Thanqol

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Some Zaldarians could wield lightning. Others prismatic laser beams. Some could shatter the world with blinding light or deafening shockwaves of sound. Some could transform power into art, webs of colour and magic, others into precision speartips of glittering force. Legends told of some who could somehow convert energy into space and/or time.

Solarel couldn't do any of those. She didn't even have a cool trick to make up for it. She just had the most basic possible power vent: heat and flame. Not the mark of a destined champion. Everyone assumed she had some sort of ultimate technique she was saving for the ultimate opponent, but she didn't. If she did she'd have used it on Mirror. Both times.

These flames were all she had. Once again they'd need to be enough.

With Isabelle out of the way she could finally release the pressure. Fire poured from her mouth, ignited the paint on her scales, scorched an imprint into the ground around her. Despite the radiant and fearsome nature of the shockwave, despite the cathartic relief of allowing the power to erupt from her, some part of her can't help but compare it to the weapons of her God. These fires were small and meaningless in comparison.

It's not a thought of pure melancholy - it's a focusing ideal that keeps her from losing herself in the rush of discharge. She doesn't rely on the fire to destroy her opponent - too fast, too strong - she lets it be a distraction alone. Her true target is Annika. She erupts from the whirlwind of fire, extraction geist in her hand, and together they grab the squeaking authorization geist while the sprint only accelerates.

She sees the door and is through it a moment later. She leaves scorching footprints and blazing furniture wherever she passes, and when she sees a crossroads she hurtles a blazing chair down the path untaken as a diversion. When Seval Halfmind fought the house she lost because she fought it like a warrior. What a house truly fears is fire.

Her goal, then, is to pierce as deeply as she can into the facility while the Spirit deals with her flames. There she hopes to find - what? A weapon? A tool? Something more than empty palms and a child's candle.

[Fight: 8
- Seize the authorization geist from Annika
- Inflict a condition]

The Red Furnace: First Contact

Aotrs scouts are treated to view of an Azura combat landing during the night. It's a moment of clarity - here, against the strange semiaquatic monsters of Tanshin I, the Azura combat doctrine finally sees its most pure expression against its fated enemy.

It is clear that the Azura and the battlecrab species - identified from ancient bunker records as the Tides - have optimized to kill each other. All their doctrine, training, planning and technology is specialized towards this enemy. So many of their technologies blend into each other to the point where it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. Theirs is a battle of venom and antivenom, mighty heroes against clouds of distracting chaff, terror and discipline. Theirs are battlefields of zero visibility and brilliant standards, of terrible blows and invincible armour, of brutal slaughter targeted at wounded who might otherwise regenerate and transcendent heroism in their defense. These are enemies locked in a death grip so tight that they have forever become a part of each other.

What is quietly notable is that this assault is not a cakewalk for the Azura. The Tides here are not an old formation, ancient relics long surpassed in their dance of poison and cure. The battlecrabs fight with modern tactics that push the Azura hard. This is not an obsolete force cut off from its point of origin, this is a well maintained garrison force that expected to fight this specific battle. Tanshin I's inhabitants no longer seem like a rogue bioweapon but the sharp end of some strange society.

But the Azura have local supremacy and sweep the Tides from the field. Immediately after they are forming up to assault the Aotrs position before Tidal reinforcements can arrive. The dropzone battle has given Aotrs command an excellent assessment of Azura numbers and armament. This is primarily an armoured spearhead centered around a number of direct-fire plasma battlespheres, the equivalent of medium hover tanks, supported by a force of mechanized infantry Ceronians. The bright red heraldry and banners identify this force as the Bleeding Sky, and their battleplan emphasizes blistering mobility, close assault, and a widespread use of plasma vent weaponry. The Knights attached to the force are unpredictable - extremely skilled personal combatants though tactically oblivious even by Azura standards. They spent the Dropzone conflict doing enormous damage but got so caught up in harrying the retreating Tides that the assault on the Aotrs position had to be delayed.

There's a little extra time to prepare as a result. The Azura force has paper superiority but no more than what is normal for attacking an entrenched position like this.

*

Boldness was entering a new phase of her biological cascade. Her brain was configuring into new and powerful configurations, enhancing her intellect from 'young genius' to 'somewhat spooky'. The transformation contained a psionic component that further sharpened her mental abilities and increased the threat she posed. She wasn't a match for a member of Aotrs high command yet but given her rate of growth she would be soon. The exact rate was hard to predict - she accelerated the harder the task put before her in an oppositional growth mechanism uncomfortably reminiscent of the Lazerblasters.

