Thanqol

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The ultimate strategy was just being better than your opponent.

It sounded oxymoronic but it was true. When your raw stats were superior new options became available. There were entire tactical sequences that hinged off relentless exploitation of a single advantage. If you move fast enough you can cut corners that others would find necessary, which lets you move faster still, compounding a tactical advantage into a strategic rhythm with the continuous buildup of combat momentum. Be inside the guard while it is being raised. Be past the smokescreen before it breaks contact. Kill your opponent before they kill you. This was the ultimate lesson of Anime. The strongest warrior was not the most creative or clever, they were gimmick bosses who would soon leave the story. The strongest warrior was the samurai who won even as their opponent's blade descended.

She makes contact and the blow comes like a hurricane. Gold into silver into gold into both, katana and wakizashi. One layer of defense. A fight ends in a single blow. Every other strike is just the sequence that leads inevitably to the severing strike where the lovers at last embrace, bound at the hilt, whispering their intimate goodbyes into each others' ears.

Was that what Mirror meant? Was that what she wanted? To speak freely in that moment when her blade was inside her rival and she was no longer an outsider? Was that the only way? Her focus was absolute. She could not question.

This was how to win. This was how to win. Nothing but the fight. Nothing but the win. Every time she'd come close to defeat was because her opponents had fought like this. No room for thought. No room for anything but skill. No room for anything but her best, absolute, maximal expression, everything she was in the tip of the blade. This was who she was. This was how she wanted to fight. This was her heart. Each blow was her love, screamed into the air and carved into the bones of the earth. Just like she'd promised.

She's slow.

The Aeteline filters the Pilot's intentions, maintaining its own situational awareness at the cost of the total onslaught. It does not trust the pilot, her total collapse into the flow of violence, the blindness of her passion. Mirror had caused this state in the Pilot, this mad joy - she must have counted on it, courted it, built her trap around it. But the Aeteline was wiser than that. It would accept the loss of speed if that meant seeing the hidden blade when it came. It only needed to see the trick to stop it, and once beaten then the fight would be an execution.

There was no place for individual expression. Perfection meant making no mistakes. A strength was also a weakness. The Aeteline had neither.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Stone falls from the sky. Stone rises from the earth.

There is a wall in Ivar's path, vast and grim granite, slick with rain and misery. It is the bone of the earth, and with its grim presence all the solidity has been sucked from the soil, reducing it into a swampy morass. Each step closer to the wall sucks at feet, trying to consume boots, horses, chivalry itself. Murderous murder-slits are carved into the wall like crucifixes, the wicked manifestation of the Lamb God's warfare. And atop the wall of stone, a wall of steel - a Knight.

Only the English could build such a joyless castle.

Three servants. One to mark your location, one to target you with artillery, one to build the castle wall to pen you in. Last to arrive, with an incapable master, in the face of an alliance dedicated to your destruction.

Daofei stirs against you. Despite the wreckage of her mind, body and soul you can feel real muscles against yours. She was strong once. When she fails to support you it is not because the tap has been turned off but because the river has run dry. "Hey..." she slurs, still drunk. "I know another way to transfer mana... if you know what I mean."

Unfortunately the continued rain of artillery is unlikely to give you time for that. Any other ideas?

Breathless Dead

Dyssia!

So the weird thing about the inside of a star is that it's not as hot as you'd think.

Now, cool is a relative term. We're still talking temperatures in the thousands of degrees celsius, more than enough to reduce almost anything into its constituent hydrogen. But once you get past the corona (1-2 million degrees) temperatures drop to a positively balmy 5,500 degrees. The Plousios can survive that - uncomfortably, but potentially for a while. The trick is getting past the corona which is as simple as finding a sufficiently stable sunspot, which hover around a chill 3,500 degrees - that's only twice the temperature of a primitive blast furnace - but you really want to choose carefully to select one that'll still be there when it comes time to leave.

And you can leave. This miracle, too, is within the grasp of science.

