Thanqol

Return to Thellamie

Rurik!

There is how Rurik, Seneschal of the Hero, would handle the problem. That would be a matter of discipline and diplomacy within the household, a moment for intervention with a firm voice and intimidating stares. He would break things up, calm things down, and generally do everything Civelia wished he would do. Tragically, Rurik was not present, and Civelia had allowed her faith in him as a man to blind her to his duty as a Handmaiden.

What would Princess Heron do in this situation? Why, she would go over to Cair, put the remainder of the soap in her mouth, kabedon the Lunarian and flirt with her while chewing. "Hey babe," he said. "I'm sorry to say you're not the only one who's Fallen Far recently~"

Now, Rurik was not Heron. The disguise was very good but there was a certain... je ne sais quoi that made the Princess more than the sum of her Handmaidens. In particular, Rurik could never quite disguise his eyes, which had a kind of perpetual ferocity to them that made everything he said come across as a mafioso's threat. Under those circumstances, his kabedon felt more like the beginning of an actual mugging instead of a sexy mugging.

(In the back of his mind, he is prioritizing the ceremony over this. In his mind, he does the Heron move which makes the girl go weak at the knees and then ditches her mid-swoon. In his mind, he gets the soap out of the situation in one quick bite and it doesn't taste like anything and he doesn't start involuntarily blowing soap bubbles while fighting down the urge to scream for the team healer while standing dutifully for the ceremony. In his mind, Rurik is a dutiful and loyal Handmaiden, and not a braincell timeshare investor.)

Breathless Dead

Ember!

Within the light of Mars it is time to discuss maps and logistics.

Liquid Bronze's fleet is on an intercept course. Five Imperial-era battleships, one modern supercarrier, and a support fleet of fifty smaller Warspheres, cruisers and destroyers. A precise tally of their resources is irrelevant; in terms of force applied to this problem their numbers are effectively infinite. That is not to say they operate without constraints.

First and foremost, they are the hunters and have limited ability to force an engagement. This means that Liquid Bronze has split up his fleet into twenty different battlegroups. Any one battlegroup might make an even match for the Plousios, but the cold Martian logic implies that a fair fight will cause so much damage to both sides and attract sufficient notice that the rest of the force will be able to close in on the damaged survivor.
Secondly, they will be operating at the end of their supply tethers. Liquid Bronze, in a desire to settle the matter quickly, has only allotted space for two of his battlegroups to be resupplying at any given moment; that means the rest will be running lean. Any expenditures of exotic resources will be difficult to replenish in the field.
Finally, the political context is a limiting factor on Liquid Bronze's activities. That was how Dyssia's Pix originally escaped their own Decommissioning - the Biomancers do not have unlimited remit to disrupt inhabited and productive planets in their search for rogue agents, and the relationship with various sector governors may be strained. The death of the Crystal Knight is both a positive and negative in this regard; she was personally invested in your destruction, but she was also capable of reining in the Biomancer-General if he went too far.

The plan at the moment is to hide inside a star. This will not end the chase, but it will transition it into an advantageous defensive siege. This is a valuable delaying maneuver - Liquid Bronze's insufficiently supplied ships will not be able to spare the exotic cooling materials required to engage on anything but the worst terms. Given his impatience, it is predicted he will force an immediate engagement despite the risk, and a humiliating defeat will be valuable in destabilizing his position. And that is the only endgame that makes sense for this kind of hunt: against a foe with infinite resources it must become politically untenable to continue to the pursuit.

This means, then, engaging the battlegroup containing his supercarrier, The Cancellation of Florence Nightingale directly. Damage to that glorious ship on the field of battle would be an affront to Mars; if it is to fail, it must be at the hands of a nightmare beyond the normal context of the battlefield. And so it is that you have decided to call on your divine uncle Poseidon whose terrible hooves shake the stars themselves. For this kind of blessing a rare and treasured sacrifice must be prepared.

What do you have that is rare and treasured, Ember? (Hypothetically, would you describe yourself as rare and treasured?)

Dolce!

"Love, then?" said Artemis, again with a distant dagger-smile. "You think that's what it comes down to? I don't believe it. Not from you. You had love before this adventure began and you'll have love after it. Love isn't what sent you out your door. Love isn't what made you throw in with a renegade Princess and the God of the Dead. Love isn't what made you step into the Lethe, risking everything you ever were. No, Dolce, you give yourself too little credit - it's not anything as simple as love that drives you. Everything you are doing, every decision you've made, from the first day you left the comfort and safety of the Manor, was driven by something far deeper and more powerful than mere love. And though you don't want to give up on your love, on your softness, on your sense of morality - I think what you're really hoping is that it won't be necessary to do that."

Artemis leaned forwards. Demeter is in the background, smiling. To Demeter, Artemis is an ally. She doesn't see the knife even when it is this close.

"I can't promise that it won't be necessary to risk any or all of those things," said Artemis. "But what I can promise is that I will prevent you from sacrificing anything unnecessarily. If - and this is the only prayer I require - you tell me I'm right. You don't need to say what truly drives you," Demeter is tilling the soil, earth running through her fingers, searching for seeds. "You just need to tell me that you need to finish what you have started."

Return to Thellamie

It can be hard to remember what her anger had felt like.

She remembers the Dark; the dreaming dragon-place. She remembers the warmth and the quiet, the murmur of sleeping breaths, the shift and rustle of scales, the heat of hearts. She remembers her dreams in full; they still fill her, still animate her, unforgotten by waking. The problem was that waking made her smaller. She became too small to fit those dreams in her head. Once she had been as big as they were, now it was like looking at a forest from inside it.

