Thanqol

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

"But where is there to go, if not to the rift?" asked Cerberus. "This is the land of the dead. Ever since she left it has been a place of ashes and ruins, forsaken by the gods. This is the end of the line. Where else is there?"

Dolce!

"She thinks she's a big shot," Jil was muttering. She was glaring at another mousegirl on the other end of the room, white against Jil's black and marked with strange green tattoos. "Look at her. You can see it in her eyes." You could not, actually, because the villain in question hadn't turned her head once to even glance at Jil. "I'm going to give her a piece of my mind."

She tried to stand up. She wavered, staggered, slammed her hands on the table to steady herself. She could hardly be faulted for being intoxicated - after all, she was almost halfway through her first drink.

"Fuck," she said. "How hard could this stuff be? They make it out of lemons. Imagine. Here, help me up, I'm going to punch her in the back of her stupid head."

As she said this she tried another sip of her drink. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and took the smallest and most ginger sip possible. Muscles in her face made a complicated dance as she tried to keep herself from grimacing. Imagine grimacing at this frilly lemon drink. Imagine getting beaten by a drink with an umbrella in it. She was way too badass for that, and she was going to prove it with violence.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Solarel hears this out in silent patience. Then she snaps her fingers, holds up one talon, and closes the door in Ivy's face.

A few minutes later the door opens again. She smiles as she thrusts a stack of papers into Ivy's arm. Solarel vs The Boatmen of Styx. A lawsuit claiming damages for the inferior product sold to her that failed to disable not one but two enemy mechs. Unconscionable conduct in attempting to bring a barely literate alien into debt-based servitude off the provision of this inferior product. Compensation required for the cost of the heavily modified Bezorel, emotional damages from losing to her destined rival, whiplash.

She smiles innocently and rolls on her heels a little. She has been Studying, you see. She has learned the secret techniques of Terenian legal combat as the corollary of financial entanglements. She has studied all their greatest lawyers: the blind one, the colourful one, the blonde one. This had taken her days to put together but she had been preparing for battle against Anglea anyway and she'd needed to be prepared for anything this society could throw at her.

She is honestly quite proud of her work. She doesn't know if this is still part of the battle with Angela but if it is her opponent won't find her wanting on this battlefield either.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Functional.

She has a speech boiling inside her, a manifesto on combat. Words bubble in her throat and shiver in her fingers. She keeps still. Swallows the words. Speak Not.

Sometimes she gets like this, a deep and manic urge to explain, to contest. She can feel parts of her mind unfold as if for combat, ready to extend prepared and rehearsed arguments, thoughts and explanations. This is how to think. This is how to struggle. This is the difference between winning and losing. This is the way. These are the codes. All her wisdom she keeps inside, as she is commanded.

Because this is how humans think: functionally. It's in their gods, boxes of metal and ordinance. It's in the lessons they take from defeat: do not repeat the sequence that lead to the defeat. Identify what is broken and change it; change it enough and you might develop something built for purpose. Iterative, industrial. Crushing. Terrifying. Moving targets. Imagine living in a world that you could shape with your decisions. Every thing made with intent. Every intent manifest in steel. Impossible. The Bezorel had been a nightmare to administer because she was responsible for everything. Imagine being able to cut out parts of yourself and replace them because they weren't doing well enough. Imagine having a choice.

Imagine not loving your Goddess. Imagine not changing everything you are to suit her. Imagine trying to change her rather than yourself. Imagine not cutting yourself out entirely.

Part of her wondered if they could be stopped. Part of her wondered if they'd pave the highlands and march legions over the wendaway. What was the storm to the windmill?

She pauses.

Isabelle. The champion of their kind. That look in her eyes. A determination. With her resources she could iterate rapidly. What kind of functional blade would she forge? Why did the idea send shivers up her spine? If Angela wouldn't repeat mistakes, what would the princess manage?

She is silent. She speaks not. But internally she draws up a new screen and sets it to playing recordings of Isabelle's battles. How is she changing? What is she building? Who does she need to be next?

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

White's hand twitches involuntarily. Immediately other processes are cut to minimal levels as she assesses it, a reflex she wasn't consciously aware of. It takes a second but she identifies it as the beginning of a move to cut Green off.

The why isn't a huge mystery; to be denied feedback would have sent Green lunging across the field to grapple Euna for real. The only thing worse than failing a test is not knowing if you failed it. Her whole being is set to absorb, digest and adjust based on data and not receiving that data is awful. She is dimly aware that one of the reasons she keeps using Headpattr is because the rating system gives her the immediate feedback hit that she craves. It all comes back to space. In space there's so little going on that simply knowing everything relevant was a reasonable ask. Some part of her assumed that combat, as a relatively constrained physical activity, would be similar.

