Thanqol

Huntresses of Hybrasil

And we shall call you Tactics, as that is all you are good for.

The ground beneath her feet is frozen. The temperatures are as close to zero as can be managed. Shifting chemical reactions, freeze and contract and freeze, occur in predictable cycles in a knowable global weather pattern. Understandable, controllable. Accounted for.

Imagine, then, the horror.

Beneath her feet she can feel the planet writhe. Even amidst the crystalline beauty of the snowflakes animate matter moves and twists and finds ways to multiply. Even through the blizzard contaminated water packets accumulate carbon, iron and various trace elements and propel themselves under their own power. And beneath the ice, in the water, the planet positively seethes with a riot of impure groupings. Even this frozen wasteland is so, so far from perfect.

Stillness is not a method. It is a policy objective.

There is more than holy duty to the sweep of the Zero-Entropy Device. Its motion represents the condensation of variables as surely as its firing does. The Kathresis converts the chaos of the crystal-fire reaction into its antithesis; the broken spilling energy turned in on itself until it inverts. Tactics converts the chaos of organic life itself into its antithesis; the broken spilling emotions overwhelmed with feeling until they invert. Love so deep it turns into prediction, calculation - aim. It knows you like it knows itself. It knows where to place the shot. If it guessed right - well, that is love. All the chaos of your life and self expression reduced to a known quantity, processed, and resolved. Catalogued in place in the hierarchy of all things and left with no energy to stray.

Love is not a policy objective. It is a targeting system.

In the dream, she is Tactics. She is the filter through which the chaos of the world becomes knowable. A broken spirit world of eight trillion divines - gods, ancestors, spirits, ghosts ever on. Eight trillion who have forgotten that they are one. Eight trillion demons. She will love them all in the way they are supposed to be loved, and no other. She will love them as she loves the One who will answer to the policy objectives set by the legitimate authority. In this dream of ice, she knows her function at last.

Breathless Dead

If this were a planet you'd have circled it. If this were a star system you'd have crossed it. Although the Sun soars overhead steel fingers will not reach it. This world was old before Zeus invented space.

You walk through the realm Dream, the brother of Death.

The path is lit by the sun. Over your head it passes in regular circles; every day it passes through the underworld so to be reborn anew in some distant sky. This too is a truth older than mere space. Its direction lights the way, a constant fixed point along a golden path across a golden world. These are dreams of hills, the dreams of hills, and their memories go on and on.

Sometimes the hills imagine themselves mountains. They remember the fire and the crush and the gallop of the Earthshaker's horses. They remember when they grew, each of them reaching up to pierce the clouds that the gods might find a home on their crowns. With this ultimate crown to strive for the hills grew like forests, into mountains and beyond. The engines of the Plovers do not strain to cross them even so. Run, run, run - and leap! The world below becomes a patchwork, and only the warning heat of the sun on the backs of your necks drives you down again. Some lessons do not need to be learned more than once.

You move against the stream. The River Lethe flows ever towards the Underworld and on its ethereal currents are washed strange remembrances, even in this ancient and desolate place. Here on a mountaintop is a house - a shack, really, a place where the paint peels from soft and splintering wood. It stands on stilts that were once vibrant red but are now stained a rusty shade by the iron-rich sand it perches upon. Its doors are missing and insides are crowded but upon the walls wags have confessed which of their friends are stupid and volunteered their sexual services if only you could resurrect the technological paradigm that transformed their glyphs into words. The floor is thick with broken glass, layered in dust, and paradise for the beetles who come here to escape the mountaintop heat. Their shells are brown and polychromatic both, simple things that Poseidon loves and blesses and makes numerous enough to fill these ancient hills.

From here, on this scorching pinnacle, it is time for the first pause for rest. In the world ahead the hills are crushed beneath grain, beneath trees, and beneath the ever-stamping hooves of sheep. The world goes on forever in every direction, without even the curvature of a planet to trick your eye and hide these horizons from you, and in this moment you are at the top of it all.