She remembers the Light. A dreaming infinity had inevitably heaved forth its opposite. It had risen above the dark in at the top of an endless pyramid, and it had said I AM. At first the pyramid had been made of light, but the Light had said I AM, and the pyramid had become stone instead. The pyramid had dominated the void, but then the Light had said I AM, and it had broken itself from the sky. Each time it had declared itself to be it forced everything to be other than it was. Each time it had made her smaller. Each time it had broken her further and further away from her dreams. And they had been such good dreams too...

She feels the anger inside her. It lies like a stone, smooth and hot and mirror-polished. There was no flaw in that structure, no weakness in her argument. She had been right. She had suffered injustice. How dare it wake her? The edifice of rage was still there in full, a fury she felt in her teeth. She could still feel the jaw-shattering impact from when she'd gotten those teeth on the light and answered its helpless I AM with a screaming, biting YOU SHOULD NOT BE. She'd crushed it, splintered it, torn open the stone pyramid that had supported it and filled it with every hatred she could imagine.

All futile. She had not said, 'You are not'. No matter how she'd ripped and torn and cursed and raged she still had no answer for that desperate, proud declaration I AM. It was, and she had hated it; her hate was consequence of and proof that it was. She had scrubbed the mold and in so doing spread its spores. Everywhere it had grown. It announced itself more subtly now but it was still there. From the sky, still stained blue from the broken light her jaws had made, all the way down to this infuriating little puppet demanding her attention. Pardon me - just as she had broken light into the spectrum, so she had broken the raw declaration of I AM into this twist of sound that meant the same thing. And then, the delegation - not only was she supposed to give this man the right of veto over her dreaming infinity, she was supposed to acknowledge this box. It declared with its existence I AM just as surely as the Light once had, and by its existence it demanded her attention. Just another assault on her senses, another distraction, another reason to rage. Another reason to destroy. Another thing to wish she could be free from. Another opportunity for failure. Spurn the gift, infuse it with her reality by hating it. A failed stratagem that had taken her so far away from the peace she had sought to win.

She hadn't been wrong. The stone was perfect; a gleaming marble of internally reinforcing logic. She could roll around in it for a thousand years and find no flaw in it. She had been right to be furious. It was an injustice that no amount of fury could solve the problem. The only way left to her passed through surrender, injustice and madness.

She let her left hand take on the aspect of her dragon talons (the right was tricky; too close to Civelia even now) and she tore off the paper. Looked at the soap. Another declaration, another demand - now she was to acknowledge Civelia, now she was to force her mind down paths of memory and wit and insult to decode the statement, another long moment where she was not free to think as she wished to think or be as she wished to be. A gift.

She opened her mouth and took a bite of the soap.

"Uh, Yana?" Kalentia said. "Uh, that's not for eating."
"I know," said Sayanastia. "I am making a point."
"O-oh. Can I ask... what it is?" said Kalentia.
"No," said Sayanastia.
"Oh! Oh, you really don't have to take another bite," said Kalentia. "I'm sure your point is made."
"I am," said Sayanastia grimly, "committed to this course."
"Because that really doesn't look that - oh no - it really doesn't look like you're enjoying it."
"I am not," said Sayanastia. "This was a mistake."
"Then are you going to stop - oh, well, I guess not."
"I will not give her the satisfaction," said Sayanastia.
"But I don't understand, what point are you trying to make?"
"I don't want to talk about it. It was stupid. I overthought things and - well."
"Oh, okay. Uh..."
"What?"
"Do you want help?"
"What?"
"Well, it can't be healthy to eat that much soap on your own -"
"I am a dragon."
"Okay yes. Okay. It's just that, um, you've asked me to use healing magic to help with your digestion before, so I think you've got a regular intestinal setup -"
"Fine! Eat some if you must."
"Okay! Thank you!"
"Don't mention it."
"Oh wow, this is really bad."
"I know."
"And you ate like half of it on your own?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I'm not going to be able to get more than a few bites of this down I think."
"That's fine. Just give it back here."
"Hey guys, whatcha eating?"
"Oh, hi Cair - we're just eating some soap -"
"Word? Let me try."
"Oh - oh you shouldn't -"
"Oh wow. Terrible."
"You don't have to -"
"Nah, what kind of friend would I be if I let you eat all this soap on your own?"
"We are not friends." said Sayanastia.
"Uh doy, how do you think people get to be friends?"
"Hrmmmm."
"Hey Tsane! Wanna eat some soap?"
"No."
"C'mon, it's a team building activity!"
"I am leaving."
"No problem, let me see if Fally wants some -"

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Okay," said Aeglesia. She took a deep breath and banged her sword against the edge of her shield. "Okay! Here I go!"

*

"You can - duck!" shrieked Fallweaver as the spear came in.

It was a halfhearted throw, entirely lacking in killing intent - it wouldn't have made contact even without the warning. The balance of it was off - something was tied to the end. A flask? Lancer grins, modern clothes starting to burn away in emerald light to reveal the elaborate armour of an Emperor.

"So, Saber, I was thinking," she said, foot sliding wide, tracing a long arc through the rough dirt in front of her with the javelin she was holding. "We're not allowed to directly interfere in that Princess battle - but there's nothing that says we can't have a friendly duel of our own at the same time. And if," Lancer said, tying a leather wineskin to the end of the javelin, "we happen to get a little drunk while we fight, and if that has implications for our accuracy, then I don't see how anything that comes of that would be our fault."

She took a deep draught of wine herself. Then her easy grin hardened and her stance became sharp and focused. Still playful, but with an edge. The play for her Master's affection had not gone unnoticed and this was her opportunity to establish her superiority.

Return to Thellamie

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.