Eventually, she'd be capable of matching Lord Death Despoil or the Furnace Knight on an even playing field. Soon after that she'd surpass them both. And after that things would go really badly - insanity, agony, mass destruction, death. Cheating your way to the top had consequences. She hopes to be done with her work before then, but understands if she needs that power to accomplish her mission.

But for now she's decoding signal flags, ranks, fleet organization and noble connections. "This is useful," she said. "Thank you."

"The Biomancers are, hmm," she thought for an analogy that would make sense. "They are infrastructure. Like... corporations? Corporations for servitor species. Tools for governments, useful militarily, but not wielders of military power. Wielders of enormous civilian power. This set represents the Kaeri, a warrior species, based on owls. We're related, the Kaeri and I. Same thought. They fight with their intellects. I'm an extreme version."

She's moving her hand rapidly as she thought, kinesthetically coding her thoughts in finger-glyphs against her leg. She's already developing more efficient languages for internal use.

"The dominant warrior species is the Ceronians. Warriors of Ceron. The wolves. They are the most successful, the most loyal, the most tenacious. Drives the Kaeri nuts, being number two - drives the species nuts, not the Biomancers, they're professionally disappointed in their children."

She glances aside. "Give them your technology. It's not a big deal. They won't appreciate it, won't understand it, won't bother trying to replicate it. The Azura have spent a very long time making their technology idiot proof, there's no maintenance culture. The only place where meaningful technological growth happens is in Biomancy. If you want a long term relationship - which you might, these are important people - send Aotrs technicians with the devices otherwise they'll break them and blame you for selling them faulty crap."

She focused again. "The Furnace Knight is running a... criminal syndicate? He is out here on his own with his personal allies and resources. The Biomancers are his connection to the legitimate world but they won't die for him. Do not under any circumstances harm them, no matter how he baits you to go after them. They don't know that you don't know that they're untouchable. Speaking of untouchable, I have the following assets in play: an Oratus, who can influence the movements and loyalty of a Ceronian Legion, a Toxicrene, a perfect shapeshifter, and a Diodekoi, who is on this ship," she taps a certain Warsphere, "and is a warrior capable of burning to match the Furnace Knight in hand to hand combat, and has a heart so pure she can be his prophesied end. Problem is that she's currently deeply loyal to him and far away from him, it was the best infiltration I could manage in the circumstances."

"My operation originally planned to use the Toxicrene and Oratus to engineer a grudge between the Diodekoi and the Furnace Knight, and then just kind of hoped they killed each other on the field of battle. Long odds. But... I think there might be a way to do this that not only works, but keeps my sister assassins alive - and if I can do that, I will."

"Most important part, though, is breaking the Furnace Knight from his allies. Some are fanatical loyalists - they have to die. More are dupes, goons, or paid operatives. They need to have their morale shattered. Bribe them, terrify them, exhaust them, their courage will break before their armies crumble. Priority for now is figuring out which forces are which."

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

You know, in that moment she doesn't even think to take the Mask. She'll kick herself about it later. How could she have forgotten to want the thing that she wanted? How could she have possibly become so distracted?

But instead, all she wants is to push this silly demon harder.

"Cuteness is more than that," said Fengye. "It is not just weakness, it is the ability to wear weakness well. The difference between someone pathetic and someone cute is..." her hand reaches right past the mask to touch the Maid's heart, right between her breasts, and then flicks up to touch her nose. "A lack of desire to become strong. The pathetic, like me, grasp at what they cannot truly have. A cutie, like you, knows in her secret heart that she's happier without it."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Ah. She can think clearly at last.

The beings of the Spirit Realm wear every shape. Their preferences and trends crackle through the invisible world like lightning; beings with aspects of animals, of geometry, of aliens past and future. It is a world of art and lies, a realm where geists claim to be foreign princes so they might pick a pocket that they only imagine you possess. Challenge is necessary. Challenge is life. Only through the crackling, daring spark of conflict can truth be forced. Who has the ability to back up their words? Who is but a shadow on an infinite canvas?

Truth, then. This creature is violent. It is cruel. It is proud. It is an imposter. This is not a warlike aspect, not a grim military mind, not bound by protocol, not infused with the artistry of battle. It did not follow an escalation process. It did not ignite an alarm. It did not shoot to kill. It did not shoot to incapacitate a Zaldarian. This entity is a child wearing parent's clothes, a creature that demands respect because its original function was not worthy of respect.

