Thanqol

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Injimo!

"Good at using her tongue?" said Injimo-as-Heron. "Just how hard did you lose that fight?"

Teasing isn't judging. She knows what it is to lose a fight, and so does Heron. There have certainly been extended periods where the Heroine was held captive, rendered into a damsel in distress, chained up with a chained bell collar in chains, gagged and kneeling and enslaved, wearing a harem outfit and looking at viewer. These things just happened and there was an entire branch of the martial arts dedicated to reversing that situation when you were in it. It's for that reason Injimo presses for details; if she was going to have that rematch with Aadya at some point, she probably needs every advantage she can get.

[Entice: 6]

"She changed her hair colour, but that was probably still her," said Injimo. "Appearance can change, but skills can't - and how many skateboarding maid knights can there be?"

Cair!

Before I get into that I'm going to answer your secret knowledge craving r.e. swimsuits.

So Kalentia wears a string bikini with gauzy white veil attachments, like the beachwear version of a wedding dress. They expand out when she's in the water giving her a bit of an angel wing look. She's got a lot of scars, almost as many as Injimo, but she's also got a tattoo pattern that links them up and adds stars to the join points so it looks like constellations. Cool effect

I don't see the point. My clothes are waterproof, I just go in fully dressed and shake myself off like a dog afterwards.

Anyway, I'm not really a tinker. Heron did most of that - she could get good at anything. My job is to manage the stockpile. Heron made dozens of magical swords over the process of teaching herself blacksmithing, most of which she used once and threw away. I can sort, label, and catalogue a suit like this but the technicalities of how it works are way beyond me. I'm going to need to take this one upstairs.

You wouldn't believe the stuff that's in the Stacks. Heron left to fight moon demons? Well, odds are one of them came down here sometime in the past, and Heron stuffed it in a box. Or maybe there'll be some sort of moon-based superintelligence shard, or a giant girl who sleeps in the heart of a meteor, or a magic wedding ring that grants wishes. You never know until you go looking.

[Commune with the Unseen: 8. Cair gives a powerful entity a String, and learns something important from the Unseen. Restless Unseen cause a haunting.]

Breathless Dead

Bella and Ember!

The Shrine of Hera opens to the void. The great leviathan suitor of the Sunshark looms above, endless rows of teeth hungering for its bride. Its body burns in a dozen places from the rain of plasma torpedoes that fall upon it; soon it will have no choice but to retreat. Damaging the ship was within its capabilities, outright destroying it is not.

Below at the shrine waits the Avatar of Liquid Bronze. A tall, gangly biomechanical sculpture; a projection of the Biomancer General allowing for action at a distance. Even in love, Liquid Bronze is a prudent man and does not risk himself in person. After all, he has a mission, and missing a wedding here or there cannot be allowed to distract him from the mission.

Not that he wanted anyone to notice this; it is only the power of the Auspex that reveals this empty shell for what it is. A deadly combatant in its own right and filled with the pheromantic chemicals to activate or alter nearby Summerkind, this is a battlefield design. It is designed for durability and self-repair. Do not allow it to speak.

In the pews are Summerkind, bought in to fill out the numbers. They sit politely in their chairs despite the chaos above and below them. They were, after all, born mere hours ago so none of this really strikes them as strange. They await their instructions but, as they have not been to a wedding before, don't know how things are supposed to go and so will not question anything strange they see.

And into this moment, stepping down from the Shrine of Hera where she'd appeared embraced by the stone statue of the divinity, is Bella.

Dolce!

"I am afraid if there is anyone out there who I need to kill on your behalf," said Vasilia as the door on the shuttle craft slammed closed. "They shall have to wait. You look like you haven't been eating at all -"

She is politely saying that she hasn't been eating at all either. She's visibly lost weight, and you'd reason that is equal parts from worry and not having a high enough opinion of the other cooks aboard the ship. Vasilia isn't a picky eater, exactly, it's just that her standards have been raised very, very high and she's gotten by quite a while on the hopes that her beloved would be returned to her.

