TokyoPewPew

Book Quotes

“Oh! I wanted to ask you—”

He remembered that she probably did not know his name, and expected the question to be put to him now; but after a moment of hesitation she went on:

“Why was it that you told me to smile this evening in the concert-room there—you remember?”

“I thought we were being observed. A smile is the best of masks. Schomberg was at a table next but one to us, drinking with some Dutch clerks from the town. No doubt he was watching us—watching you, at least. That's why I asked you to smile.”

“Ah, that's why. It never came into my head!”

“And you did it very well, too—very readily, as if you had understood my intention.”

“Readily!” she repeated. “Oh, I was ready enough to smile then. That's the truth. It was the first time for years I may say that I felt disposed to smile. I've not had many chances to smile in my life, I can tell you; especially of late.”

“But you do it most charmingly—in a perfectly fascinating way.”

He paused. She stood still, waiting for more with the stillness of extreme delight, wishing to prolong the sensation.

“It astonished me,” he added. “It went as straight to my heart as though you had smiled for the purpose of dazzling me. I felt as if I had never seen a smile before in my life. I thought of it after I left you. It made me restless.”

“It did all that?” came her voice, unsteady, gentle, and incredulous.

“If you had not smiled as you did, perhaps I should not have come out here tonight,” he said, with his playful earnestness of tone. “It was your triumph.”

— Joseph Conrad, Victory

Smoke and Steel

____________________________________________ _

𝕹o doubt the vultures of Rodelkog had not feasted this well in decades—maybe centuries. Even a single skyward, squinting appraisal said as much. Lazily they circled overhead, yawing on lethargic breezes, their bellies seeming to slosh with every pitch, every shrugging tilt. In disposition they such resembled men, stumbling from taverns at indecent hours—gorged and bloated, sighing and groaning, their gluttony straining them at the seams. But a great many beasts and creatures called Rodelkog their home; the outskirts and, for a time, when the silence and the absence had stolen in, the streets soaked in shadows, and the very walls which cast them. Voles and finches scratched at the wheelbarrows, the granaries, the trampling and the burning having crushed the fallow, broken the seeds from their blackened hulls. With them came stoats patting along on noiseless paws, owls on moonlight-dusted wings. Ratsnakes and foxes and kites, all drawn to the city's smoky emptiness, drinking deeply of its stillness. The din of hammers soon enough had chased off these trespassers; the unshuttering of doors and windows, the protests of ungreased wheels. As the people returned to the still-smoldering streets of their city, so too did routine, and even a vestige of normalcy. They churned the fallow and buried again the spilt seeds; repaired the doors; cut new bricks for the walls, and stirred their blood into the mortar. There was grieving, of course. Cries and wails which went unheard by the beasts of the earth, returning to their burrows, their brooks, their copses. For while one world came unraveled and undone, another carried on, without very much interruption whatever. Hawk still ate fox ate owl ate stoat ate vole ate trampled wheat. And while the people wept, only the vultures seemed to hark.

Szaalm reckoned this to have been, at one or another time, a royal forest, or the erstwhile elf-lord's approximation of such; for how else could the trees, tall and aged and beautiful, have for so long eluded the lumberman's blades?—and how was the stream not infested with washer-women, with water wheels, with grazing herds and all their refuse?—......but no matter. It belonged to no lord now but to God, and that which belonged to God belonged to all who needed the shade from those estimable cypresses, a sup from clearer waters.

Young was the morn and still it gilt the groves from on high, still bejeweled every blade with dew; and stood the man before his congregation: the five hundred who had half a fortnight past returned from the walls of Rodelkog (and, perhaps, at least in memory and spirit, the hundred-and-fifty who had not). They who hadn't yet broken their fasts stood a slow-moving vigil, these queues ending at great copper cauldrons, where ladled into their bowls and cups by silent, oxen cooks were forcemeat puddings boiled in broth. Those who had not cut seats for themselves from the cypresses, or claimed for themselves various stones and logs scattered about the clearing, sat dutifully, attentively, in the damp grass. Half-dressed were the five hundred, some without their doublets, others without cravats or hats (though they doffed their hats who did wear them, for the name of God was already present and spoken-for at this assemblage). A mild breeze kicked up the regiment's flags¹, rippled against their oilcloth tents.