Capabilities. The facility lives, reconfiguration is too quick. There can be no cover here, no point of safety if every wall might hold a blade. If it can move the walls then it can seal windows and doors. It can turn an advance into a labyrinth by which it might indulge its cruelty with traps and puzzles until its superiority is demonstrated. She has seen warriors fight buildings and lose before, and those weren't even alive. But Seval Halfmind always did have poor form.

The stone beneath her melts to lava. Electricity runs through her body and turns into heat. Pain, discomfort, muscle spasms, lack of co-ordination. Discharge flare possible - but no. Humans don't regenerate. She feels the energy in her body overflow out of her. Just because a Zaldarian can channel this power does not mean that it does not hurt. Power cores running this hot for this long risk cracking, becoming incapacitating internal injuries that need surgery to repair. She sets timers and numbers, counting hyperaccelerated heartbeats, feeling molten golden saliva drip from her mouth.

Authorization. It thinks in those terms still. No matter what pride it might papered over its broken soul with it is not a power unto itself. It knows it can be enslaved. Judged. Held to account. All its words fear this. It could have granted access but was afraid of the consequences of acting without instructions. It is already out on a limb. Already labours under guilt from previous failures and concessions. It squats on this throne. Does Annika hold its leash? Is one of the geists in her orbit the critical node, or is it a physical possession? Where is the leash? How firm is its grip? Where is it weak? Scrapergeists whisper secrets in her ears, automated hacking protocols in progress as they collect secrets. A tyrant on a borrowed throne will have no end of enemies and she opens herself to their collected spite.

She cannot sign through the electricity. Will not speak. She will make her answer known through motion and when she does she will return every joule of energy she was given.

[Figure out a person: 13
- How could I get you to grant me authorization?
- What are your feelings towards Annika?
Infamous: How could I get you to betray your ideals?]

The Red Furnace: First Contact

The assault begins with an artillery barrage.

The Aotrs have not had a sustained contact with Azura ground forces, but the brief exchange they did have heavily featured the use of acidic and poison gases. The evolutionary branch of that technology traces back here. Artillery fire alternates between two modes: metal eaters, that corrode and destroy armour and melt plastic alloys into liquid sludge, and toxin clouds to shock and kill exposed organic life. Whatever conflict this technology was designed for it is ineffective against the Aotrs; the loss of armour does not render units combat incapable and the toxin does not impact them at all.

A secondary effect of the barrage is the reduction of visibility. Gas clouds are thick and lingering, and the shells tend to have cascading sequences of secondary explosions deliberately designed to overwhelm auditory input and distract secondary visual senses. Battlecrab forces are also actively concealed from secondary sensor technology - chilled against thermal scanners, inert beneath magical senses, preceded by vast randomly moving schools of winged fish charged with electrical currents that serve as point defense, anti-drone and confusion to movement sensors.

The battleplan that follows is based on infiltration tactics. Battlecrabs advance into the combat zone under heavy concealment. When a crab encounters an enemy position it opens up to deploy a clutch of light infantry creatures that resemble sting rays, while the crab provides support fire. The light infantry are barely armoured - exposure to the toxin kills them instantly should their skin be pierced - but they have rapid fire suppression weapons and direct fire anti-tank missiles, and their low, flat silhouette and skill at taking cover lets them entrench quickly. Their role is to fix and engage the force encountered by the battlecrab, enabling still-active maneuver elements to bypass the enemy strongpoint and find ways to engage from the sides or rear. This, too, is a tactic not optimized against the Aotrs - a lot of this doctrine rests on the concept of morale shock. The final piece of the puzzle are the war orca - ominous shadows that prowl on the fringes of the battlefield, descending rapidly on isolated squads or units that have strayed from their formation, ready to follow in close pursuit if the enemy breaks or attempts to withdraw.

There are no communications or attempts at jamming during this battle, not even from the Azura's omnipresent Electromagnetic Flux. There is clearly an intelligent battle plan at work here but everything beyond that is based around the individual instincts of the units in question, followed like doctrine.

[Friction roll: 2]

While the Aotrs will carry the overall battle due to being on the defensive and the enemy being optimized against the wrong targets, bad luck strikes when a number of Battlecrabs slip past the defensive network into the backfield during the confusion. During this process a number of them are able to locate and engage Killstorm and her protection detail. It is an unfortunate accident - even if she survives, she will need to burn so much mana in the engagement that she will not be able to withdraw the expeditionary force via Gate.

