Thanqol

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Cair!

She slapped the offered hand.

"Oh damnit," she said, sticking out her tongue. "Instincts, you know? Heron and I started doing this high-five, down-low, too-slow game at each other and it became a whole thing. Now I'm just conditioned to slap any hand I see in the microsecond for which it's available. Don't spread that around, it's a real liability in contract negotiations." She stood up. "But it's cool. Would have been nice to spend another fifteen minutes clarifying some things but too late now, we're signed and sealed."

To prove how cool and with it she was, she offered her hand to the Lunarian in a gallant sort of way so that she could use it to stand up. If she took it, this would give her a better opportunity to get some handfeel for what that material was, it would prove that she had the strength of mind and will to resist the urge to snatch her hand away at the last microsecond, and it'd make a great shot.

"Sicksuit huh?" she added. "So, like, are you sick, or is this place sick in general, or is there a heightened risk of getting sick that happens here? I ask because if something happens in the Stacks and your breach gets worse, I want to know if I should be running towards you, away from you, or hanging back and letting you deal with it on your own."

Breathless Dead

Ember!

"Water would be a huge help against the Summerkind," Sagetip said thoughtfully. She was alit with a crimson light, flickering like bloody ink from her projector. "They are creatures of lightning reflexes and evasion; slowing them down would make them easier prey. We can easily take on more water and flood the entire ship. If they adapt then we can drain the ship and render their entire lifetime of military experience irrelevant. That's a good idea, Princess Alpha."

"But -" and here she falls deeper into the crimson, the buttons on her uniform gleaming silver even as she seems to bleed into the crimson light of her projector slide. "- I disagree on targeting Liquid Bronze. We don't have the numbers, don't have the assets, don't have the materiel. It would be expensive to create an opening like that with no guarantee of success once it is created. We don't know the full extent of the Biomancer-General's tricks, but we know he has guaranteed a form of immediate reincarnation for his Legions, and that was accomplished centuries ago. What if his research into that field has borne even more fruit? What if he has made himself immortal? He might be so directly, or perhaps he has done as some Biomancers and created clone backups. We are not up against an Azura Knight, we cannot fight as though we are."

This is her final challenge on this point; after this, she must agree with whatever course is decided by her Alpha so the pack might have clarity.

Dolce!

Artemis folds her newspaper - an an ancient thing of cheap paper and cheaper ink. She takes the time to smooth the crease and lay it across her knee as she sits, arms folded and legs crossed. A familiar shift of her head sends the shards of brown hair from her face.

"Once, a long time ago, there was a woman who wove the most splendid snares," said Artemis. "She had a genius for knots and was able to twist thread and twine into moments of suspended strangulation. She would walk through the woods weaving her traps and bought forth from them a bounty. I admired her. I admired her skill, her craft, her focus. So one day I decided to reward her - I sent into her snares a prince of rabbits, with a coat of silver and moonlight. She was delighted with her prize, ecstatic even. She called out my name in gratitude and joy."

Artemis flicked a smile, a cynical, distant thing, like a dart. "And then she sold the fur, purchased a house in town, lived comfortably for the rest of her days and never hunted again. I understood what I was in that moment, what the hunt was: necessity. Necessity alone. Nobody wants to crouch in the dark and mud with a wooden spear in trembling fingers. Nobody wants to learn the migration patterns of termites so they can be ready to eat them when they swarm. Nobody wants to work for endless hours to extract the means of survival from a uncaring forest. Once the concept of female property rights and divorce caught on in society recruitment for my wilderness cults dropped off a ledge. The second any individual or civilization can ditch me, they ditch me. Nobody wants to hunt."

She unfolded her newspaper again, straightening it out and looking up over the edge with silver-lined glasses. "But, sometimes things are still necessary. Even in the midst of all this plenty people find ways to make it so. So instead, I ask you a question: Is there something that is necessary for you to do?"

