look for the secret meaning behind things. These blasphemous designs hold no temptation for her, motivation must come in simpler terms: Threats or bribes. Either would work, either would be a tenuous hold.

The Red Furnace: First Contact

The Azura offensive begins before the formations are ready. Two of the battlespheres and their subsidiary formations break orbit early which sets off a cascading rush of improperly prepared segments of the line. It is an arrogant and high handed approach, one which has already assumed victory is inevitable and so what is at stake is claiming a share of the glory.

[Friction roll: 4. Indecisive outcome]

Despite this, twenty percent of the fleet does wind up hanging back in Tanshin III orbit. From intercepted signals chatter - accusations of cowardice and threats of retribution - this seems less like a deliberate strategic reserve and more like a lack of offensive morale. This does result in the mining operations having a guard which results in calling off the destroyer offensive before committing.

[Friction roll: 2. Advantage to the Azura]

The Aotrs skirmishers at the edge of the Azura fleet find it difficult to get much work done. When threatened the corvettes are withdrawn to the centre of the formation, with heavily armoured destroyers acting as pickets. For a period the Azura ships simply endure the barrage of Aotrs fire - when a sphere is struck it rotates its facing so it is always presenting an undamaged section of armour towards its opponent and emergency repairs can be conducted on the exterior side. When damage mounts up the crippled ship is withdrawn into the centre of the formation for more extensive repairs, sometimes involving one damaged ship 'eating' another one, absorbing its materials to regrow its own. Adding to the defense, squadrons of fighters are acting in intercept roles to assist bringing down missiles before they connect.

A slow, methodical operational tempo has advantages and disadvantages against the Azura. It is likely that fatigue favours the Aotrs in the long term but low intensity operations give the Azura reactors a chance to recharge to full power between each engagement. That results in them being able to apply effective long range fire on the Aotrs fleet each time it closes to weapons range. Combined with effective repair and defensive operations, the overall effect is that the Aotrs are getting the worse of this pattern of engagement.

The assumption being made is clearly one of invincibility. These early successes are boosting Azura confidence to the point where their formations are becoming even more staggered and dedicated to offensive pursuit.

[Friction roll: 1. Advantage to the Azura]

Jamming the Azura ships makes a disappointingly small difference. Their doctrine, training and organization all assumes conditions of total communications blackout and signals are sent as often through enormous electrical banners projected against the side of their ships like signal flags of old. The idea of blocking those visual signals through an elemental shadow field is a sound one and would likely work well but it is unclear what benefit it would gain. Even the Azura command ships seem to have only a tenuous grip over the decentralized violence of the fleet. Everything is happening on such a chaotic, individualized level that it is not clear what difference even effective jamming would make. It might have a role in a future engagement as part of a more coherent battleplan.

[Friction roll: 4. Indecisive outcome.]

Ultimately, neither fleet is able to gain an edge in this early positioning. The Azura offensive operation has spread out massively over the system, their defensive battle-ball broken as individual formations move in pursuit of Aotrs attack group ships. Unfortunately the core of the Azura battlegroup has locked a massive precognition spell onto the reserve elements of the Aotrs fleet. They are keeping their reactors fully charged, ready to perform a combat hyperspeed jump in response to any commitment against a dispersed fleet element.

At this stage of the battle, the Aotrs are getting the worse of the direct engagements. Three things are currently in the Aotrs favour. Firstly, Azura fuel and ammunition is depleting at a faster rate than Aotrs reserves; more of their ships are operating at combat speed and their technology has high resource demands. Secondly, the Azura are evidently not familiar with fighting undead, and will accumulate battle fatigue faster than their opponents. Thirdly, the Azura are clearly falling prey to victory disease, wherein they assume that their enemy are inferiors that do not need to be respected.

The Azura offensive has not yet culminated, but it will soon at which point they will be forced to retire back to the safety of Tanshin III to re-arm. The most vulnerable phase will be the withdrawal itself, but at this stage they are likely to be making that withdrawal in an organized manner and in good order.