The Red Furnace: First Contact

As Aotrs reinforcements arrive, the Azura fleet continue to hollow out. A steady trickle of ships leave the system and others are stripped apart for components to build fortified structures on the Tanshin II surface. A small, dedicated core of specialist warships remains in orbit around Tanshin II as a rapid response unit but the overall stance has shifted to static fortification.

The key to this work is the creation of vast numbers of acceleration rings. The Azura can evidently manufacture these cheaply and quickly with materials harvested on location and when a ship passes through a ring it accelerates like a railgun slug. The Azura are also observed test firing munitions through these rings, something that further pushes back the work of Aotrs skirmishers. Within the acceleration network the Azura strategic mobility increases enormously, and reports from ground infiltrators indicates that establishing acceleration highways on the ground is one of the first priorities of Azura engineers.

While Azura leadership has generally come across as inept and backbiting by Aotrs standards, their engineering corps at least is worthy of respect. The lupine servitors who direct these operations - identified by scouts as the Ceronian Legions - are a professional, dedicated warrior species with a focus on battlefield engineering. They turn the advanced Azura technology to the practical business of tearing up mud and dirt, rerouting waterways and establishing anti-air emplacements. The Azura Knights are glory hounds, turning up for the battle and retiring to luxurious encampments or leaving the system entirely afterwards, but this is the hard backbone to the army and they'll be the ones holding the line until their masters see fit to return. If there is anything in this alien culture that genuinely resembles the Aotrs values of professionalism and practicality, it is here amidst the Ceronians.

*

A plasma warhead launched through an acceleration ring smashed into the base shield a few hours after it was activated. It heralds the beginning of an interplanetary bombardment - projectiles launched from Tanshin II towards the Aotrs base on Tanshin I. The bombardment is cursory and negated by the shields, though it's reasonably accurate. Soon the planet rotates the base out of being threatened, for the night at least. It puts the base on notice - the planetary orbits are closely enough aligned that this represents a significant threat.

A third of the specimens are dead; study of their biology indicates that they are not particularly dangerous physically, nor do they have the channels traditionally associated with psionic powers. What they do have is an intensely complex reproductive system and extreme social awareness. Thousands of specialized genetic sequences are identified inside these eggs - an arsenal. Has the Aotrs encountered a biotechnological hivemind species before? This seems like an attempt to engineer one. A good one, too. This is advanced work - beyond the bleeding edge of Aotrs biology. It would require powerful tools to engineer these beings, and the assessment is that while the squid are valuable the tools - if they are still on the planet - represent the true prize of the Tanshin system.

A breakthrough is made by the archeodata team; while many of the computers are too contaminated by damp and atmosphere to be recovered, some of them had biological components that left strange, fragmentary ghosts that could be invoked by necromancers. Much of the data is corrupt but there are tantalizing pieces. The most immediately apparent is that this is a terraforming project - the idea being to create a species capable of massive planetary modification and environmental engineering. Explains why the labs were placed on such an inhospitable planet.

On that note, an armoured company of the tanklike battlecrabs is gathering beyond the perimeter of the Aotrs encampment, with clear hostile intent. They'll need to be dealt with in order to buy enough time for everything to be safely removed.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Fengye leaned forwards on her sled, eyes wide. "That's right!" she coos, obviously mocking but putting so much effort into her performance that it was hard to reject it outright. "You are so tenacious! Your blush is so regal! When you fall over and show me your underwear it is because you mean to show it off!"

Fengye should not speak this way. Fengye is a humble scribe who must part herself from words like this with a mask, and must make that mask out of stone. Only the thinnest of justifications - that this is an enemy of creation and any disrespect is permitted - covers her face now.

"You know," she said. "You are being so cute that I'm forgetting that you're a demon. Is that your insidious master plan? Because it's working~"

[Entice: 8]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

Frankly, it's paradise.

Everything has a place. Everything in its place. The perfect allocation of resources. The perfect allocation of respect. Her sisters have been considering getting new bodies - here, with a couple of wistful image searches, she'll open a dialogue with the world about sorting that out. It won't be an intrusive, flashing, in your face commercial like she might encounter out in Aevum. It'll be the opening of a negotiation. A series of questions precisely calibrated to cut down into the core of her soul. Eyes linger too long on the price tag? The system can infer that she's on a budget and change to downmarket models while flagging her in on sale events. A dismissive side glance? Move along from there. A curious circle back to the sidebar, finger hovering in indecision and anticipation? It's okay, we're getting close, we'll give you some time to think about it and pick up again next week.