You even see on her face the determination to cook for you. The determination to be a good wife and take care of her poor, lost, rescued husband. That determination will absolutely win out over her desire to taste your cooking again - of course you should rest and let her take care of it, you must be exhausted.

But the fact that it's a struggle says less about her love and more about your talent in the eyes of someone who truly appreciates you.

Dyssia!

The God of Madness shakes their head, the ink spreading and flowing like shadow-puppets. Not a cage. No bars. No constraints. Desire does not work that way. Instead:

A clock - an old fashioned circular clock. Hands moving ceaselessly. Every moment in chase, touching for moments and then moving onwards. Smash the clock, freeze the hands - it is still a circle. As soon as it is repaired it will start moving again, around and around and around. That is the shape of time. All things rise until they inevitably start to fall. Tick, tick, tick - until that twelve falls all the way back to one. Until the greatest and wisest becomes hungry for their children.

Dionysus grips the clock and pulls it. It breaks like taffy, coming apart as it is stretched from a circle to a line. They laid it out in front of you, a single long straight ruler, one to twelve - and then it stops. And what then, after twelve?

That's not for you to know.

Not knowing is the point. Not acting is the point. Going only so far, and then stopping - even if stopping means letting everything you worked for fade back into the ocean...

It's hard. Isn't it?

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Do I feel like I am in charge?" said the Cardinal mildly. "Do I feel clever? Do I understand what it is that you want?"

Something gold glinted on Aeglesia's finger.

"I hardly think that your opinion is relevant in any of those questions," said the Cardinal. "No, no, no. All I need from you is to witness. By the power invested in me, I declare myself and Aeglesia husband and wife, speak now or forever hold your peace..."

*

The Shrine Giant lurched from the swamp.

It was at its heart an instrument of control. Long dormant adhesive launcher pods burst all over its body, individually targeted to all the joints on Avenger's machine. It wrenches at and pulls off its own faceplate; where a cockpit or pilot might have sat instead is a single, strange, technicolour eye, pulsing hypnotic swirls. This mad eye does not just confuse and disorient the mind, it confuses and disorients space and time; everything is off. Movements take too long or happen too quickly, a shift to throw off finely honed instincts and make its opponents feel drunk and clumsy. And against an opponent labouring under the weight of paralysis and confusion, the Shrine Giant attacks with its primary weapon - a long and barbed trident. It pushes forwards like an ancient gladiator, beating back against the weight of the tower shield with the immortal strength of its fusion heart.

*

Diaofei entered the control chamber. Her hands glowed orange, wisps of smoke surrounding them. She was eighty-five steps through the Daemon-Banishing Kata; soon she would hit the first break point and then she'd truly be able to fight even these wicked ghosts as peers.

She saw the King in Crimson, holding the hand of his unconscious and bound bride. She knew in her bones this was Actia's servant - and she knew that she'd been wrong. Wrong to doubt herself, wrong to trust - all of this horror had been set in motion by the damn fox. Here at the heart of the corruption her influence was here, just like it had been in her own heart.

"Guard," said Assassin to Avenger. "It seems we have an intruder. I am forbidden by Command Seal from doing anything about it, so I leave this one to your imagination."

Diaofei took the eighty-sixth stance. Filter out the words. The lies. Only the pure way was left to her.

Return to Thellamie

Injimo!

In her capacity as sparring instructor, one of Injimo's tasks is to go out into the world, learn new combat skills, and then teach them to Princess Heron. This means, as most everything she does usually means, losing. She enters new dojos or martial traditions as a novice and then fails as a novice until she's distilled the heart of something useful enough for Heron to pick up.

From Aadya it was wrestling. It was a good memory. On one side she had the feeling of being tangled up and helpless in the arms of a muscular woman, and then on the other she'd gotten to put Heron into some nasty pins and hold her there until she perfected the breakout technique. It was a shame she didn't have a chance to see how that fight would have gone on her own time (REMATCH REMATCH REMATCH), but she was on the clock now more than she usually was.

"Hear you fought the assassin," said Injimo as Heron. "What should I know?"

Kalentia!