There are complications. The Plousios is damaged and undersupplied for this kind of mission. Massive stockpiles of CandleIce - an exotic concentration of frozen hyperium gas - will be required to sustain liveable conditions inside the ship while it is submerged. Significant repairs and heat management upgrades will be required. There is only one place within range to acquire all of these things: An Intergalactic Clearing House Subsidiary.

The Intergalactic Clearing House is one of the wonders of the galaxy, a planet sized warehouse covered with massive container crates fifty kilometers long. An orbital ring with ten thousand space elevators, leading up to planetary dockyards filled with hundreds of thousands of logistics starships. When a request arrives at the Clearing House a crate is loaded and a ship is dispatched. The planet will then receive a container filled with enough of any imaginable product to last anywhere between decades to centuries. This is the logistical network that manages the concept of infinite wealth. Production ceased to be a bottleneck millennia ago, now the only difference between poverty and abundance is connection to the trade network that leads to the Clearing House.

Which brings us to the Subsidiary. A Clearing House Subsidiary is a local distribution node, a spoke that does last mile deliveries for key or high demand items. Sometimes desolate moons with new mountain ranges comprised of containers, sometimes planets surrounded by an ever-tumbling asteroid belt of container boxes filled with tools and machinery. Militarized Subsidiaries are built up on the borders of hostile powers, no matter how far beneath the Endless Azure Skies they might seem. It is one of these you will need to attend to.

The Crystal Knight bragged of her recent efforts destabilizing a primitive alien civilization[1]. The buildup on that frontier will be the place where you can acquire the goods you need to evade Liquid Bronze. It does mean dealing with the frontier's military governor but that's within your capabilities - one to three Azura Knights and their house legions. Perhaps it will even be a chance to spare the aliens from incorporation into the Skies - for a time.

[1] The frontier/system/alien species has been designated as The Argumentative Portuguese - that's the best way to translate the phrase the Azura have used. The Endless Azure Skies rarely bother to befoul their own language with another civilization's name for itself, instead assigning them the name of some group of barbarians from their own history and adding an insulting adjective. Portuguese in this context is drawing a parallel between a barbarian group of technologically advanced merchants.

Have you ever encountered an alien before, Dyssia? Humanity is dead and the galaxy is filled with servitor species, but independently evolved life has been known to exist and be violently incorporated into the Skies. Their art, music and culture is sometimes passed around as the fruits of conquest before being updated to Azura sensibilities. Great works of art are recreated in various shades of blue, literature is translated and improved in the translation, music is retuned to appeal more to local audiences, aliens are genetically altered to be appealing to Azura beauty standards. Other than that no oversight is given to them.

The only thing important to the Endless Azure Skies is their ideal of beauty. Accept that and they can have no quarrel with you.

Dolce!

The Biomancer General is on campaign at the system of Njed.

Orbit is a chaos of warships and debris, the vast plumes of clinging void-compound solid projectile smoke surrounding the planet like a toxic nebula. Massive thunderstrikes arc across the void, leviathan spheres bursting forth from oceans of acidic venom surrounded by tens of thousands of plasma spheres caught in gravitic slingshot orbits. The familiar warspheres of the Endless Azure Skies are joined by and locked in battle against an arsenal of unique vessels - Imperial dreadnoughts, refurbished Ferno[2] strike cruisers, and several twisted and exotic void leviathans of the Tides of Poseidon that have been biomantically captured and bound to service.

[2] In the Age of Knights, there were once three nations: Ferno, Azura and Goltir. Specifics of this have been deliberately obscured by centuries of historical revisionism and propaganda pushing the concept of a single, united Endless Azure Skies.

Njed itself burns. Flashes of atomic detonations light up the dark side of the planet, dim flickers compared to the spectacular fireballs that occur when a plasma sphere makes planetfall. Rainforests burn in apocalyptic conflagrations, the artificial weather patterns caused by the released quadranix and hyperium mixing with carbon staining the face of the planet. In another time the agonized death of a world would mean an end to the war. The Endless Azure Skies has moved far beyond such petty constraints.