As it happens, Szaalm had with great strategy and choosiness selected this place for the laying of camp. Though the battle was already won, the elves already ousted like so many vermin—though Ariana's wine-and-milk standard already billowed high from the ramparts, and the city was, by all accounts, now safe for its new inhabitants to enter—by his estimation another war still ravaged this place; a war not won with shot and steel. 'Twas the war fought by the bilberries, pushing hard to burgeon forth their tender flowers, small and pale and bell-like. 'Twas the war of the foxgloves, their fiery-purple blossoms stealing sunlight at the clearing's every edge. 'Twas a war of sparrows pecking at seed and unripe berry, of warblers combing the grass for caterpillars. Of rustling leaf and babbling water. 'Twas the war, in all, of every heart and every spirit against fear, against remorse, against pity for the enemy, against dwelling on the dead; indeed, against all pause and falter. The war of all life's little beauties over the unsightly desolation of battle. Less than a mile away stood the shattered ruins of Rodelkog and yet no man would know it hadn't he climbed the battlements himself, hoisted the flags himself, himself cut down the scrambling defenders and pried the gates. Not in a place like this, alight with the song of birds and breeze and petals.

Held he in his right hand his breakfast half-supped, the colonel; in his left (closer, as it is, to the heart), his copy of The Inſurgente's Liturgie, which he held high aloft (for he had long ago memorized its contents, its worn pages serving better as symbol now than guide). And so, breakfast's prayer already issued, and the day's first song as well, the catechism continued thusly:

"I, flaming Life of the divine substance, flare up above the beauty of the plains," called he.

Answered those among the five hundred who knew the words, whether by heart or recitation: I shine in the water and blaze in the sun, the moon, and stars.

"And with an airy wind, as if by an invisible Life, I arouse all things to splendor."

And so I, the fiery power, lie hidden in these things.

"And they themselves burn by me, as the breath unceasingly moves the man, like windy flames in a fire."

I am life.

"Whole and entire, all that is living is rooted in me."

I am life.

"For reason is the root, and in it blossoms the resounding Word."

Amen.

Six hundred and fifty voices. He had known so well the admixture, the texture to their harmonies, before the battle had stolen away with a hundred from his choir. Then, of course, about one lad in three actually knew how to read; the other two murmuring along in mimicry of the first until they learned the words through rote alone. So many men he'd learned to recognize just through their birdsong. An eight-fingered, barrel-chested baker who crooned like a milking cow; a repented thief turned butcher, a twiggy little creature with a brittle, reedy tune. A drummer boy, just turned ten-and-seven, with a head of hair like goldcloth and a voice like an angel's clarion. Aye, just a fortnight ago he'd known all the brightest, boldest voices, could pick them out from the choir like eggs from a low-hanging nest. Now Szaalm strained and pored over the sound and still he wasn't so sure. The texture had changed. Six hundred were too many names to remember but he knew every face and which faces laid nose-down in the muck now, which faces would he not see again around camp?

But in the congregation's front rows, still those drummer boys sat in a circle, scratching the bellies of the hunting dogs. Two, three, five men still huddled all around each copy of the Liturgie, stumbling over the words as its more learnèd owner read along, guiding their eyes with the slide of his fingertip across the newsprint page. Life commenced and continued, even for soldiers, there when the thick was thickest.