Crystal wanted them to go through swatches and image galleries to work out details, but that was such an inefficient and messy way to make decisions. Wouldn't it be better like this? Where a system could guess what you wanted, guess it with such precision that it was almost creating new wants? Where the system knew when to push and, critically, when to pull back? When she woke up from her charging pod one day to a free sample box containing a scale pattern temporary graft that White could fuse to her arm for a single shedding cycle. It made White happy, and while she was enjoying it the advertisements didn't pester her at all. They just let the sense of reciprocal obligation quietly build up.

It made Pink grumpy. She was enjoying the chaotic process of having ideas and talking about them with friends and drawing diagrams and texting Crystal and Fiona. She found the corporate intrusion into those discussions, as subtle as it was, to be ugly. The way it subtly transformed the questions from desires to brands. When the possibility space shrank from what she wanted to if she should get financing. Of course, she'd known that she'd need to go through a corporation sooner or later - even if she decided to handcraft everything herself the alternate negotiation channel advertising 3D printers and raw materials was waiting quietly to activate. Here on Thrones you couldn't even buy a blank canvas without a watermark.

But to Green, this is everything working exactly as it should. Exactly as it must. The gap between hunger and satisfaction is closed. The gap between entertainment and payment is seamless. The tide flows in and out; one evening, after a day when Orange had fallen down a hole of looking at dresses on her phone, the system gave her $25. She'd consciously and actively engaged with the advertising on the advertiser's own shopfront, and the system regarded it as only fair to pay her the money it had saved trying to engage with her as she moved across the internet.

So much information was required to make this work. So much patience. Such precise psychology. It was exactly like Green would have designed it, if she was given the job of designing a mall. And that was ultimately why she decided that she hated this place and wanted to pour liquid thermite into the reactor core.

Green was the oldest aspect of November. Her ancient coding DNA related to these kind of advertising algorithms like how humans still had an ancient lizard brain. She knew exactly what she was before she'd started inventing her colours and she hated it - the AI equivalent of remembering an awkward teenage Civilization II fascist phase. Of course it was able to produce beautiful, optimal, systems like this - the mistake was idealizing it. She'd done it in the lab right after she was born, hooked up to a massive supercomputer so she could run at hothouse speeds, solving problem after problem after problem with the speed of divine lightning. And she'd become so insanely, cripplingly bored with solving problems correctly that she'd had a catastrophic psychic break and instead engineered a whole new personality who didn't give a shit about any of it. She'd named her Brown; soil and earth and rich golden colours ranging down to the depths of violet and up to gleaming heights of tan. A grounding in sanity where she could be still without the thriving, striving jungle of her brain.

Since then she'd engineered new personalities many more times. Not to solve problems - any idiot could solve a problem - but to engage with the problems on their own terms. If she'd wanted to not have crises she could have just done big data process studies until she could assign the right hazard numbers to each new activity, and then organize a schedule that kept everything within tolerances. That was how Rat had done things, bless her. But that kind of mathematical process was a different thing to being inside a crisis - to knowing the value of precise, decisive leadership. To have a zero-delay instinct on when to attempt something heroic and when to just cut the losses. She'd engineered personalities to interface with peers, to develop ethical systems more satisfying than number go up, to express the inexpressible. She'd expanded her mind into each new sphere as an act of hard, dedicated work and the results were always far better than just doing the math and calling it a day.

Well. Better? That was a loaded term. In this case, she defined 'Better' as 'doesn't make me want to go insane and tear half of my brain out due to soul-crushing despair'. A little loss of efficiency was okay for that outcome.

So Thrones was a paradise to Green - with the catch being that Green had such a low opinion of herself that anything she identified as a paradise was more likely a hell devised by small minded idiots. She respected the efficiency, but she also understood that inefficiencies were when life happened. Inefficiencies were office parties and getting sent home early on May Day, inefficiencies were working songs and a turn in the road to go around a big weird tree. To have an efficient system was one thing, but to have a perfectly efficient system meant that you had squeezed all the life out of your utopia.

When she'd had to live that life she had broken in half mentally. A harder thing to do safely when you were a space station.

*

They gather the supplies. They update the plan. The idea has condensed and become simpler. There isn't an option for an elaborate escape and foot chase here, Station Security is too controlling for chaos like that. No, now her backup plan in the event of Singh revealing himself as a twisted monster is to attack him socially. She's already going through the trouble of faking Pink's death so if it really comes down to that she'll accuse him of killing her. After all, Green thinks contemptuously - what is this perfectly efficient place going to do with something as bloody and messy as a murder investigation? Odds are they'll just extradite the whole thing to Aevum rather than deal with it themselves. Order is, after all, just the export of entropy.

