“You’ve had that cross look on your face the entire time you’ve been logged on, cheer up mate, nothing goes according to plan but you can’t be mad when you outnumber the baddies and you’ve got them on the ropes,” Mavis stepped nearer to Mordred and pushed her shoulder against his. Mavis was, arguably, his best friend and most stalwart defender. This whole venture had been kind of a sore point between them because she was a big Empress Amelia fan. When he’d found the quest starter and first floated the idea of altering it to start this whole Rebellion, her answer had been a very unenthusiastic and disbelieving, ‘shore, why not?’ Even though her facial expressions started to go from doubt to resembling a raisin the more feasible the plan became, she didn’t leave or join the Imperials.Between that and listening to him rant for hours at a time, there wasn’t much more he could. Mordred was honest with himself whenever possible, and he had to admit he liked quirky and strong personality.

She was also completely nuts, so that helped.

“I’ll never understand how you can talk like a ‘bloke’ with that feminine lilt to your voice,” Mordred muttered under his breath. “Scottish, Irish, English -- pick an accent to mutilate.” He cast a side glance at her and couldn’t help but scowl when he saw that her hair was bright purple. The hair color wasn’t the problem. The problem was that her leather pleated skirt, situated over leather boots that went all the way up past said skirt, was lime green. The rest of her outfit was just a simple, normal, brown. Bonkers. “Are you color blind now? Is this a thing? When I’m Emperor are you just going to go around mimicking a citrus fruit with only one half of your body?”

“First, you leave the color blind folk alone prick. Second,” she quirked a smile. “You want to be Emperor?” Mavis made a noise in her throat and looked at what he’d been staring at for the last half hour. “Doin’ lotsa Emperor-y type things? Like staring at the backside of people fightin’ for you, but you can’t go up there because you’re worth points and supposed to be nominally directin’ other people?” Mavis clapped him on the shoulder with an exaggerated ‘good luck with that’ expression before continuing, “mate, when you’re Emperor, I’m going to unfriend you and disappear. Then I’m going to change my name so you can’t find me, at least until you lose your nonsense.”

“There’s probably an Emperor thing that would let me track you…” Mordred said, scowling at the people in front of them trying to mash their way into Keristrazly Square.

“I’ll just give it all up then, won’t I? Then you’d feel bad.” Mavis grumbled. “Just Mavis out there in the world, touchin’ grass.”

He rolled his eyes but couldn’t help but notice his mood improving. “Do you want to go fight? Shall we go fight?”

“Nay!” Mavis shook her head and pouted at him. “If Empress Amelia of Elysium, hero of such-and-such many battles and worlds pops up right in front of me and I’m waving my wee Rebel flag, I think I’d die of shame.”

Mordred blew out an exasperated breath out his nose and finally turned to face her directly, throwing his hands up in the air. “You had better buck up! I will turn this Rebellion right around! Do you want to be Imperial? We can be Imperials right now!”

“Can we?” Mavis blinked big eyes at him.

“Unbelievable,” Mordred was just about to reach out and start hitting her with his staff in a firm but loving way, the type of way that got you twenty to life in court, when the weird noise started to echo down the streets from behind him.

“Oh, so that ominous and creepy soundin’ doom noise isn’t on our side?” Mavis turned with him, one eyebrow raising over the other. “I’d say I knew this would happen, but I have to wait to see it first. Some sort of nonsensical dragon force. Or she’s brought to life a horde of creatures from another realm. Maybe she exploded atmosphere and it’s all being sucked into space…”

Mordred turned slightly, squinting. “Space?”

Mavis nodded. “Oh yeah. It’s a big empty mate. Nature’s big suck.”

“I’m ashamed of you,” he decided, turning back around to watch for the next big thing going wrong.

“Damn.” Was all Mavis said when they first noticed the ship sailing through the sky dropping a small sea’s worth of water on the boulevards and streets leading to the square.

“Double damn.” Mordred responded quietly when the water, which was arguably freaking awful already, turned to ice.