He lowered the Liturgie, stowed it, for the time, in the crown of his hat, upturned upon a table cut from the saplings of this place. "Amen," he concluded fondly. And just as he raised again his hand to strike up the next song, a noise. Footsteps. At first Szaalm paid them no mind—he assumed it a local poacher skulking for roe deer, or a goodwife collecting potables from the stream—if, of course, it was not a man of the regiment, returning from making his morning water behind a tree—but—along with the footsteps, unmistakable was the sound of steel slipping over steel; the shifting and clinking of armor. He turned, and standing there was a soldier of the 1^st: a grenadier of Ariana's honorguard. The man had left his halberd elsewhere, but the tabard and the hanger and the morion left little to the imagination. And how he glowered. Not curiously, not (in truth) as a matter of any sentiment at all, but expectantly all the same. Szaalm knew at once who he was here to collect.

Went he just abreast of the nearest chaplain, a Mittelman by the name of Chlodowig; grasped him by his black-caped shoulder, and charged him with the ceremony through to its natural conclusion. He scooped up his capotain, and returned to his tent. After all—on that fine, mild morning, with only the men for his company, he was hardly dressed to stand in the presence of royalty.

¹

Smoke and Steel

Race Human (Doelishman) Sex Male Age 51 Court Alignment Red Role Colonel (2nd Regiment of Horse—"The Firestripes") __________________________________________________________	Untitled by Andrey Shishkin

Divine Right. Despite his common origins, "Old Vic" in just a few years has proven himself a capable soldier, roughrider, and commander of men, an invaluable asset to the Inburians' peasant revolt. Equally adept in both the dragoon and the harquebusier styles of warfare, on the field he deploys with sword, carbine, and a brace of two Reiterpistolen; whereas on the street he carries a mercenary's Katzbalger—short, broad, and in all more suited to tavern brawls than proper dueling.

Ironsides. First to engage and last to withdraw, Vicquerno himself sets the 2^nd's example in battle. As composed among enemies as allies, and unflappable under fire, he does not retreat until he's received the order; and even then, not until the last of his boys has gotten out first.

Similis Simili Gaudet. Handpicked not for their individual skills and strengths, but for their devotion to "Commander, Queen, and Cause" (purportedly in that order, ascending), Vic's "Firestripes," so nicknamed for their distinctive orange sashes, have cultivated a unit cohesion not achieved elsewhere but by the very most prosperous leaders. They do not rape; nor break ranks to run down a routed foe; nor whore or gamble at quarters; nor loot the houses and baggage of human foes, regardless of allegiances. (The colonel does condone the pillage of elven property, however.) Their discipline is admirable, their personal loyalties enviable, their repute as yet unrivalled.

Demagogue. That most of the 2^nd began the war as common workmen—hunters, militia, and other decent shots, perhaps, but unskilled in battle all the same—and now command the renown they do, speaks to the methods of van der Szaalm and his serjeants. This begins not with the ruthless drilling of their bodies and horses, nor even with the communal prayers and catechisms in which all the men share between battles; but with recognizing in each man all the qualities beseeming a soldier of freedom.

Knave of Hearts. One would not expect the man who has forbidden gambling among his ranks to be so adept at games of skill, but especially cards and billiards.

Anguis in Herba. The Firestripes' personal devotion to their colonel has brought some of Ariana's councilors, and perhaps the girl herself, no small degree of anxiety in recent days. Why, for instance, this insistence on garbing the regiment in a color besides Ariana's scarlet? And why does it draft its own poems, its own songs and slogans ("We Remembre Grendell," "Be Thou of Good Couraige," "The Gunnes of Rodelkog" et al.), rather than join the other troops in their catechisms? Some cannot help wondering whether the good colonel's personal ambitions supersede his loyalty to the pretender-empresses...

Sanguinarian. Though marked by temperance and measure in most things, if one vice colors Vicquerno's decisions it is his rage. Slow to forgive and quick to avenge, it is little wonder that he's fallen in with the camp which promises the decimation, humiliation, and ultimate expulsion of the elves from Old Inbur. At times to the detriment of the war effort (inspiring those to fight to the death who would otherwise have lowered their arms and surrendered), those who have crossed the 2^nd can expect no clemency; no quarter. And the grudges their commander keeps are strong as steel.

