Thanqol

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Julia opened her mouth to retort but it was too late, breath attack breath attack breath attack.

Specifically, ice. When Opalis opens her mouth she does not blast forth a jet of frozen water, but conjured in the place between her jaws is a heat-annihilating microsingularity in a vortex of radiant violet. The air sheets and ripples as moisture snap-condenses into snow, the branches of the vines snap and rupture as their sap freezes and leaves fall in an early autumn, and Julia pulls her cape over her head to shield herself from the blast of terrible cold. Then her boots screech across the icy floor - she is dragged a step towards the terrible gravity of the dragon's jaws. With a fierce gesture she dismisses her tendrils - and Cyanis and Aeglesia are dragged through the phone-portals, which snap shut behind them - and turns to set her spear to face down the

BANG BANG BANG BANG. Actia still has a gun! But Julia has pulled up her armoured cape just in time and catches the attack, just like she catches the follow-up burning side-kick from Diaofei to the shin. The Redeemer of Rome's eyes water in pain and outrage for a moment before Berserker smashes a chair over the back of her head from behind, slamming her on the floor.

"Because I have a sense of humour and nothing to prove," said Julia from her position halfway through a flagstone. "I am going to let you appreciate this moment until I finish counting to ten. Laugh about it! And after that I'm going to bring back crucifixion."

Return to Thellamie

Cair!

"Cair! Good Stars, are you alright?"
"Ah, shit! Rurik, how did you get here?"
"Portal. Cair, the legions of the damned are inside the gates! We need to do something!"
"Hi Cair."
"Hi Tsane - look, Rurik, how did you even know -"
"Magic. The legions of the damned, Cair!"
"- okay, fine - hi Injimo -"
"Hi Cair."
"- but look, you probably don't need to be here. I'm still not convinced this is a problem yet."
"The legions of the damned, Cair! They are inside the gates!"
"Rurik, you haven't really spent much time here, have you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Look, this place is the collection of the Hero of Ages. And she doesn't just collect items. She collects enemies, monsters, things whose place in the world she destroyed."
"Mmm?"
"That means that this place is perpetually full of dangerous creatures."
"Right. But that is different from having the legion of the damned inside the gates, surely?"
"Well, not really - like, the Hero's Shadow hangs out here, did you know?"
"Good Stars! Tsane, can you fight the Hero's Shadow?"
"Well, I can resist the temptation to get weirdly horny about fighting it for about twenty minutes, tops."
"Well... that will have to do. Thank you for letting us know, Cair, we'll deal with that right after we stop the legion of the damned -"
"Rurik! I'm saying it because it's kind of normal here! Like, I was just speaking to the Architect Knight the other day -"
"The Architect Knight! Good Stars! Thank you for letting us know, Cair - Injimo, can you fight the Architect Knight?"
"Yeah."
"Oh thank goodness, I thought for a moment there you were going to say the same thing as Tsane."
"I mean, I'm always weirdly horny when I fight. I just don't let it interfere with the job."
"That's the spirit! So come on, Cair - don't you have an alchemy lab or something? Can't you whip up some weed killer?"
"Rurik - look, shouldn't we just wait for Heron to handle it?"
"What?"
"If the, uh, the -"
"Legion of the damned."
"Rootwalkers."
"Oh, is that what they're called?"
"Yeah, - they're a fascinating blend of Nature/Shadow mana, actually. It's a melding technique called hedging, which in this case is a neat pun, and -"
"Look, if the Rootwalkers are here then they're not somewhere else. So why not let them be here? There's nothing here for them."
"That one is holding the Sword of Invincibility."
"Yeah but they're using it as a shovel. It's fine."
"- allows ordinarily contradictory magical forces to feed off their opposition. Some advanced pyromancers develop an incidental mastery of ice just because concentrating heat in one place means drawing that heat away from -"
"They are destroying the Stacks!"
"Rurik, I've been living here for a long while, and I honestly couldn't say that this place is any worse than when they started."
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that, actually. You are a Handmaiden, aren't you? You believe this level of cleaning is acceptable?"
"W-what!?"
"We work for the Hero of Ages. This place should reflect her stature. And it's positively filthy."
"Rurik, she has an entire cursed desert in here! Do you expect me to dust it?"
"Well, why not get a rake and start drawing sand circles? It might take a little while but it'd improve the effect enormously."
"That'd take a hundred years!"
"Well, that's why we are imbued with reproductive organs, is it not?"
"Oh, wow, grandad. And you take issue with my monsterfucking?"
"Not at all. I just wish it would result in some great-grandchildren already."
"Grandpa!"
"You're not getting any younger, Tsane."
"I don't need to be here for this conversation. I'm going to start killing Rootwalkers now."
"Very good! See Cair, Injimo has the right attitude with regards to the legion of the damned being inside the gates. You could learn a thing or two."
"Injimo wait - ah she's gone, fuck."
"Speaking of, Cair, why don't you settle down with my granddaughter?"
"I'm going to the alchemy lab now."
"Oh, excellent. Tsane, go with her, it'll be like a wizard date!"
">:("
"o灬o"