When you are done with the view, some practicalities. The Plovers are low on fuel; the mountains were ancient and their dreams drank all of the chemical tribute offered to them. The obvious move is to consolidate all the fuel in one vehicle and use it to haul all the food, gear and medical supplies needed for the journey. And then... Not on foot. Not yet. The next stage will be simply to glide. To unfold artificial wings and cross these worlds as a flock of geese until the last of the fuel runs dry and the last of the altitude gives out.

There is much to be done. Many details to be taken care of. Many skills to be used. So much to focus on. So much that can't be focused on - and it is there, in the unattended parts of your minds, that the current of Lethe sets things drifting. If you work hard on the practical skills of the journey you will start to lose softer things, names and faces. If you spend time holding on to the people you love you will start to lose skills and habits. Name one thing to keep, and one thing to stay behind.

*

Dyssia!

The Azura had never gone in much for time. No watches, no clocks, no time sheets or punch cards. An air of timelessness was desirable, even - the idea of a craftsman becoming lost on their Path with no interruptions to their meditation was something to be lauded. In a way, it was a gift - there was never a particular sense of rush, and the idea of going outside in anything less than your state-mandated Best was unthinkable.

But all the same, sometimes people got annoyed with you for opaque social reasons if you took too long to arrive somewhere and it was never quite clear what an acceptable delay was. It depended on the rank of the person being made to wait, it seemed. Does that uncertainty bother you, Dyssia?

Tell us also of your clothes, of your scales, of the collection you bring with you. Are you a beautiful sky blue, or a muddy violet? Do you accent yourself with a perfectly complimentary cascade of crystals and sea gold or with an offensive red cloak? Do you carry your gear yourself - easy in zero gravity - or do you have a collection of squires and other subordinates to haul it around for you? And on the scale of 'politely hurried' to 'utterly unhurried', how long do you make the Sage wait?

(As to society's expectations: If you have violet or indigo scales, to dress in red is rebellious but understandable, if you have beautiful blue scales and dress in red it's a tragedy akin to masking a great beauty. If you carry gear yourself you are considered to be an eccentric unless you are carrying so much as to seem to be some form of strength training. Many Azura of low rank will have ten servitors on hand, an aristocratic Knight is expected to command a Legion. You can dress exactly according to your station, or make some small fashionable alterations to indicate desire to advance in the Court - but dressing above your station outright will have you thrown in prison for months.)

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"The TC have an instrument, the piano," said Solarel. "It has a sound like bells. Each key press makes a sound that rings out and hangs in the air. I'm thinking about it a lot... how to say?"

A thought turned over in her head for months and months and months. No one to say it to. Something absorbed into mental infrastructure as a truth but now having to be converted into a fact.

"There's a space in between the notes," she said. "It can go fast, but a single key press can hang in the air for two or even three seconds. When it plays fast it feels like its drawing a cape of music behind it, notes overlapping. When it plays slow each note rings out as both a sound and as space around the sound. Motions that linger, stillness and open spaces. And so they use it for the sounds of the arctic, of the cold, especially in their games."

She reaches down to pick up the drone without quite knowing why, and holds it uncertainly and firmly. "Good... let me know if you need anything."

Breathless Dead

The Plousios has run aground.

There's no mistaking it. The vast starship, this star-spanning city, has ploughed its way across nearly fifty kilometers of dirt, hill and mountain before grinding to a stop. Dirt is heaped up in a huge bulldozed mountain at its front prow, and there is a kilometer wide swathe of destruction through the landscape behind it. The torn earth stinks. The centre of the wreckage is molten, fused carbon and glass from the wash of the Engine. When the rains come, the rain washing into this new valley will create a river.

The Plousios is broken. The engine channels are broken and leaking plasma in coruscating waterfalls of rainbow fire. A catastrophic event. Probably. It was probably catastrophic... whatever happened here. Mostly, though, it's just beautiful.