Son and heir to a family of poorters and husbandmen, relatively modest of means, Vicquerno even from a most tender age was spared the indignity of an idle life. Expected from the start to earn his daily bread, he had a small hand in many of the family's various enterprises—a tin smithy, a heraldry office, a small paper mill, all of these situated in the levee-town of Valtrecht—but his true duties were to the estate, where with godly grace he took to pick and plough and scythe, same as the sharecroppers who worked his father's fields. When there were no troughs to till and crops to tend, especially in wintertime, Vicquerno also enlisted with the town's standing militia, walking its dams and walls and sea gates, arresting the occasional robber-knight or burglar—a privilege afforded only to the wealthy of the city, as the stadtholder, Rodon Van Ecklingen, expected the men to supply their own arms. But with such exclusivity arrived opportunity. Enough service years in the Free Watch all but guaranteed one an eventual city government position, and Vicquerno van der Szaalm had been well on his way toward one such position when the wars broke out, studying as a solicitor. Oft he wonders what his life would look like now, hadn't he answered the chance for glory and adventure when it knocked; quiet, t'would seem. Quiet and comfortable and ignobly dull.

The other ignominies—the noxious fumes of the smithy, the drudgery of heraldry, the odoriferousness of the pulp, even the stink and the calluses of the fields—these he suffered graciously enough but not the courtroom. The courtroom drove him very nearly mad. Perhaps those ink and pounce-stained hands, unstimulated by the quill, yearned for the hoe and the hammer once more. Perhaps, given his first glimpse into Valtrecht's inner workings, it disgusted him just how much money the Doel was paying for Orrian's "protection"; how prosperous his household and his choice familial friends and his people at large could be, were they not racketeered by plumped-up horseback brigands. Then again, it may be the bills of lading, the manifests and the charterparties which so incensed him; inventories counted not in bushels or ingots, but heads. Names. Whole families and tribes branded, fettered, auctioned off to offshore mines and plantations, then squabbled over like goats and capons. Everyone knew Orrian's "Western Empire" did not exercise a chattel system—they justified their slave trading by convicting a person of a crime first (often enough a fictitious one), then calling it punishment—may be the aging Doelishman began to wonder when he would recognize a name on the list.

Regardless of the cause, his defiance started off small: first earning a few more guilders renting out the family's press to populist pamphleteers; later on penning and publicizing his own (albeit anonymously). Finding himself in their backroom beer halls, attending their speeches, their debates. Little arsons and vandalisms, especially of shipments bound for the treasurers of Orrian's court; his "tributes." The fourteen months Vicquerno spent in the Salaissant for such offenses were meant to dissuade him thereof. Instead they galvanized him all the further, giving him time aplenty to pen all manner of anti-Haltian verses and fictions, several still popular today among "Ariana's Ardents"; and making him a few lifelong friends among his fellow prisoners besides, several of whom have fought and died already for the Reds.

Only Vicquerno's time in the Free Watch saved his estate from confiscation, and himself from the very worst conditions inside the prison, cramped and packed and rife with disease—not even mentioning, besides, the aforementioned indentured servitude on some fever-ridden plantation somewhere across the sea. Of course, only God knows whether it was redemption or recidivism which laid coiled in van der Szaalm's heart of hearts when he walked free that fateful day; whether he intended to navigate the straight and narrow, or fall back into old habits. For in just a few short months the revolution had swept through Doel, and, most courteously, robbed him of the choice. Though whether they sought him out, or the inverse, is as yet lost to time, known only to the Red Empress and the man himself.