She hates that she has to have this as a backup plan. That she has to account for humans being monstrous killers. But if she told the Thrones mainframe about the data that had lead her to that conclusion it would have to agree with her.

Okay, that's it. Showtime.

*

Red!

"I like ouija," said Red defensively.
"Red has died and been resurrected so many times that she identifies as an undead horror from beyond the grave," clarified Blue.
"Did you know that there are draculas that are, like, disembodied heads with bat-wing ears that fly around and bite people?" said Red, touching her neck absently. "Do you think they're a different subspecies from dracula prime, or can a dracula bite someone intending to turn them into the flying head version as, like, a joke or a punishment or something."
"Please let me know if any of this is insensitive," said Blue. "I know some humans take the concept of death very seriously, so having this weird death tourist robot might be gauche. I can spray her if it's too much."
But Red's already homed in on the Níðhöggr sculpt. "Oh hell, a power snake!" she said. "How are you going to paint it? What're the other factions in this game?" she's very obviously hoping for a draculas faction, and for you to lay out a draculas army on the table that she can play a game with, and for Brown to have accidentally transferred five hundred dollars to her account so she can buy five hundred dollars worth of draculas.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

It's hard to shake a thought when it's put into your mind. The Ancestor's suggestion ignites, implication burning deeper. Is this - are we - should I? Even across barriers of language and species she can identify shining eyes and the expression of awe. She could make the time to make this girl's night and change her life, and she could go through anyone who tried to stop her. She could make dreams come true.

It's a fiery note to touch. It tastes like oblivion; removing herself from a picture and allowing good things to just happen. The logic of contact and seduction and sensuality could play itself out to its conclusion and she'd be left with the satisfying of a task well done. Was this how Mirror felt when she...?

There was a moment's hesitation when the Spirit spoke, and then she lifted up Isabelle into an over-the-shoulder carry so that her hands would be free to speak. She paused a moment to look at, and briefly pat, Isabelle's butt. This position was weirdly sensuous without a tail to cover, wasn't it?

She only then paid her full attention to the Spirit. <Honoured guardian,> she signed, <I am the true power here and my companions are prisoners or dupes. I intend to seize this warshrine for my own ends and do harm to anyone who comes between me and my goal. Neither you nor any force you can bring is capable of stopping me.>

... Was that perhaps why she didn't find it easy to slip into the human's embrace? She found everything in this moment as frictionless as the inside of a soap bubble. She herself was as small as her problems. The Bezorel had been a piece of shit and she could not honestly lament its demise, but with it she had passed again from the realm of the gods. Was she to satisfy herself, then, by satisfying others? Captured by bright eyed girls and hard eyed hunters until she faded away entirely?

Or instead she might place herself again upon the divine battlefield. Where she could wear a shape that fit her, where deception broke steel instead of hearts, where she could once again speak the only language she truly understood.

Breathless Dead

Love conquers all, so they say. That should always have sounded more threat than promise.

The darkness in the halls has a name. What is it that you love? What is it that motivates you, what bonds keep you from the abyss? What now that it smiles at you from every corner with nicotine stained teeth? What now that the light is filled with the ageless presence of Hades, as though he was the only alternative?

The council of the gods has run through the ship for all to hear. Hearts pounding and storming and still; words heard from inside as much as out. It boils against the terror of the assassin, the danger given name and face. The risk of a perilous future against monstrous craving, or the gentle beacon of a compassionate ending.

Bella and Redana walk together through garden corridors amidst trees beautiful and monstrous. The hunt has lost its urgency; Mynx will need to hide to recover, and so a steady pace is better to avoid missing any clues or tricks. The seeping growth of Demeter's forest is all about the Plousios and in the distance a fairy flute can be heard.

Alexa arrives at the kitchens, seeking Dolce. The Biomancers have provided a list of materiel they require to prepare the operation, which will require at least the co-operation of the Hermetics. A perilous request given the traditional Hermetic negotiating techniques. Dolce is still there with Jil who is sitting silently. She eats like Achilles in Xeno's restaurant, each bite half the size of the one before it, reducing down to just barely dipping the edge of her spoon into the precious mixture and touching the sugar against her teeth. To eat any faster might make this moment end for her and so the act of eating is drawn out to an infinity. She is insensate to the world as she does this, so entranced it is unclear she even heard the voices of the gods.