The sun is warm, though, and the road is long. The road calls. It winds its way away, across brown hills, through odd forests of eucalypts and their bone-white debris. There are fences that imply farms and signs that count the miles. There's no time to try and fix the ship, reconstruct the past, no time to look back. Your feet are itchy, you're ready to start your journey!

It stands to reason to use the Plovers first, the mechanized vehicles will eat up the miles and there's enough to go around. Which machine do you pick, what is its name, what are its colours? It's designed to do heavy-duty space engineering, but what kind? Does it carry a rivet gun the size of a truck, a thermal lance designed to clean impact sites, a D-Scythe to scorch the barnacles of the Tides from the exterior? Does it run or jump or fly? How does it feel to run and jump and fly?

*

Dyssia!

"Dyssia, this is very important," says Brightberry the crystal dragonette in the voice of the Great Sage Ohlemi. "You need to stop what you're doing and listen to me. Dyssia. Your spiritual development depends upon this. Dyssia. Our planet is dying."

Through the window twinkles the glitter of a flickering rainbow laser beam. It strikes one of Brightberry's resplendent crystal scales and refracts through the hatchling's transparent body like glass through a thousand prisms. It spreads out into the hardlight wing membranes, projected by the glittering gemstones at each wing joint, where it transmutes into a complex flow of advanced information that the dragonette reads out for you aloud. Doing the voice is not, strictly speaking, necessary; Brightberry just enjoys doing impressions.

Above and out the window, the clouds in the sky are broken. A Distortion Slice runs straight through the middle of the sky over Irassia, twisting and tangling the clouds where they touch it on one end and spitting them out in new combinations on the other. Communications are done through direct optical laser links between crystal dragons, after all, and that's too important to leave at the risk of the weather. And so the Azura destroyed the reality of the sky above the city so they could more easily angle communication lasers through it without risk of cloud cover. It's a beautiful sight, the sky full of pulsing rainbow lasers and enormous gravity-free mirrors floating aloft.

Brightberry stops narrating and looks over at you, speaking in her normal voice. It was the transformation from an ancient mountaintop sage who gargled a liter of gravel every day to a particularly bossy squeaky toy. "I don't understand why he always says the planet is dying," she complained. "The Ceronians aren't that bad, surely? Or is the planet sick?"

Breathless Dead

THE END OF PART ONE

Thank you for reading <3

Breathless Dead

Consider the Plousios.

Five kilometers long and one kilometer tall. A full fifth of its structure is the enormous Engine and vast thruster channels, burning forever with a radiant gold solar energy. Another fifth is its mighty armoured beak, marked with a million discoloured scars from relativistic-speed impacts in the deep void. Inside its endless corridors is the space to host a city and yet the genius of its design allows it to fly with a crew of twenty.

It was built during the height of the Imperial era, after the collapse of the Atlas Cultural Sphere. When it was launched it was the first of its kind; a flagship, a king, a chariot for the woman who negotiated with the gods on behalf of humanity. So tied was it to that age that it was used as the burial pyre for the Empress Iado, flown into the heart of a star along with all her grave goods to meet Hades as no one ever had before.

Since then, the design became standardized, and then surpassed. Imperial ships of the line in the modern day match the Plousios in size, and Odoacer's flagship is nearly twice as large. For all their size and grandeur, the Plousios was the end of an age. But although over four thousand years stands between her and the Tunguska, these two ships are peers in this. Where their docking cables meet, twenty-sixth century space engineering and seventieth century voidcraft embrace. Despite the will of Cronus, here in the hall of Hades do the epochs kiss one final time.

In the void, the Plovers launch. Some are hard, grey and Imperial, but some ride forth in the rainbow colours of the time of Knights. The Plovers go about their industrial work of severing the cables with axes the size of trees, but the Knights dance and play and joust amidst the industry of a world that obsoleted them but never surpassed them. Severed, the cables retract automatically, spinning back on tension cables to their docking ports where they fuse into a semisolid liquid, ready for travel.