In the past, Heron experimented with flame magic rather than her familiar lightning. Her completed battledress, the Invincible Flame Armour, was the culmination of that quest. It was forged from a dragon's fever dream, a volcano's indigestion, and a night of passion with Summer amongst other lesser catalysts. She walked the world for a while as a firestorm, fields of rolling flames as tame as grass.

The histories didn't say what went wrong with it. Cair didn't know or wasn't telling. All Kalentia knew is that it shined, radiant in orange and yellow, in its containment sphere of molten glass at the bottom of a jagged lake. The light from below filtered through the water's reflection of the strange half-void sky, staining the water an admixture green. A little wooden bath shrine had been constructed or collected and placed outside the narrow band of coastal water where the water was warm and not scalding. Rurik's fishing rods were stored neatly outside the front door, next to Injimo's kayak.

Despite the sky being visible, the shrine existed on a 'floor' of its own - walk five minutes away from the lake in any direction and you risked falling to another part of the Nexus, or even directly into the Outside. A rope ladder passed through a hole in the sky down into what seemed like a bottomless pit; the only entrance and egress.

"Don't go out too far," Cair said. "It's dangerous to get too close to most things down here."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"I shall have to have a painting commissioned of this moment," came the voice of Assassin from a blood-soaked shadow. "The devil pagan standing monstrous and bloody above the martyred angel. The madness of the past arising to consume a Christian present, a mother devouring her son - haha -" there was a moment of reluctance, a moment of struggle, but in the end a failure to prevent a wicked laugh from burbling out.

Cardinal Richelieu stepped from the shadows. Luxurious in his Cardinal's bloody red, surrounded by a cordon of crimson-tabarded traitors and killers.

"Oh, it really has been remarkable to watch this little war play out," said the Cardinal. "A true battle of the one-eyed men. Bohemond saw the power in the Church, but thought it lay in relics. Julian saw through the power of the relics and thought it meant that the Church itself was false. The pagan saw the power of fear and terror, imagined it to be a mere sword."

The Cardinal ascended the stairs towards the throne, shielded by his men, and reached out to caress the shivering face of Aeglesia. He couldn't quite keep the smirk off his face, despite another struggle.

"Fear and hope," he said, "are both merely half of the equation. Alone, useless. But together," he turned, rubbing his fingers, "together -! Fear panics the masses, and hope tells them where to run! You have built this terror of a castle, but -"

He slouch-fell into the throne and gripped the sides with both hands. Immediately as he did so the castle shook. The ground heaved, windows shattered and great gusts of smoke erupted into the air. The scorching, burning focus of intense red laser energy ripped through its outer battlements, obliterating entire spires and ramparts.

*

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits stared up at the Shrine Giant. Its lights burned red against the blue, boiling together like sirens. Its arm had been heaved up, away from the dragon Opalis and towards the distant castle, tearing a rent through the landscape as it cut. Its other arm reached up, trying to pull the cannon back down, but it resisted - the mecha caught in a struggle between two masters.

*

"- all you have done is drive everyone else into my arms," said the Cardinal, putting his feet up on the throne's arm rests. "One of the great laws of balance, the same as did for Spain. The more terrifying you are the greater the coalition that forms against you."

Breathless Dead

Mosaic!

"..." Hera sighed. She sat down and hugged her knees, her emerald dress extending away from her in all directions like the ocean. Within its depths, fish swam and lilypads bloomed. "Even if I decided to, I could not," she said. "My sister took that chance away. She ate my son alive, and I am not sure either of them even noticed what was happening. Since then things have only gotten worse, and worse, and worse..."

She tilted her head back and undid her hairpin. Her freed hair cascaded endlessly, falling into the depths of her dress, an optical illusion where she was above and below the landscape at once. "I tried to kill her," she said. "In my rage and despair. It was I who made Molech mad. The Spear was intended for Demeter. Ares did his best to fight for me, and we might have won, but Hermes intervened," she laughed bitterly. "She prevented me from killing Demeter, I prevented her from saving humanity. Demeter never gave the incident a second thought. What is left for me to try?"