Smoke and Steel

Race Human (Doelishman) Sex Male Age 51 Court Alignment Red Role Colonel (2nd Regiment of Horse—"The Firestripes") __________________________________________________________	Untitled by Andrey Shishkin

Divine Right. Despite his common origins, "Old Vic" in just a few years has proven himself a capable soldier, roughrider, and commander of men, an invaluable asset to the Inburians' peasant revolt. Equally adept in both the dragoon and the harquebusier styles of warfare, on the field he deploys with sword, carbine, and a brace of two Reiterpistolen; whereas on the street he carries a mercenary's Katzbalger—short, broad, and in all more suited to tavern brawls than proper dueling.

Ironsides. First to engage and last to withdraw, Vicquerno himself sets the 2^nd's example in battle. As composed among enemies as allies, and unflappable under fire, he does not retreat until he's received the order; and even then, not until the last of his boys has gotten out first.

Similis Simili Gaudet. Handpicked not for their individual skills and strengths, but for their devotion to "Commander, Queen, and Cause" (purportedly in that order, ascending), Vic's "Firestripes," so nicknamed for their distinctive orange sashes, have cultivated a unit cohesion not achieved elsewhere but by the very most prosperous leaders. They do not rape; nor break ranks to run down a routed foe; nor whore or gamble at quarters; nor loot the houses and baggage of human foes, regardless of allegiances. (The colonel does condone the pillage of elven property, however.) Their discipline is admirable, their personal loyalties enviable, their repute as yet unrivalled.

Demagogue. That most of the 2^nd began the war as common workmen—hunters, militia, and other decent shots, perhaps, but unskilled in battle all the same—and now command the renown they do, speaks to the methods of van der Szaalm and his serjeants. This begins not with the ruthless drilling of their bodies and horses, nor even with the communal prayers and catechisms in which all the men share between battles; but with recognizing in each man all the qualities beseeming a soldier of freedom.

Knave of Hearts. One would not expect the man who has forbidden gambling among his ranks to be so adept at games of skill, but especially cards and billiards.

Anguis in Herba. The Firestripes' personal devotion to their colonel has brought some of Ariana's councilors, and perhaps the girl herself, no small degree of anxiety in recent days. Why, for instance, this insistence on garbing the regiment in a color besides Ariana's scarlet? And why does it draft its own poems, its own songs and slogans ("We Remembre Grendell," "Be Thou of Good Couraige," "The Gunnes of Rodelkog" et al.), rather than join the other troops in their catechisms? Some cannot help wondering whether the good colonel's personal ambitions supersede his loyalty to the pretender-empresses...

Sanguinarian. Though marked by temperance and measure in most things, if one vice colors Vicquerno's decisions it is his rage. Slow to forgive and quick to avenge, it is little wonder that he's fallen in with the camp which promises the decimation, humiliation, and ultimate expulsion of the elves from Old Inbur. At times to the detriment of the war effort (inspiring those to fight to the death who would otherwise have lowered their arms and surrendered), those who have crossed the 2^nd can expect no clemency; no quarter. And the grudges their commander keeps are strong as steel.

Son and heir to a family of poorters and husbandmen, relatively modest of means, Vicquerno even from a most tender age was spared the indignity of an idle life. Expected from the start to earn his daily bread, he had a small hand in many of the family's various enterprises—a tin smithy, a heraldry office, a small paper mill, all of these situated in the levee-town of Valtrecht—but his true duties were to the estate, where with godly grace he took to pick and plough and scythe, same as the sharecroppers who worked his father's fields. When there were no troughs to till and crops to tend, especially in wintertime, Vicquerno also enlisted with the town's standing militia, walking its dams and walls and sea gates, arresting the occasional robber-knight or burglar—a privilege afforded only to the wealthy of the city, as the stadtholder, Rodon Van Ecklingen, expected the men to supply their own arms. But with such exclusivity arrived opportunity. Enough service years in the Free Watch all but guaranteed one an eventual city government position, and Vicquerno van der Szaalm had been well on his way toward one such position when the wars broke out, studying as a solicitor. Oft he wonders what his life would look like now, hadn't he answered the chance for glory and adventure when it knocked; quiet, t'would seem. Quiet and comfortable and ignobly dull.