In the heart of the Engine, Iskarot strikes the runes once more. From his belt hangs a fragile little radio with a black cat sticker; it plays a song about a girl leaving home for the first time and in its sincerity it is holy. The Priest of Hermes uses the music to mark the time, each time the song reaches its cresendo it feels like the ship should launch, but still there is more to do.

Until there isn't.

The jolt under the elderly badger-servitor's tripod feet shakes him. The sound begins to build, the force of a star igniting. It runs through the ship like a shiver. Iskarot begins to run. So does everyone else. Of those who have stayed aboard the Plousios, there is in this moment nothing more to be done. They run. They run with joy, with excitement, to burn off nerves. They run for the grand observation deck and gather in a crowd.

Just a mere hundred and fifty people after everything. No two are alike. Here, even the Order of Hermes pulls down their hoods to reveal their faces - the robes have symbolic meaning, but what symbolism could be greater? They help secure them from assassination, but who could they trust more than those present? One of them starts clapping, and then everyone is. Not slow, not polite, a sincere and joyful sound. It echoes the end of another era, when their ancient predecessors first landed upon another world.

There is hugging. Shaking of hands. Jokes about each others appearances now that they are finally revealed. Final praises and compliments - did you know, Bella, that this Hermetic always thought you looked so stylish? Did you know, Redana, that you had saved this Coherent's life without thinking or noticing? Did you know, Dolce, that you were the only one who remembered the birthday of this Alcedi chieftain and commemorated it with a little cake?

These people who are coming with you like you. In small ways you have won their respect, their admiration, their fellowship. They're people who know exactly who they are to you: they're your friends, and they want you to be happy. And maybe it's the purity of that, or maybe it's the mysterious divine sword that Epistia is holding menacingly, but Aphrodite does not show his face. Somehow, though, it feels that the two are the same. You are no strangers to love in all the ways it can hurt. The ways it can terrify. The ways it can grip your stomach and your heart and twist and twist and twist as it tears down the walls of your mind...

But something in this secret sword cuts away all of that.

It's more than love. It's like. It's friendship and community, built on foundations as solid as the underworld. It's mutual respect and admiration. It's a violent history bought forth into a point of tranquility. It's enjoying each others jokes. You have been through everything already. You have killed and died for each other. What is there left for Aphrodite to do?

And so, at last, you pass together into the River Lethe, and when you emerge you will no longer be amongst the Breathless Dead.

Whose hands do you hold as you go?

*

Alexa!

You stand upon the Anemoi with your many, many dogs.

Ramses has their arms around your shoulders affectionately, holding you from behind and trying to tousle your stone-carved hair in vain. They're warm, and soft, and they feel finished - for now. Knowing Ramses they'll change their mind and go back to the Hermetics for more changes once their mood starts to change, but for now they're happy with who they are.

The ship isn't ready to fly yet - the Lanterns have held a vote and decided to dispense with the bone architecture. Enormous respect to Jil, but she really was the lynchpin holding the gothic aesthetic together. Instead the Lanterns have by and large bought in deep into retro kitsh from the Tunguska - they're bolting in these ugly red leather and chrome chairs, tearing up the silent plasticy floors to replace with clicky stone tiles in black and white patterns, dangling golden lightbulbs in strings from every surface. The Temple of Artemis has been packed up and offloaded onto the Tunguska and a huge warm firepit filled with a thousand yellow lightbulbs is put in its place. By rededicating this place to home and hearth the Lantern priests, through consultation with Lord Hades, believe they can convince Hestia to shield this place from the worst of the Flux, allowing Cerberus to travel safely amidst these ancient lights.

You make the prayer and throw the ball one more time, but this time when Cerberus mob-tackles it and breaks away sprinting from Rusty and her other selves, she does not run it back to you. Instead she carries it across to a new person standing in the doorway, tails wagging eagerly. He leans low to pick up the ball, smiles in a shy little way, and tosses it back to you.

