Thanqol

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

To be a Berserker is to be cursed.

You know your own story. You know how you see yourself. You have your own internal narrative, your own trials and struggles, your own goals and ambitions. You have inner depth and complexity. But none of that matters because that's not how anybody sees you.

And what the Welsh saw in her was castles.

The Kingdom of Wales could have fit comfortably inside the Terraced Lake. In that tiny space six hundred castles had been built, one every thirty three square kilometers. Every hill and cleft had grown a castle, every ridgeline and chasm, every choke point and fertile land. They were not as she remembered them, peopled by chivalrous knights, wards against the Danes. They were as the people remembered them, grim monuments to taxation and populated by a religion of corpses.

It wasn't just the flash of anger that formed the connection for Katherine into Berserker's waking dream; it was the moment of miscommunication, the slip of defaults. To not even have realized that everyone else saw her as this monster of granite and steel...

The roads approaching are populated by soldiers with boar-head helms, hot breath visible between their tusks as they hold out mailed fists for their tolls. The walls wrap everywhere, closing off every passage that does not lead to the hungry metal-toothed gates, endlessly sucking in carts groaning with sacrificial grain. And it's not just grain that satisfies - ancient and sacred trees are hewn from the earth and dragged into roaring workshops, birds are plucked and severed and their feathers remade into weapons of war. Everywhere black-robed priests walk, hands gentle and soft as they point out to armoured men the temples of the old gods that are to be smashed and burned, the faerie gates to be trampled and sown with cold iron. Nobody here had cared what her sword was named. Nobody cared that she hadn't been the one to build most of them; she was confabulated with a hundred other hostile kings, all one indistinct mass of The English. A thief just as sure as any of the Danes, but she did not retreat to her longship when the raid was done. She would stay until she'd stolen even land and language.

Lose one castle; what did it matter? There were always more besides. Let Saber manage her theft if she could, Berserker would wear her down in the end until even the distant Viking lands worshipped her god and spoke her tongue.

Breathless Dead

Bella!

Artemis looks at Bella like she's stupid. "You're alive," she said. "Aren't you?"

She wears her suit, silver grey, tight fit, sharp against the black collared shirt, black office shoes, and black strangler's gloves. Her hair is a shock of tangled brown, cut short on both sides, a single silver moon-shaped earring on her right ear. She stands like she's either greeting a dignitary or about to throw a punch, and no amount of polite precision can distract from the fact that her eyes are voting for the punch. Don't worry, it's not personal.

"You're alive," repeated Artemis, "when you started as dead. I've had hunters raised from the dead before but that's because people remembered them enough to summon them from the Lethe. I've never had one drag themselves out the hard way. Of course I'm not disappointed."

She paused. "Unless you're talking about the sex, which I will reluctantly concede as being necessary for this stage of the operation. I can overlook it, for now."

Ember and Dolce!

Plundering Fang has always had an eye for vulnerability.

"I have decided," she said, "that we shall make the captive into the Syneffo's outfit."
"What do you mean?" asked her combat tailor, Lytefit.
"This is also fashion in the Skies," said Plundering Fang, high-handedly. "Sometimes a pet servitor is made to be both companion and fashion, like a fox-scarf who wraps around her mistress' neck. It's unusual for an Azura themselves to be used for this sort of thing but not entirely unprecedented. We just need to pretty her up, wrap her in -" Hera maliciously leaned down to whisper in Plundering Fang's ear. "- peacock feathers," said Plundering Fang with a smile, "paint her scales, add some gold chains and supports so that she can move easily while carrying him. Maybe fit her with a saddle~"

Ember, this is a problem. Plundering Fang has just found an opportunity to move to the next stage of the competition without having her puppet release Dolce for a moment - if she gets away with this there's not even going to be a moment where you'll be able to do more than stare into those glazed and helpless eyes. You need to find a gap in the armour.

Dyssia!

It's time. The Plousios is about to descend into the flames of a star.

The diviners agree it can't be put off any further; the initial clash with Liquid Bronze delayed but did not end the pursuit, and as decisive a victory as 'stopping time' was the Biomancer General has divine allies of his own that have put him back on the case. It's time to follow through on the original plan and descend into an open fusion reactor until the hounds pass by.