*

Kalentia!

"Woah woah woah hey now nonconcordance dissonance megastalling medical emergency," said Kalentia, shoving directly past the woman to head for Fallen Far.

After a moment she realized she'd just shoved aside the hottest woman she'd ever seen who was in the process of telling her that they were going to get married and then do extremely married things to her. Because there was an injured patient nearby and she needed to attend to that before she could process anything else.

In that moment Kalentia realized that she was an excellent white mage - and that being an excellent white mage fucking sucked.

Breathless Dead

Princess Redana!

The Lethe washed away many things. For her, it washed away fear, pain, regret and doubt. She drank of it greedily and deeply, downing mouthful after mouthful of that cool water until only her hopes and aspirations were left. She wished she could be a Princess and perform her role perfectly. She wished she could sacrifice so that those she cared about would be safe. And, somewhere a few ribs below her heart, she'd had a very quiet and hungry wish that somebody would remember what she'd said carelessly and jokingly and not let her squirm her way out of it.

It bubbled up from inside her. An emotion that was completely incompatible with being Princess Redana Nero. The desire that someone would want to take revenge on her. That all of her teasing, poking, prodding and skirting around the line might somehow mean that when the assassin came for her, they were coming for her and not the person she was impersonating. It was a perversion, a kink, an entirely unacceptable vanity to imagine that the death she was programmed to yearn for might be because of who she was. And of all the wants in her head, that was the one desire that split her from her mask.

"You won't get away with this, Praetor," she said, holding up the words, the bait - just in case. Maybe you're just confused? "I'll escape, just like I always do," she knew exactly how hollow that sounded over the tearing sound of her dress. "And - and when I do - you'll..." words jumbled in her mouth; the scripts she's following no longer aligning.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

From the severed tentacles, vines begin to creep. They burst upwards rapidly, wooden tendrils replacing metal ones, and immediately they begin to blossom. The flowers merged together in a storm of vibrant pollen and, pink and white, Lancer stepped down. A long green dress drew behind her sparkling with a million stars, a wreath flowering crowned her head, and long flowing white sleeves perfectly captured the bloody red stains that spoke of blood sacrificed in the name of Rome. "Mine was a seed that never had the chance to blossom," she said, trailing a long spear behind her. "Mine was a reign could have healed the world."

She raised her spear to the roof; with a terrible detonation it blew away the stone that Berserker had made, and with a twist the entire castle she had erected began to peel apart and blow away on the sand.

"You knew Julia the Apostate. Julia the failure," said Lancer. "Who I would have been if I failed at my ambition. The Empress who presided over the final break between East and West, the Empress who failed to burn out the Church and was damned by them, the Empress who in a stroke of tragic luck was struck through by a spear," her fingers curled around her nightmarish weapon, "before her reign could truly begin."