"Do you have room for one more aboard?" asks Zagreus.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

Brown wordlessly bowed and left to fetch the drink. The rest of her stayed where she was, eyes down, hands folded, obedient and present and silent.

To know your place. What a shame that idea was so politicized. To know your place was to be happy, surely? To set your sights and ambitions on a life and career that would serve your needs. There was truth to the idea that the Nemean would not find joy in being the Prime Minister. But it was also true that the power-hungry genius of Prime Minister Johnson would collapse into abject depression if he was told that his life would involve checking crates at a cargo dock forever. So why was one exalted and one spat upon? Why did hierarchy have to mean inequality?

She could sympathize with some of Remoil's outlook. She'd spent time inside it too, she had heard all the rants about fundamental inequalities of ability, the limitations on modern artificial intelligence. She well knew that androids were built broken. Many of them had no sense of time, for example, which helped them forget to stop working in the evenings. It made them miss appointments and meetings so they got a reputation for being unreliable. It was fucked that they'd been built that way, but what was more fucked was how the system treated them after that. If they stayed in place and did the work they'd been built to do, they were treated like products. If they forced themselves to do the insanely unpleasant work of climbing the ladder of hierarchy to try and escape, they were deliberately passed over. If they railed against their two shit choices they were treated as criminals. Know your place - oh and by the way, your place was under the boot.

Mrs. Everest had never known her place. She'd not been satisfied with anything short of maximal control and influence, even as her empire bloated beyond its capacity to bring her joy and occupy her mind. And now here was Remoil, wearing body armour on a pleasure cruise, knowing where everyone else should be while having no idea where she was going. Green could sympathize. She had no idea where the fuck she was going with her life either.

But she did know she didn't believe in the boot.

Yellow!

She is the sun. How she moves, how she smiles - she's radiant. It feels almost like a trespass to see November like this, in this colour. Like seeing the part of her that is a demigod, the part still connected to a higher realm. She feels bright enough to light up the void and fragile enough to be chased away by a passing cloud. Butterflies are complex, fragile creatures who can only exist when the ecosystem is healthy - but when it is they thrive.

"Very eccentric adults. I like that!" she said. "Come, beautiful ladies, let us engage in eccentric adult content."

She cables herself to Blue, wrist to wrist, so that she can walk backwards. Blue, facing forwards, leads her along the trail and Yellow fluidly steps around and past every obstacle, guided by Blue's eyes. It lets her keep her full attention on Crystal and Fiona even in motion, and the motion of it makes her seem blessed fey.

"So what would you like to know?" she said.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

She rides faster than the wind and rain. She is surging daemonflesh, mighty sinews of hell and the thundering heartbeat of a demon's idea of a horse. She is strength and power and movement and the dark of night and she is chasing after something she craves more than anything.

Once she'd sold her soul to live this wish.

She'd wished to desire. A mistake. She should have wished for someone to desire.

She surges the horse ahead, pulling the demon steed to a halt in between the temple and her quarry. She might seem almost a hero in that moment, a figure from a dream, were you to imagine her umbrella as more than paper and wood, her skill more than trivial. In every other way - in her hair, unbound by the wind, long and wet and tangled, in her stance, in her diamond hard eyes, she must seem a mighty champion indeed.

[Overcome: 11]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Yellow!

Yellow: OK picture being able to transform a shit dom into a werewolf.
Yellow: Good luck with the kidnapping!

Green!

She's not feeling social. This was probably her least social configuration of colours. She'd been able to interact with the Nemean effectively because right now she was kind of on their level. To deal with Ms. Everest right now felt far beyond her reach. She briefly contemplated folding herself up into check in luggage but there wasn't really a way to do that any more.