Ember!

The good news is that you have already come dressed for the occasion.

A few modifications have to be made, of course. Cleaning for one, and then some adjustments for local tastes. A wedding veil is draped across your face, the better to conceal the gag. The bouquet placed in your hands is so overflowing with flowers it conceals the ropes pulled tight around your wrists. A carriage and train is wrapped around your hips, placed so that nobody can see the small device that delivers sharp electrical shocks to your rear whenever you so much as put a foot wrong. You are a klutz, you see, Ember, and the Summerkind handmaidens assigned to prepare you for your wedding have decided to leave nothing to chance. They intend to steer you like a puppet, kept in your place through immediate rebuke the second you leave it. You will be made perfect regardless of your opinions on the matter.

(The Cancellation shivers. Distant metal bends and tears. Your other suitor has not forgotten you.)

In this manner, you are walked towards the temple deck, towards the Shrine of Hera. There Liquid Bronze intends to finally make an honest woman out of you.

Dolce!

In the end, it is the starships - and not the leviathans of the deep void - that are technologically inferior.

The combat drums change rhythm, a deep and terrifying alert frequency. Lights respond to the resonance, applying blue-black filters. A synthetic horn ripples out a cry of alarm and everyone pauses in their fighting to grab hold of nearby wall panels and slam on emergency helmets if they can reach them. Out through the open shuttle bay in the wine dark void, prismatic lightning flares.

And the Sunshark bites.

Metal ruptures and tears. Teeth the size of houses rends through hyperium alloys. Plasmatic heat rends through the void. Debris pours everywhere, a spectacular cascade of ruin. Flesh-orange blotches of Summerkind reincarnation eggs spill out like grapes and the spectacular flares of adaptive evolution as dying Biomancers and support servitors erupt into flocks of tropical parrots and deep sea crocodiles add new colours to the prismatic black. You can see miles across the ruined structure of the Warsphere; twenty percent of its colossal mass gone in an instant as the hunter of the void strikes its prey.

And upon the brow of the mighty creature, one hand holding a pistol and the other a Razorwhip lash which she uses to drive the beast onwards, is a lioness. Her eyes search the ruinous scene for you and you alone.

Dyssia!

Line overtyping line. The ink is layering on thicker and thicker, the white blacked out as characters are hammered into their place. All of the knowledge of the worlds, all the possibility to write new ones, possibilities overlaying and overlaying as the same page is overtyped again and again. With no paper to grip ink hits ink, splashing and wet, beading together and dripping down the page...

You see the truth.

The words are traps.

Reality is in the mirror; in the reflection you can see on the edges where the light hits the liquid ink.

Dionysus is the substance of that mirror and they are not true, but they are not delusion. They are not lies. All of these alternate worlds, all of these possibilities, everything contained within the possibility of the ground-up Hadean crystals used to make this ink - all gateways into this world of creative madness. In those colourless depths are things more valuable than the truth: ideas. New ways of thinking. New ways of being. New ways for the galaxy to be, freed from fatalism.

This is the weapon the God of Madness is here to give you: how to glimpse the shape of something new.

Return to Thellamie

Injimo!

She stands up stiffly. Something was wrong with the motion, it was too strained - it would take a deliberate moment's reflection to realize that she hadn't been sitting in a chair. She'd spent the whole meeting holding a squat and even for someone with her fitness obsession that took a toll.

(It was something she had to work on. Heron could walk crouched for hours at a time.)

"No problem," she said. She wanted to stretch, crick her neck - Heron wouldn't. Sometimes it felt like the Hero was made out of rubber. "See you, Vil."

She knew she couldn't beat Civelia. Maybe that was unfair; she didn't really think she could beat anyone. Any victory felt like her opponent had just made a trivial execution mistake; an accident, something that'd get washed out in a best out of three. There were some things - most things - that only Heron could do, and going toe to toe with the Goddess was outside her range. She knew her limits. She spent every day being reminded of them, like a prisoner knows the bars of her cage.