The upside for you is that this is going to put you beyond having to worry about any big philosophical questions for a while. The downside is that the interiors of stars are hot. Not too hot - the Academy of Biomancy, where new species are forged, is built on the volcanic Forge of Hephaestus in the center of a trinary star system, so organic life in this galaxy knows a thing or two about enduring extreme solar heat. Also, the sunspot where you will be sheltering will actually be several million degrees cooler than the fusion reactor in the heart of the ship's Engine. An Imperial-Era battleship's hull armour is proof against even the direct plasma vent of a Starbreach. You're not going to die.

But oh my god does it feel like you're going to die. It's hot. Servitors cluster around ventilation panels, lying sprawled in the whispers of cool air. The entire ship is covered in a fine layer of downy fur from where the Ceronians and Pix have been shedding. And here and there can be seen the hulking and indifferent shape of a battlecrab, often carrying on its back a prisoner or two who strayed too close to the waterline in search of relief. There'll be time to launch a rescue invasion or negotiate with the Tides or something later, this isn't a crisis. You just need to get through it.

So how do you beat the heat, and who is keeping you company while you do?

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Little fox, please," said Rider, holding up her hand. "I never needed convincing that this was all Cyanis' fault -"
"I DIDN'T REALIZE THIS WAS CASTLE MEAN TO ME"
"- you don't need to give me the hard sell," said Rider. She flicked her wrists, revealing her long-fingernailed hands from her silken sleeves. She had a hand grenade in each. "I just needed a moment to vent. This has been a very frustrating war for me."

She bit the pin in first the left grenade, pulled, and spat it out - then she did the right.

"I'd prefer to fight with cruise missiles and the fury of revenge," said Rider. "But if I must make do with small arms and the power of friendship, then such is life." And with that, she flipped backwards off the balcony. At the apex of her arc she dropped the grenades, and by the time she'd completed her flip she had drawn a pair of assault rifles from those same sleeves and was blazing away guns akimbo. She landed delicately on tiptoes in front of Julia, who was sheltering behind her cloak, and delivered a kick with the kind of recoil you normally only got with wire-fu.

And as amazing as that fight would be to watch, Berserker is there in the next moment, grabbing Katherine by one wrist and dragging Saber with the other, and determinedly hauling both towards the door. There's no reasoning with her - other Berserkers are marked by an endless approach towards enemy, this particular one is characterized by an instinct to withdraw that is just as relentless. On the hill ahead was already forming another brand-new castle, wrenching itself up out of the earth. It was just as new, distinct and unique as every castle she'd previously summoned. How many did she have?

Return to Thellamie

Injimo!

"You're thinking about this too hard," said Injimo placidly, ignoring the destruction taking place behind her. "It's simple. Anyone could be a shapeshifted fox, any sense could be an illusion created by a malicious sorceress, any opponent might be an immortal with a plan centuries in the making. Asking questions is a waste of time. The only truth that can't be faked is the truth of the blade."

She shifted her stance, arcing out wide, tracing the tip of her spear through a loop of electricity - and then pulling the entire web tighter.

"To the victor, answers," she said, pulling the knot of the lightning thread tight around Eclair's tea-station.

Tsane!

Tsane loved her grandfather.(1)

(1) BUT

WHY WAS HE NOT FIGHTING WITH HIS GODDAMN HEARTBLADE

The Tsunami Trident was a good weapon. The slightest touch of it, even if parried, drenched the opponent head to toe in seawater - rendering them highly vulnerable to Princess Heron's electricity attacks. When Heron was present it was a fantastic one-two combination that allowed her to engage multiple opponents simultaneously, BUT WHEN SHE WASN'T HERE IT WAS JUST PRODUCING A LOT OF WET PLANT ZOMBIES. And one of the major features of wet plant zombies was that they WERE NOT FLAMMABLE. She had a dozen fire spells ready to go that could turn these stacks of kindling into bonfires and she kept having to bite them back.

She knew what he'd say if she asked - Heron could arrive at any minute, and even if she didn't, Injimo could come back through the portal and finish the technique. Just be patient and keep the debuffs active. We're a team who mutually supports each other, don't be a selfish glory hound and try to do everything yourself.