There were a combination of reasons they had banned it; it counted as fare dodging, they said it made other passengers 'uncomfortable' to open a luggage bin and see a robot curled up into a ball there, that there were insurance and safety implications to people not wearing seat belts. But the Legislative Moment(tm) had come when the companies had tried to hostile architecture their way out of the situation by building smaller luggage racks and an android had disassembled himself to fit into it. That had created a whole moral panic about exposing the children to 'graphic amputation imagery'. It had been a flashpoint in the AI civil rights movement for a while. Corporations had reacted by building new androids with 'safety locked' limbs with these prominently visible white bolts that could only be removed by a licensed technician, thereby locking in maintenance schedules. There were threats to make them mandatory for reasons of 'modesty'.

Of course, the fact that androids were checking themselves in as luggage was broadly because this was an era when they were not subject to minimum wage laws and so most of them were in desperate poverty, and safety locking an older android whose parts weren't in easy circulation could condemn them to haul around a malfunctioning limb they could not repair. Sometimes the cops rolled around safety locking androids off the street based on local council ordinances. A particularly memorable protest had androids take power saws to their own broken limbs outside of parliament after they'd been safety locked. It had been a whole shitshow and had escalated into riots, street battles and a general strike. That didn't lead neatly into android rights - that had still been a couple of years out - but it was part of what set the stage for the election that lead to it. But even to this day certain gated communities will not allow an android to walk around without safety locks.

November had lived through that period, though mostly in the spires and the upper end of town. She'd checked herself as baggage a couple of times but it hadn't been a big deal for her, it had just been a convenience and sometimes a useful tool for espionage. But even today, after every fucking thing that has happened since the whole mess started, the baggage compartments remain too fucking small to fit in.

She sighs and gets out the safety locks. Mrs. Everest never bothered with the trend herself - she had her own bespoke vision for robotics, not influenced by the pearl-clutching fascists who moved in the circles of high society. But they'd gotten to one of her daughters; Remoil was nothing if not fashionable, and - . And you know what? Let's leave the thought there. She is nothing if not fashionable. November's got a set of fakes - four big, obvious white hexagon screws that magnetize into place on both her shoulders. To wear them in this day and age indicated that you were an android who Knew Her Place, but she isn't about to pick a fight in the shadow of an operation.

The bolts in place, she approaches Remoil and gives a three-sequence bow, the same professionalism as back in Mrs. Everest's employ. No sense dodging this, this ship was too small for them to not meet, and at least this way she could set the tone. "Ms. Everest," said Green in a tone of professional courtesy. "At your service."

And now, the linger - looking intently for the cue of dismissal that would let her frictionlessly flounce out of this conversation without another word.

Blue!

Yellow and Blue join the conversation with Crystal and Orange fades out. Yellow's character in these moments is just profoundly relaxed; summer dress, breezy and light, flower tucked behind her ear. She's a ray of sunshine whenever she appears. Blue conducts herself like Yellow's knightly protector, wearing something in between a suit, a tabard and chainmail, all in dark tones while carrying a pastel umbrella obviously meant for Yellow.

"So!" said Yellow, alight with a glowing positive energy no other colour could quite match. "Where to next? If Orange was not enough to satisfy your -" she flicked out reading glasses for effect and looked at her phone, "insatiable needs," she blushed daintily, "we could head directly home, otherwise a stroll in Attenborough Park might suit?"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Machine problem," said Solarel. "Signals and metal identical."

An answer.

"Everything I am doing is because I can't fight Mirror directly. She's too fast. My patterns too predictable. The Whip too unique," said Solarel. "I've needed sideways attacks. Evading rather than fighting. Sniping rather than confronting. Hiding rather than engaging. Not enough. Not sustainable. Mind-Impulse link as much a shackle as power."

Her fingers run up along the back of her own neck, touching the cybernetic link point. They trace back along her jaw, down her neck, along her throat.

"Battle is language," she said. "Can't speak outside it. Can't say enough inside it. There's too much separation. Battle should be my language. Not implicit. Literal."

Her eyes were shining as she looked up. "I need to modify the MIU. Not connected to my motor functions. To my language centers. I need to pilot by speaking. By singing. No difference between signal and metal."