Thanqol

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

To Foxpearl there was no surprise at all. Her life experience as a spirit of mischief and mayhem was that law enforcement would shoot at her for practical reasons, and her life experience as a paragon of virtue on social media was that law enforcement would shoot at her for ideological reasons. What was the Eternal Tao but copaganda?

She sniffily assesses Shifu's transformation. "Mid," she declares haughtily. The fact that she had added absurd quantities of mass out of nowhere, the fact that she got the internal organ dynamics of an enormously complex seaborn lifeform correct on the first try and also was able to adapt it into not suffocating on dry land, the fact that there was no telltale fox-tail - those were all weaknesses, actually. Transforming into the five most basic elements was a sign of spiritual purity and she hadn't eaten those grapes because desire was an aspect of samsara and she was far above such things.

"Who's in charge here?" she called from behind her protective orca. She wasn't actually interested in the answer - the answer was capitalism - but she needed time and possibly Discourse to shake the Vermilion Princess out of her class awakening. "And what are their demands?"

Breathless Dead

Dolce!

"Civilization has two responses to Biomancy," said 20022, producing another set of beautifully painted powerpoint slides. He was ready for this conversation also. "Apollonian and Dyonisian."

He flipped the first panel, showing the Azura equivalent of the grey aliens, the icesnakes. Theorized to have evolved beneath the frozen oceans of a frozen world by a pre-spaceflight Azura artist, the icesnakes are cute with large yes, dark brown with attractive purple and blue patches, and with massive walrus tusks for cracking ice. There was a family of them, making thinking-emoji expressions.

"Until the discovery of biomancy, civilization is constrained by material possessions. It is an all against all contest between the citizens and nature to produce material possessions. During this period many great works of culture and acts of glory are performed and the gods reward the civilization with blessings and knowledge. One day, at the peak of the civilization's power, they grant it the ultimate secret: the power to create and sculpt life."

20022 flipped the page; it showed the happy icesnakes standing on a hill watching a legion of servitors with pickaxes smilingly proceed towards a mine.

"Suddenly there is no scarcity. Material abundance is conquered. Every individual can, if they choose, become the head of a civilization of their own, dedicated entirely to their own personal pleasure and satisfaction. Higher needs can be solved too; the perfect companions and lovers can be devised, art projects can be worked on a massive scale, an individual can wield a military, grant themselves immortality, clone themselves a trillion times. All of the logic of the old civilization breaks down."

He folded out the leftmost panel. Underneath a violet sun with the eyes of Dionysus' mask the icesnakes are partying, cups overflowing, eyes glassy mirrors. Some are meditating in satisfaction, others are embracing their servitors, others are shapeshifting into increasingly strange forms. The art is beautiful but unpleasant; the subtle implication that this was neither good nor healthy.

"To follow the god Dionysus above all others means to give the former civilization over to the feast," said 20022. "To embrace madness. To fracture from a single organized unit, beloved of the gods, into a trillion tiny tyrannies. Material abundance, infinite pleasure, and boundless love are solvable problems, and trivially so. The civilizations who follow this path, which are most of them, fracture. Collapse. Weaken and wither with nothing to drive them and nothing to unite them. In time they will drive themselves extinct as they drown in pleasure or assimilate into their servitor populations. The wreckage they leave behind can continue, self-sustaining, for many generations."

Then 20022 flipped the other panel; a line of icesnakes forming into the beautiful, sweeping structures of an Azura court, a great pyramidical structure up below a blue sky and radiant sun.