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"We're here," said Lancer.
"What do you mean?" said Aeglesia. This was an unremarkable expanse of open ground - dry earth, sparse trees. Open savannah.
"I mean we're here," said Lancer, taking a seat on a low rock. "This is where you fight."
"But -" Aeglesia froze. "But that doesn't make sense. This is open ground."
"Mmhm," said Lancer, flicking open her book.
"But - but have you seen her?!" said Aeglesia desperately. "I can't fight that in the open! I thought you were going to take me to a - a cave or something so she'd at least have to shrink down to fight me!"
"Hmm," said Lancer, flicking up her eyes. "You seem to have thought about this a lot."
"Of course I have!" said Aeglesia. "I've been planning this for ages!"
"Let me ask you a question," said Lancer. "Why did you pick Princess Jezara as your opponent?"
"I - I mean, I wasn't planning on fighting her this quickly -" said Aeglesia shiftily.
"Why didn't you pick Princess Qiu?" said Lancer, turning a page. Aeglesia started.
"Are you kidding!? I can't beat Qiu! She's the strongest of the Princesses -"
"What about Chen?" said Lancer.
"She's a prodigy, I can't keep up with -"
"Kikil?"
"Technomancy is scary and -"
Lancer snapped her book shut. "So you picked Princess Jezara because you thought that she was the weakest," she said. "And there's no shame in that, but let us be direct: you are not a strategic mastermind, and you are not alone in wanting the easiest fight. What I'm saying is that right now you are nothing special - Princess Jezara knows that she's the weakest too and as a result she's surrounded by climbers like you all looking to steal a quick win and get their names on the board. Fight her in a cave? As if that's not the first thing every insecure wannabe will do to try to even the odds against the warrior who advertises herself as fighting in open spaces. She probably has more experience fighting in tight areas than you do."
Aeglesia looked down, cheeks burning with shame. Lancer didn't seem to notice, flicking her book back open to the bookmarked page.
"Do you know what I bet she doesn't have a lot of experience with?" said Lancer. "Fighting in this giant terror monster shape. Everybody who sees it will be terrified - oh no, there's no way I can fight something that big! They'll hinge their strategy around not letting her use the big lion and in so doing play into her actual strengths. It's human nature. People see a giant cathedral with stained glass windows and their brains overflow. They can't see that it's just a wasteful building made by humans. They flinch in cowardice before the big thing and then call it spirituality. It's the same simple trick that Saber uses. It's why I feel confident in having her as an ally - because I can see through that ridiculous lurching combat style to the fragile, unarmoured girl underneath."
Aeglesia's cheeks burned hotter. She'd thought that Saber was cool. Maybe unbeatable. But she hadn't seen Lancer fight, so she'd probably just been taken by the illusion again.
"Anyway, here's my advice," said Lancer, standing up and approaching. "You want to be a Roman? Then be a Roman. Meet the enemy army in the field and destroy them. Fight barbarian size and strength with discipline and formation. Mark your brow with the blood of Mars and go to war as a crimson star of battle. Do not steal your victory, seize it! It is your due and your destiny. Rome only fell the day Hadrian sinned against Terminus and accepted a smaller, more 'practical' Empire. Do better! Accept no limit! Cross every milestone! Become the greatest and never flinch from it! That alone is Rome!"
She held a silver bowl before Aeglesia, filled with the dark blood of an ox. She saw her face mirrored in the vitae.
"Will you accept the mark of eternal conquest?" Lancer asked.
Aeglesia took a deep breath. She looked up.
"I will," she said, and drew a line of blood across her face, shadowing her eyes in Imperial crimson.

Return to Thellamie

Cair!

"Oh shit I'm up. Hi! I'm Cair! Shit, hang on, I wasn't ready yet - okay, ah-hem! So-ooooo~ I'm doing a nature documentary! With a twist! Yuki told me about nature documentaries and I was hooked - following around animals all day narrating over them what you think is happening in their heads? Bottom texting over still photographs, which I assume is part of the same tradition? That sounded like a blast and I wanted to be a part of it. Only one problem: the animals here are assholes. Just last week I met a goat with the personality of a random encounter and eyes like a pet rock. Maybe somebody with more reinforced hip bones than me wants to go down that path, but I figured why not leverage my privileged status as Factorium to nature documentary the life and times of Princess Heron? I mean, people bottom text her all the time, but nobody's done a full length dub yet. So that's why I'm talking to you now! Well I'm talking to you now because I just got approached by a space alien and that seems like extremely quality content for a nature documentary even though I'd rehearsed a whole thing to open up at the princess ceremony but -"

Cair lowered the tablet. "Wow, film is hard. You've only got one shot at all this stuff. I wish there was a way to cut stuff out. Don't worry, I'll figure it out as we go." She put the tablet on the table next to her, propped to face the both of them. "Don't worry about it," she said.