Your little shuttle shudders as an emissary ship blasts you with a broadside of diplomats. Summerkind eggs can be loaded into specialized cannons and be fired like cannonballs. When they impact they seal against the hull with adhesive as the eggs quicken - and then they hatch. In the void the swarm all over the surface of the ship, clawing at the hull, minds pulsing with the rage and hunger of the newborn. For two days you try to sleep through the sounds of talons against the walls and kicks rattling the windows. Then, finally, the diplomats calm. The airlock is opened. And with knuckles still bloody from where they beat against the hull exterior, the Summerkind come aboard.

They are beautiful in their way. Slender and quick and with iridescent shines; every flick of their heads sending a cascade of light like from a hundred coloured mirrors. They're looking at everything with interest, tapping the control panels, scratching the walls, turning over and tearing open the furniture and marveling at the stuffing inside. They look at you a little dangerously but they killed enough of their own kind on the hull of the ship to have too many questions about the layout of your internal organs.

"Hi!" said one. "I'm - I'm honestly really glad to meet you!" He absolutely dripped sincerity as he said that, smiling like he was getting to meet one of his heroes. "20022, right? Liquid Bronze sent us to meet you and escort you through to his command post. And wow - he's a big fan of yours, right? One professional to another?"
"I am shocked he has even heard of me," said 20022, though his tone was more irritated at himself for not concealing his reputation sufficiently.
"Oh, yeah, when he heard you were coming -" the Summerkind looked at his wrist where a blotchy birthmark in the pattern of writing was imprinted "- he couldn't have been more thrilled," he read, slightly woodenly. "He noted your contribution to the Report On Secession In The Pacifica Sector with great interest."
"A team effort, I assure you," said 20022 blandly.
"And what a team!" said the Summerkind. "Wow! And you've got one of them here with you! Double wow! What's your number, if I can ask?"

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Between the old man's neck and the blade is the crow, first to be cut through. It shatters when impacted, fibreglass and silicon crunching into fractal patterns, blue light spilling out in the microseconds before its power source shorts out. It offers no resistance and the blade continues -

On to nothing. The old man is gone. The wreckage of the crow scatters across the dirt and campfire, little more than a twist of machinery and the eerie ringing of a dropped bell.

*

Some miles away a Cherubim turns to whisper in the old man's ears. Culture has come a long way from the days when it was considered an aspect of God - the body of an infant and the face of a mature man, with a shock of red hair, rosy lips and an a golden trumpet. It's eyes, too, have the same circuit pattern that once marked the crow.

Here the old man does not wear the ragged cloak of a wanderer; he wears the simple black robe with white collar that marks a Catholic priest. His beard, brow and grim expression are unchanged from when he negotiated with Ivar. He listens to the whisper of the mechanical Angel, reading from a book that resembles a Bible, until he is interrupted by a laugh.

"Caster!" roared a man who was more kin to the Heavens than angels. "How fares your attempt to betray us?"
Fox ears twitch mirthfully. Cyanis, nocturnal sunglasses finding valid use here in the radiant presence of her Servant, grins and elbows the warrior angel in the side. "Don't be like that. He thought he was being sneaky."
"I was not attempting to -"
"Please," laughed Archer. "I have been in enough sieges to have a sense for these things. Someone always breaks when life and death is on the line - and you were never a man of faith, were you Caster?"
Caster snapped shut his psuedobible and turned to face Archer. "I chose my battles well enough to never require it."
"You played it safe," drawled Archer. "I don't need to know your name to know that. You radiate cowardice and failure, nothing dared and nothing gained. It's why you can barely manage that parlor trick of yours while I..."

Archer raised his hands outwards. The expansive gesture took in the hundreds of siege engines, vast catapults, trebuchets, ballistas, and blackpowder bombards that gleamed in angelic gold and spectacular engraved detail. The machines moved miraculously into position, wheels grinding and turning as ranges are taken and parabolic arcs calculated.