"But the Gods have answered my prayer," she said, "even before I triumph in this contest of ours. My victory is inevitable and so travels back in time to ensure it will occur. As I shall rewrite history, so history shall empower me. There will be no Dark Age; only an early Enlightenment. There will be no fall of Rome; instead it shall continue uninterrupted and glorious all the way into the heavens. There shall be no," she sneers at Berserker, who - shockingly - flinches, "feudal warlords and their ugly little castles squatting in the ruins of my Empire. Northern raiders will be met by the fury of the Legions and driven back to their rocks," in this moment she turns her gaze on Ivar and -

drifting alone on an iceberg, cut off from human history. julia's ascent means the destruction of your legend, your history, your destiny, everything you fought and died for. she can feel the cold mechanical gaze of the moon pressing down on her, the cutting scissors of the norns as they sever her from the tapestry of fate

Berserker was right to flinch.

"You face Julia the Philosopher," said Lancer. "And I am here to condemn your entire timeline. Your lives will become as meager and pathetic as mine once was, and you will drift away like sand through an hourglass."

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

Every phone at the table rings simultaneously.

Opalis looks at the tablet that she wears integrated with her golden bracelet. Cyanis lazily fishes out her hot pink sticker-plastered phone from her bosom. Aeglesia reaches into her pocket and pulls out a bright red phone marked with thunderbolts and SPQR. Diaofei fumbles out an archaic wooden flip phone, engraved with warding glyphs. Actia pulls out a gun.

BANG BANG BANG

The foxgirl blasts away at the dragon before anyone can react. The warding glyphs on Diaofei's phone glow red and a second later it bursts into flame. Cyanis and Aeglesia scream as a mesh of mechanical tentacles burst out of the glowing screen of her phone and start trying to drag them into the screens. The mouths of the phones are stretching wider, elastically, large enough to take a person through whole.

Berserker reflexively moves to intervene; she barely gets a wall up in time as a spear explodes out of the morass. It shatters the wall, and the impact slams Berserker across the room. Lancer.

Katherine's extremely cool moon wolf phone will be no exception to this attack. If she answers immediately she'll be seized as quickly as the other two masters; if she doesn't she has until the phone rings out before the tendrils start to force their way through.

Breathless Dead

Bella and Redana!

Princess Redana Claudius was trained from birth to be the hand that controls Ceron and all her daughters.[1]

The true ways. The secret ways. Many lessons were too secret even for the Assassin handmaidens who were expected to die for the Imperial Heir if required. If Empress Nero was asked, what was the difference between her daughter and an imposter trained from birth to replace her if required, her answer would have been simply the mysteries of Ceron. Too powerful a knowledge to leave the Imperial bloodline, even to the most trusted handmaiden.

That is not to say that Mynx did not get lessons. It's just that those lessons were deliberately, embarrassingly, humiliatingly wrong. The pheromantic wards she has cast to interfere with formation instinct have more in common with a novice scout who is signalling that she needs to be punished. The tone of voice she uses to issue orders does not resonate on an invisible frequency that inspires fear. Her attempted grapple, an attempt to emulate Redana's Olympic wrestling performance, results in her ankles being pinned against her ears. Mynx could emulate Princess Redana down to the DNA, but she does not have Zeus' blessings of authority and the Ceronian hunters are all too eager to show her exactly what she was failing to protect herself from.

Redana, how does it feel to see yourself with torn clothes and crimson blush, thrown roughly at the feet of your mistress Bella?

[1] One might wonder if childhood exposure to art and literature that emphasized the chaining, collaring, gagging, and forcing submission upon defiant wolf-warrioresses left some sort of psychological impact on Princess Redana.

*

After the Pylons, the next miracle of the Endless Azure Skies is the Matter Decompressor.

It's almost astoundingly stupid in its simplicity. It is simply a very large Grav-Rail. No mystic circuitry runs through its depths, no hidden weapons, not even particularly elegant seams where steamrolled and spaghettified planets have been welded together. Civilizations live here too, but these are far more tenuous and fragile than those eternal bubbles of the Pylons - like everything else to do with the Decompressor the fact that it functions at all is the miracle. It is the club of macroengineering, and its role is to crack the skull of black holes.