Okay. Phase shift.

"Alright friend, there's a language gap here so I'm going to go over each term in isolation," said Cair. "Because what we're negotiating here is a Contract, and those don't mean anything if there's a disagreement over the terms. I tried doing it the other way a couple of times and that just gets you hauled in front of a Law Princess and that takes forevvvvverrrrrrrrrrrrrr. So let's break it down:

- Fallen Far: You! Sick suit by the way. Can I buy it?
- Managing of Materials for the Reoccurrence: Me, Cair! Factorium is my title down here though.
- Reoccurrence: Heron, presumably?
- Dirt and Impossible: Uh, reality dohickey places and the Wild in-between. Not my area, technical stuff
- Shaping Matrix: I have no idea what you're on about here, but it's probably in the galleries somewhere.
- Dictating how this occurs: Haha oh wow lady you probably want to set a budget for this or a price on your time because I will hella dictate exactly how this goes on an ongoing basis if you don't close up the language on that, cutie~

"But it's not a trivial task for me either because the stacks are a mess and Heron really doesn't like me breaking up her collections. I'd need to source a replacement before she noticed and depending on what you're asking for I don't know if I have that kind of time/Sayana still has teeth that size."

Breathless Dead

Bella and Dyssia!

Bella, you have spent a very relaxing afternoon reading in your room. It is calm, it is quiet, it is safe.

And then an enormous blue snake bursts in through your door clutching a giant sword.

How exactly does that go for her?

Ember!

The Silver Divers are having a great deal of fun with their Azura Sorceress. Hands bound and mouth gagged, she makes her way across the ship painting the glyphs of warding with a paintbrush attached to her tail. Magic has always existed, even in this far future where it and technology have intertwined - some people are simply blessed by the gods to be sorceresses, and some people are blessed by the gods with the strength to overcome sorceresses.

While that's happening, a council of the pack elders has been called. New tactics and strategies need to be discussed. Agonizingly, this must take place under the most favoured of Mars' rituals: transparent paper placed upon a lit surface, amplification crystal projecting it upon the wall.

"We're up against two intertwined threats," said Sagetip. "And we cannot allow the threat of one to blind us to the other. The first is, of course, the Biomancer-General Liquid Bronze. On his own merits he is a terror; he travels with the normal biomantic retinue of a Drone swarm and has a host of apprentice Biomancers working under him. Additionally his speciality is in burnout tactics - that is, overclocking biological life so that they achieve vastly superior short term prowess at the cost of long term sustainability. Against his forces everything will come down to surviving the first wave, and so we will need to front load our defenses as much as possible when they are deployed.

"The second threat is the Summerkind - and realistically, this is what will be deployed against us first. There's no glory in killing Ceronians with Drones, but proving that his own warrior servitor species can take us on even ground - that'll get the attention of his peers. So it will likely be the Summerkind and they're a devil of a problem. Their lifespan is not a combat weakness; deaths simply restart their cycle to predeployment. We don't have the Biomancer cohort on hand to crack and format Summerkind eggs. The absolute requirement we face, then, is controlling the field after every engagement - that will allow us to incinerate any eggs and thereby attrit their forces."

"That's just chasing defeat," grumbled Plundering Fang. "Sure we can burn a few eggs, but what good will that do us? We're a pack, he'll be bringing his legions. The only move that makes sense is a decapitation strike."
"But that will force Liquid Bronze to deploy his Drones and then we'll be fighting both forces simultaneously!" said Sagetip.
"Good," grinned Plundering Fang. "Like you said, there's no glory in him Droning us to death, so there's no glory lost by dying to that."

Dolce!

"Well," said Demeter sympathetically. "I understand. You weren't built to be decisive. That's really the main thing that stops people from understanding me - most people are just not built properly. But don't worry. Sooner or later you'll meet one of my Chosen and they'll fix the broken parts of your brain and your heart. Then you'll understand."