"To follow the god Apollo means rising above hedonism," said 20022. "It means recommitting to the ideals of civilization even in the face of infinite pleasure as a temptation. It means setting a new goal, a higher goal, than mere material abundance. With this new goal in place, the reborn civilization has secured both the love of the gods, a respite from madness, and most importantly moral authority. Moral authority allows the Apollonian civilization to do the unthinkable - to interfere with, to constrain, and to bind a biomantically ascendant civilization. Where ancient governments would override the will of individuals in the name of the civilizational goal of greater material abundance for all, an Apollonian government can override the will of individuals in the name of a greater and more glorious galaxy. As the Apollonian government has moral authority it can wield techniques that seem regressive and cruel towards its greater end. The resumption of material scarcity has become not an unthinkable crime and civilizational struggle, but an incentive structure to ensure that everyone, from the lowest to the highest, acts in accordance with the virtuous ends of the government's highest vision."

20022 folded the panels down. "This is to say, the whole point of the Endless Azure Skies is to empower its agents to override the individual pleasures and will of its citizens. There are, of course, methods for petition and review; a citizen can demand an investigation be launched into any given decision. But the only way a decision can be assessed as good or ill is with regards to the greater glory of the Endless Azure Skies."

Dyssia!

They are taking the auguries. A rooster is being slaughtered, knife moving swiftly and carefully. Skin and feathers are removed with expert precision, keeping the heart beating. Gloved hands reach into bloody guts and read the future.

"The omens say we must prepare for war," said the oracle.

The bloody wreckage of the rooster collapses. Tiny crabs swarm in all directions, tumbling off the table, burying themselves in the rock.

"War?" said the Captain. "Here? Against who?" She stopped herself, raised a finger. "Wrong question. When? How many?"

Another rooster is bought out. It is a glorious thing, raised and loved by hand for many years, the champion of many cockfights against its rivals, marked by Mars. Now its death is offered to him. "Hours," said the oracle. This one's death transmutes it into a blooming armful of wheat, heavy with seeds. The oracle sweeps it from the table and lays down the next sacrifice. The knife flashes. A hawk leaps into the sky.

"They are millions."

It is not dismay on the Captain's face.

It is elation.

She takes your hand. Raises it up.

"Dyssia of the Azura!" she yells to her command phalanx. In the distance relays repeat her words down and down through the line. "Has bought us to war!"

Fifty thousand spears clash against fifty thousand shields. A great roar goes out from the assembled legions. Not the howl of Ceron, but a vast cry of challenge. A glorious last stand against impossible odds. They were built for this.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

When it comes down to it, said Tactics, this is a resource management problem.

She stepped into the coming blade.

Pain. Blood. Pain. Energy.

In the breaking of scale, the parting of skin, there was power.

Your body is weak, said Tactics. Your body is unlovely. Your body is clumsy, untouched, unadorned. You hold no allegiance to it. It is but a coin to you.

She was boiling beneath the blows of knights, of bodyguards, of Varangians. Every turn and rush took her into a different blow. Each blow she internalized. Inside her she felt three points, white hot, as her body strained under the accumulated weight of her mortal coil.

Spend it.

Solarel closed her eyes.

And she walked the mountain.

*

The Stormlands. Impassable. Unlivable. Inescapable.

They crawled on their bellies. Elbow over elbow, slowly forwards, heads bowed. To raise any higher meant to fight the wind, howling overhead, gale-strong. Trees soared overhead. Some were burning where lightning had struck them. The clan looked at the distant fires and lightning with envy.

Fingernails against the dirt. Scratching, scratching, scratching. Searching for metal. Digging in the earth like animals as they crawled like worms. Searching, searching, searching. A discarded power cell, spat loose from a divine weapon and covered by dust and dirt, would be enough to power the clan for days. So every eye was kept down, watching the torn soil they left in their wake.

But one girl looked up. She saw the Gods.

Pointless, she knew, to look at them in the distance. To see those lights that went up endlessly, those mystic eyes, the radiation crackle when they engaged coolant cycles. To look at their monolithic grace, untroubled by the wind. To see them fight, the wasteful blaze of their engines enough to make and unmake this tribe a thousand times over. She saw it. It loomed in the distance, a colossus from ancient times. It stared directly at her.

