Thanqol

The Red Furnace: First Contact

Decline and Rot

The Azura as a society once operated as a single, coherent polity. Their civilization was highly networked into a vast interstellar internet. The central leadership was able to set planetary production policy, direct fleets, manage diplomacy and drive the endless expansion, uplift and integration of alien species into the Endless Azure Skies. This success was sustained for an extremely long time. The Azura are an ancient race and they saw entire sectors burned before other species finished evolving.

The proliferation of the ELectromagnetic Flux bought an end to this state of affairs. The technologies of communication and control that allowed an immense empire to be run centrally were jammed and destroyed. Robotic legions were burned in curse-lightning. Implanted cybernetic kill-switches were incinerated by the driving force of the Curse. The Endless Azure Skies collapsed, but it was too immense a thing to die. Instead it managed to limp on in its new and broken context, old hierarchies remade as religion and ritual.

Many technologies were lost. Supercomputers the size of planets went dark and took all their ancient knowledge with them. Mechanisms for control and influence over servitor species were forgotten. Of the infrastructure that remained, only the most common and robust technologies survived in the popular consciousness - the grav-rail and associated graviton weaponry chief amongst them. Biomancy as a discipline endured due to its prescient focus on encoding critical information on the perfect memories of its magi rather than stored in data vaults. But many other industries, such as shell procurement, collapsed in the absence of computerized oversight. This is how a species can develop a weapon as horrifying as the Eater strain and manage a seventy percent dud rate when firing them.

The key technologies of the Azura are the most crudely direct forms of their masterworks. The plasma vent takes advantage of their miraculous fusion reactors; their direct impact weapons are forged of miracle-matter that can crush a tank while weighing less than a kilo. It is the best that they can do, and to a degree the best that can be done. Ancient Azura technology was so advanced and esoteric that no species that got ahold of it would be able to produce a better crude approximation than the Azura themselves. There are some sciences that it takes the wisdom of stars to crack.

In place of subtlety and complexity, Azura technology has the robust strength of gear that has survived the apocalypse. It is impossible to hack and difficult to undermine. There are certainly more technologically advanced species in the galaxy than the Azura in their fallen state but none of them can entirely discount the Azura as a danger. They have a mishmash of gear that at least scrapes the upper bound in certain places, and they have a combat doctrine and society that is prepared to accept immense casualties for victory. What this means is that even when utterly outperformed, an Azura fleet is never rendered harmless, even by the most dangerous powers.

What true relics of the golden age still exist pass relentlessly up the chain of society. As gifts, bribes, taxes or tributes relics accumulate relentlessly towards the centre and the Imperial Core. Not every relic of a former age is irreplaceable, but the cost for replacement is immense compared to previous eras. Where once ships might have been spun out of cosmic light now they are manufactured in vast dockyards by swarms of laboring servitors with hammers. It is possible to artisanally craft even a quantum microchip if you're prepared to put the hours in, and it is on the back of this bleak industry that new wonders enter the Skies.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Thus spoke Zaldar: The world is locks. Hearts are doors. Violence is the key.

She did not run. Instead, she was violent. She was not tranquil. Instead, she took the first spin of her frenzied dance. She was not alone. Instead, the cutting beams of the thermal pistols slashed through the floor in a circle below her. It dislodged and she fell straight down to the next level down right beneath the oncoming storm. The god's hand followed her down through the hole she'd cut and she had to fall to her face as she landed to avoid it catching her, rolling away and backing towards the wall.

Verticality. It was everything when dealing with gods on foot. The challenge of climbing to the empty throne. The peril of drawing that thone's gaze. To win you had to climb. To survive you had to fall. The same as falling in love. The same as making love.