She steps away into the garden. "Anyway, like I said, I'm feeling generous," said Demeter, dropping to her knees and sinking her hands into the soil. "I have my own family, so why shouldn't everyone else?" The work she does is hard, hands plunging into soft, dark earth, tearing leaves and sap, pulling roots, stripping stems. "And I believe, truly, that nobody should go hungry in my galaxy. You play a small but important part in making that happen. So why shouldn't you be rewarded with a murderous assassin? I'll even clear her presets for you - may as well while I'm here - give her whatever name you wish and they will become her target."

The body that grows is beautiful; long and angular, soft fur and curved musculature, lips that promise softness and horns and hooves that promise violence. There is undeniably something of the divine in the shape of a body perfected.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Once upon a time there were lions.

They were kind of mid to be honest. Dog software on cat hardware, pack hunters who picked off the old and sick members of mass herds, overseen by vestigial patriarchs. Kind of plain tan brown colour. But the next continent over had heard stories about them and adopted them sight unseen as the animals of kingship. They drew pictures of how they imagined they might look, then they drew them holding swords and axes, and then they put those drawings on their flags.

A certain set of assumptions may have come to mind when you heard that Princess Jezara was a 'lioness shapeshifter' if you are even passingly familiar with irl lions. It was something that frequently caught out modern day princesses with access to the internet and nature documentaries who went after the Lady of the Western Plains. Jezara was most certainly not that kind of lioness. She was the other kind.

She rises up taller than the trees, painted in alien greens and reds, and roars so loudly it shakes the autumn leaves from their branches. The sound silenced and scattered the bird flock whose departing screeches echoed through the air like tears in the soundscape. Her sword is the size of a longship as she gestures towards the horizon, her flocks spreading in every direction - no longer weapons but scouts, searching everywhere for the warrior who stole their mistress' prize.

Aeglesia looked up at the distant titan and swallowed hard.
"Hey," said Lancer.
She couldn't look around. She was frozen with fear and determination in equal measure.
"Hey," said Lancer. "You ever read about these "Polanders"?"
"What?" she said through a dry throat.
"They had winged horses, and their cavalry was so good that it went toe to toe with armoured vehicles," said Lancer thoughtfully. "And they had a bear carry their ammunition. They only lost because they were outnumbered forty to one. I think we can learn something from them."
"... sure," said Aeglesia, gripping her tower shield so hard it hurt. Winged lancers. She'd take all the help she could get right now.

She hoped that Saber was safe.

Return to Thellamie

Rurik!

He had ruled out telling Civelia immediately. It's not that he didn't trust the Goddess to keep a secret - it's that, well, the fact that her blood pressure got a vote was fresh in his head. The Hero had definitely been right about that.

"No sweat," he said. He resolved himself against any guilt at making a promise that he had no ability to keep. His duty and loyalty was plain. Civelia had her priests and paladins; Heron had her Handmaidens. All any of them could do was trust in the Hero. Anything less was selfishness, presuming that one's own problems were more important than whatever the Princess was engaged in.

Kalentia!

She remembered the moment Heron had left. It was burned on her mind.

She'd had the healing spell burning on her fingertips. It had been there for almost a minute - a lifetime - and still there had been no need to use it. Heron had just gone through every enemy before they could touch her. It had been all she could do to keep up. In the end she'd wound up using the spell on herself. Then her cheeks had burned with shame instead.

How could she have explained? What could she have said? She'd realized too late that barrier magic would have been far more useful for Heron; she could have increased her range of motion by sectioning the battlefield and countering threats proactively. But there was no time to study an entirely new magical discipline so she'd gone further and further into a skillset that was worth less and less. She'd dreamed of being the essential pillar of the Handmaidens, the one who gave up individual glory in exchange for being indispensable.

And just like that. She was dispensed with.

Rurik had been right when he'd talked to them afterwards. The world had been at stake. They were sworn to the world's defense; this was the job, they'd always known it might go like this. They still had a duty.

Imagine how selfish it was to put her own hopes on someone already carrying so many.

Breathless Dead

Dyssia!