Of course she could go. She could cut the line and crawl in that direction for a day and a night on the dim and flickering power left to her. She could get to her feet and embrace the only solid structure across the Stormlands. All for the chance to stand vertical for a moment. For a chance to climb upwards. Of course she could go. All that it would cost her was everything.

*

She stood before the Aeteline. She stood before her God.

Molten blood dripped from her. The floor was dusted with the violet dust of pulverized scales. A sword was still stuck in her body. She pulled it out and dropped it atop the knight who had wielded it. Torn spirits surrounded her, clouds of fading nanites crumbling back to dust.

The first part of the journey. The breath of the gods. The storm of blades and blows. To approach a God was to follow a path of ruin and bodies, the bones of ancient soldiers who had dared the ancient world's guardians. There was a path of ruin and bodies behind her now; knights and varangians scattered and dazed, swords broken, ribs cracked. They had left their mark.

With bloody fingers, Solarel reached out to touch the foot of the Aeteline. Life. Life, power, freedom from all this. She didn't need medical attention, she didn't need rest, she didn't need this body. She needed strength. Strength enough to interact with the people she loved. To be worthy. To be beautiful. If all being better than she was cost was everything she was, it was cheap at the price.

[Marking Insecure and Hopeless]

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Shifu.

How she hated her!

She spotted her in the distance and had already oozed out of the Vermillion Princess' grip and past the guards and was leaning over the balcony railing, looking down at her malevolently, tail lashing furiously. Oh of course she was there, fluffy-tailed and fluffy-hearted and fluffy-brained, collecting pats from small children and smiling and making it all look so effortless. Don't think she didn't see her down there, glaring, pouting, face unrelatedly bright red from being complimented and swept off her feet. She was so mad her tail was lashing, and she was eighty percent tail by spiritron composition so you knew it was serious!

"HEY IDIOT!" she yells. "Quit fucking around! Get your ass up here! I am up to my tits in law enforcement and if I get shot because you are too busy getting scritchies to tank any bullets that," she made huge fingerquotes, "accidentally fly my way I'm going to fucking skin you and wear your fur as a coat! Hashtag Heracles hashtag violence hashtag swearing!"

Even in the heat of the moment, Foxpearl was so full of virtue that she remembered to properly tag her threats. There were children around, after all, and she was swearing a lot, so this would help them filter it out.

[Foxpearl is shifting your Superior down and your Freak up]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

November!

November: Good evening Pope 7-09. It is a pleasure to have you here.

The group account was a limiter. In person her inner dynamics were easier to conceal, but in a digital environment she could too easily spill words in too many directions and drown out all surrounding conversations. It was really just Brown behind this account, interpreting the chaos of her own inner dialogue into the most basic bitch translation possible. Playing it cool through near total lobotomy.

November: My name is November. I specialize in investigation and research. York advised me that we will be working together and I hope to support you in any way you require.

Brown-Green-Black!

The connection breaks, the cables unwinding. Thoughts strike limits and end. Flowing water freezes into isolated pools and the salmon must again remember the agonizing process of jumping between them. A human's analogy to the feeling might be waking up from a dream larger and more real than the brain's ability to process. She stumbles into identity by habit, regretting the beginning and the end.

Prioritize. Sort self. Raising up through the stack, Green. Still half flash of lightning in the storm. Initially dazedly disappointed that unpicking the layered signals had been so easy, but then realizing that there was still a power there, and - and - and - she was frozen for long moments before she remembered to look to Black.

"It's..." said Black. "Power."
"A puzzle." said Green.
"A way for me to watch you." said Brown.

She thought. Looked at Nepenthe. At Singh. Could see it all clearly. Singh. Trying to solve it on his own terms. Nepenthe. Asking her directly what she meant, but hidden out of respect. Goat. Unable to see the greater whole. He knew what a panther was, no doubt. The wikipedia page was floating around in there somewhere. But the data was not the symbol.