Because that is what is in the centre of this spectacular ring. An entire black hole, the ultradense wreckage of an imploded supergiant, being squeezed in the centre of this cyclopean ring. And with the characteristic brutality of technology of this age, the black hole's infinite gravity - so deep that time itself cannot escape - is being reversed. An endless plume of hydrogen emerges through the narrow hole of a focusing lens, like air escaping from a punctured balloon. A forested pylon nearby breathes in this flow and breathes out a nitrogen/oxygen mixture - paper thin in the vast void of space, but if you stood close enough to the pylon's outflow, you could breathe it.

You could breathe it. In space. The Endless Azure Skies has determined to get the sheer atomic mass that they need in order to realize their dream they need to harvest black holes. Black holes plural - in the distance, the light of the stars goes dark as a fleet of macroengineering tugs haul the next fallen star into position. By the time the current occupant of the Decompressor has been reduced to a breath of fresh air the next stellar object will be ready to slot into place.

Return to Thellamie

Cair!

Yeah, but, like... Heron will solve it, right?

She'll come in through a portal, be surprised for about a nanosecond, and then she'd come to the realization that she was in a target rich environment. Better than that, she had all of her options on hand - she'd be able to switch between weapons and styles freely, changing dresses from encounter to encounter, freed from the chains of having to make decisions. Heron would be everything at once, all of herselves at once, and the living dead would remember how to weep at the beauty of it.

So what was there for her to do, really...?

It was honestly something she struggled with. Heron had not asked her for anything. She wasn't oathbound to safeguard the Stacks against all intruders, she hadn't been given a mystic geas or a duty or a realm of responsibility. It felt more like Heron was letting her crash at her place, and she sometimes asked for favours in passing. And even though she'd been there for hundreds of years and made several attempts on Heron's life in the process, there didn't seem to be anything she could do to pay the Hero of Ages back. What do you get for the woman who doesn't need anyone? Kalentia had her angst at being overlooked, but Cair had been failing to find a role for herself for longer than she'd been alive.

So for now, Cair just stayed in her little crow's nest atop the Archive of Rare Currencies and watched. Maybe if she could figure out what the dead were after she might think of something to do about it that Heron would actually appreciate. No need to get involved early though.

Kalentia!

Aw shit she hates it here.

The first reason Kalentia hates the Outside is because it instantly puts her in a wedding dress. The sense of spiritual-morphic self of her that is drawn out instantly snaps into a massive bridal train and veil and white doves and not only does that make her feel neglected and pathetic but it's like maneuvering a bathtub. Yes good, let everyone see her childhood dream of being a pretty little bride, let everyone notice that there is not, in fact, a second bride anywhere to be seen, no doubt she'll earn one when she trips over her ten meter silken backwash.

She knows better than to fight the veil at this point. If she pulls it back more layers will come - the only one who'll be able to part it is her conspicuously missing betrothed. So just to be sure she waves her bouquet in front of her with each step, swinging it back and forth like a blind woman's walking stick, making sure she doesn't slam her shins into anything she can't see. All around her, the sounds and smells of the past were starting to seep in, so she trundles forwards as fast as her hoopskirt will allow.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"The thing is, I know you're playing me?" said Lancer, carving away the swampy vines with the tip of her spear. "But the problem is you're also being completely honest with me. I can't work out the angle."
"Hmm," sighed Caster. He followed behind holding an electric torch, crow-cyborg cleaning its beak on his shoulder.

They were deep underground at this point. The floor was wet and metal broken apart as overgrown roots and lightless vines erupted through the paneling. Nothing should have been able to grow this deep underground, but there it was - as thick and tangled as though a rainforest was straining to burst fully formed out from the earth. Caster smiled as he heard the buzz of a mosquito, and discreetly sprayed himself with a repellent.