The other ignominies—the noxious fumes of the smithy, the drudgery of heraldry, the odoriferousness of the pulp, even the stink and the calluses of the fields—these he suffered graciously enough but not the courtroom. The courtroom drove him very nearly mad. Perhaps those ink and pounce-stained hands, unstimulated by the quill, yearned for the hoe and the hammer once more. Perhaps, given his first glimpse into Valtrecht's inner workings, it disgusted him just how much money the Doel was paying for Orrian's "protection"; how prosperous his household and his choice familial friends and his people at large could be, were they not racketeered by plumped-up horseback brigands. Then again, it may be the bills of lading, the manifests and the charterparties which so incensed him; inventories counted not in bushels or ingots, but heads. Names. Whole families and tribes branded, fettered, auctioned off to offshore mines and plantations, then squabbled over like goats and capons. Everyone knew Orrian's "Western Empire" did not exercise a chattel system—they justified their slave trading by convicting a person of a crime first (often enough a fictitious one), then calling it punishment—may be the aging Doelishman began to wonder when he would recognize a name on the list.

Regardless of the cause, his defiance started off small: first earning a few more guilders renting out the family's press to populist pamphleteers; later on penning and publicizing his own (albeit anonymously). Finding himself in their backroom beer halls, attending their speeches, their debates. Little arsons and vandalisms, especially of shipments bound for the treasurers of Orrian's court; his "tributes." The fourteen months Vicquerno spent in the Salaissant for such offenses were meant to dissuade him thereof. Instead they galvanized him all the further, giving him time aplenty to pen all manner of anti-Haltian verses and fictions, several still popular today among "Ariana's Ardents"; and making him a few lifelong friends among his fellow prisoners besides, several of whom have fought and died already for the Reds.

Only Vicquerno's time in the Free Watch saved his estate from confiscation, and himself from the very worst conditions inside the prison, cramped and packed and rife with disease—not even mentioning, besides, the aforementioned indentured servitude on some fever-ridden plantation somewhere across the sea. Of course, only God knows whether it was redemption or recidivism which laid coiled in van der Szaalm's heart of hearts when he walked free that fateful day; whether he intended to navigate the straight and narrow, or fall back into old habits. For in just a few short months the revolution had swept through Doel, and, most courteously, robbed him of the choice. Though whether they sought him out, or the inverse, is as yet lost to time, known only to the Red Empress and the man himself.

Smoke and Steel

I'll be able to start working on this character sheet on Friday, finish it through the weekend. Glad to see the other factions are getting some love!! Should make for an enticing opening board.

Smoke and Steel (A pike and shot era RP concept)

The Reds were a conspiracy that's been brewing for a while made up of human burghers and military officers. When the civil war kicks off they've started rallying peasants, burning manors etc. and then defeated the Imperial field army sent to put them down (through weight of numbers). They are in the open at the moment to rally the peasants but they have the potential to go underground again or retreat into that impassable woodland area on the map.

@Dyelli Beybi

Perfect. I'm taking heavy inspiration from Maximilien Robespierre and Guy Fawkes as well, but the working backstory is straight out of Oliver Cromwell: a wealthy-ish commoner with a surprising acumen for cavalry command, furthering a righteous cause while also exploiting the turmoil to ruthlessly seize power. The more brutal the methods (the more ethically ambiguous the character's legacy) the better.

Smoke and Steel (A pike and shot era RP concept)

Character drafting (if, of course, there is room for newcomers—I'm sure you're giving priority seating to people already playing in Circled Sea games). Do any of these factions operate from a position of secrecy, or are all the major claimants declared and accounted for in the coming conflict? And what phase has the fighting reached, if at all?