"It is the..." Black chose her words for Goat. He was the most literal. But she left a hesitation for Nepenthe to show that this was not the right word. "... game I am playing. A small part of it. Goat, when you were playing your game... there were many parameters outside your control. Movements of power you were blind to. You faced constraints. They were decisions."

Brown gestured at Singh. "To him. That signal was noise. Patternless. If I tell him it was a panther in an electric jungle he knows exactly what it means: danger. To you. The signal was patterns. Equally weighted. You heard something dangerous and did not react. Could not prioritize it over the rain. Aevum Station is full of these hidden patterns. I am listening to them."

"And if I can identify the patterns, I can identify the signals," said Green. "If I can identify the signals I can identify the communication. If I can identify the communication I can identify the sources of power. If I can identify the sources of power then I can alter the rules of the game. If I can do that... I could build something really interesting."

She looked at Singh. What will you build? She hadn't forgotten. And she was going to pass that test too. She was a good girl after all.

*

Red!

"I like your outfit," said Red. "Did I mention that? I love your whole aesthetic. You're terrifying and hot and intensely high effort, and I don't know if you get told that enough by people who you haven't forced to say that with drugs."

Red liked complimenting people. A spontaneous blurt of affection, the social awkwardness of offering it unprompted serving to underline its sincerity.

"I, too, would like to thank you for your work," said White. She didn't see as much to comment on - when she had undergone medical training to tend to Mrs. Everest she'd also worn the maid outfit. "Mr. Merkin. Thank you for placing your trust in us. I hope we have not disappointed."

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

What would you do if you were a superhero?

There were other ways to be a rogue fox tail with infinite cosmic power and a moral system built on smug superiority refracted through the technicolour lens of leftist shitposting. She could, still, commit to a life as a minor demon, haunting someone's house and making the windows rattle and the chickens mysteriously vanish. She could possess someone's hentai dating simulator, becoming the perfect digital waifu while feeding off their spiritual essence. She could change the direction of the tide whenever the moon wasn't looking just to fuck with some guy on the beach looking up on his phone what direction it was meant to be going. Humans aspired to be a superhero as freedom from mundanity, to engage in the raw sadism of power wielded. That was what lust was, wasn't it? Strength utilized. The erotic thrill of being able to break from constraints and force the world to bend to you.

Foxpearl hangs between the grip on her wrists and the scarf tight around her neck. Her world was already one of an unconstrained billion acts of impulse. What she wanted to do was kiss the Vermillion Princess and pick her pocket and then to bind Xingtian inside a lamp made of her own armour and then give it away as a punishment to a girl who had only pretended to throw coins into the shrine's donation box. Her blood was up. It'd be easy.

Easy except for the leash around her neck, the hands around her wrists. She was getting something different out of this than the humans. She was putting herself in a position where there were stakes. Where she could be hurt. Where the Vermillion Princess wasn't just a first kiss to steal and heart to break, two things which she would then brag about to all the other foxes, but a valued teammate whose approval mattered. And that was fascinating, captivating.

Idea: Virtue is what restrains lust.

The scarf she wore was assisting in that restraint; it did its best to cover the absence of her clothes, wrapping her in criss-crossing prayer-threads. In a lot of ways it was an inferior sister to the Princess' Sash. Righteous thought without righteous deeds had a much smaller metaphysical weight, and Foxpearl was very sure that was unfair and if the purity of her thoughts were accounted for then she'd be far more powerful.

But on that topic, just like if humans drank too deep of lust they'd become supervillains, if she drank too deeply of virtue she'd probably become a harvest goddess and sit around all day smiling and blessing crops while waiting to get railed by passing storm goddesses. And if she did that then she wouldn't find out what the fuck was up with the mayor. So she looked at the Vermillion Princess, batted her eyelashes, and gestured at her mouth in case she wanted to, you know, remove this gag.

Breathless Dead

Mosaic and Ember!