"... I wrote my name in the ruins of a civilization," said Archer. He grinned and looked at Cyanis. "Master. Permission to open fire?"
"Do what you want," said Cyanis, sipping a boba tea through a plastic straw. "I'm not your dad."
"Hah!" said Archer. "Then I call on you, O Father Who Art In Heaven! Grant me victory in this new crusade!" He spread magnificent angel's wings and pointed at the distant, flickering campfire. "Siegeworks of Antioch! Fire!"

*

A distant rumble like thunder.

A shadow over the moon.

Darkness enveloping the stars.

Ivar looks up from the ruins of the crow to see an impossible sight. It was no longer air that filled the sky: It was stone. A mountain's worth of stone in the form of a thousand boulders, all coming crashing down from above like meteors.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

In the heart of the Aeteline, Solarel stirs in her sensory deprivation tank. Just a little, just enough for the Aeteline to project that the movements served no military purpose and suppress them.

That was a trap; a stratagem that relied on manipulating the Pilot's mood and emotions. Perfection decayed into predictability and in time it would become willing prey for a blade. The Pilot had used that approach many times, the Aeteline had no desire to become a casualty of it - and more importantly, no trust that the Pilot would not become a casualty of it. It looked up, eyes glowing violet through the black scorched faceplate.

[>] The exact nature of the trick is irrelevant.
[>] That is as much an aspect of this approach to warfare as the trick itself. To condition an opponent mentally, turning their mind to paranoid overpreparedness and causing them to neglect fundamentals.
[>] Your words are such a weapon. Attempting to turn me against myself. To voluntarily step from the Victorious Path.
[>] But this too is why the Sage said Speak Not.

An opponent retreats. Expand. With the daemonic flares of chemical launches she blasts four of her own tails into the air, missiles unfolding guidance wings and gatling guns. The dogfighting equation was simple; expend energy for altitude, expend altitude for maneuverability, expend maneuverability for victory. The Shadow-Tails lance down from above, tracer rounds slashing at Mirror's extended tails. Inferior shadows, they have a purpose: they unpick Mirror's defensive array, not even seeking to kill or damage their opposites - just to drive them away.

There would only ever be one layer of defense. She just needed to unravel it - to disassemble the trap as it was forming. She bursts into pursuit, joyless haste as she casts herself forwards. Just one more projectile in her array.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"None of this is free..." he laughed a little, as he reached into his robe. A bottle moved over two aluminum cups, label hidden inside the fabric, and he handed one over. The liquid was unique, the golden bitterness of finest whisky coupled with the deep, rich aroma of an unknowable flavour that Ivar might one day come to know as coffee. "To charge for hospitality, to put a price on fire... What a hardscrabble life you must have lived! My friend, for my story look at my hands," he held them out. "The hands of a child," he said. "Hands without callouses. No sword held I, no spear, no tool, no chisel. Hands that had not done a day's honest labour in their lifetime. What sense might such a story make to you? What value such a name? No, we must turn our eyes to the only question that matters: the destination."

He chuckled darkly, a grinding half-grunt in a set of three, just enough to establish that it was not a mistake or a clearing of the throat. He held up a scrap of meat to his raven who gave him what could only be described as a dirty look. He shrugged and ate it himself.

"My destination, then," he said, looking up through thunderous eyebrows. "Is not victory. That is not sufficient for my purposes - I want something else, something that can only be accomplished in this world. Were I to achieve it then I would have no use for victory. And so I'll offer you a bargain. Give me the head of your Master, broken wretch though she is. I will supply you with the mana and the arsenal you require for your victory - and, when you ask for it and I have accomplished my ends, I shall offer you my head as well."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

[>] Creativity is a null concept.

The Aeteline is remorseless in its simplicity.