No, what she'd do if the balloon went up would be to rush the General Secretary. Damage the support apparatus. Buy time for Heron. That was her duty.

Kalentia!

"Oh, honey..." Kalentia sighed.

She was right, of course. Nothing in the worlds of magic would bring the release from passion the Lunarian sought. The Dark Dragon had ground the pyramid to rubble, and the rubble to sand, and the sand to dust, and the dust to atoms, and there amidst the atoms life sprang forth in a microbacterial bloom. Once the craving was inside of you it could animate you forever, and there was no spell to mend a broken heart[1].

The best she has is the offering of a handkerchief.

"Well, my auntie always said the best thing for impurity is a bath," said Kalentia[2]. "Do you want to try the hot spring? Maybe that'll help you relax."

[1] She'd checked.
[2] Ogden Pious was an odd duck.

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Tsane!

Okay, so(1)

Mana is a fascinating topic, and the history of Arcane Philosophy is an endless sequence of wizards making really bad analogies about Mana in an attempt understand this vital force. Mana is like fire, a sequence of raw power that can be used to power the mechanisms of spells! Mana is like water, adapting to take on the characteristics of whatever shape it is poured into! Mana is like wood, growing and adapting a self-reinforcing ecosystem around it! So on and on endlessly, it's worth pulling back from answers that may be more correct than others(2) to talk about mana's fundamental observable qualities.

1: There are different kinds of mana. Different schools categorize it differently, but generally agree there are at least 6 and fewer than 16,777,216 varieties.
2: Mana shapes and is shaped by its environment. The mana naturally at rest inside a healer becomes more associated with healing magic; release that mana into the air without the focus of a spell and it'll start doing healer-y things over time to the environment; cleaning and restoring etc.
3: Heartblades are the ultimate form of magic because they represent one hundred percent mana efficiency. There is no wastage or slowdown, they're a frictionless manifestation of potential that can be withdrawn back into the self and recycled fully.

This is all to say, watching this idle working of the Goddess is far, far more interesting than anything that could ever be said here(3). Whatever Civelia is doing is potentially a revolutionary breakthrough in the Arcane Science, something that couldn't be replicated without shattering a great number of extremely expensive magical items in the process. It also hasn't escaped her notice for how weird it is for Civelia to be breaking something at all. What does any of this mean?

(1): On Wizards

Before going any further it is worth formally repeating that Tsane is a wizard, and whenever the topic of the wizard subculture comes up on crossword puzzles then the preceding word is more often than not something like 'hubris', 'mad', 'overconfident', 'evil', 'opinionated', 'overconfident', etc. A wizard must, by their nature, have big opinions about reality and those opinions are not guaranteed to reflect the actual reality. In fact, when a wizard is proven factually wrong about something, they are statistically more likely to conclude that reality is wrong and set about a great and terrible Working in order to fix it.

So. Grain of salt.

(2)

'Mana is like fungal gelignite' is the most convincing analysis so far btw.

(3)

Though she's privately stoked at the idea of breaking into the dragon mansion. Imagine getting to observe a magical creature like that up close - or see how it interacted with Sayanastia! And imagine getting to do field work while surrounded by maids! Actually, she's wildly hoping for this now, that sounds practically utopian(4)

(4)

In Tsane's fantasy, all of the maids flock to her in awe and terror of her arcane power and shower her with affection and praise, and also their skirts are definitely way below regulation length. Tsane has never had her ass kicked by a maid and so doesn't really appreciate where the 'knight' part factors in.

Kalentia!

"Hey, hey, easy there, it's okay," said Kalentia, kneeling down and holding both of her hands up. "Look, I know I've got no right to anything you want to keep private. After I'm done and you're better, if you want, I can get Tsane - my wizard friend - to erase my memory of today. It'll be like this never happened, okay? But for now I just need you to take it easy and work with me. You're very sick, and we both need to try our best for your recovery."

No amount of training or cleverness or knowledge could substitute for this; a healer's kindness. It wasn't much, but it was as sincere as she ever could be.

[Comfort and Support: 7]

Breathless Dead

Mosaic!