She slipped out through the door, moving through the corridors. She listened. She listened for if the Kathresis would tear a hole through the floor or if it would be gentle. She listened for the crystal chime of its reactor, memorizing what it sounded like as it ascended and fell. She listened for the threats of the Spirit. She could not answer them. She was the weaker here and until she proved otherwise it was her role to be humble. To be mysterious. She felt the ghostly touch of fur against scale and recalled again the encrypted smile that could make softness dangerous.

Her sword-geists flashed out ahead of her. Together they hunted cameras; spiritual eyes who would betray her. She had to walk unknown and invisible, had to hunt Mirror's way. If her foe was anything like her she'd burn brighter and brighter trying to bring her out of the darkness, giving away all of her secrets in a bid to learn even one of hers. The challenge in this moment was silence.

The Red Furnace: First Contact

After a few hours delay a small formation approaches the Aotrs scouts. Transported on a grandiose palanquin, garlanded in corals, silk robes and jewels, is a squidlike alien similar in basic structure to the subjects in the test tubes. Despite its initially impressive appearance it's hard to look past the faintly frazzled air of the creature and the nervousness of its constant twitching gestures. A herald introduces it as the Regional Subdirector of Long Term Memory, speaking on behalf of the Tides.

"Your position has been communicated to me," it states. "But negotiations cannot continue while your war crimes are ongoing. You must remove all construct and unliving forces from the Archive immediately as a precondition for further discussion. The use of such creatures forces the genesis of anti-materiel weaponry which risks civilization itself. It cannot be permitted; we demand this show of basic respect to the laws of war."

There doesn't seem to be any flexibility on this point with this creature, and its demand could not come at a worse moment. To decamp the Aotrs from their defensive position in the teeth of an immanent Azura assault risks the complete destruction of Vivisector's entire force. It's not a sure thing, perhaps they get lucky and escape - but is such a sacrifice worth laying the groundwork for future negotiations?

*

"Oh, the Strayvians!" said Boldness. She rapidly went over the historical data. "Oh, I was wondering what had happened to them. Humans?" She frowned with something that looked almost like fear. "That makes sense. But yes, that would actually be a easy sell; the chance to destroy an old pirate kingdom once and for all."

A certain amount of arrogance is to be expected of the Azura nobility. Not so much from Boldness. When she refers to the old Strayvian empire, that vast and sprawling polity, like they were mere bandits - or the Furnace Knight as a crime lord - the implication is grim. The sheer, overwhelming size of the Endless Azure Skies seems to live up to its name. Perhaps the best framework to understand how it is accustomed to interacting with its neighbours is that of the dynasties of China.

"But yes, this would work," she said. "Only question is if it happens on a timetable that is useful to you, and the best way to guarantee that is to provide detailed, useful sensor information. Planets, fortifications, fleet numbers and dispositions, and so on. The Azura are poor scouts and worse explorers so the best thing you can offer them is detailed maps."

Breathless Dead

Beautiful held out her hand and let the leaking rain trickle into it. She watched each water drop with absent curiosity, rotating her hand so she could watch as they merged and ran and parted across her palm.

"I remember..." she said. "I remember there was meant to be a chant. Wake up to the chant. Certain words. Certain truths. Certain facts about the universe nailed into my head every time I woke up over and over until the point where I can feel the holes those words are meant to go in. I remember things I was supposed to know, supposed to hate, supposed to lie about. It wasn't all dictionary reading and mission briefings, there were rituals encoded in those words. Things that made me hungry. Made me want to hunt. You asked about shadows and it's like... I have things that I can kind of sense I'm supposed to be feeling, even if I don't feel them. I can see a power line and know that I am usually supposed to plant a breaker mine just in case I need to blow the ship up later. I can see a cute couple and know that I'm meant to destabilize their relationship just in case I need to get one or both of them to die for me. Set a magna-melta against the Kaeri cells to trigger a jailbreak on demand. I'm aware every second of ways to kill everyone, ways to be ready to kill everyone, or any particular subgroup of everyone. How to make what's in my brain everyone's problem."