But instead she's being strategically denied information. That, even more than the fight, raises her opinion of Euna. In motion things had been happening too quickly and she'd been too self aware of her own motions that the technical ability hadn't fully sunk in; she didn't have the eyes to see, didn't have the context to fear. But denying information was something White especially understood. If Euna thought of fighting like space, a limited dataset that could be accurately modeled and solved, then there'd be no need to deny information; the opposite would be true. That's the approach any second floor karate dojo would take. To not do that meant that Euna viewed combat, deep down, as essentially unsolveable.

And that had White's full attention. It put into context the incredible situational awareness she showed when fighting; the checks, the listening, the phantom follow throughs. Ready for anything, even here. Unspecialized.

One of the primordial problems of intelligence is over-fitting. Thinking takes work, so why not simply develop accurate answers and then cut out the intelligence to save on resources? Early machine learning devices did this all the time; boiling themselves down immediately into instinct engines. The answer to the problem had been found not in code but in dreams. Dreams are humanity's solution to over-fitting within the human brain. A dream casts a person in scenes they don't encounter in daily life, in hyperspecialized perils and possibilities to force them to engage aspects of their brain that would otherwise atrophy as they press buttons on a keyboard all day. It was why the Hecatoncheires were made unaware of their true 'score', why they were given the ability to dream, why they were made as people. Because otherwise they'd collapse into Brown's singularity, wireheaded and empty. Preventing that was one of White's core functions, and that's why Euna's refusal to comment on her form meant everything.

"There will be," she said sincerely. "I want to learn what you have to teach. I must make you aware of a complication, though," she grimaced. "I don't know what 3V has told you, but I am essentially one ninth of a hivemind - in particular, an aspect focused on discipline and self control. So I can personally commit to training regularly and can ensure my own attendance. The rest of me does not operate according to the same standards. I do not want to inconvenience you with a commitment to a large number of students of dubious quality and intermittent attendance, so I understand if you change your mind about this at any point."

Breathless Dead

Bella and Redana!

You walk down the street. Leashed behind you is a suitcase full of sharks. They gaze out in every direction, freed from their prisons to watch with stitched eyes as the glittering digital glory of the ancient world played out in every direction. It rolls smoothly across the floors, flimsy little wheels of hard plastic carrying their precious cargo.

Here and there are set out small clusters of chairs in the street; red, plush and cramped, looking like they have been torn out of solid foundations. They sit in clusters of a dozen or so, all facing towards one of the infinite moving screens. When you sit down on the chair and allow the audio to focus on you then you find yourself watching a movie. Ancient movies, movies from before the invention of film. Movies from a time when all the actors were too fragile to fight living creatures and so they had to fight digital ghosts in weightless, frictionless battle in front of emerald screens. They are stories about men who wear machines and mortals who are equal to the gods. People of this era had strange stylistic tastes.

And there is animation. It is strangely modern, familiar - the old style of hundreds of hand-drawn frames arranged in rapid motion is as alive today as it was back then. Some of the shows on display even compare favorably to modern content. Some of the shows of ancient Japan are timeless enough to stand through the separation of history, in the same way that painters of this ancient era could still marvel at Renaissance masterpieces.

There exists open stalls of the strange, weightless ancient food; warm white cornbursts of nothing and salt, orange liquid of nothing and chemicals. Help yourselves as you walk through this museum of ancient art.

Alexa!

"Hmm," said Ceberus. There was another long silence, the intimacy of a broken toy. Thought without motion; statues of girl and hound.

Finally, those eyes blinked back on. "Can I go with you?" she asked. "Across the Rift. I've been thinking about it for a while and... forgetting might be better."

Dolce!

"Of course I'm going," said Jil, standing up in a sweep and taking off her skull-bead hanfu. She looks at it like she's contemplating eating it as well. "I was born in a coffin and grew up in a mausoleum. This is my chance to live, to truly be alive. For me... that's everything, that's a chance to spit on the order of the cosmos itself. Frankly, I hope I don't remember anything - I'd pay the ferryman for a chance to wash all of this away."

She gives in, and takes a very small, experimental bite of her hat. Just a corner.

"Anyway, you want to get smashed? I'm sure there's a bar we can raid around here somewhere," she said, drawing her sword. Evidently she means that in the literal sense of violent robbery.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Is this how the knights of Zaldar fight?

Solarel stood in silence for a moment as Angela accused her. The Kathresis felt sluggish around her, the neural link flooded by thought - the struggle to Speak Not against the whirl.

You mean you don't know?