Gemini has been training. Sort of. She's been trying to train. It's hard because she's not really made for it - she's not really a Ceronian, she just looks like one for the purpose of murder. She's certainly not capable of keeping up with a determined Azura on flat terrain.

Her and... every single bystander in the corridor, though? Well, maybe. You'd better figure that out real quick Dyssia because every Lantern deckhand, Beri songstress, Stone Tribe brute and apologetic Pix have suddenly found their brains telling them that it'd be super cool and good to crash tackle a creature more than twice their bodymass. The upside is the corridor isn't that crowded, and the attempts are kind of halfhearted and impulsive.

But then, you've got this magic sword! And it doesn't seem to hurt anyone you cut - if anything, it makes them snap out of whatever mojo Gemini hit them with and back off. So, how does that go for you?

Dolce!

"It doesn't have to be so," said Demeter, turning over leaves one by one. An old instinct, searching for fungi, insects, discoloration - elements of chaos that she is still vigilant for despite having long banished them from her garden. "Here is my advice: If you love something you should care for it. This is basic morality, and like all morality it can and should override physical law.

"If you were to raise a horse on your farm then you could love and tend it, nurse it with your own hand, raise it taller and stronger than any of its kind could ever be, give it a paradise to exalt in. Yet at any time a flaw in its brain structure might cause it to leap the fence, gallop off into the uncaring wilderness where it will sicken and die alone. No chance of freedom - domesticated racehorse biology requires a caloric intake that cannot be supplied by grass, they need processed grain. That is a disaster! That is an obsolete, broken quirk of genetics. It causes heartbreak and tragedy - and to what end? To what value?

"Take that thought further. Consider your wife; how she struggles with attraction to other people inside the bond of your marriage. No matter how well you care for her something in her brain might make her leap that fence and bring your story to a tragic end. She hates it as surely as you do, but you're both powerless because that's just how things are - but what if it wasn't? What if a little medicine could cure her of that desire? How is that different from setting a broken bone or cleaning the parasites from a rose bush?

"What special value does 'pure' desire have? What special value does 'true' love have? We have seen Aphrodite's face and his cruelties, we have seen where he takes people and how he works in the breaks in evolution's design. Why look at an overgrown forest full of tangled, feral, disease-ridden desires and call it better than a tended and ordered garden?" she smiled. "A sentiment all the more ridiculous given that you, and she, and every other creature in this galaxy are already tended gardens. Biomancy has been used to architect everything you love and hate from before your planet was built.

"And now you're here with an assassin who was built to be an insane hyperfixated murderous psychopath, whose brain was assembled in a lab like this with nothing but contempt for her and the target that aches in her bones. And you suggest that she is in any way capable of making her own decisions? Who are you respecting in that situation? Her, or the Biomancer who added an empathic camouflage subroutine?" she sighs with frustration, clanging her metal leg walking stick on the ground. "Civilization has been so slow to adapt its morality to the technological reality of the modern age. The simple fact is that individualism has no basis in reality now, if it ever did; organisms cannot be separated from their biosphere. I think that the smallest coherent moral structure, then, is the family - and a family member does not need to seek permission before doing what's best on behalf of its members."

Return to Thellamie

Rurik!

Civelia had not always made her introductions so brisk. That was a habit that both she and Sayanastia had been forced to develop over the centuries. Heron generally had little patience for speeches and had, in one of her rudest moves, developed a spell that could fast forward herself through conversations she thought she knew the outcome to. If you were talking to her it wasn't always clear if she was listening intently or if you were talking to the chronological after-image from where she'd sent herself into the future.

The only thing that had really worked at making her knock it off had been to work on their voices. By practicing enunciation and delivery, working in some subtle magical enhancement effects, and cutting out all conversational hesitance and pauses it was possible to delay the Princess reaching for the accelerator. Rurik, for his part, hated using the spell - half the time he'd come out of it either in a fight or a makeout and he wasn't as swift to adapt to those circumstances as Heron was. Part of the act was continuously toying around with the hand gesture to start it, but he erred on the side of not doing that as much as he could get away with.