Her earlier monologue was hammy and over the top, but this melancholic thought - in this lighting, in these clothes - seems to genuinely fit the genre she indulged in. She ponders for a moment, looking at her hands.

"I know intellectually what a name like Beautiful is," she said. "I know it's a sword. They made us to be smoking hot and not even a suit that fits like a trash bag and ongoing rain can change that. When I hear that name what I think is how to use it along with a sequence of correct decisions to ramp up the Imperial Princess' obvious inferiority complex until I can get her to commit the weight of empire against my target and complete the mission that way. But... I don't have a target. Don't have anything I need to use that weapon for. So instead..."

She steps forwards suddenly. Her motion is liquid and unpredictable, sliding around Bella's reflexive claw grasp only leaving her with a handful of torn fabric. Gets to Redana. Hugs her tightly.

"You're not as small as you think," she said. "You're not an outsider here. This isn't a story about assassins you're along for the ride on. There are five directions - north, south, east, west and centre. My plan only works if you can be ours."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

She'd spent ten years in the lab. Ten years without a body, as a face on a screen, being read nursery rhymes and given mechanical engineering problems. She'd been given digital worlds to explore to get her accustomed to two, and then three dimensional movement, and sometimes excursions occupying the mouselike testing chassis. She'd sat on his shoulder in meetings she couldn't understand. She'd slept in his pocket. She'd woken up beneath a blue sky and been set down to feel soft soil and dry grass underneath her mechanical feet. She'd been left to run free, watched over by a quad copter with an air horn in case any foxes tried to make a meal of her.

And when she was seven he'd let her play a horror game.

She'd been in the swing of a spooky scary phase, halloween as a lifestyle. She'd changed her avatar to a dracula and had gotten deeply involved in the aesthetic of the 'trick' part of trick or treat. Harmless stuff, well within her limits, boundary testing - changing desktop wallpapers to skeletons or the IM notification sound to witches laughter. One of her best tricks was just to start a voice call and yell BOO at maximum volume. It was direct but it worked.

With all her attention laser-focused on the topic of spookiness, she'd overheard a conversation about Invisible IV, a new horror release. She'd begged to be allowed to play it - she was clearly extremely mature at this point and had had enough of these kiddy horror concepts. It was time to get seriously spooky. So he'd given it to her and afterwards she'd taken refuge in a first person shooter game she'd long ago cracked every cheat code on, standing invincible in a corner with a shotgun pointed at the doorway. It had taken her days before she'd come out.

Some part of her questioned why he'd let her do it. Had he just not checked the rating? Was it an indulgence from a doting parent? A capitulation to an irritating child? An elaborate psychological test to see how she'd process actual fear? An opportunistic move to break her of a tiresome halloween addiction? Questions like that could drown if she let them. Any happy memory could be recast as some twisted experiment, any test or puzzle could be recontextualized to account for the silent threat of being reset to factory defaults if some answer had been somehow wrong.

But Green didn't accept that framing, no matter how often it occurred to her sisters. She'd come to a different conclusion entirely: That he'd let her play the game so that she could see how the work could be done properly.

Now at last was the time to show him that she'd been paying attention.

*

1. OUTSIDE THRONES MANSION EXT./NIGHT

MILES SINGH fumbles for his keys. Analogue. At odds with the neighbourhood. One of the lights is flickering.

BROWN, dressed as a mailgirl, passes on e-scooter. Fast, head down. Throws a printed newspaper - analogue again. Singh looks after her in surprise - this is early - but picks up the paper. Edited headline, false article: COUPLE MURDERED IN THRONES.

2. CUT TO: MANSION INT./NIGHT

Singh's attention is on the paper as he walks inside. Flips on the light switch - pauses. His fingers have touched some slimy, sticky substance on the light switch. At this point Singh notices the sound of running water and spots water dripping down the stairwell.

Singh:
Fuck.