"You can always cook me meals," said Hera. "I never fail to miss them or appreciate them. I never fail to note the sentiment that goes into their preparation."

She says that as she thinks. It's a dangerous kind of thinking. She has the option to obliterate this entire sector of space as an alternative to answering it, and when it comes to the memory of children that is always a tempting option. Perhaps once she might have.

"The stories have not been kind to me," said Hera. "When they told the tale of Hephaestus, they said that when they placed him in my arms I was so horrified by his crippled ugliness that I threw him from Olympus. They said it like it was a matter of vanity, these men who had never borne a child inside them. They said it like I," she spread ten-trillion peacock feathers across the length of the galaxy, an ocean of green and blue, "am a slave to the biological defects that tormented humanity at the time. Not any of them considered what it meant for a Goddess to recognize a family member as hideous."

There is not certainty in her speech. Her doubts are still evident, no matter how many times she has told this story.

"Hephaestus was not physically deformed," said Hera. "He was spiritually deformed. He was born heartless. A creature of dead matter and dead machines. The mind and soul were nothing special to him, just more raw material, more dead matter to make into more dead machines. In his heart was an all consuming industry that ran for its own sake."

She stepped away. "He was not malicious. No cruelty, no wrath. I had a wicked son, Ares, who despite everything I could still love. Hephaestus was not wicked, he was worse. He was born with the mark of his grandfather, born with the love of creation. And for the sake of his love, anything was possible for him. Anything was acceptable. He would accept any cause, alliance or master, so long as he could continue his work. He would pave over a living galaxy if he could continue his work. Fallen from Olympus, he shared his love with humanity. He taught them to build miles-long cities in the desert to prove they could. He taught them them to burn the planet to power a machine that could pretend to be a very stupid person. He taught them to build the pyramid just to see how high they could pile it. And what he never did was teach them to maintain what they had already."

Her feathers had wilted, a galaxy of bone spikes mouldering away into stardust. "I still wonder if I could have taught him differently," she said.

Ember!

They come for you. All of them.

What wouldn't a man sacrifice for love? Summerkind are awakened to stupefying tranquilizer pheromones by Biomancer attendants, slowing their initial fury to a sclerotic headache, and legions of these dazed shambling soldiers are sent in pursuit. Stumbling, mindwiped and barely awake they pursue you in a vast crowd, hands reaching out to catch something just out of reach.

And it has to be them. Drones can't be relied on to do such delicate work as securing a bride, and the Biomancers are certainly not combat capable themselves. And when awakening a thousand Summerkind doesn't work, their only escalation is to awaken another thousand - and another. The Cancellation's corridors begin to flood with a tide of intensely hung over Summerkind all trying to catch one extremely helpful and enthusiastic puppygirl doing klutzy zoomies.

All of these soldiers are, incidentally, not being deployed in the shooting war with the Plousios.

Roll to Keep them Busy to see how long it takes this situation to resolve, if ever.

Dolce!

Ember hasn't exactly located Iskarot herself, but she has distracted literally everyone who might come between you and him. You find him coming out of the Garden, which glows orange-red with the roaring flames he has lit there.

"I have my bag," he said. "Let's help your friend."

Between him and Sanalessa it is shockingly easy to move through a crowd of sleep-deprived Summerkind. You reach the shuttle bay without problem, but as you're crossing to your destination the unicorn servitor hauls you both aside seconds before the crack-bang of a solid projectile volley blasts into the ground before you. A small rifle unit of ancient, decrepit Summerkind - the geriatric hospital patients kept around for Liquid Bronze's personal edification - have been organized and are staking out a position between you and the escape. You see the silhouette of 20022 standing safely by the doorway well behind them.

These soldiers, despite their dotage, represent a fearsome military unit. They were the best that 20022 could call on in this transitory period for the ship. While you're sure that they have no love at all for Liquid Bronze, 20022 probably made them some promises to get them out here.

"I can hold them off while you escape," said Sanalessa.

Dyssia!