The eardrum destroying wave of noise hit them first. It wasn’t enough to debuff anyone with a silence modifier, yet, but it was loud enough that people would have to be right next to each other screaming or using channels. It was the sound of falling things breaking hard against the ground. Buildings being crushed. Lives being lost.

Mavis turned away immediately and began pushing through the throng in front of them, making her way to Keristrazly Square. Mordred, slightly slower on the uptake for once, did the same. That was obviously an Imperial ship. He would bet real world land ownership bonds that it was freaking Elisha again.

“[Examine] - The Good Skyship Cloudkill:

Description hidden. Appraisal being blocked by enemy force skill.

“Khiafin!” Mordred called over his channel. “Khiafin! What do I have to offer you to kill everyone on that ship? You’re there right? Khiafin?”

“Look!” Mavis grabbed his arm and pointed, laughing like she was seeing the funniest thing in the world.

Mordred looked up at the ship, already insanely jealous of the thing(how did that work?), and his eyes immediately zoomed in a small falling object. The name ‘Khiafin’ over the falling figures head made him grimace. “He can still Shadow Step back onto the ship!”

“What?” Mavis yelled, coming closer.

“He can stil--” Mordred saw the tiny falling figure disappear and started to smile. Then his smile slid right back off his face again seeing something come over the railing. It was ‘Khiafin’ again. He was falling, dagger out, sliding down the hull of the ship with the angriest look on his face Mordred had ever seen.

Mordred turned away without watching the rest and couldn’t help but give Mavis a laughing ‘oh crap’ face. Despite how this was very not good for them, both Mordred and Mavis just started laughing as they pushed closer to the Square.

“I would have liked to see him get pushed off the ship!” Mavis yelled.

Elisha won’t bomb her own people with that, Mordred thought, nodding to acknowledge her comment.

…Pretty sure. Like, 40% sure.

Amelia was pretty sure this was going to work.

99.9% sure this was going to work, even. B-3 had given her the big old stinkeye when she’d tried to call Vienne the first time. Gabriel had even promised to pray to Vienne and try to get the ball moving down in the game. The way he had phrased the promise to try hadn’t sounded confident, but that was probably just Gabriel’s natural voice! Haha! Right, that must be it.

As the hour approached Amelia began pacing in the cell. Quark watched her walk back and forth.

“Did you not sleep well?” They asked.

“Oh, I slept great.” Amelia muttered, reflecting that she hadn’t slept a wink in the real world. There was too much about go happen. Who could sleep?

“We are relieved. Is this a normal behavior for your species then?” Quark asked hesitantly.

“Anxiety? Uncertainty? Nervous energy? It is so normal.” Amelia laughed then.

“Do you wish to share what is making you these things?” Quark nodded to the floor in front of, for lack of a better term, their pillow nest.

You will meet allies and enemies. You will not always know which are which.

“Perfidelia says to just take this on my own,” Amelia replied.

“Ahh,” Quark replied. “We do not know what you reference, but are glad that it is a comfort.”

“Quark,” Amelia stopped pacing and looked at her green roommate. “I gotta be honest. I’m probably going to provoke B-3. Would you like me to do it in another room?”

Quark was silent, and then asked, “Is B-3 the designation of your demon?”

“That’s probably the best way to describe it, yes.”

“We would appreciate it if you did not enrage the demon at all, but if you must, we understand,” Quark drawled slowly. “We would appreciate it if it was elsewhere.”

“Alright! Fair!” Amelia had a little time left, and the doorway silhouette was glowing indicating that she could start testing if she wanted. “I always wanted to cause a ruckus in a puzzle room!”

“Be safe, Empress Amelia of Elysium. We would be pleased to see you again,” Quark said awkwardly.

“Yeah! I’ll come back.” Amelia laughed.

“Where else would you go?”

Amelia frowned, trying not to let the depressing comment get to her. “Good point!”