Smoke and Steel (A pike and shot era RP concept)

Amidst the chaos, two sisters, Andronika, the heir to the old Empire and her younger sister Ariana, have also raised ancient Inburian Wyvern banners and many flock to them, tired of elven oppression. While the sisters are firm friends, they have quite different ideas about what a free human Kingdom might look like. Andronika, the 'White Wyvern' is in favour of cooperating with the elven populations in human majority lands while Ariana is in favour of complete displacement. The chances of their forces coming to blows is very real.

@Dyelli Beybi

👀 The English Civil War except instead of filthy royalists we're decapitating filthy knife ear apologists?

Regalia

Somewhere inside that skin-and-metal exoskeleton, that body which she wore the way others wore clothes and armor, Beth still wondered what it all meant. The 'Red Stars.' And what they had portended, clawing up the beach like a living tsunami, their chitinous knees clicking with greed, their mandibles yawning ravenously. Whether that enemy up there was the enemy—the one Ultima had warned them about all those years ago, the one which had made the girl's recovery, her training, her painstaking grooming all so very necessary.

So many questions. Yet among all those uncertainties had one thing remained clear, a lighthouse standing strong amid the squalls: it was not her destiny to fell this monster. She was not these people's savior. She would, however, aid that person. That much she had known from the beginning—even if she'd thought it would be Cassiel, her craven brother, who rose first and paramount to Landow's aid...

Still, before someone could deal the coup de grâce, someone had to bring low that obscene creature. And before someone could cut it down, someone had to fight her way to it. Fight over the blood-slick sand, through the roiling surf; through the roach-dogs and their hordes uncountable, their bodies even then weighing down her own, hooked and latched about her ankles, her throat, like so many writhing shackles, heavy and still gorging. Glutting. Beth impaled them until her hands were too heavy with their carcasses to hoist, sliced them and hacked them until the blades of her fingers were clogged with their thick, pulpy innards, hiked over the mountains of their dead, and still they came, two arriving to replace each one felled. And through it all, through the futility and the struggle, only one direction remained: past them. Through them.

Wresting her hand from the last thorax she'd plunged it through, she kept pushing. Kept clawing. A stalemate slipping from their fingers stroke by stroke.

Until that changed.

It began with a kind of sandstorm: a flurry of detritus kicking up from a single focal point, shearing pebbles from salient concrete, uncovering and uplifting beach-buried river stones. Steadied, aimed, controlled, this biting wind liquefied the lesser creatures inside their organic armors, shredded the chitinous shells. Another storm also focalized, this one encrusted with a million diamonds of ice, glittering on the gusts, glittering on every surface where grew its stiff, brittle hoars. Where the first sandpaper squall had reclaimed sections of beach, this ice storm calcified over the squirming dead, gave pause to the scuttlings of those yet unharmed. Born from bugs and insects, the roach-things feared the cold most of all. It compelled them to dig. Hibernate. Flee winter's desolation down, down into the heats and slimes of the earth. Still, even this afforded the Inevitable One, and all the other Dominants, but a few feet's reprieve. Only a moment to refresh.

By the time a second behemoth had scraped the heavens with its scaly back, blotting the sky with the stretching of its titanic wings, those down on the beach knew not whether to elate or to shiver. Behind them, from among the huddled refugees had it appeared, but as another defender? If not, then one who had infiltrated—the second of two pincers—one driving their prey into the hunter's jaws, one preventing all escape while the other wreaked hell and havoc.

Much to the relief of the dwarfed onlookers, the invader from the sea appeared rather incensed by the sudden arrival and presence of this second entity (an entity Beth, and all around her, did not recognize; not by name or visage). Their attention drawn, their ire stoked, thus began an exchange of blows which shook the earth, and sent shockwaves pulsing through the spray. Like twenty-inch artillery guns were their swipes and strikes, and yet like those found on two warring battleships were their defenses—leviathan hides and razor-quick claws and the gnashings of skyscraper teeth. Every minute, every second further pulverized poor Landowtown beneath their primordial feet that their stalemate continued, iron striking iron. Even when the commandeered, brainwashed roach-things had scaled the massive back, and reached their destination, and for a moment distracted their erstwhile master with their chewing, even then the second titan could not pierce. Could not penetrate. Even when the first shrieked in pain, and, agitated, began to swipe and scratch at its own feeler-organs, the second could not maneuver its huge claws and fangs to meet soft underbelly, vulnerable throat.