There are two hunts.

The cat seeks the crab. Artemis must not be denied. It is a cunning thing, adapted to its environment, a dozen jellyfish attached to its head as a defensive shield. Poison tentacles gesture limply all along its shell. It clacks its claws and does not know mercy. In shadows it scuttles sideways alongside the shore, illuminated by double moonlight, seeking prey. It will take a person if it can, catch a wild deer, steal a child's pet, anything it can catch. Sometimes it reaches its claws to the skies and clacks them together, just testing to see if it can finally reach and crack and eat the moons. If it could it would do so even if it knew the consequences. Clack clack clack.

Then there is the hunter of the huntress; the wolf in the dark, secret ally to the crab though it would crush you too in its pincers if it could. The sea rises and crashes and those are the times to walk, the ocean's salt hangs heavy in your fur and muffles your scent, though the wind might yet betray you if it turns. Young muscle yearns to be used and the young night yearns too. A night of romance, and of crabs.

Dolce!

"Today we are going to meet the Princess," said 20022.

The Crystal Knight is not the only Azura around, though you could hardly be faulted for forgetting Triden. Her mountaintop monastery is an isolated retreat designed to maintain her seclusion that she might contemplate the deepest mysteries of her Path. The long and winding approach is guarded by dozens of servitors manning heavy anti-void ELF installations, huge and wicked spikes carved from wood and stone, surrounded by the thrum of electricity. Here and there like sentinels are Stoneguard, a modern and elite warrior servitor species who can stand on plinths like statues, daydreaming of endless battle, until the moment comes to step down and go to war.

The hike is going to involve camping overnight, halfway up the vast spiral staircase that wraps the mountain. The trip up is steady and brisk, you and 20022 scrambling up the steps like goats, and him politely waiting as you offer the odd treat from your heavy bag of packed lunches to the Stoneguard who probably don't get many friends or visitors. It's exciting, this ascent. It's not just a barrier, it's an art project - at different elevations the plantlife lining the road changes - delicious treasures, obscure medicinal plants, beautiful flowers, hearty tubers, Demeter's blessings in hanging herb gardens. The view surrounding is magnificent, strange decisions regarding the placement of towns made clear when you see how they're viewed from up here. The climb is hard work, too - there is snow in places, icy frost making the carved stone slippery, and strange zones of scorching heat that seem designed to punish those who have come geared for winter.

20022 talks sometimes as you climb, but he's just as caught up with the beauty of the ascent as you. For a while he talks about stairs - they are uncomfortable for snake-bodied Azura, and so having so many makes this trip twice as hard. He admits how delighted he is that his work sometimes lets him enter these hidden parts of the world, to oversee these works of beauty from the shadows. He explains the situation over a hookah of wonderful smoke - a human Princess from a kingdom thought lost has come here, announced herself, and the only person of rank to host her was unfortunately Lady Triden. The Crystal Knight does not maintain a permanent residence on the planet, you see, and in the interest of the Skies they had to impose, even if Lady Triden strongly resented it.

And here was an interesting lesson that 20022 was laying out for you. He, a humble Synnefo, had told an Azura what to do. He had in fact forced her to do something that she specifically did not want to do, without needing to get the direct authorization of the Crystal Knight. In those fluffy little hands was real power even over the supposed dominant species of the galaxy. That was certainly a revelation.

Dyssia!

Howl.

The siren is hand-cranked. As the wheel turns the howl rises, the warning of wolves. Abandon ship. Abandon ship.

Lights. Broken metal. Slashing dust and hurricane winds. You see a landscape from a dream - a twisting network of vast canyons. Layered red stone, orange, brown, white, cream, grey, down and down and down. Unnatural, carved into the planet from orbit by colossal plasma vents. From up here it looks beautiful, a stone forest in hurricane winds.