Parry. Dodge. Attack. Three techniques and three techniques only, operating on the monomolecular edge of possibility. No items. Fox only. Final Destination.

Parry. If it had been trying anything 'Creative' it would have lost to the Whip's initial charge rush. Additional weight, distracted calculations - anything to stop it identifying that the Whip was not traveling at maximum possible speed. It was able to budget the exact correct amount of motive force required to evade the rush, and in so doing it had enough surplus to deploy emergency ray shields in response to the attacks of the tails.

[>] Individual techniques are irrelevant. An advanced theory of victory takes them all into account. Only in sequence can they reach full effect: priming an opponent's reactions, playing off their fears and biases, undermining the pilot's psychology.

Dodge. It was being set up for a combination takedown, it needed to break the sequence before it reached its full manifestation. It burned hard, circle strafing to the right, accelerating out of the arc of the shattering sword. The biostasis fluid immersing the pilot kept physiological damage occurring to that vulnerable computational node. Her only limit was her Crystal Fire Reactor. It meant that the Pilot would not contribute to the battle as she had in the past, but that was a small sacrifice to make for extra efficiency.

[>] And when the entire tactical space is accounted for, Creativity means inefficiency. Creativity is gambling in the hopes that your opponent is bad. Most opponents are bad, making it a viable strategy for the majority of matches. But when it comes time to fight a serious opponent...

Attack. Mirror was taking a stance, changing gear configurations - split seconds of vulnerability. It was the Aeteline's moment. It burned forwards at maximum speed, golden blade not even disturbing the air it passed through. Initiate normal attack sequence. Not a named technique, just whatever parries, cuts and thrusts fit the energy of the moment.

[>] Named attacks are unviable. Ergo speech is a tactical dead end. This is what the Sage meant when she said Speak Not.

Breathless Dead

Bella and Ember!

The celebration will be pathetic. The Imperium of old crunched stars into pulsars to mark the ascension of a new Emperor. The Endless Azure Skies has staged entire apocalyptic battles of millions of servitors across an entire planet for the spectacle of it, the flash-flares of plasma detonations visible from orbit. The fireworks from the ascension of the Shah are still detonating fifty years later. Your party will have whatever water-soaked garbage can be dragged up from the hold, and whatever conjurations Quajl and the Azura magi are able to scrape together on short notice.

Which is to say, for those with unjaded eyes it will be the greatest show in the galaxy.

Dyssia!

"No, we're not going to do that," said Brightberry, snapping her wings closed.

It's fucking weird to hear that from an artificial lifeform. Normally a servitor will walk to the moon rather than deny a direct request but - well, the Crystal Dragons are different. These are creatures of Zeus, a biosilicate circumvention of the the Flux Curse. Zeus decreed that civilization was no longer entitled to mastery of electrical life, and so by necessity the Azura are not the masters of the Crystal Dragons. They have to treat them as equals, or sometimes even superiors - something which a great many Azura are flatly incapable of, no matter how useful the technology.

Even for you, it stings a little. Not your fault, just where you're from.

"We've got one professional Publica Legion, a half Legion of Ceronians, and six thousand random civilians," said Brightberry. "Liquid Bronze's personal bodyguard is twenty Legions, and Mars knows how many more he'd bring if he felt serious. He could put a million soldiers and drones under arms on short notice if he felt like it, and maybe fifty million if he took his time. A campaign against him would be measured in decades and the casualties would be measured in planets. We survive this by being not worth his time, not by trying to make off with his magnum opus."

There's an inflexibility to her voice here. She doesn't need to say it directly for you to know there's a red line here: she's not going to stick around for this fight if you choose to pick it.

Dolce!

A quick review of scale: The Royal Architect's departure would not mean the fall of the Endless Azure Skies. It would scarcely be an embarrassment. The Architect is a useful curiosity, a relic of a previous age, and a personal asset and ally of the Shah. His death or departure would cause turmoil on Capitas and potentially a coup. It would be locally apocalyptic, with economies collapsing and alliances falling apart and an entire sector might become unstable. But the Fall of the Skies? That would be like suggesting Rome would fall if an earthquake tumbled the Hagia Sophia.