Enraged, it unhinged its jaw, and opened wide its cavernous gullet, wherefrom emerged a growing light. Whitish, pure, the distilled essence of a dying star; the fury in its belly going supernova.

Down on the beach, the smartest were already turned to flee, unsure what hellfire would issue from the portal of this behemoth's mouth except for that it would glass the sands, scour the rest to ash. The survivors ran, and they were easy prey for the roach-things not caught in the radii of Titan's shredding sandstorm, Shiva's banshee-winds. They ran and so too did the things which devoured them, sensing devastation, yet unable to overcome their unnatural instincts, their hijacked programming.

Beth, of course, had never been one to flee, least of all when cladded in Odin's metallic embrace. The chill which permeated the armor seemed as well each time to seep into her very heart, imbuing it with an alien, detached acceptance. Perhaps the scrawny five-foot-something would have feared, stripped naked of such effects; standing there exposed among the horrors; but not then, peering out through His visor, flexing His gauntleted fingers. Not then...

A few necrotic blasts cleared the way, scattering the roach-things in a linear path, curled and dead before they hit the ground. Sand became shallows became foaming surf, until she waded waist-high among the mutant bugs; live ones teeming and swimming and gnashing about her legs, dead ones bobbing and buoyant. Ere long she waded too among other things; things which towered over her the way she towered over its dutiful legions; the pylons of its legs, its sinews corded like guy wires. She was microscopic compared to these. Small enough to go unnoticed past the massive spur of its metapodia, small enough that there would not even be enough of her left to ooze up between its toes when she was crushed beneath this dance of giants. Even still, Beth did not fear.

She had, after all, reached her target.

The bugs still latching to her armored limbs, the shallows still dragging her this way and that, the behemoths' every step a tsunami, their every exchange a tidal wave, she spent her every drop of strength not being dragged to sea and drowned. Yet still she pushed. Drew. Invoked. Fought and fought with every blow and every plodding, trudging step. Until finally, finally, there she stood amidst the crashing spray, mere feet away from having been mashed, and with a single massive stroke, all her power and will strained behind it, fed into it ...

One moment the monstrous leviathan, born from the hostile sea, ripped and tore into the dragon-Dominant, eager—desperate—to gouge out its breath before the second could unleash Its hellfiery wrath. Lashing and snapping and scouring at its superheated throat. The next, the creature somehow lost its footing. Staggered forward, crumpled with a writhing, a shriek. The blackish ichor coursing from its digitigrade ankle, polluting the pinkish waters, told the story: somehow, by something (someone) too minuscule to see, someone swept away in the churning chaos of the water and the bugs and the bodies, had hamstrung the being; sliced clean through its heelcord, hobbling it.

There was a hurry, then, to capitalize on this vulnerability. Perhaps more sand and stone peppered the felled creature, aiming for the jellies of its eyes, and soft whites beneath its jaw. Perhaps another of Shiva's flurries aimed to blind and frostbite the monster. A hail of bullets and gunpulses clattered across its armored cheeks, its neck. But its killer already stood there, upon its plated brow.

He reached down, and plunged his twin swords from the back of its neck. He looked across the way, where stood Laura Genevieve among the terrified, huddled masses. He bowed.

"Farewell for now, miss," he said, and with a flourish, and a bow, and a sheathing of his swords, a flame erupted at his feet. A flame which crawled quickly up his legs, and dusted him inch by inch into a fine ash, which scattered on the southward breeze.

Cards {15/15}

Come die Patrick Stark

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