"So just to recap," said Lancer, ticking off on her fingers. "The Sunshard is down here, the one the foxes used to summon us all. It's trying to bore a hole into the Vault of Wishes and is absorbing the energy of slain Servants to power it. All of this," she blasted through a thick tree trunk that had erupted through the middle of the corridor, "is bleedover, coming from Archer's death as the Sunshard accumulates the energy it needs. And you think we can jump the line straight to the end, yeah?"
"That is correct," said Caster. "Sunshards are artifacts that attune, and this one is attuned to the Blessing trapped within the Vault. Empowering it with sacrificed Servants will allow it to spread its influence further and further, but that is useless to us until the seed flowers. But now that the Sunshard has awakened, we can use it as a... telephone, to bridge the gap between us and what's inside. And from there, we can draw forth its power."
"And this does not involve murdering, entrapping, cursing, or otherwise damning me to some ironic fate?" said Lancer.
"No," said Caster. "Not that I'm aware of. What's inside is a Blessing. It only wants to help."
"And it won't turn me into a fleshmonster?"
"Only if that's your wish," said Caster.
"And the reason you're not using this for yourself is..."
"Someone needs to cast the spell," said Caster. "I will allow you to access the Blessing. You use the power of it to kill the other Servants. Then I will cut off the Blessing and attempt to fight you myself once we are the only two who remain."
"You keep saying that's your angle," said Lancer. "But I don't buy it. I've got a really good eye for bullshit and deception, and while all of that's true there's something you're not telling me."
Caster sighed, but did not answer.
"Cutting off the Blessing will cause some sort of terrible side effect?"
"No," said Caster.
"You have a special technique for taking me down specifically?"
"No," said Caster. "Any martial Servant would be fine for this. I am indifferent as to who I empower, you are simply convenient."
"You have leverage against my Master and you'll have her turn on me?"
"No," said Caster. "I neither know nor care who your Master is."
"So," said Lancer, biting her knuckle, "all it comes down to is that you think you can win a one vs one fight when you couldn't win a free for all, is that it?"
"Hmm," said Caster. "Yes, that's broadly correct."
"Could you win if I attacked you right now?" said Lancer, putting her spear under his nose.
Caster glanced at her sideways. "That would leave far too much to chance. I'd flee, and try to form another alliance."
"Argh, this is going to bug me all night!" said Lancer, banging her spear against the wall. "I know I'm missing something, I just can't see it."
"Consider," said Caster, stepping into the dark and dripping computational cathedral, "the possibility that I am simply very stupid."
"What's fucked is that you believe that's true too," said Lancer, and then groaned and looked down to where she'd stepped in an over-ripe pumpkin. She hopped into the massive room, illuminated by the dull blue glow emerging from the server pillars, where it could be seen through the enveloping leaves. Every few moments there's a soft, wet impact as an apple falls from the dark vault of the ceiling and splatters upon the ground. In the center of everything, surrounded by a cascading bloom of grapes and olives, is the Sunshard - and beyond it, a massive blue-steel wall, covered in arcane glyphs.
"We are here," said Caster, sitting down next to the Sunshard. There was a little wooden chair, painted green, waiting for him there. "Have you made your decision?"
"Well, as I see it there are only two options," said Lancer. "Either you're smarter than me, or I'm smarter than you. If you're smarter than me I'm doomed either way. If it's the reverse, my only risk is psyching myself out over nothing." She grinned, "And Rome wasn't built by those afraid to cast the dice."
"Very well," said Caster. He reached into the glowing, crystalline surface of the Sunshard and pulled forth an archaic telephone - so old it was a speaking tube attached to a radio microphone. He handed it across to Lancer, who gave it one last glance and picked up the receiver.
Caster closed his eyes and began his spell.

Return to Thellamie

Sayanastia!

She actually appreciated this part. More than she thought she would.

She's been on the other end of the Hero's blank stares plenty of times. Just that silent, unhelpful focus, like she was paying attention but contributing nothing - not a conversation as much as a spotlight demanding the other person monologue. She did not know what was in the Hero's head when she did it, but in Sayanastia's was the cruelty of a cat(1) waiting for the mouse to make the first move.

Rurik, for his part, managed a Seneschal's apologetic look and vague cycle-motion of his hand, indicating that it didn't matter so long as Yuki simply got on with it.

(1)

Cats were one of the few creatures she had never taken issue with. They had been with her, after all, sleeping in the primordial void before the cursed sun had awoken them to the creation of the world. When she had raised her jaws to the sky and screamed her first scream of waking rage, her fury had been heralded by waves of felines spreading out in all directions to colonize every corner of the world. The footsteps of a cat were so soft that they could not disturb even the sensitive ears of a sleeping dragon.

Kalentia!