But for all that, to the people crushed by the rubble, it might indeed seem like the Skies are falling.

But Sanalessa will not hear of the plan any further. There are evasions of her duty she can countenance, and evasions that will drive her back into her familiar murderous rage - and you have become familiar enough with her warning signs to know when you approach dangerous ground. This is not to say that you are wrong or the plan won't work, simply that she cannot be party to it. She must start from the position that one person must be killed.

So it is you left alone with pen and ink, once again. You have two letters to write: to the Architect, and to Vasilia. And it is a kindness that, for all its evil, the Endless Azure Skies has an enormous and well funded postal service.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

The Body is hungry. She eats.

Her hands move over hot seaflesh and scorched vegetables, raw and grasping, as visceral and impatient as a drowning woman's first gasp of air. Halfway through a bite there's a pause and a regretful glance downwards at the fish, a muttered half-prayer, and then a renewal of the feast. She's lost so much, and that includes every restraint that stands between her and her appetite.

It includes, too, the barriers between consciousness and dreams. It takes a while to notice that she's gone - monastic training has not only made her capable of falling asleep while sitting cross legged, but she can do so with her eyes open. Slumping over or closing one's eyes would get one smacked by the master's broom - it was meant to teach discipline and the denial of bodily impulse. Daofei was always better at the appearances of virtue than virtue itself.

*

"Is there space by your fire, friend?" asked a voice as old as forests.

The stranger wears a dark and ragged cloak and a beard like a cloud devouring a mountain. His face is run through with his wrinkles and his brow sits heavily over his blue eye - the one that is not concealed behind the dark leather eyepatch. His age sits heavily on him, though seemingly none of it rests upon his body. He is still tall and he is still strong, barrel chested and muscular. All of his years seem to weigh only on his spirit and his aura of melancholy pierces as deeply as his stare.

Upon his shoulder is a raven. Its feathers are a blue passing into black, and its eyes are a blue passing into white, an electric tattoo of circuitry around the corners of its gaze. It twists and turns its head from side to side, watching with one eye and then the next filled with an eager curiosity.

The old man strides closer - it feels like he should shuffle, should limp, but his flesh refuses to give in to the weight of his soul - and takes a seat. Slumped half in shadow and in a rough and ragged cape, he holds out a begging bowl.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Even the shamans could not have dreamed this world.

The sky is filled with an endless waterfall of diamonds, brighter than the stars, wrapping the fine earth. Enormous needles going up into the sky ever-visible on the horizon, silver and ethereal with lights blinking in time. A lake that falls into another lake, that falls into another lake, that falls into an endless pit. Hills and mountains and glittering lanterns in cozy clusters and rural solitude both. The roadside has shrines with fresh corn and tomatoes and other vegetables, laid out and free for taking. In the depths of the forest there is an artificial water fountain, clean and free-flowing allowing animals to drink without risking the rivers -

- The rivers. There's something wrong with the rivers. The lakes, the water - that hole in the Terraced Lake. Knowledge ends at the sense of dread - it is enough to know that everyone knows that what's down there isn't safe.

For a moment the thought is dark. It clouds the mind and makes this world seem fragile, a post apocalyptic outpost over the top of something forbidden. No wonder the distant space elevators - no wonder people would flee this place. For a moment this seems precarious. For a moment - and then!

And then a school of clownfish rush by your face, alight in vibrant colour, scattering and weaving as they try to evade the rushing motions of a skyshark the size of a dog. They hide in the branches of trees, and in the clusters of magenta and saffron coral barnacles that grow on one of the oldest shrines. And of course! In a world like this, where the water is dangerous, why would the fish stay? Why not grow wings and fly? And why would the sharks not follow them?

The bounty of the ocean has all washed ashore. No wonder people chose to stay here.