She's stunned by the idea. Frozen by it worse than if she'd been the one in the cold. The idea that someone might not obsess over their opponents the same way she does. Did Angela not watch either of her previous bouts? Did she not come to this fight prepared for Solarel the infamous, Solarel the trickster, Solarel who would use every underhanded technique in every book to steal every win? You only have her measure now?

She's offended. A pride she wasn't even aware of is wounded. This isn't about love or victory any more. This is about proving a point.

As Angela leaps up to the stone she stands upon, Solarel jumps back - clearing the blast radius of the anti-armour mine she concealed beneath her feet. Is this what you think love is, human? To rush blindly forwards in your determination to get what you want? She's been silently screaming her truth from this mountaintop and you still can't hear? You think your loveless determination merits her blade?

She does not even look around at the legless, smouldering wreck of the Barn Owl. Come back when this is to be a duel, girl, not an act of self gratification.

[Defy Disaster: 10]

Breathless Dead

Bella and Redana!

The skies darken and the shadows gather in strength. As you ascend through the ranks of the carnival you have attracted the attention of Lord Hades himself to stand in opposition.

The games do not change other than their intensity. The God of the Dead does not speak; this is not about him, nor what he might say to you. He does not interrupt your date, your dialogue, your rhythm. A lesser creature would have demanded your attention; Hades only demands your focus.

He is there and waiting behind the frictionless flat table, circular plastic pucks ready to parry the flat circular disc that is sent sliding across towards him. He is there at the cards table, unblinking as he draws his sixth card in a row, unable to match the red you have cast down. He observes the rotating clown head machines with relentless precision before placing the ball in the mouth of the leftmost. He pulls a lever sending a boneless, rubbery horse sprawling waterfall-like down through a maze of pegs. These carnival games are his traps, his wards, the fortress vaults that conceal his greatest treasures. Lord Hades knows, after all, that even his divine brothers and sisters do not rule the chance that rules these games.

... but he wages a war against two girls with matching eyes. The Auspexes are the eyes of Hermes and Hermes always did know her way around festival games. As the God enters the competition so do the eyes and they can see the patterns that Hades misses. He is so intent on the chance implied by the throw of the dice he doesn't think to calculate their velocity and momentum. He throws himself on the mercy of the cards unaware that the metal behind him is reflective. There is a logic beneath this place; there are challenges of skill and perception hidden amongst shifting metal and the twitches of flesh. But the God of the Dead is so caught on the riddle of the whirling cups he does not even think to notice the dealer has flicked the ball into his sleeve after the first round.

Tricks are not his domain.

Alexa!

"I'd kind of like to just keep hating them, if that's okay," said Cerberus. "Not because they were hateable, not even because leaving was their fault. I want to sympathize with them, want to worry about them. But when you worry about someone that hard for that long it just... turns toxic."

The mechanical toy's eyes are a cluster of lights arranged into the shape of eyes, blank and sightless circles. "If I didn't hate them I'd have to love them, and if I loved them I'd have to be heartbroken all over again. They gave me a collar once, you know? I loved it. I wore it every day. It kept them in my thoughts every day. So I scratched it and scratched it and scratched it until it finally broke. It felt..."

The eyes focused again, the change in those pixels implying somehow conscious thought. "Maybe it was just a change of pace. I'm always winding up to start conversations that I'll never get to hear the other side of. After that I got to have the conversations with a different emotional energy. If all that emotion is just for me, why not have it be louder?"

Dolce!

The laughter eventually passes that ethereal line into tears. A lifetime of stress unwound itself in this liminal moment, this skipped beat. The Lanterns were engineered to serve the ship; created to serve as an extension of the captain's will. Even when that meant their death, even when it meant their exaltation, all of life was for the ship and all the ship was for the Captain. You may as well have swallowed the sun, Dolce. If you'd given her a thousand years this idea would never have crossed her mind.

Eventually there is no air left; muscles are sore from strain, serenity is found amidst the ruins of reality. "Fuck," she said, at last, looking off at the distant rooftop of the Tunguska. "That's it, then? Freedom. It's..." she toys with the skull-beads of her hanfu. "Well. Is it weird to say the Rift doesn't feel like a big deal any more? I mean, it was easier to imagine life after having my personality erased than this."

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

When the Maid held the Mask there was a moment of... serenity.

Serenity is never calm. Serenity is manic. Serenity is disconnect. Serenity is when the world is aligning into something so unstoppably that the mountains sweat and the sun seizes and the rains stand still. Serenity is an alignment around a new centre of gravity. She is pulled in a different direction, strong enough to fall. She is pulled towards something happening between the Maid and the N'yari.