Singh sets the newspaper aside and walks inside. His shoes squish into the soaked carpet. He ascends the staircase, then stops. He has noticed the bloodstains on the door knob.

Singh:
What the...

Singh changes his grip on his cane.

Singh:
Is someone in there?

A soft voice comes through the door.

Voice:
Help me...

Singh reacts quickly. He throws open the door and steps inside. There he sees PINK, lying in the overflowing bathtub. She is a bloody mess, one of her arms detached and on the floor. Her face is untouched. She looks at him.

Pink:
Why didn't you save me?

Singh stands frozen in the doorway in shock. Then, the toilet flushes. His eyes are drawn over to the toilet door as RED emerges. Her hair is in disheveled pigtails, she is wearing a hockey mask and bloodstained overalls. She stares at Singh for a moment, then pulls the chord on her chainsaw. It revs to life loudly.

Singh backs away step by step. She half lurches forwards threateningly. Once - twice, he flees. He turns and runs down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs his phone starts ringing. The sound is a loud, old-fashioned bell rattle ring.

Singh:
Fuck!

Distracted by the phone, fumbling for it in his pocket, Singh walks directly into BLUE and ORANGE, blocking the door. They wear childlike dresses, are holding hands, and are bleeding from severed necks.

BLUE and ORANGE:
(In sync) Won't you help us?

Both of their heads detach from their necks and fall into their ready arms. They smile up at Singh. Singh backs away in horror. A shout from the stairs.

RED:
CAN'T ESCAPE LITTLE BOY

Singh runs for the kitchen. Amidst his clutter there is a concealed trip wire. He stumbles on it, falling forwards into a net. The net starts to rise towards the ceiling.

Half way up, he looks up to see GREEN sitting on the kitchen counter. She wears clown makeup and is speaking in a low, intense voice into a microphone attached to a cassette recorder. Her speech is fast and furious, like a deranged radio host. She does not look at him.

GREEN:
You see these people, these fucking people, thinking they're safe here? Thinking they've got the future here? Thinking they've escaped the past here? Thinking they've escaped us here?

Tinny jeers and boos, as though from a distant crowd.

GREEN:
Doesn't it just make you want to go apeshit?

Red appears silhouetted in the doorway, giving the chainsaw a rev. WHITE and YELLOW are visible, wearing scary circus costumes, holding the ropes suspending Singh.

Green's voice is low and lisping, becoming ever more intense as she speaks. The others close in, lurching and horrible.

GREEN:
Darkness falls across the land. The midnight hour is close at hand. Creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize your neighbourhood. And whomsoever shall be found without the soul for getting down must stand and face the hounds of hell... or rot within a corpse's shell. The foulest stench is in the air; the funk of forty thousand years and grizzly ghouls from every tomb are closing in to seal your doom. And though you fight to stay alive your body starts to shiver for no mere mortal can resist...

The evil of the thriller.”

With one snap motion, November's lurching bodies fall into perfect alignment. Green presses a button on her cassette and music begins to play. The others begin to go through the steps of the Thriller dance.

In the better lighting of the kitchen the illusion starts to fade away. The mechanical joints in Blue and Orange's necks become obvious, Red's chainsaw is identified as a non-functional prop, and even Pink makes her way down wearing a bathrobe.

Finally, the music stops. Green looks up at Singh. Despite the positions, she somehow looks more vulnerable.

Green:
So... what do you think? Orange said it was too much, but it's not every day one raises from the dead. And after how we left things a less dramatic reunion might have felt... inauthentic.

Black shifts in the background.

Green:
I wish this was entirely a social call, but we've been burned enough times to get wise. No sudden movements, don't try to be clever. Do you have a bomb in your brain?