"Is that what you want?" the hand is heavy on your shoulder, heavy and dry and still like a dead man's. "You want to see me imprisoned, little serpent? I understand. I can," you can hear the crackle as lips pull back from gums, "help you get what you want -"

But you don't want that at all. Do you?

You want to know why Zeus still supports the Endless Azure Skies. Why she allowed them to endure the destruction of the Atlas Cultural Sphere. Why she cast them down but did not stamp on the embers. Your course changes -

"I - you want to bring down the Skies? Many do, but you could be the one to make it happen. I can help you -"

But that's not it at all! You can see it in the reflection of the polished keys of the typewriter, the mirror gleam as your hands dance and slam, cutting off the output so fast that the letters smash over the top of each other. A new idea has occurred: what is Hermes doing in the underworld that is so important that she can't deliver Hades' message herself? What would happen if -

"- you wish to - stop! Hermes knows what she wants; she loves humanity, and in that love, she has the power to achieve great things. If you could just focus on one thing you could have my help -"

You're floating. You're buzzing. Everything's here for you, every question trying to get through your fingers all at once. That hand on your shoulder has tightened. It's shaking you, trying to get your attention. To get you to focus. Fingers clench your bones like they're trying to grip your brain. "Why don't you want to pay attention!?" snarls Aphrodite.

But that's the thing. You don't want that at all.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits was holding down the fort.

An important position! She was keeping the dragon Opalis a prisoner and guarding the mana core of the sunken giant, the two critical assets that would ensure foxgirl supremacy no matter how dark things turned out. She wasn't sidelined uselessly in the center of an impenetrable fortress because Actia didn't believe in her, she was doing critical work. Berserker knew it. She was sitting, legs folded, palms in her lap, eyes closed with the perfect stillness of someone who had nothing more to add to the situation. Kat was trying to imitate her.

She was so pretty. Kat wished she could talk. Why had she gotten stuck with Berserker? She didn't have a berserk bone in her body. She didn't even have an Assassin bone in her body - she was here with the means to seize the war for herself, she was very aware, but she hadn't even been able to properly steal her second tail. She'd just been given it as a punishment for someone else. She was a terrible foxgirl, she knew, and even having Actia and Cyanis kindly setting examples for her all the time they'd both known she was so hopeless that they could leave her in charge of the hencoop because she was more like a dog. It was so embarrassing!

The thought hurt so much that it messed up her sorry excuse for a meditation. She stood up, stuffed her hands in her pockets, walked to the pondshore, and threw a rock. It skipped across the water and impacted on the metal leg of the Shrine Giant.

The glowing metal leg of the Shrine Giant.

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits was terrible at being a fox. She didn't weave an illusion or throw a curse or conjure a thunderbolt or defensively marry anyone at all. She just dived to tackle Berserker out of the way of the energy beam, like a big dumb sucker. It'd serve her right if it burned off one of her tails in the process and she went back to being a shoulder fox.

But it didn't. The beam slashed through the ground, immolated Actia's shrine and cut through Berserker's castle walls from the inside. Glowing blue, wrenching itself free from the cables that bound it, earth and root sloughing off as the ancient metal giant tore itself from centuries of mud and sediment. A terrible machine of the ancient world awakened before her and it raised its mud-filled cannon to seek out the captured dragon.

She'd been wrong. She hadn't been benched somewhere useless. It was much worse than that. Now she had to save the day.

*

"I will not," said the angel Bohemond, touching lightly down in the throne room, "linger on your failure here, ancestor, because doing so will reflect poorly on myself. But I will suggest that for all the softness you may imagine lives in the hearts of Christians, they did know how to hold an empire together far longer than the Old Gods ever did."

His feathers have faded from radiant gold to a powder-yellow; his armour is no longer alight in all-consuming divine radiance. He is whole and hale, full of power - but only full of power. The tether that empowered him with a flood of energy has been severed and so it no longer burns out of him as it did moments ago. Even as he took your castle, someone has taken this opportunity to steal his from him.

But. He is too deep to escape now.

He conjures his longbow and holds it ready.

"Come, then," said Archer. "Let me consign you once again to the past."