"Thanks," said Rurik when Civelia was done. He would also have liked to be a bit more formal, but this too was part of the act. The Legendary Hero was as impatient at giving answers as she was when it came to listening to them. He then stood there, vaguely fish eyed and blank - completely unhelpfully waiting for Civelia to continue. As much as he'd have done things differently were he the Legendary Hero, Rurik understood that Heron's mind moved as quickly as the lightning bolt of her heartblade, and it was his duty and honour to not create an expectation that she would be anything different. What a disservice that would be!

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Sayanastia!

All of these colours. In each of them Sayanastia could see the crunch and tear of her mighty jaws. She had thought, when she had eaten the sun all those centuries ago, that the opposite of light would be darkness. It turned out that the opposite of light was stranger than she'd ever imagined. Even now it found ways to surprise her.

"Hey, it's cool," Cair. A voice like the feeling of teeth on her ankle. She sighed and flicked her eyes down, a majestic gesture through her long eyelashes.
"I am not concerned," said Sayanastia.
"You sure? Because you've got like three secret agents aiming heartbows at you right now," said Cair.
"Were you not attempting to reassure me things were 'cool'?" said Sayanastia darkly.
"Oh shit," said Cair. "I mean - don't worry about them, they're probably terrible shots."
"Or they are concerned by the presence of human shields," said Sayanastia, flicking her eyes back up to the Crevas Stone.
"What, noooooo," pshawed Cair. "Nobody thinks you'd do that."
"The last time I was here I rode into town with Civelia tied to the front of my chariot, explicitly as a human shield," said Sayanastia.
"Shit, really?" said Cair.
"Really," said Tsane, not looking up from her book.
"Is there an illustration?" said Cair.
Tsane picked out another book, thumbed it through to a select page without looking at the numbers, and handed it to Cair.
"Oh wow," said Cair. "You didn't mention she was topless."
"That," huffed Sayanastia, "is an exaggeration."
"Oh yeah?" said Cair.
"She was wearing... an outfit," said Sayanastia.
"Do you have an illustration of the outfit?" Cair asked Tsane.
"Stop," said Sayanastia. "It was a military maneuver. It achieved its objectives. And regardless. The point is that I am not welcome here, nor do I expect to be. I will keep my eyes and my hands to myself and that shall be the extent of it."
"Aw, c'mon. They think you're cool," said Cair. "And if you scowl a bit, maybe show your claws, I think I can lean on the timeshare guy to get us some free samples."
"What does a free sample of a timeshare even look like?" sighed Sayanastia.
"It means a chance to pick up some cleaning products, maybe some fresh pillows, break up some furniture for firewood," said Cair. "And it won't even cost us lockpicks to get in. And if you think about it, going to 'clutter thief' would be a huge step up for your reputation, right? I mean, nobody assigns secret agents to aim heartbows at me."

Rurik!

It was a great honour to dress as Princess Heron.

You wouldn't think he could pull it off, but that was just what made it so effective. Not only had he practiced the traditions of the Heroine's makeup from an early age but he had been inducted into the guild of Princess Dressmakers at fourteen. For fifty years he had studied fashion and woven dresses in between his swordfights, mastering new and miraculous designs for the Heroine once she was finally reborn. Everything he had done had been for her even before he knew her; there was no interruption at all for him to continue working for her until she returned.

Now, though, the fire was in him. His weaving no longer ended in an endless room of mannequins. Now he was the mannequin. What an honour!

So he smiled and waved, exactly in accordance with the reach and flow of what he had designed his dress to do. This piece was a water cascade of white stained bloody red; a deathless maiden emerging from a pool of crimson. Wings of brass and gold hovered behind him, gemstones set with the lilac-orange of the Princess' heraldry. A great crest emerged from his upper back and curled over his head, set with crystal shards, part moon and part axe blade. Only the tip stained red as the veil flowed down to cover his face. This was a dress for reincarnation, immortality and war, and represented his tribute to she who fought the demons upon the distant moon. The Handmaidens wore lesser versions of the same without the white, fading instead to pale oranges and violets.

It felt... like he had chosen wrong somehow. The children, he hadn't accounted for the children. This was a dress for a more sombre moment, for moonlight and ritual. But that was to be expected. He only made these, he was not the one who was meant to pick them out. A small mistake, and like all mistakes, it would remain small.