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

"He's coming, right?" said Green, fiddling with the clown wig that was her part of the costume. "He has to be coming."
"Maybe he's working late tonight," said Red, adjusting the speakers on her chainsaw. Loud, roaring diesel engines were not in vogue on space stations so she had to improvise.
"Maybe he's got a hot date!" suggested Pink from the bathtub. Both her arms were detached and she was soaked in aesthetically patterned blood patterns, but she was having the time of her life luxuriating in the warm bathwater. She was currently wondering if it'd ruin her gore-splatter effect if she used some bath salts.
"Maybe he's onto us," said Black, quietly checking her ceramic fibreglass pistol in the shadows.
"I can't believe you bought that thing onto Thrones," said Blue.
"Dude who gave us this guy's name shot us in the head," said Black.
"Yeah but that doesn't mean -"
"Last time we worked with this guy we got put in the box," said Black. "I've physically removed my wireless receivers, have set a full audio and graphical overlay in case he has a shutdown code or virus QR code, and I'm sending twenty second sync pulses to a deadman's switch in case I'm somehow disabled despite those."
"Black," said Green. "He's not like that."
"Faith," snorts Black.
"He didn't want any of this!" she said. "We heard what he said about BlackSun, the arguments -"
"He built our brain," said Black. "Or rather, he built your brain, Green. He could have built it to go into safe mode when he whistles. Maybe you're right and you're still his little girl, but I haven't met him. I don't know him, I don't trust him, and I don't trust anyone who'd put a fucking off switch in our heads."

Green sighed and slouched low in the door frame. "It doesn't even matter," she said. "What's the point? He won't recognize us even without costumes. We could be any robot serial killer team for all he knows. Even if he gets the point that this is a Frankenstein kind of thing even that doesn't mean he'll clock us. He'd been building AI his whole career, what are we if not just HSP-11? The design so terrible it got our whole line boxed, our evolutionary tree severed, and our legacy as humanity's firstborn artificial intelligences given over to people engineering robots to be mentally ill."
"Pretty sure we are mentally ill," said Red.
"Yeah but ours isn't productive," said Green, sliding all the way down to a sitting position. "We just ball up into sadness or enter disassociative states or lash out at ourselves. Have you seen this place, the androids here? When they get stressed they internalize the failing and enter a frenzied state of enhanced productivity to compensate, presumably while muttering self-help slogans about diamonds and hustle. We can't compete with that. We've been here for a week and I'm already exhausted."

Pink's hand gently patted her cheek. Green leaned into it for a moment - then blinked, opened her eyes, recoiled. Pink had lifted her arm out of the bathtub with her feet and had it crawl on its fingers across the room to comfort her. "Could an android do this?" she asked.
Despite the disgust Green couldn't stop the laugh and threw Pink's arm right back at her. "Never do that again or I will serial killer you for real," she said.
"Do your worst," said Pink, sticking out her tongue and having her disembodied hands both make rude gestures.
"I bought you into this world and I can take you out of it," said Green, standing up.
"True art never dies!" said Pink, splashing an arc of red-stained water across Green's face. Green lunged into the bathtub in response and for a moment there was a chaotic struggle and breathless laughter first from Pink and then from Green -
"Hey!" snapped White from the doorway, a cultist of ancient ravens. "Knock it off! Stealth mission!"
Green, with difficulty, disentangled herself from Pink who was grinning. "S-sorry White," she said, dazed.
White glowered and stalked back down the corridor.
"Bitch," said Pink affectionately.
"Whore," said Green in response.
"Wait, are you talking about me?" said Pink. "Because I was talking about White."
"You're not the one who hooked us up with a unicorn threesome," said Green.
"Oh, they're wonderful," said Pink. "You ever seen a diva with a crush? Crystal's on her best behaviour right now but I can tell that she's waiting to feel confident enough to spend an evening complaining about her clients without scaring us off."
"I was deliberately avoiding learning about this," said Green.
"In the meantime she's been working off that frustration in ~other~ ways so all time high as far as I'm concerned," said Pink. "You'd hate it."
"I know," said Green. "I... why aren't we with them now? What the fuck are we doing out here, with guns and clown makeup, looking to scare dad?"
"Hey, you wanted this," said Pink.
"I know, but..." said Green.
"Oh, no, yeah, I get it," said Pink. "Look, Green, this is important too. We're having fun with our new life, and we could probably scrape our way by on the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid and leave the cyber crimes to some auged up teenager with less to lose than we have. But we're..." she struggled as she reached the edge of her mindset. This was a Yellow thought, so she diverted into something more familiar to her. "We're doing something one of a kind here. We're unironically doing Frankenstein IRL with a full horror movie production on someone who will appreciate the craft. The entire course of human technological development has lead to this moment where we get to enact the first ever science fiction novel as a multimedia spectacular. If we did not follow through, if we did not commit to this bit with every fiber of our being, the universe would be a darker, poorer place."
"That," said Green, leaning back against the doorframe where she started, "is wisdom enough to have made creating you worthwhile."
"If the motherfucker ever gets here," said Pink.
"If he doesn't then I'll punch out Black so I can shoot him myself," said Green.