Amelia walked up to the doorway with the nerves and walk of a baby duck, vanishing shortly and reappearing in the--

“Halt Knave!” B-3 cried out cheerfully.

Amelia jumped half a foot in the air and closed her eyes, ignoring the next words that came out of B-3’s mouth and giving an inartculate scream instead.

“Even when I’m ready for it you jump scare me!” She screamed.

B-3 nodded intimately and leaned forward like a conspirator. “...56 seconds and the testing will start.”

“Die.”

“Amelia does not have the authorization to request this action of the unit, 34 seconds.”

“Let’s all just play the quiet game for 30 seconds, can we do that?”

“31 seconds.” B-3 seemed to just respond to idle chatter with a countdown.

“You just lost the quiet game. Do you not know how to play? Let’s go again, starting now.”

“26 seconds.”

“I don’t mind being undefeated, I guess.”

“20 seconds.”

“Do you have like a drop table I could look at for later? Like, do you drop that sick coat? Can I sort of hint to the system that you should drop it?”

“12 seconds.”

The time had arrived! At least for the puzzle room.

Amelia stared at the wall blankly. It was some sort of maze that encompassed the entire wall in front of her, a good fifteen feet across and four feet high. “Maze, no formatted for your wall.”

Despite the urge to put her finger on the gently pulsing starter dot, Amelia instead looked at the system time. The Lab ditching hour approached.

“Whenever I start to do a maze, I like to just sort of talk about a story of my childhood,” Amelia started out, talking loudly and watching the walls around her for any reaction. “Me and my buddy Vienne, she was an Empress as well, were starting a band called ‘Evil Must Be Fought Whenver It Is Found’.”

The surroundings didn’t change at all. The dot on the map glowed a little more persistently, but it seemed like a visual aid effect from her taking so long than any sort of urgent demand.

“Oh this maze is so hard! Okay! So, the band name was kind of long, but it was catchy! Vienne though, she had all sorts of problems. She was basically a mess. Who knows what she was thinking when she said she wanted to be the bassist. She was a goddess on vocals, you know? She had this voice that was just killer. Sometimes she did actually slay with it, it was that amazing…”

Amelia grimaced.

There was no doubt in her mind that Elias freaking Thompkins was streaming this live.

“We can’t stream this live,” Elias said quietly. He was in the War Room of the studio and nodded at the technician. “Just keep primary on Abhy talking about the play-by-play, with the ship dropping ice from the sky. Cloudkill was it? Let’s get some footage from Elisha and Forsythe playing behind her on the big screen.”

“...but she was always late, and didn’t listen to her messages, and it really screwed the band sometimes…”

Elias closed his eyes and shook his head, looking back at the mainfeed which showed Abhy and several guest hosts whooping and laughing as they took Elisha’s feed on the ship.

Elisha was explaining to Forsythe that the ship had a lot of guns but it wasn’t feasible to dip the ship to fire them at the ground because their own ice would catch the boat and halt their momentum. No thrust, no sailing. No sailing, no fly.

“No fly, bad.” Forsythe nodded somberly with wild eyes. Elias wasn't sure why Elisha had taken the one guy with a fear of heights with her.

“Even getting hit by the water would be bad. It really is cursed,” Elisha said after a moment of reflection. “It drops your HP by a percentage based on how long the flask has been open. Mr. Porter let us know that. I'll have to pay for his temple dispel.”

“I can’t believe you found a use for that thing,” Forsythe finally said. “I apologize for telling you to let Raven try to drink it, like she wanted to, on the world we found it.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to see that,” Elisha shrugged. She bit into her lemon muffin. "It would have been like watching Raven put the end of a firehose in her mouth."

"Stop," Forsythe sighed. He bit into his own muffin and chewed quietly. "You're making me sad."

“Sorry Amelia. You’re competing with a flying ship dropping frozen and cursed water AND lemon muffins.” Elias looked around and then asked in a sudden surprised tone. “Who was watching my son?”