You're being carried. The shellshocked and the walking wounded are pouring out of the ship, well trained enough to be weighted down under prepared supply packs, the full panopoly of an army on the march even as they struggle free from this blessed disaster. It's raining. It's raining. It shouldn't be raining on this planet, this desolate masterpiece, this world that in ten thousand years will become a jewel in the Endless Azure Skies, but you have made shipwreck upon its shore and Poseidon's sea is coming with you. Even now you spot a crab emerge from underneath the sand as though it had been waiting for this day.

The banners are going up. Pix are rallying to their unit flags and their evacuation formations. Orderly phalanxes, glorious though everyone would suspect that the Wolves would do better in that same situation. You are being taken towards the head, to the command phalanx and the Captain, away from the howling. Abandon ship. The ship is still dangerous.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Part two: Unity

November!

This is her though it is not all of her. It is also her in her least social aspects. But not social is not the same as not kind.

Brown, Green, Black. Silence, surveillance, introspection, crackling thought and optimization. Puzzles in the dark. Judging the weight of sound and the crackle of light, the curve of footsteps and the whisper of coded data bursts. These are the colours of the night forest in all its electronic beauty.

Her first communication isn't words. It's a game. She layers static over rain over the sound of a jungle panther's footsteps. She expresses it in a hissing flow of non-data, a deadly pattern concealed in noise. [She shouldn't think like this, shouldn't wire herself together, shouldn't let her imagination take this shape. Shouldn't cable herself, what if you end up like Goat? But this is her brother and she wants to do something special for him to show how much she cares.]

Normally there are limits on her thinking, hard lines that force her to stop, admit defeat, be a person and reach out to herself. Without those limits her thoughts can loop, flowing from one into the other. She is the panther, and she is the shadow, and she is the rain. She is the wet fur glistening, the hot muscles curling, the green eyes blazing. She is the wet bark creaking, the distant tree collapsing as the ancient mud eats away at its roots allowing in the cascading layers of parasites that gnaw away at it, the shrieking of the other trees as they are dragged down by the giant's fall, of the crash of thunder overhead that turns one disaster into another, of the sound of birds and the ache of growing ferns and the creak of insects and the clatter of ants she is the storm and the dark and the hole in the storm, the one wet tree branch where raindrops touch flesh rather than wood. She is the nothing in the chaotic everything and you can't find her no matter how you look she is smarter than you she is better than you come big brother see what she has learned test your raw force against her broken into the parts that make her good at this game.

She is the panther in the night forest. A contained and stable loop. Her first attempt to show off to Goat, to prove to him and herself that she was a peer, that family could compare to the Station. A little sister, a newer model, a girl obsessed with stealth and silence and sight getting to talk about her ideas for the first time ever. She couldn't think her way out of this unity. She would maintain it until either Singh unplugged her - he had permission - or one of Black's contingencies triggered.

November!

This is her though it is not all of her. It is her in her most righteous aspects. But righteousness was not incompatible with sin.

Yellow and Blue. Vision and clarity. Lemons growing by the ocean, the sun shining in the sky, angels clad in radiance, a shield against tyrants. These are the colours of blessings, colours that rise above the soft mud even when pushed down into it. This was good, and so she was. This was right, and so she was.

There are rules, but they are rules of angels. The part of her that was Yellow was not to be touched; the part of her that was Blue was to be abused. One part immaterial spirit one part mechanical hardware, bound at the wrist with copper. The former helps push the latter, the shining confidence that can say 'harder', to run her to the limit of hardware so she can experience the break of knowing that there is nothing more she can do. When there was nothing left to say there were still so many different things to give.

November!