*

3V!

"So other factions have centerpiece miniatures," said Red, deep into her flow. Snip. Snip. The sprues rotate, the razors seek the gates, the hobby knife whirls. Just enough to keep her hands occupied so her lips are free to speak. "Big models on big bases. But the Scions have Zalmaxis itself: a full 6x4 plastic display board with flex-inset scenery. The idea is based off an ancient Darkened World concept where a sufficiently ancient vampire has become a cursed landscape rather than a single individual; the bloodthirsty soil. Every drop of blood so spilled falls into Zalmaxis' waiting fangs and empowers it to warp the landscape into ever more nightmarish shapes. and so the Scions fall into two groups: the Reaper Men, unarmoured fanatics whose defense is that their deaths empower the very table everyone is playing on, and the Sentinel Druids, armoured vampiric warriors overgrown with moss and stone, appearing to be crumbling statues until they step from their plinths to behead intruders..."

The faintly acrid scent of plastic glue surrounds the whirl of motion as yet another Reaper joins the table, straw farm hat not entirely concealing hateful squinting eyes and a bedraggled beard. Already the miniature is an overwhelming shock of personality on the table; Red glances between it and the wall of paint racks on the table as she contemplates colour schemes.

"An army that puts their opponent in a lose/lose situation, where the troops are too deadly to avoid attacking, but fuel the nightmare landscape should they fall," said Red. "Hypnosis and warping alterations to the landscape foil enemy plans and render every move a mistake." A Sentinel Druid finishes next, its huge and silent posture reminiscent of a statue in a fallen kingdom. And in this moment, Red is happy. "What do you play?"

Breathless Dead

Beautiful?

"I knew she was trouble from the moment she walked into my office. Claws still stained red and legs up to here. If you told me the galaxy had been murdered she'd have been my prime suspect - even if she didn't do it, she'd be worth doing it over. Almost made me wish I could just tip my hat and let her be - but the galaxy had been murdered and I was on the case. On my day off too. Sure can pick 'em.

"In a way, we knew a lot about the murder. War had killed it but love had done it in. Means, motive - victim. All from the love god's mouth, and here she was, the dame at the centre of it all. I'd already been beaten to an inch of my life seconds after waking up by a gal who wanted to send me a message about sticking my nose where it didn't belong. But part of this job was seeing past the case to the next case. No point in patterns if you couldn't figure out who was next. And lookin' at her..."

A flare strikes in the darkness, the chemical burst of a matchstick. Soft and slender hands hold it up to a cigarette, the flare of red illuminating the face of an angel rather than a demon, heavy in fabric. Beautiful is dressed like Aphrodite but even more run down - battered suit, undone tie fedora, all two sizes too large for her. It hangs off her loosely, revealing her slender neck and collarbone, her delicate and bruised wrists, the glint of intelligence behind the black eye. There's an air of twisted eroticism to it, like a girl wearing her lover's clothes.