Because that role was already taken, wasn't it!

"Do you think," she suggested to Cair, "you could go and get some sort of lightning grenade or scroll or something?"
"Fresh out!" said Cair brightly. "Heron was carrying most of those, and those she wasn't got broken down for elemental essences."
"How about ice?" sighed Tsane, rubbing her temples. "We can take advantage of all of these water effects with frost magic, right?"
"Oh, for sure!" said Cair. "I've got an entire crate of blizzard staves back here. Heron fought an entire army of guys armed with them."
"Then that'll have to be good enough. If we freeze enough of them we can stack them into a wall and that should buy time for Injimo to get back," said Tsane. "Which seems to be the only plan we're capable of following."
"Hey," said Cair. "Maybe Heron comes back instead?"
"She's not coming back," snapped Tsane.
"Sure she is. She always comes back when things are getting dire. I've seen it a hundred times!" said Cair happily, pulling open the lid of a massive blue treasure chest to reveal a trove of sapphires and twisted ashwood. Enough to plunge the Stacks into a new ice age.

[Overcome: 9]

Breathless Dead

Mynx!

She has to start with colour. Shapes work backwards from colour; a hard line or forced shadow can make a gentle bend seem severe. She's been stuck with a drab pallette for far too long, constrained to the narrow ranges of human skin. Her boy melts, her features melt, she lets herself run into cold and pure whites as the basis for her canvas.

Blue. It was hard to be entirely immune to the influence of the Skies, and there was a radiant pale shade of turquoise she'd always loved; the colour of plasma coils and tropical water. Bubbles of it traced across her skin - too much. The colour looked plastic and flat if it dominated - she sent it to her extremities, her hands and feet and shoulders so the white brightened into blue. She then coiled bands of a darker blue around her core, around her chest and thighs and hips running to her knees, following the lines of muscles. Details in black, triangular around her back and knees, too sharp to be organic. Topical lines appeared, straight and sharp, accentuating the lines of her body.

It came together; a shape both organic and artificial; sometimes appearing to be clothing and sometimes appearing undressed, a lithe and living machine. But it was missing - a touch of faded red, spreading out from her heart on front and back, wrapping around her body just shy of her neck, shoulders, and bottom ribs.

She kept the blonde hair - she'd always envied it - and let it grow even longer. Many parts of the face, too familiar for her to reject them - but longer and sharper canine teeth. The words she was trying to say was savior, angel, and living machine. Something that could love and protect, but needed to be maintained and repaired. That was who she wanted to be.

Bella!

That silver moonlight - it's close now. You can almost hear its soft footsteps in the corridor outside.

Time has passed; there are curtains and sheets and fresh marks on the bedhead. After everything you've been today now you walk in the liminal space of soft breathing and fragmentary dreams. Rustles of silk almost conceal the sound of arrow-feathers brushing against each other in the quiver.

Ember!

It is vital for the security of the pack that you cuddle this sheepboy.

Specifically there is the problem of the Azura Magus. Plundering Fang has already taken the initiative during your period of distraction to have her wrap him in her coils and start saying things like 'you are an excellent servitor' and 'stop resisting'. It's a powerful opening move, especially with Plundering Fang keeping a tight grip on the Magus' own leash. This represents a terrible threat to your role as Alpha and you have to Do Something!

Dolce!

This is your second time being used as a squeeze toy by an Azura, but this one also has literal hypnotism eyes. You need to avoid those! If you look into her magical eyes then you'll give up the competition too soon and the plan will fail! Even though she's firmly holding you and telling you 'my eyes are up here' you need to find somewhere else to look - but where!?

Dyssia!

The Ceronians are distracted. You've got a rare free hand to intervene in the ship's affairs, and enough institutional backing from the Pix to have a good chance at forcing through whatever changes you need to make before a response can organize. You are a Knight of the Publica; part of your role is to help new societies develop the laws that will help them thrive. What mark do you wish to make?

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"As the white serpent was carved into three, so I would sever the Empire of the Han."

A ghostly, crimson light. Dragonsblood drifted in the air, ethereal and shimmering.

"As the white serpent received an ouchy ouchy boo boo, so I would inconvenience the Empire of the Romans."

And Rider finally arrived into the world.