The mask. The mask. It must be the mask. She is too close. Too real. Too seen. Too catalogued. Too known. Here and helpless beneath the eyes of the powerful. They see her and they judge the mask more important, as is right. They see her enough to mark her for later. Serenity is the terror of knowing that you are not a part of this connection. The Maid is failing her; she is losing this fight. She can no longer be patient.

She moves closer. Her umbrella is still closed, but the crook of it is ready to slash down and hook the mask the moment the embrace fades. Her serenity rules her voice and her smile, and it's with serenity she looks down and says to her Maid: "Is that all you've got?"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Fight you? Oh Angela. Do you not see that she loves you too much for that?

Speak not to the outsider. Do not let them hear the chattering of your teeth. The kiss of cold stealing warmth from your lips. Do not let them taste the desperation in your voice, the pride that wavers on the edge of humiliation. The Kathresis' beam blew out your mech's internal temperature regulator, her swords cracked the upper armour in the clash. The cold is seeping in.

And so Solarel stands back. She floats away into the snow, just outside the line of contact. When Angela advances she retreats. When Angela stops so does she. The Zero-Entropy weapon hums in her palm but she does not fire it. Her swords are vanished into cosmic dust. She is the wolf against the elk, waiting for the cold to finish her quarry. As patient as the cold she waits.

Sometimes autocannon fire comes. Sometimes missiles. She uses her shields, dodges, takes structural damage when she must. She does not advance. Eventually the stores will run dry. Eventually freezing poison will seep in through the tiny cut she left during that fleeting exchange. There need never be another. Because this is her gift for you, her love for you, Angela of humanity. Do you not know that glory against Solarel is measured in minutes? That the greatest huntress of Hybrasil would strive with all their skill to survive for mere hours against her amidst the asteroid rings of Etalaune? Tick, tick, tick. So rises your fame. So slows your heart.

How long until your hands go numb? Until the shivers of your body are visible on your machine? How long until frost starts to form on your face? How long until the fog of your breath drenches every screen in water? Tick tick tick. Glory, glory, glory. How long can a human last against the cold?

An hour passes.

And then more.

Still she waits. She waits until the cloud she seeded sighs its last. She waits until the wind finally clears the sky and leaves them together again on this mountaintop, eyes opened to each other in the last whispers of this false winter. The Kathresis still stands, distant and predatory and endlessly patient. No need to hunt. No need to risk the wrath of this beautiful, oh-so-prepared girl and all of her hidden techniques and just arguments. She could have hidden beneath the driving snow. She could have drawn this out more.

But her eye is on the clock too. Tick, tick, tick. Every moment she allows to pass brings Angela closer to the record set by the One Day Defender. Her swords are in her hands again. She loves you this much, Angela, but no further. Never further than this.

She stands, in the open at last, against her frozen foe. She is as unattainable as the stars. No words nor curses nor insults nor pleading could move her, could make her draw her blades. Nothing could cut her. Only this; only love.

It's beautiful, isn't it? Terrifying. To be so close to something so far away. To have someone respect you so much they never give you a chance. She never took a risk, never guessed that you'd make a mistake, even when you were shivering in a blizzard. You were still dangerous then. You are still dangerous now. Even as your lips turn blue she has not forgotten for a second that you are a goddess. She has not forgotten for a second that what she wants more than anything else is to defeat you.

The sun emerges from behind the wasteland she made of the sky. It captures all her sleek alien beauty. Have you forgotten, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius?

[Entice: 10-1(string): 9]

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

"Hmm!" Cerberus thinks about that for a moment. "Hmm..." Not like she's coming up with a witty response, just rolling the idea over in her many minds. A certain energy starts to fade out of the hounds as she does; the swarm unravels and drifts away along a hundred doggy paths, and soon the street is empty again but for you and the robot dog in the window. In the absence of the machines and the motion the lights in the screen seem cold and lonely, and the guardian of the Underworld seems like just a toy.

"You reminded me of someone who I haven't seen for a long time," she said quietly. Her digital eyes blink, flicker, and go dark. Her voice, without the plurality of reverbs from so many speakers and directions, is small and tinny. "Thank you for that."

Dolce!

Jil laughs. It's at first a stunned, incredulous kind of motion, trying to come from a place of cynicism. But she has a terrible weakness: she is unpracticed with laughter. She's been in a state of absolute seriousness for so long that she's forgotten how to manage a laugh, how to stop it escalating, how to handle a world that is not themed around SKULLS and DEATH. She puts her fist in her mouth to try and stop it but she's already lost control of her breath. She tries to take a deep breath and give a serious response but she loses her shit each time. Her proud, jagged willpower gathers time and again only to immediately fall apart.

"wELL," she managed, "I'll EAT my HAT before I -" and then she's gone again, unable to finish broken like the tension.