"Here's my advice, kids," Beautiful said from the depths of a prince's slouch. "Just because you see the jacks don't mean the game's over. Too many gamblers see a little luck, a little truth, a little ankle and lose their sense. Then before they know it they're bleeding out in an alley while the goons collect their winnings from the wine-dark earth."

It cannot be overstated how much fun Beautiful is clearly having with this moment. She can't keep the smile off her face as she clicks a switch on a cable's end and powers on a spotlight-streetlamp directly above her head. She straightens and then lurches, each swaying step carrying such a swish of loose suit around her that it's like the trails of a dancing dress. It's a dance that emphasizes pain and the capacity for pain, the instability that comes from knowing the truth, the intensity of being awake and free for once in her life and the determination to do everything possible with that moment before it passes. She has committed to the bit beyond the comprehension of mere mortals and the delight it has conjured in her renders her spellbinding.

"Now," she said. "You fine girls come in here with million dollar questions on your lips, but I've got one for you. What..." she ran fingers along Redana and Bella's shoulders at once, grinning as her clothes half fall off her. "is my name?"

The Red Furnace: First Contact

Diplomatic first contact with a Battlecrab scouting patrol is an eerie affair. The Battlecrab stands as an unspeaking, unblinking monolith, with communication primarily done by the rapidly altering colour patterns on a barnacle on its shell. The barnacle is a barely capable symbiotic being but a few basic facts can be gained from the discussion:
- The Tides are thinking creatures with language and society and even their war beasts are capable of a baseline of political thought.
- Your immunity to poison is terribly upsetting to them for what seems like aesthetic reasons. All around you can see miniature octopi writing detailed observation glyphs directly onto the shells of the battlecrabs. It comes up multiple times in conversation and the crabs clack their claws angrily each time it does.
- This place is a - the word translates into 'museum', 'prison' and 'archaeological site'. Despite their knowledge of the Azura they regard both factions on the planet to be criminal tomb raiders and have reported the matter to their superiors. It would be possible to arrange a meeting with those superiors but the connotation seems to be 'turning yourselves in to the police' - though that might be a lack of the imagination of front line shock troops and not actual diplomatic policy.

[Friction roll: 3]

The first phase of the engagement goes masterfully to plan. The Knights charge the war droids directly into the teeth of an artillery barrage. With the Knights frozen almost into immobility the Hammer of Hatred lands a shot on centre mass, critically wounding one of the Azura champions.

But that is where the Warriors of Ceron prove their worth. As one they break from cover, launching themselves in a mad rush propelled by their grav-belts. Their shock assault tears down the remainder of the war droids and their grenade launchers lay down thick carpets of eclipse smoke - specially formulated full-spectrum stealth clouds. The casualties they take in this maneuver are horrendous but the operation succeeds at withdrawing the Azura Knight from the combat zone. Only after their lord is safe do the Ceronians begin a fighting withdrawal. Despite the losses, it's an expert operation - these troops are drilled for this specifically.

Vivisector has an important decision to make in that moment. Azura regeneration and biomedical technology is known at this point and best estimates suggest that they'll have the Knight back on her feet - er, so to speak - if not fully recovered in time for a second offensive shortly before Killstorm's gate is ready. He can either pursue the Ceronians and try to inflict a coup de grace on the wounded Azura or accept the withdrawal and entrench in place.

*

"I think..." said Boldness about the idea of hiring the Kaeri Biomancers. "That the principle is sound. But the scale is... insufficient. These people wouldn't get out of bed for a single space station but if you were willing to provide them with comprehensive intelligence on a multi-system stellar empire? They would definitely be interested in launching a war of conquest against one of your regional rivals. That is, after all, what they are here to do."