She was dressed in white; white upon white upon white, all the way down to soft white scales where her hands emerged from her dress. Her eyes were narrow and slitted where they were visible through her veils. Her hair was done up in two large triangular shapes, held fast with silvery pins, and her silver earrings were in the shape of keys. She pulled back the gauze around her wrists to look at an incongruous digital watch, held in place with a wristband covered in tiny green hearts, and sighed, tapping her foot.

"I beg your pardon?" said Opalis, immediately bandaging her injured wrist (she was also holding an ice pack to her face where Saber had punched her).
"My summoning," sighed Rider, "was inextricably linked to the curse of the White Snake. If you cut off her head, I would have returned to take yours; if you cut off her tail, I would have returned to take yours. You didn't even cut off her little pawsie! Master, had you met a terrible end I could have avenged you and carried your wish into the heart of the world. Instead I arrive with only the strength to carry out retribution against a mild mannered fox, and before that I must undo the concept of Rome. You have given me little to work with."
"Well! You! One, getting not stabbed is fairly high up my list of wishes -"
"A weakness of character," yawned Rider, revealing two long, serpentine fangs.
"And two!! You didn't tell me any of that!!"
"My messages were being intercepted by Assassin," said Rider. "Who, at least, was trying quite hard to get you into situations where you would be stabbed. Speaking of, darling fox," and Rider turned her attention fully on Katherine, placing her hands on her shoulder with all the demure temptation that snakes were famous for, "would you at least consider severing this dragon's head? I do not know if it would empower me at all at this stage, but surely you agree it would be worth the attempt?"

Return to Thellamie

Injimo!

The second that spear hits that teacup, Eclair knows that she just won the fight - and that the fight, paradoxically, just got much more dangerous.

Injimo's tactics have shifted so suddenly and decisively it's like she's a different person. That first attack was brash, proud, imperious - the strike of a hero. The moment it was countered that hero vanished, all of the pride and strength that infused it blowing away on the breeze. Injimo was so ready to accept defeat that the moment it appeared probable it was accepted as inevitable. And within the zen of her defeat she becomes a dangerous weapon indeed.

"Lace stance, thread weaving," said Injimo, mirroring Eclair's narration of her approach. She swishes the edge of her spear and it catches a thread of lightning like a crochet hook. When she traces it through the air the lightning web lingers in place, forming a dangerous barrier that can only be moved through at the cost of electrocution. "Begin encirclement, clutter possibility space, create cognitive load -"

She snap-lunged, a feint that left a searing arc of electricity crackling in the air between Eclair and the hole the Architect-Knight had left in the floor.

She wasn't fighting like an opponent any more. She was fighting like a teacher giving a test. Each move was made to force a new, different reaction. Her guard was so standard, without a hint of inspiration, that it could be defeated by any secret move - but in so doing force her opponent to reveal a secret move. She was not fighting to avoid pain, incidental damage or humiliation - she could be dissected in a thousand cheap shots - but her stamina was such that her opponent would be forced to get more and more creative with what they showed. She stubbornly refused to take any risks that might allow the fight to end more quickly, refused to lose her composure in a way that would make her concede early. Beating Injimo was easy, beating Injimo without putting all of your cards on the table was hard.

"Doesn't matter what I'm into," she said, answering the question at last as she wrapped one strand of lightning around another, tangling them into a knot. "My job is just to keep you busy."

[Creating an opportunity for someone else]

Return to Thellamie

Injimo!

It doesn't matter what you decide, so long as you decide.

This was the first law of portal combat. To come through a portal meant being placed in a new situation. Enemies were different. Terrain was different. Opportunities were different. Everything about operating in a null information space encouraged the warrior to slow down, get their bearings, think things through and come up with a plan. Those instincts were defeat. Decide first.

She grabs the fangirl by the shoulders. Hefts herself up. Legs over her head. Puts her boot on her back. Kick off, full force. Launch over the crowd, trailing the spear. Whirl it through the trisagion sign of thunder. A rush of air and electricity blows out lights, illuminating the room around her with sudden blue electricity that pools at the tip of her spear. She brings it all down towards Eclair Espoir.