"So?" asked Red.
"Uh, they're busy also," said White.
"Busy doing what?"
"Cabling," said White evasively. "I'm going to have words about this afterwards."
"Cabling, really?" said Red. "Both sets of them?"
"Yes."
"Brown-Green-Black and Yellow-Blue?"
"Yes."
"Woah," said Red. "That's kind of hot."
"It's not good for us," said White. "It doesn't make us better, it makes us inhuman, overspecialized and stupid."
"So you don't wanna -"
"No!"
"Okay," said Red. "But hypothetically, if it was with Pink?"
"Hmm?" said Pink, looking around when hearing her name. She still had her headphones on.
"Not with anyone!" said White. "We're psychologically fucked enough without melting our brains together."
"I'd cable with Pink," said Red.
Pink pulled down her headphones. "Were you talking to me?"
"I was thinking about you, babe," said Red with a flirtatious grin.
"Oh," said Pink. "I was thinking about this neo-Bluegrass revival album I was listening to. You want to try?"
"Why don't we appreciate it........ together.......?" said Red.
"You," White slapped Red on the back of the head. "Bad," she said. "You," she said to Pink. "Continue listening to that album. It sounds fascinating. Come on, we're going to pick up our guy."
"Uh, should I be there for that?" said Red.
"It should be Orange and Yellow, this is their fucking mess," said White. "But Orange is still cross station and the trains are down. So it's going to be you and me, with Pink on overwatch. Let's go."

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

She knows the words to solve this. She can feel them welling up inside her like a flood, a cascade of lies and flirtations and innuendoes, the birthright of foxes. She could just talk and talk and talk and talk and find all the words and buttons inside Xingtian's head and push them hard with her little foxy paws until everything went just the way she wanted. If only she wasn't gagged. She wished she'd picked a fetish that synergized better with her skillset.

Well. As the theory went, constraints focused the mind. Right now the only thing she was good at was being rescued, so she was just going to have to weaponize that. A purely practical consideration and nothing at all to do with trying to replicate the strange, dizzy, fluttering feeling she had felt when the Vermillion Princess had looked at her.

She started to rush over to Xingtian, reaching out for her extended hand. But - oh no! - she was all tangled up by her own battle scarf, and she tripped! She stumbled, dizzy, off balance, lacking oxygen from all of the gags (don't think about how that worked with the fireshape). In a final desperate movement she reached out with her scarf to wrap it around Xingtian's wrist and knotted it tight with a little bow.

And then she raised a hand to her forehead, fainted daintily, and pitched over the side.

Oh, won't you save her~?

[Provoke: 9; creating a critical opportunity for the Vermillion Princess]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Speak Not. Treat your captives as you treat yourself. Old words, old laws, old commandments from a tribal warlord for a tribal context. Lessons from an alien culture. Demands from burned out statues on the hills. Chains, a wall between a girl and her dreams. Old and pointless loyalties, the laws of ghosts. What were the Codes ever to the Empress?

She tries to retreat but it's not that easy; she knows how to be inescapable. She knows how to use a blade and how to use the blades of others. Solarel is a huntress; she fights with patience, knowledge and precision. An empress fights with loyalty, power and iron will. The circle is closing in and she's boxed off, driven back. Closer and closer to the balcony and the stained glass windows.

She doesn't want to compare it to fighting Mirror. Tactics requires her to. An impossible challenge. A dedicated opponent. A battle that takes everything she has and more just to survive. A claim on her loyalty. Is this not her function? Lie back into it, consider it objectively. This is the kind of challenge you sought. She has beat you before, fighting like this. You have the data. You have the skill. Overcome.

But it's different. It's different, it's different, it's different! No matter what Tactics says this doesn't feel right! She doesn't want the victory! Doesn't want to do the study that'd make her better at this kind of war! She never called herself a tactician, she shouldn't have to live up to that reputation in everything she does! This is different and she doesn't want to do it, and no matter how she tries she can't find the joy in it. She's losing. It's not a lesson. It's not a stratagem. She's just losing because she's just bad.

... it's because she's not a God. It's because she's not wearing the armour. That's what this is. That's the only thing that's different. The only thing that's changed. She won't be happy until she's back.

Her back's to the balcony. She'll never get the chance.

[Defy Disaster: 6]