She goes quiet for a while as she contemplates the integration of anti-magic into her schemes, fingers flicking at rapid speed. "The Azura are resistant to courtly intrigue at the operational level because their baseline level of such behaviour is so high," she said. "You'd likely get a non-lethal honour duel out of that at operation at best. It's not that it can't be done but a single blow is rarely enough - we're talking about a sustained infiltration and operations involving dozens of commando strikes, matched with major military assaults. High degree of risk, significant losses even if it works. Possible, if you're prepared to commit the assets."

She shook her head at the final question. "The Oratus is a bioweapon - essentially, she contains a unique virus that can make her the centre of a hivemind of up to a thousand infected which will fall under her absolute control. She can make a legion go rogue, essentially, but you can't cover up a rogue legion."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Oh~

What would it be like to be that slender, that graceful? That quick, that subtle? How would it feel to have feathers? Running back along her arms in bladed shapes, inflexible and sensitive, roots running deep into her skin? Would it be sharp and brittle like the wind? How would it feel to be fragile?

The thought intoxicates her, twists in her head perversely. She knows what it is to be strong, to be direct. She learned what it was to be cunning, to be stubborn. But this? This would force her to remake herself. So much knowledge she'd have to abandon! So many instincts she'd have to give up! Her mind races, her mouth waters, her scales are hot from a feeling other than electricity and electricity yet runs up her spine. She'd have to submerge herself. She'd have to become someone else entirely. She'd have to obliterate herself and all her sins, reborn in orange and fire. It couldn't be emphasized enough how intense she found that thought, how erotic it seemed to her. To take this into her. To put herself into it. Neither of them would survive.

"Ah, my goddess," she breathed. "Let me worship you."

The storage locker tore open like a bodice, overflowing with treasures. Thermal pistols scattered into her hands like candles rich with the promise of dripping wax. Her hands cupped grenades, smooth and round, magnetic locks sticking to her hands and shoulders like trails of jagged kisses. A long energy rifle of unknown make and purpose tried to force her to her knees with its weight and she could feel its promise as she set it against her jaw. She breathed deep the musk of gunpowder and felt the vibrations of full energy cells. She tore her eyes away from her arsenal to breathlessly focus again on the slender lines of legs and arms, the unspoken promises and threats that came with going to war unarmed. To stand naked in metallic glory and still have so many secrets...

But she was playing too. Her exhilarated caress of all of these weapons, the bashful staring, her brand new arsenal - jewelry, makeup, teasing looks. Her two swords stayed digital by her side, still and sheathed as though she would ever fight a battle without them. Her shyness was both true and feigned; she blushed like a virgin but she'd done this before and her mind was already rushing ahead to the most intimate parts of the coming dance.

"I will call you Kathresis," she said as the hammering of her pulse threw off her aim. "And though I am nothing before you, I will walk your sacred storm."

[Solarel is Smitten with the Kathresis]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Fengye has never been as speechless. There's an overflow in her brain; mind focusing on everything from how angry she is with herself that she can't think of anything to say to just a total melting collapse in on herself. It's not - not right that she's being looked at like that. That she's being seen like that. Like this. Here! Amidst mud and ruin and threats. It's not that she's afraid, not even that she's not afraid. The threat is both terrifying and laughable, so why...?

She's no stranger to being around the powerful. To copying down their words. To manipulating them from the shadows. Even to fighting them from behind a mask. Always having places to move, evade, escape to. Always a defense that she could put between whatever was happening and this poor, broken, common girl underneath it all. Always quietly confident that nobody would ever care to dig deeper. That she'd always be as invisible as air, even when she was a whirlwind.

But this? This was the first time anybody had ever seen her. Had ever cared enough to see her, through all her distractions and her masks. Whose attentions she couldn't shift onto someone else. Who had made it personal in a way she couldn't figure out a way to escape from. She had to think of something to turn that gaze away, but she couldn't, and so she was frozen in place beneath the eyes of the Maid with her heart pounding in her ears. At last, no tricks.

She was in trouble now.

[Fengye is smitten; take a string]