Only now that she has committed to the attack can she think through her reasoning. One, the Architect Knight is already out of the Stacks and is therefore Not Her Problem. Two, Eclair is part of an active plot and has already evaded her once, she's by far the more valuable target. But, she recognizes in the moment that she unleashes Heron's lightning-lance technique, that the actual motive was that she'd fought monsters and devils before, but she'd never fought a Maid Knight.

So her brain settled into a relaxed state: Hey, cool. I'm fighting a Maid Knight. I wonder if the rumour is true they really do have a second form where they turn into dragons after you defeat them.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"Your plan has failed, Assassin," sighed Caster, sitting down heavily. A mechanical dog with a screen for a face hopped onto his lap and stared at the Cardinal with glowing blue eyes.
"It has merely become messy," said Assassin. "Lancer will still triumph."
"Messy," said Caster, holding up a hand in frustration. "Is failure."
"This entire operation hinged on disrupting the transfer of information," said the mechanical hound abruptly, voice clipped and artificial. "Instead we revealed it. Our opponents must surely have noticed the repeated attempts on the dragon's life by now."
"Well," said Assassin. "If that is the case, I will simply have to take matters into my own hands -"
He paused to look down at the mechanical tendril stabbing him through the chest.
"No, I do not think so," said Caster. "I think you betrayed us. I think that you are working in concert with your Master. I think that you knew she would foil your scheme."
Assassin opened his mouth to speak. Instead he coughed up blood. He grinned through bloody teeth.
"And even if my guesses are wrong," said Caster, "I think we can find better uses for you."
With a whirr of ancient machinery, Assassin was wrenched away from Caster's sight, carried into the heart of the massive technological monolith that ran deep into the heart of the world.
Even as his face dissolved into the light, he was chuckling - and then the metal walls slid back into place.

*

Some days it sucked to be a dragon.

No matter how far society and technology came, nobody ever seemed to fully move past the idea that you were composed of high end crafting components. Even if nobody was actively murdering you over it it was still unrelentingly awkward. When she had been losing her baby teeth a local bandit princess had tried to steal them so that she could grow an army of deadly handmaidens, which had lead to an intense 3am battle in her bedroom with the Tooth Fairy (who was real, but only for dragons). Her teacher had refused to accept that as a valid reason to delay her exam and so she'd been so exhausted she almost failed out of arcane economics. She'd once broken up with a human girlfriend because she'd gotten really into making jewelry out of her scales (which did deserve it, they had a rare rainbow shine she was very proud of) and they weren't growing fast enough to keep up with demand, which had made her feel like a half-plucked chicken. And that wasn't even getting into the time a Technomancer had tried to buy her voice because her 'singularity generation projector was broken, and therefore able to be reverse engineered' which in addition to being very scary had rudely called attention to her inability to ignite her breath attack like other dragons.

And now a foxgirl with an axe wanted her blood. She knew this day would come. She knew they wouldn't be satisfied with just her - erm anyway.

"Why don't we explore other options first?" said Opalis, bargaining as sweetly as she ever had. "I mean, we have not yet investigated to see if Ms. Julia could be redirected into the exploration of material riches? I am authorized to grant her a very generous timeshare in a beach vacation house collectively maintained by my Order in order to -"

The next part of that was unfortunately lost over the sound of a spear piercing through a stone wall.

Breathless Dead

Bella and Redana and Redana!

Some thoughts are like black holes. The idea itself can never be explored, never spoken, but at the same time it binds the mind to it with crushing gravity that can never be escaped. Personality begins to emerge around the edge of the thought like trapped light - haha wouldn't it be funny if? - but continues a little too long to be a bit. Its presence bends the personality around it even though it never lets itself be observed directly. And there it lurks in the darkness of the brain until a catgirl straps it into the Matter Decompressor and says out loud the thing that one was intending to take to the grave.

She's more naked than the loss of her dress would suggest. She's breathing heavily against her gag. She's in chains and does not need them. There's nothing left to cover, and so for the first time she stands - on tiptoes, arms held high by chains - with protean pride. She no longer needs to conceal what she wants to do; the only question left to her is what she'll be allowed to do.

The gag is pulled from her mouth. She meets Bella's eyes with the hard focus of the hypnotized. "Yes," she said, each sound deliberate. "Nineteen left."