"Oh, save it," said Kalentia firmly(2). "This is a medical kidnapping. You of all people should know the importance of providing opposition and challenge to the understimulated, and that's all this is - got it?"

(2)

not shivering not shaking not remembering tsane's lectures on the perils and abilities of the Hero's Shadow no huge adrenaline surge at the idea that maybe she fucked up and summoned something beyond her that isn't going to buy her medical kidnapping bit and that she's actually not in control here even a little bit and it just says perilous because that's the kind of thing something like that says you can't read into it you've been in peril before nothing about this is different it's fine

Breathless Dead

Bella and Redana!

"I can prepare sedatives," said Iskarot. "Your choice of delivery mechanism - airborne, skin contact, saliva. This ship has enough residual Lethe water for me to brew a full reset for her as well. Any chemical effect you imagine I can brew - but I can't guarantee its effectiveness. Protocol for an Ikarani flying this high was always to leave the system and watch the explosions."

He took out a bulky metal slide-rule and opened a reinforced panel to reveal a thermometer; it was an ungainly brick the size of his arm, but it was meant to measure the temperature in plasma reactor cores. "Speaking of, whatever she is doing this time is drawing the ire of the God of the Sun. That's expected - an unbound Adept always progresses to the final stage of enraging Apollo, it's why we gave them the name. Temperature and disease protections are recommended."

Does he... not know that this is moonlight? It might take a moment of conferring, but it's plain: the Ancient Craftsman who contributed to the biomantic construction of the Ikarani Adepts had no idea that this buildup of energy is coming from Artemis. It's the kind of misdiagnosis that recontextualizes centuries of work - but he never had the Auspex with which to test his theories.

Dolce and Dyssia!

"The problem is the Ceronians," said Omn, the Subject Matter Expert to whom you have referred for advice. "It is the deepest part of their design. Place them in any situation and they will work to seize control and influence. They can't help themselves, they can't stop themselves, they can't be content - it's that drive that makes them the galaxy's premier warrior species despite centuries of competition. Other designers build for use cases, build for control, build for reliability - the Ceronians were built to accumulate power, endlessly, whatever it takes. In one famous incident, an entire clan - the Harem Blades - sold themselves into slavery and spent centuries working as janissary soldiers for some primitive empire. Eventually they were able to erode the empire from the inside and collapse it amidst corruption, civil war and economic collapse."

The sphere reconfigured, glowing arcs rearranging into a galactic display with orange light radiating out from a single world. "Humanity only ever maintained control over the Ceronians by limiting their numbers, only turning Ceron to full production during times of war and calamity. But that strategic lever is unavailable to us and we must recognize that the presence of Ceronians at all represents a continuously building coup against any and all authority figures."

"But this is also the key to riding this wolf in the short term, so to speak," said the machine intelligence. "The Ceronians are expanding against the Summerkind because they sense weakness and opportunity. You can redirect them in the short term by offering them richer pickings elsewhere - the Ceronians know how to play the long game when it suits them. Naturally, that will have consequences as we travel towards the Shogunate. The Pix, while similar, are more introspective and less fanatically expansionist, so they are primarily a danger when attempting to counter Ceronian power grabs."

*

You pass the first Pylon of the Endless Azure Skies

A vast diamond-shaped monolith the size of a moon. Closed black, reflective and dark, surrounded by great orbiting grav-rail loops. No windows, no entries, no spaceports.

Inside is a civilization. Five billion servitors sealed inside this massive device, forever, a perfect little bubble society designed to exist in peace and harmony forever. They have no desire to explore, learn, grow, or push the boundaries of their little world - they are there to maintain the shrines and the machines that empower the Pylon, enjoying a timeless idyll. This little space habitat will drift on forever, inner utopia blind to all war or calamity unless it should somehow breach those massive walls.

It is the first Pylon in a network growing into the thousands. In the distance more and more of them are visible. In order to perform the great working of the Endless Azure Skies, gravity must be bought to heel on a level unimaginable and unprecedented. These Pylons are the ring-fence that will hold together the Skies, the monumental effort required for mortals to reshape the laws of physics into more beautiful forms.